Wise County on the Web

A tongue in cheek review of the news published this week regarding Wise County.
Normally posted every Sunday around 10:00 p.m.
(Note: To make sure you are receiving the most recent update, hold down the "Shift" key while you click on reload/refresh).
For the week ending 8/23/03:

The Story	The Decatur ISD votes to go ahead with a school bond election after having been denied so many times before. The election is set for October 9th.
News worthiness (on a scale of 0 to 5)	*******
The Spin	To insure a victory, the proposed wording on the ballot is: "To vote for the continued legalization of beer and wine in the City of Decatur and to do some add-ons to the school."

The Story	*The Messenger* does a feature story on a winery in Alvord which ends with the quote "I just want to be a good local winery," the owner said. "Wine makes people happy."**
News worthiness	*
The Spin	The Appraisal District, acting on this information, vows to send out a free bottle with next year's tax appraisals.

The Story	The Commissioners' Court gets a bit dicey with most county departments taking a budget cut but the individual commissioners not doing the same for their own precinct budgets. After County Judge Dick Chase and commissioner Mikel Richardson exchanged barbs, Richardson said "You're coming dangerously close to saying that I'm doing something untoward".
News worthiness	**
The Spin	*(1) Points for making The Spin* having to look up the word "untoward", and (2) continue to watch the interaction at the commissioners' meetings - this has the makings of some pretty good stuff.**

The Story	The 23rd Annual Watermelon Festival took place this week including "the mule jumping tournament. The rules were quite strict on this contest, which featured mules jumping over a raised bar."
News worthiness	*
The Spin	And to think city folks make fun of us.

The Story	Around noon on Thursday, a truck actually flies off of 287 and lands on FM 51 below (that's near Jack in the Box in Decatur). The truck hit the retaining wall and ejected the driver who was not wearing a seatbelt. "I just saw him flying out of the sky," said one witness.
News worthiness	**
The Spin	Another ficticious witness agreed: "I thought it might be the Rapture at first but he was going the wrong way. It scared me a little bit but then I remembered I was out of Pork-N-Beans so I headed over to Walmarts. But I'm going to church next Sunday just to be safe."

See something in the local papers that struck you funny? Then suggest a topic for The Spin.

View Last week's issue.