 By Alvin Engelke
alvinengelke@hotmail.com
The Creston auction will be held Saturday, October 4, starting at 6 P. M. at the Creston Community Building. Folks can spend the day in Elizabeth participating in Pioneer Day activities and then come to Creston to stock up on goodies & such.
Keith Belt brought the message at the Burning Springs M. E. Church. There will be a revival there Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday and then the meeting will move to the New Home (Mayberry) Church on Route 14 south of Palestine.
Donna Sue Ferrell, Jane & Nancy Engelke spent two days in Cleveland learning a new computer program.
The Calhoun road crew has been busy picking up litter during the recent nice weather. Apparently the Big Boss doesn't want roads worked, repaired and patched during good weather with trash pickup for the men a top priority.
Kelly Paving laid down some hotmix on Route 5 between Brooksville and the Annamoriah bridge. There had been station flags on Tom's Run but the apparently were pulled up and the potholes have grown.
While in theory local gas wells were turned into the line pressure was so high that gas would not flow.
Mr. & Mrs. Carl Ferrell were calling on Ruby Sutton.
A woman who needed lots of dental work came to the Burning Springs church asking for money to buy gasoline to return to Ohio to a hospital job. She said she & husband had been visiting at Julian in Boone County and had been living in the automobile & that other churches had turned her down. One person there said that if she would wait five minutes she could follow him down to the Exxon in Elizabeth and get some gasoline. Instead she got into her vehicle and drove toward Grantsville.
The Calhoun Chronicle has been running a series of letters written by Amie Sexton Silcott. In an 1863 letter she wrote that Bashy Blankenship was visiting her at Arnoldsburg. Abasha Blankenship was the wife of George Blankenship, Sr. who lived on the Annamoriah Flats. They have many descendants living in the area.
A large group of buzzards has been circling down near the mouth of the West Fork of the Little Kanawha River.
Continental Petroleum, CNX (Consolidation Coal), Marathon Petroleum and Sinclair Oil have all formally joined the competition for acreage to drill Marcellus wells in West Virginia. The per acre price for lease bonus has now hit $4,000 in Pennsylvania and in Randolph County $1,000/acre leases have been signed. Some of the slicksters say "Oh where your stuff is the Marcellus is 'only' fifty feet thick." What they don't say is that is plenty thick enough. Chesapeake noted that gas was cheaper "in Appalachia" which, translated, means that royalties are less here than in the western states. The new players will be paying 20% royalties but in many cases 8% will go to brokers and dealers. Obviously one wants to deal with the principals and get leases that call for gross figures, accounting, etc.
The deal for the farmout of Marcellus acreage from Dominion to Anterro Resources was cut back to 114,259 acres for $347 million or just over $3,000/acre. Anterro noted that because of the mess caused by Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac they were having financing difficulties. The folks who made the financial mess are now blaming others (claiming no oversight) but with the internet one can listen to clips from C-Span testimony from a few years back (there are no problems and there need not be regulation, you have a lynching party, etc.) and draw one's own conclusions (and it doesn't take a CPA). One woman noted that one of the head culprits is now the chief financial advisor to a presidential candidate.
The price of local Penn grade crude fell to $100.95/bbl and gasoline in central West Virginia dropped to under $3.60/gallon although locally gas was much higher. Visitors from Pennsylvania note that fuel is much cheaper there. Maybe they do not have to make "contributions" to venal politicians. The tax on gasoline in West Virginia is over $21.15/bbl.
Some local folks have been visiting with the magistrates on a variety of issues.
Tobacco growers now have most of their burley crop in the barns to cure. Some years back Bill & Hill started a program to shut down domestic tobacco production to assist producers in Brazil and elsewhere.
A group had a hayride on the Richardsonville road Sunday afternoon.
Paw paws are ripe now and very tasty. In the promotional literature for the Jamestown colony it was stated that "in the new world" custard grew on trees. Butternuts, walnuts and hickory nuts are in plentiful supply this season so there is no reason for anyone to go hungry. But, of course, one would have to gather them, hull them, dry them, crack them, pick them out and chew them. For those who feel that they have an "entitlement" that likely would be asking a bit much. Then again, when Chairman Mao took over the happy People's Republic of China those folks "vanished".
A number of folks attended the Molasses Festival at Arnoldsburg.
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