 By Alvin Engelke
alvinengelke@hotmail.com
The Creston ATV Poker Run is scheduled for Saturday, April 18 at the Creston Community Building. Signup starts at 9 A.M. Come and join the fun, see game, spring flowers, play in the mud (if one
wants to) and have fun with the entire family.
There will be an Easter Party at 1 P.M. on Easter Sunday, April 12 at the Creston Community Building. Be sure and bring the little ones to the event.
The Creston Neighborhood Watch's meeting will be held Monday April 13 at 7 P.M. at the Creston Community Building. Everyone is invited.
Lyle J. Gibson, age 85, formerly from Creston, passed away. A veteran of World War II he was the last of his family. His parents formerly ran a store in Creston and his mother was for many years the
postmistress. He is survived by his widow and one son who is noted for being an excellent plumber.
There was a serious wreck on the Creston hill Thursday afternoon. A Roane County woman was taken away in the chopper and others were taken to various hospitals.
Mr. & Mrs. Bryan dePue, Mr. & Mrs. Jim Marshall, Freddie Bush and sons, Casper Shuman, Virgil Maze and a host of others were on band Saturday evening for the Creston auction. The next auction
will be May 2.
Alvin & Nancy Engelke joined most of the rest of the Schenerlein family Sunday afternoon for W. Harrison Schenerlein IV's second birthday party at his new home on Turkey Foot Ridge at Mineral Wells.
He received lots of toys & also had fun playing with sycamore balls, He tells everyone that he is three.
Construction is continuing on Jack dePue's addition to his building on the historic dePue family farm at Creston.
The Creston neighborhood watch picked up trash & litter along a stretch of W. Va. 5 on Saturday. Those participating included Carl & Donna Sue Ferrell, Denver & Tammy McFarland, Jim Tedrick, Alvin
Engelke, Jerry Poling and Roy Copen. Linda, Tammy, Donna Sue & Estelle fixed fine vittles for the workers. Among the items "harvested" were 3 home pregnancy test kits and a computer keyboard. There were lots of amber bottles and trash from fast food establishments.
Greens are up, as well as ramps, and folks have been looking for morel mushrooms which are among the tastiest of local treats. Of course the venison and the wild turkeys like them too. Spring
ephemerals are to be seen everywhere. Warm weather and rains have been bringing things to the fore.
Quite a bit of ground has been worked up for gardens. Apparently many are concerned that food may become a premium as a result of the new Marxist oriented federal programs that are being
implemented, especially those that would impact small and local operations, farmers markets & such.
The editor of The Parkersburg News noted that he & his newspaper received at least 10 press releases each day from the office of the big eared one touting all that is being done for his subjects.
Local resident are still wondering about all the press reports about the big foreign trip, hugging the queen and bowing before the king of Saudi Arabia, the latter being something only done by those who
answer to the desert king. Of course it was learned that an Arab lawyer who worked for OPEC, the oil cartel, was the one who pulled the strings to get "the, messiah" into Harvard law school.
When asked when he was going to bring back the jobs that were sent overseas, dear leader said, "Those jobs aren't coming back and you wouldn't want them anyway." Anyone who has gone up Route 2
in Pleasants County recently will see the remains of the Cabot lampblack factory that recently was there before relocating to the Persian Gulf. It was said at the time of the closing of the facility that there was lots of cheap natural gas in Araby and the facility would be nearer India and China where automobile tires are
now made. Of course back when many local residents used to make tires in Akron and Godfrey L. Cabot formerly had lamp black factories in Creston. Spencer & Grantsville (Cabot Station) &, of course. then employed local men. One wag noted that the new jobs will be "green jobs" which were described as
mowing the grass with a push mower so as to not pollute with gasoline or other fossil fuels.
Reflecting the decreased demand for local natural gas Dominion had area producers curtail their sales into Dominion's (Hope) gathering system over the weekend.
The price of local Penn grade crude rose $4.25/bbl to $45.75 and the average price for March crude was $41.7581/bbl.
When the telephone cable was cut local residents didn't get any calls from telephone solicitors nor did they receive the calls they needed to get concerning sick family members, changed medical
appointments. etc. Other local folks have been having difficulties with Hughes Net the internet provider. The tech rep for the firm speaks better English than the Hindi that local folks can command but the problem still remains even with clear skies.
The "leaders" in Washington passed the "stimulus" bill to put folks back to work or so they said. A recent, well documented example is the federal government condom program. It seems Uncle Sam buys
about 10 billion of them each year, allegedly to stop AIDS in Africa. They were all made in a rubber
factory in Alabama but, under the new program of hope and change, the condoms will now be purchased from a Chinese communist factory helping the unemployment numbers in that part of the world, no doubt.
Representatives of several oil and gas companies, including the major players in West Virginia attended a conference in Cooperstown New York on Marcellus shale drilling. The problems dealing with
the Marcellus are, in large part, related to water, first the vast quantities needed to fracture the wells, most of which are horizontal and then the disposal of returning and produced waters. With the removal of calcium, barium and strontium the water can be reused and acid mine drainage, if the sulfates are removed,
turns out to be an excellent fracturing medium. One company is considering renting railroad tank cars to
haul produced brine to Texas to inject into the Ellenberger formation. Salt was considered a waste product
to be disposed of in landfills until someone noted that the W.Va. DOH paid $140/ton for road salt last winter delivered to the Baltimore harbor from South America. As one person pointed out, "There are some golden opportunities out there for someone."
Marcellus drilling in New York state is on hold as there is an injunction against fracturing horizontal wells but drilling continues in Pennsylvania. Farm fields seem to be the best locations to set up drilling operations there.
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