By: Robin Ford Wallace, Staff Reporter

Happy endings are not generally a newspaper’s stock in trade. 

For one thing, unhappy news tends to be bigger news than the other kind. “Tsunami Kills Thousands,” for example, will knock “New Unemployment Claims Down 2 Percent” off the front page every time.  

For another, it is not in the nature of reality for things to end neatly or, really, at all. Issues fester on and on, as a pretty good writer once put it, from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, so that when in this racket we write “the end” we only mean we’re out of space, or it’s time for supper.

That said, the Sentinel looks this week at a few stories we covered recently that, if they can’t really be said to have happy endings, seem to be having, anyway, pretty acceptable middles.

First, the Sentinel reported Feb. 17 on a meeting at the Pike’s Peak subdivision on Sand Mountain.  Residents of the neighborhood led by Sue Feuerstein and Rich LaValla had appeared before the Dade County Commission at its Feb. 4 meeting to ask for help in their troubles with Carruth Logging. Carruth trucks, they said, had torn up their privately maintained road going back and forth to harvest lumber on a tract of land behind the subdivision.

County Executive Ted Rumley responded by arranging the Feb. 12 meeting, attended by civil and law enforcement officials from the county, the logging company’s Travis Carruth, and Scotty Fleming of Keller Lumber of Stevenson, Ala, the sawmill operation that buys Carruth’s logs.

“We’re here to ask for your forgiveness,” Fleming told the assembled neighbors. He promised to have Pike’s Drive, the road in question, graded and regraveled, and asked the local press to report his reparations as vociferously as it had reported the damage.

So the Sentinel was duly on hand Friday to witness that the road was, in fact, being repaired. Under blue skies and sunshine, neighbors LaValla and Feuerstein were walking a pony down a newly graveled section of Pike’s Drive while a road worker waited beside his earthmoving machinery for another truckload of gravel. 

Work was slated to be finished this week, weather permitting, though a predicted snow could delay completion a bit longer, the worker warned. It was expected that a total of at least 11 truckloads of gravel would be needed before the end, he said.

“It’s looking pretty darn good,” Ms. Feuerstein told the Sentinel.

Next:  Rising Fawn Fire Chief Roger Woodyard lit a fire under Dade Water Authority’s Doug Anderton at the same Commission meeting when he told commissioners that a fourth of South Dade’s fire hydrants would be useless in an emergency. 

His finger of blame pointed squarely at Anderton, who he said had ignored a list of bad hydrants Woodyard had given him a year and a half ago. Their argument seemed to be a longstanding one. “I’ve spent more time in my 20 years fighting for water supplies than we have fighting fires,” said Woodyard, as quoted by the Sentinel in its Feb. 10 article on the issue.

Woodyard also questioned oversight of the Water Authority, saying that as it receives SPLOST funds from the county it should answer to the county about how the money is spent. “To me, they ought to be accountable,” he said.

Anderton responded at the time that his staff had already been working the list of bad hydrants. He agreed there might be a communication problem between water authority and fire departments but vowed to get the hydrant problem taken care of ASAP.

Interviewed last week for this article, Anderton reported that his men had in fact just finished work in Rising Fawn and were moving on to the north end of the county. All the leaks had been fixed, he said, with components upgraded on about eight of the units and some switched out for new. “I think we replaced five total,” he said.

Also interviewed for this follow-up, Woodyard said he was pleased with what had ensued after he flung the gauntlet Feb. 4. “The water company has been busy every day since then,” he said. “Right now I’m very satisfied with the level of cooperation.”

But Woodyard says questions remain: Does the Water Authority have a plan for the next 10 years? If there is not enough water for firefighting, is there enough for new development in the county? 

He also revisited the issue of oversight. About 15 years ago, he said, he and others had discussed changing the way the Water Authority’s board of directors is set up, a measure that would require legislation to be introduced at the state level. “It just sort of got dropped,” he said.

Commenting on the availability of water for development and/or fighting fire, Doug Anderton says:  there’s plenty. By law the county can take 3.8 million gallons of water from Lookout Creek daily; current consumption is about 2.2. Additionally, Dade has a tie-in with Tennessee American Water Company and can buy 2 million more gallons daily, so demand could easily double without unduly distressing the county.  “We’ve got water,” said Anderton.  

The Sentinel also asked Anderton about oversight of the Water Authority and found that it was governed by a board of directors that meets at 10 a.m. on the third Thursday of each month in the Authority’s office at 250 Bond Street. This month, that’s the 18th.

Currently sitting on the board are Jakie Smith, Charles Breedlove, William Pullen, Ted Dyer and Milton Owensby. Members are appointed for five-year terms by the grand jury convened in Dade each April. One seat comes up for review every year and its occupant may be either reappointed or replaced.  

Well, that is how matters stand with the water issue, Anderton and Woodyard not precisely holding hands and walking into the sunset, but with their hatchets buried at least for the moment. “He made me that promise, that we were going to stay on top of it,” Woodyard said of Anderton and the hydrant problem.

And now let’s move on to one final story, the Trenton American Legion post’s fundraising efforts on behalf of Jeffrey Farmer, a local soldier whose home was robbed last fall while he was on active duty in Afghanistan.

The Sentinel covered “Farmer’s Aid,” a Feb. 5 benefit hosted by the Legion in conjunction with the Trenton Arts Council that featured bluegrass music, beatnik-style poetry readings and Farmer himself, present via a live Internet feed from Afghanistan. The show amassed about $2,400 toward replacing Farmer’s possessions.

Now the Legion’s Bill Lockhart, who is spearheading the drive, says the pot total is up to $9,200, augmented most recently by a motorcycle ride event sponsored by the Fort Oglethorpe American Legion and VFW chapters. Bikers’ clubs affiliated with the veterans’ organizations presented Lockhart with $1,800 last week, he said. 

“But the fat lady hasn’t sung,” said Lockhart. “We’re going to go on collecting until Jeffrey comes home, which will be about three weeks from today.” 

Farmer himself, interviewed via email, seemed a little baffled as to how to express his appreciation to the community, and in any case still preoccupied with the robbery itself. Specifically, he complained about a lack of communication with the Dade County Sheriff’s Department. “It has been almost five months since the robbery, maybe even longer, and I have not heard a word from the law agencies,” he wrote.

Contacted for comment, Dade Chief Deputy Jackie Womack appeared surprised at Farmer’s frustration.  He said that Farmer had not called or emailed him about the robbery and that anyway the department had followed up all the leads it had to follow in the matter. “If leads do develop, we’ll certainly revisit the case,” he said. “Right now there’s really nothing else that we can do.”

The Sentinel furnished Farmer Womack’s email address.

Again, sunsets and weddings are conspicuously absent from this conclusion as from the others, but it does contain $9,200 and a heaping helping of community support – plus, as Lockhart pointed out, we have not yet heard from the musical fat lady.