Goodbye, Barney, You Will Be Missed

Don Knotts, aka Barney Fife, passed away this past Friday at the age of 81. And with him goes a little piece of my childhood. I, like many others of you I'm sure, grew up watching the Andy Griffith Show and Barney was always the real star of the show. This photo was taken in 2001 in Knoxville at the Mayberry Reunion held at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. I was fortunate enough to meet many of the stars of the show over the three days we covered the event, even spending a couple of hours in a pub with Betty Lynn who played Thelma Lou and Maggie Peterson, better known as Charlene Darling. But Barney was, as always, the show stopper. Barney, you will be missed. Check out all things Mayberry at http://www.mayberry.com.

Basketball Time

It's regional tournament time in basketball, and I've spent the last couple of days at Jacksonville State, site for the Northeast Regionals. My favorite part of the games is the fans, students who are allowed to skip school and roadtrip. And boy, oh boy, do they get fired up for the games. Painted faces and chests, weird clothes and hats, they go all out to cheer on their schools. And sometimes things get out of hand. At Troy State yesterday, 4 female fans were arrested after getting into a fight after the game. "Be True To Your School", sang the Beach Boys. Just don't get locked up in the pokey for it.

100th Post!!

Well, what a milestone. This is the Sand Mtn. Photog's 100th post, who would have thought it? To all you out there who said it would never last, I guess I've shown you!!
Going through some old tape today and found this clip of my son Forrest back in Kindergarten. He is the cute curly-headed one on the right. We were shooting a story about Crossville's lunch room crowding problems when we were paged out to the shooting death of Grant's police chief Verlon LeMaster. Which only goes to show how a day in the news business can go; one minute you're doing a cutesy story about school lunchrooms and the next minute you have to head out to a story about the death of a man you know and like. Ups and downs. That's what this business is all about.

Church Arson Close to Home

Well, Sand Mtn. dodged another bullet with the ice and snow this weekend. But today, Sunday, I got called into work to cover a church arson in Etowah County. The church is the Chapman's Chapman Holiness Church in Glencoe, and as you can see from the photos it was only an attempted arson. Someone lit a fire on the side of the church, but it appears to have burned itself out before doing any serious damage to the church. Right now, investigators do not think this case has any thing to do with the others arsons down South. As always, we will keep you updated.

Ice For The Weekend??

Well, the meteorologists are calling for ice and snow again this weekend. That means your faithful Sand Mtn. Bureau Photographer will be working Saturday morning. Gotta be here to tell everyone about conditions here on the mountain. That makes 2 Saturdays in a row working the ice and snow shift. The only problem is that this Saturday is Jemma's birthday party at the skating rink. Will the weather affect party plans? Let's hope not, birthdays only come once a year you know. Anyway, tune in Saturday morning for the latest in weather and traffic from here on Sand Mtn. And we'll see about the ice and snow.

Our State Parks??

This is a photo of the new gatehouse being built at Lake Guntersville State Park. It's all part of the new multi-million dollar renovations being done at the park to upgrade the lodge and overall look of the park. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for the renovations, Good Lord knows they needed it. But our story today is about how visitors to the park will soon be charged a $3 fee to enter the park. That's not a camping fee or fee to play golf, that's just to enter the park. I thought the state parks belonged to all of us, land set aside for Alabama residents to enjoy the great outdoors and get back to nature. Now, they are telling us that we will have to pay to get onto our own land and enjoy our nature. That's just wrong. I happen to love Lake Guntersville State Park and truly like all the people who work there and who run the place. But I still think it's wrong to charge people to get onto state land. Am I wrong about this? I would like to hear what you think.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow!!

Looking at New York City, this can't be called much of a snowfall, but for North Alabama it was a pretty good snow. And for my kids, it was one of the first snowfalls they had seen. Jemma was born in February of 2001, and it was January of that year since we have had a snowfall of any significance. So when we saw the first snowflakes starting to fall, we all grabbed our coats and mittens and headed outside. I do have to admit that Wende and I were pretty excited about the snow ourselves. So a couple of snowball fights later, but sadly no snowman, we headed inside to warm up. When I was a kid, seems like we had a least a couple of snows a year that were big enough to keep us out of school. But the last few years we haven't had any. Today the kids were out of school, but the snow was all but gone by mid-morning. Let's keep our fingers crossed for some more snow, what do you say??

Hail to The Assistant Chief

Monday, Carson and I went to Priceville to cover the Vice President coming to town. Randy Owen of Alabama sang the national anthem before everything kicked off. And of course there was a lot of security. The top picture is of the Secret Service agent whose job it was to keep an eye on the media. She stayed right around us the whole time, about 4 hours. The V.P. swept in, made his speech, and was gone in about 30 minutes. Overall, it was nice to be part of a big event, not everyday the V.P. comes to town.