Volume # 2, Edition # 3 January 30, 2002
Apparently all candidates who qualified to seek office have decided to remain in the race. Thursday at noon was the deadline for withdrawal and it is my understanding that none did. One citizen told me a few weeks ago that he was considering running for the city council and asked me as to what he should expect if he became a candidate. I told him to expect his friends and supporters to speak well of him and to expect his detractors to label him as guilty of all kinds of terrible atrocities. Unfortunately that is the way of most small (and large) town elections.
And the rumors and charges are already starting to fly. Apparently the first accusation leveled against me has it that I attempted to get our people to stop trading with one or more local businesses. But as I have always said, it pays to have things in writing.
Those who maintain a complete collection of these articles and those with much better memories than mine, can attest to the fact that in Volume # 1, Edition # 27, dated November 27, 2001, I encouraged everyone to trade with ANY of our local businesses to the greatest extent possible. My article is quoted: "……………I hope that our people will shop at home this year to the greatest extent possible and help our local businesses. Even the chain stores employ local people and buying from any of our Jellico businesses creates jobs for our area citizens and places additional money into our local economy." As one lady who operates a business stated, "How anyone after reading that article and seeing how you have worked to promote business could come up with that story is way beyond me!"
But such stories are going to be spread during elections and that one is probably tame to some that will eventually emerge. Generally it is best to ignore them. To paraphrase President Abraham Lincoln in refusing to respond to detrimental stories about himself, a person doesn't need to tell his friends and supporters that the stories are false. And having a thousand angels surrounding him and swearing that the stories are not true would not change the opinion of his enemies.
The beauty of living in a small town is that about everyone knows a candidate's background to include his family, interests, education and training, qualifications, job performance, etc.. Thankfully those are the things upon which most people base their voting decisions no matter how terrible the stories.
I initially ordered fifty (50) campaign posters to place in yards around town to officially announce my candidacy for reelection. More were ordered for later. I worked all day on Monday since we were out of school for the observance of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. (I originally had a list of approximately 125 residences where I had been given permission to place a sign or invited to do so and I had planned to place them as soon as I receive them.) I put up the entire first 50 including twelve or thirteen in the Tannery Hollow area along Sunset Trail before I exhausted my supply.
All that I placed in Tannery Hollow were torn down that first night although all were placed on private property with the permission and sometimes invitation of the residents. None were erected on utility poles or on state, county or city right of ways. As soon as morning came and everyone began to discover that the signs were missing, I began receiving telephone calls from some very upset folks and some talked to me directly to express their anger.
One individual asked me to bring three back for him to erect personally in place of the one that was taken from his lawn. A resident who did not at first want a sign, called and requested one for his yard after seeing what had happened. Most who had signs taken want replacements as soon as I receive my next order. My original list of approximately 125 has grown considerably since that time. Additionally one lady stated that she intends to call people and to inform them of the situation. So the incident may have had a far different result than was originally intended.
The hearing pertaining to the "firing" of Police Chief Ned Smiddy by City Administrator Tom Barclay was scheduled for last Monday, January 21st. However there apparently were conflicts for some and the meeting was canceled. The new date and starting time is this Monday, January 28th (7:00 PM).
One of our Jellico citizens, Mr. Mike Smith, an official with Walmart, has always been great in helping us to obtain funds from that firm for use by our schools, agencies and non-profit organizations. Recently he literally ran me down to give me a check for $ 1,000.00 from Walmart for our Jellico Learning Center. He had read some of the comments that I made several months ago in these notes about the great work done there for our children. He wanted me to have the honor and pleasure of presenting the check to Mrs. Ginny Witt, Director of the Learning Center. And of course I was happy to do so!
On behalf of the city of Jellico and the Learning Center, I want to thank Mike for all that he has contributed to our town and especially to benefit our children.
I often mention the passing of community leaders and I want to be sure to mention Mr. Aaron "Junior" Douglas. We all referred to him as Junior and very few even knew him by his first name. But he was a fixture in Jellico for many years and he always had a keen interest in what was taking place in our town.
I rarely pass the old Western Auto Store (now Jellico Hardware) without thinking of the years that he worked there and sold me everything from nuts and bolts to a bicycle to automobile tires, batteries, etc.. And sometimes I just went in there to see what they had in stock although I often didn't have a penny to my name. But I knew that I would be treated the same by Junior as if I had I been making a large purchase.
We also lost another extremely likable person in Mrs. Ruth Albright who was known by about everyone. I have heard several state how much she is missed. And I miss my former good neighbor Joe Overton. More and more like Junior, Ruth and Joe are passing from the scene and we are diminished with each loss.
A recent article in the Lafollette Press gave an account of a fire that completely burned Lafollette to the ground. And many towns and cities experienced similar major fires in their early days due to the fact that most buildings were of wood construction and placed very close to each other. The same was true in the first ten years or so in Jellico after the 1870's announcement that a "railhead" would be established to Smithville (our former name) to provide access to the vast rich coal deposits in this area. The railroad was completed in 1883 and buildings sprang up over night.
And we had our fire that was apparently reported throughout a large area. The following is an exact reprint of an account of the "great" Jellico fire taken from the Chattanooga Daily Times dated Wednesday, October 7, 1896, page 2:
"Jellico, Tennessee, Oct 6 - At 1 o'clock this morning fire caught on Commercial street in MAZE & BROWN's saloon, destroying all the buildings on Commercial street except the Commercial hotel, which by great effort was saved. The sufferers are BUCKNER & BRADFORD saloon; SULLIVAN, second hand store; MAZE AND BROWN saloon; the Jellico Clothing company; Sherrad ROOKARD, S.O. WATKINS, jewelry, and Sam BARTHAM, dwelling.
BUCKNER & BRADFORD, insurance $ 1,000, loss $ 3,000; Jellico Clothing Company, insurance $ 2,000, loss $ 5,000, other damages, possibly $ 2,500 or more. There was great excitement.
The wife of D.C. WITHERS was badly hurt by falling furniture thrown from an upper story on her head. She fell prostrated, but there are hopes of her recovery.
A fire extinguisher exploded in the hands of Alf HIBBURT, who was badly hurt, The cause of the fire was defective flue in MAZE & BROWN'S saloon."
(Note: Commerical Street was possibly Commerce Street but more likely our present day Main Street. For the benefit of our younger generation, "flues" were chimneys.)
The above story serves to remind us that in our early days there were two Jellicos - Jellico, Tennessee and Jellico, Kentucky. Both were wild and wooly "frontier" towns in the sense that there was very little local authority for a lengthy period of time. Saloons and "bawdy houses" sprang up on both sides of the state line and guns were carried openly, especially on the Kentucky side. (Believe it or not, our official city of Jellico application for a permit to sell beer still asks the question of the applicant, "Do you now, or have you ever, run a bawdy house?" Needless to say that always brings some good laughs during meetings of the Beer Board when we are reviewing applications for permits.
And ladies who ran such "houses of ill repute" were sometimes held in surprisingly high esteem. Former Post Office employee Mr. Paul Harp once told me that one of the largest funerals in the history of Jellico recognized the positive contributions of one such lady. According to Harp, she visited the sick, looked after those in need and even took in homeless children. She apparently filled the role of our present day Department of Human Services and was loved throughout the community.
Jellico, Tennessee and Jellico, Kentucky eventually organized at least some type of city governments but Jellico, Kentucky remained much more liberal with its administration. Jellico, Tennessee outlawed bawdy houses and saloons as well as the sell of "hard liquor" sometime around the turn of the century -although beer was still sold in the downtown until the late 1940's. But open-door saloons operated on the Kentucky side and served whiskey until at least the early 1930's. (Jellico had two or three breweries and there was a whiskey distillery only four or five miles from town.) I can remember Mr. Charley Lindsay, our JHS economics instructor, telling us about seeing so many Jellico, Tennessee residents crossing into Jellico, Kentucky to "drown their sorrows" following the complete collapse of the stock market in 1929..
Both towns did have jails for locking up lawbreakers although the Jellico, Kentucky jail was always referred to as the "calaboose". The calaboose sat approximately where a service station is now located just across Highway 25-W from Ray's Superior Market. In fact some of the property deeds in that area still call for property lines "bordering the calaboose property line".
My father grew up on Kentucky Hill but I never heard him go into details concerning the city of Jellico, Kentucky except to say that they had someone serving as a "city judge" and maintained the above mentioned calaboose. I believe that at some point that they did have a mayor and council but I have never been able to confirm that. But whatever type of administration they maintained eventually disappeared from the scene - probably in the late 1930's. He also mentioned that his sisters and other "proper" young ladies on Kentucky Hill never went down on the main street/road of Jellico, Kentucky during the period ca 1910. Instead that came out a street to Cumberland Avenue and then down into Jellico, Tennessee where they worked, shopped, etc.. (There was no real highway at that time since construction of the North-South Highway, popularly known as the "Dixie Highway" and later officially designated as U.S. Highway 25-W, was not started until passage of President Woodrow Wilson's "Hard Surfacing Bill" of 1916.)
I hope that everyone had the opportunity to see the main headlines in recent editions of our local papers. Those headlines read something like, "Jellico Students Score Low in Mathematics". Then in a story also on the front page, details were given of the birth of a baby who weighed in at 7 pounds and 20 ounces. Just goes to show that nobody is perfect!
Think that the new and exploding technology doesn't affect us all? A mother was teaching her three years old son "The Lord's Prayer". For several evenings at bedtime, the child repeated it after the mother. Then one night the child was ready to solo. The mother listened with great pride to the carefully enunciated words, right up to the end, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some e-mail".
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