The City Council worked around and through high school students that crowded the Council chambers for Student Government Day during the regular meeting Tuesday evening in City Hall. The students had spent a good portion of the day escorted by Council members and City Staff and spoke for their respective mentors for the evening.

The Council voted 7-2, member Bastin was absent, to allow the Public Services Committee to negotiate an arrangement with Killer Marketing of Joplin for a three day 4th of July celebration. The full Council would have to approve any agreement worked out with the promoter.

Also approved was a recommendation of the Finance Committee to allow the purchase of a 199 Jeep Sport from Williams Auto that will be used mainly as a D.A.R.E. vehicle. The appropriation of $15,000 plus the trade of the old taxi and old dare vehicle had been approved earlier in the year.

The Council passed a bill authorizing $199,942 for a 2,100 square foot multipurpose building at the Fair Acres Sports Complex and the ordinance allowing a contract for $128,744 to extend George Phelps Boulevard.

Ragfest 2000 Held in Carthage.

news release

Ragfest 2000 will be held Feb. 26 & 27 at Carthage, MO, heart of the land where ragtime was born and initially nurtured. The schedule includes an informal symposium at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 26 (site to be announced) and a concert at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 27 at the Carthage Senior High School Auditorium, Main and 7th.

Local and district talent, proving rag still is vigorously alive here in the heartland, will be featured.

Headliners will include Susan Spraklen Cordell and the Carthage Community Band led by Marvin VanGilder. Also on the concert bill will be the Don Broers Combo, Don Campbell & Sons, a district troupe and others.

The works of the district’s original ragtimers - James Scott, Clarence Woods, Percy Wenrich, Theron Bennett and others - will be featured. There will be no admission charges but donations to help meet festival costs and support the ongoing work of the volunteer community band will be requested.

The symposium, led by ragtime historian Marvin VanGilder, will deal with basic ragtime history and the nature and intent of the idiom from which virtually all American popular music has grown. Audience participation invited.

The two-day festival is produced and sponsored by the Carthage Community Band in cooperation with other volunteers and with the Carthage R-9 Schools, Victorian Carthage Inc., and Carthage Chamber of Commerce. The Carthage Press is the band’s corporate sponsor.

Bring a friend and come to Carthage for a bright warm wintertime moment with the raggedy music of joy - February 26 and 27, 2000.

I was glad to hear that someone bid on removin the City’s last airplane hanger. It was scheduled to be demolished, but an offer of $500 for the structure was accepted by the Council during the meetin’ on Tuesday. ‘Course the hanger taker will have ta pull the thing apart and clean up the property, but a lotta good material will be saved. This is just one more example of the recyclin’ wheels in motion.

I’ve watched a house or two go under a dozer. It’s not a pretty sight. Pretty neat, but not pretty. I’ve always wanted to watch onea those big buildin’s drop from explosives. More typical in these parts is the gradual decay of old farm buildin’s. Nature may be slow, but it always seems ta get the job done.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

by

Metcalf
Auto
Supply

Click and Clack
TALK CARS
by Tom and Ray Magliozzi

Dear Tom and Ray:

I own a 1988 Pontiac Gran Prix with 43,000 miles. The other day I noticed that my brakes required additional pedal pressure. I took it to the local Pontiac garage (a big one). They stated that my brake fluid was contaminated, and I needed a whole new brake system, at a cost of $2,000. This big garage was the only one that had serviced the car in the last five years, which raised the question as to who had contaminated the fluid.

To double-check the problem, I took the car to a small garage for a second opinion. They purged the fluid, put in a new master cylinder, and charged me $253. The brakes now work fine. I went back to the big garage and inferred that they were trying to gouge a senior citizen who couldn’t protect himself. The garage official replied that in the case of contaminated brake fluid, they always replace the whole brake system as a matter of safety, and that I was risking life and limb. Who is right in this matter? —William

TOM: Well, we haven’t looked at the car, so we can’t say for certain, William, but it sounds to us like the Pontiac dealer may have had a large boat payment due.

RAY: The Pontiac Corporation claims to have no policy that calls for replacing the entire brake system when fluid is contaminated (although they also have a policy of not criticizing their dealers, so they won’t comment on this specific case other than to say that the dealer knows best). But unless he saw something specific that he didn’t report or that you’re not reporting to us, it sounds like this dealer may have tried to take the easy way out at your expense.