Postcards
- Believin’ Las Vegas
According to the Sacramento Bee, a group called the Foundation on Gambling Abuse, a coalition “against casino gambling in California,” has been sending California legislators anti-gambling material. The group is financed by the Nevada gambling industry.
- Sending funerals to the flowers
State authorities in West Virginia have found that wood chips, chicken waste and dirt added to possums, raccoons, squirrels and other assorted wildlife scraped up off the roads can produce an acceptable composted fertilizer. According to State Legislatures magazine, the squished critters are spread on the wildflower stands that line the state’s highways.
- Disorderly conduct
Sixteen Indianapolis cops with one belt too many under their belts emerged from a downtown bar, made crude remarks to women and beat up and arrested two men who confronted them, all in front of about 50 witnesses that included three ministers out for the evening with their families.
- Clint Eastwood for mayor
The newest township in Arizona is Dead Wrong. That’s right. The retro town, 90 miles north of Phoenix, features an original 1846 post office, television artifacts including Doc’s wagon from “Gunsmoke” and Michael Landon’s wagon from “Little House on the Prairie” and an 800-seat amphitheater that hosts cowboy music and storytelling.
- Driven crazy
A Knoxville, Tenn., state trooper was fired after wrecking her cruiser trying to avoid a highway patrol roadblock. Rhonda Gregg was driving three friends and two dogs near Nashville, when she spotted the roadblock and sped away.
- Keynote lecture
Burlington, Iowa, City Manager Jane Wood docked the fire department $46,000 to pay for changing the locks at the city’s 18 schools. It seems the fire department had lost the master key. “They lost the key. They pay for the key,” she said.
