The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG WEATHER

Speak Your Piece

Tell us what's on your mind. No need to give your name. Call 633-7508 from 9 am Tuesday to 9 am Friday.


Tell us what’s on your mind. No need to give your name.
Call 633-7508 from 9 am Tuesday to 9 am Friday.

E-m@il address
In addition to the telephone and the U.S. Mail, The Mountain Eagle accepts comments to Speak Your Piece by electronic mail. Our address is: mteagle@tgtel.com.

I think it’s a shame that when certain people have a problem with me or my wife they call Social Services and tell lies instead of coming to our faces. If they have a problem that needs to be settled, they should come to Premium. Let’s settle it like men or women. I might drive a silver truck, but I’m also tired of getting pulled over by cops saying I’m DUI. I’m especially tired of it because I don’t drink or do drugs. So if you have a problem with me, don’t go to the police. Come find me and we’ll settle it. Signed, Silver Ranger.

We’re glad the court is stepping in to get the guardrails on 1148 that Shirley Breeding has been trying to get done. Maybe their input may help get it done. Maybe then they could put up some warning signs of the loading of scrap iron on the highway on Isom Drive. Who owns Isom Drive? The county, state or the scrap men?

Don’t get your hopes up for timber legislation. The industry lobbyists will lean on the politicians, and they will back off, as they always do for mining and gas companies. We’ve gone through the campaigning, the promises, and the failures so many times I’m surprised anyone pays any attention, anymore.

I would like to know why a man who lives on Thornton can ride his four-wheeler every day he wants to and wherever he wants to go and gets by with it. If it was anyone else they would have to pay a fine. And the cops do stop everybody else, but he gets to ride free. Why is that? That’s not fair. This man never gets caught.

To all the born-again believers: We must stand firm on the word of God and we will be held accountable for who we vote for president over us. We don’t want the spirit of Ahab and Jezebel over our nation. Pray for the Lord to guide you in this election. God bless.

I hope that all the drug dealers get what is coming to them. They only destroy lives. I wish that UNITE would get them all and put them away. They do not deserve to be free. I hope they have another raid on Flat Gap and Eolia soon. There are people there who are neglecting their kids and getting them taken. If the dealers were gone they wouldn’t be able to get the drugs that are causing these kids to suffer.

To a certain woman in Mayking: I would love to know how you can call yourself a mother, because for the last few years your children have called me mommy. They say some of the most awful things about you, but you know what you’ve put them through. All of that is over for good. They have a new baby brother, a daddy who would lie down and die for them, and a stepmother who takes the best care of them. I love them more than you ever could have. You wish you were back in his arms, but it will never happen. We are married now. You didn’t know? Not many people do. As for you parading by our home many times a day, do you not realize you are breaking your own DVO? The way I hear it is you have a bench warrant on you for failure to pay child support. I would be very careful if I were you.

Billy, I loved you then, I love you now, and I always will.

To a certain drug dealer: All of your family is in jail now except for you. Now that you’ve told your wife you are leaving her for another woman I hope she gives up every bit of the evidence against you. It’s funny how everyone around you goes to jail. Have a nice few months with your new woman. You’ve already got evidence stacked against you, pal. See you in the big house.

There has been a surge of support for HB489, An Act Related to Forestry, probably because there is an urgent need to control timber theft, but also because the passage of this bill would be a symbolic victory over all of the forces which attempt to control, subjugate, and use common, working people to their own advantage. The timber industry, consisting of lumberyards and their lobbyists, forest associations and their lobbyists, loggers and the politicians they support, and legislators who don’t want any extractive industry even inconvenienced for things like property rights, will do everything they can to defeat or dilute this bill – all the time saying it is a good idea, but needs to be studied more, or improved so that it will benefit a wider group, or that the economic consequences need to be studied for several years, etc. The extractive industry, and all the operators, lobbyists, politicians, and lawyers, who enrich themselves from it, are a shortsighted group who have no concern about the future. Energy experts have said that the eastern Kentucky coal supply cannot last for more than 10 years and that officials should be looking to sustainable resources, like timber. They should also be looking to other industry, like tourism. The obvious truth, though, is that unless something is done to stop this irresponsible cutting of trees, there will soon be no trees left, and no chance of making timber into a sustainable industry. There will also be little way to appeal to tourists, if all the hills are shorn and look like moonscapes.

If you cannot understand why your electric bill is so high, keep an eye on your wife. She could be taking a bath in warm water.

Adam’s and Eve’s last name was Smith. According to this auctioneer whose name is Smith, every time someone did something disgraceful they were asked to change their name.

Most of my friends belong to the ages now. They are not here to defend themselves. But their past deeds are. Remember, I believe all men have some good in them. When I read ‘we the people,’ that to me says all the people for all souls belong to God. So who do you think you are to cut someone’s life short? I forgive but never forget. My nephew is waiting for you at God’s throne to watch you and your friend be judged. Your community let you away with murder. Most of them are worse than you. I’ve been to the top of the mountain. God’s there. He is going to give us all our just rewards. Besides murder, you are too Biblically illiterate to know that your drug pushing is the work of a sorcerer. We know you bootleg and steal, but that’s what your community supports. Put that in your crack pipe and smoke it.

I’m just calling in to state an opinion about Mrs. Barack Obama. I wonder where she was living before she just decided to announce that she is proud to be an American. I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve been proud my whole life. Did she and her husband finally get proud because he’s got the chance to be president? If he wasn’t proud before he should not be president. And if his wife wasn’t proud before, he should not be president.

To a woman in Dunham: I saw the guy who was at your house last weekend. You really got it right this time. That is one hunk of a good-looking man. He’s a keeper for sure. I’m sure he loves you, too, you lucky girl.

To the people at Little Colley: We’re aware of the drug dealing going on there at your place. So please keep your tips and information coming to us. Thank you.

I’ve heard people say they are proud to be in this county. Well I’m not. Letcher County is full of drug dealers. You hear about other counties catching their drug dealers. Why not Letcher County? We know who sold the drugs to the boy who overdosed. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for showing up to his funeral and pretending nothing was wrong. Heaven help you people. You’re sure going to need it when Judgment Day comes.

I cannot believe the superintendents of our schools are actually waiting until 7 and 9 o’clock on Wednesday night, February 27, to call off school for Thursday. This is absolutely ridiculous. There are people who have to travel very far to the schools and parents who have to get up very early to go to work. This is really inconvenient when every county around you has already called off school and you can see the roads are bad, but you have to go ahead and get your children ready because the superintendent won’t call it off. What’s being proved? This is not a race to May, it’s about the safety of the children.

Gas is going to over four dollars a gallon. Enjoy your trips up and down the road for as long as you can. When it gets to five dollars a gallon there will be none of this nonsense going on.

Will somebody tell me how to get on ‘Deal or No Deal’ on TV? Can somebody tell me in Speak Your Piece how to do it?

Every one of us here on Little Colley should take the law into our own hands and get rid of the drug dealers.

I think that bunch on Cumberland River should leave that old man alone. Everybody loses cattle once in a while.

Boy, it looks like we’re going to have to legalize drugs. If we don’t we aren’t going to have any truckers to truck coal. They’re all on Lorcet. Timber thieves aren’t going to do any better. They’re all on Lorcet and Percocet and what have you. I’ll bet they all vote against Leslie Combs as soon as they can get to the ballot box. And I’ll bet their families will do the same.

To a certain woman: After your four friends get their investigation done and sign the verdict, I would love to get back together with you.

In this month’s edition of the Scrip Club magazine, there was a piece written about Letcher Coal at Dalna, Kentucky. I called to Frankfort to get some history on this piece of scrip. The operation was at Premium/Hot Spot in the thirties, but it was not in the computer at Mines and Minerals.

Why don’t our officials do something about the log trucks? A driver stated in Speak Your Piece that he hauled 27 trees on one truck. Now that is what’s tearing up the road. It’s not the bread trucks and grocery trucks.

Those people should not go to the beautiful state of West Virginia and make a movie about a bunch of incestuous hillbillies. They need to come right here to Letcher County. They would have no trouble getting the people to play the part.

We the citizens of Jenkins are very excited to hear about the investigation of drug trafficking by a certain couple who are living together with children and claiming food stamps while the boyfriend is working in the coal mine. We are tired of all the traffic and thugs who hang out just to get a high. We are all taking down tag numbers and filming video. Also, the garbage needs to be picked up and put into cans instead of opening the front door and throwing it onto the ground. Clean it up.

I have so much respect for our Marines fighting for our country, but I like kicking the crap out of the ones who drop out and act so mean. You’re a bad man – or at least you were until I got hold of you.

I enjoy reading the news from the senior citizens at Colson. I’m sure everyone else enjoys it, too, and want to keep it going. It is a lot of help to a lot of people.

This is concerning all the drugs going on in Long Branch: We need some law enforcement here.

The person calling about people needing to watch their own land sounds like he doesn’t know how rugged some of these mountains are, or that the sounds of bulldozers and chain saws don’t carry far enough to warn people that someone is cutting their timber. He also doesn’t seem to know how clever some of the thieves have become about sneaking onto property from back ridges, or how fast they are. The loggers in one county hit seven or more properties in about two weeks. A lot of property owners in Letcher County aren’t able to walk their property, so other means have to be provided to help them. Leslie Combs is going to provide help with her HB489. That is going to go, and everybody with any interest in property rights should be very grateful to her for her courageous stand for her constituents.

I think it’s a shame there wasn’t a single sentence about the Jenkins Lady Cavaliers defeating Letcher Central. But since the boys defeated Jenkins it was plastered on the front page.

(Are you an idiot? The Lady Cavs versus Lady Cougars game wasn’t in last week’s paper because the game wasn’t played until well after the paper had already gone to press. Coverage of the game is included in this week’s edition. By the way, publishing a picture of two basketball players running up the court is hardly ‘plastering’ something on the front page. What kind of agenda do you have?)

To all you people losing your timber to the timber thieves: They’ll be back to get your land next if you let them away with it. You better get an AK-47 and use it.

I’m really disturbed about these timber thieves. It’s all I read about in the paper and it’s got me disturbed.

I would just like to say hi to Trina from Jenkins and her daughter Telina. I wish you all the best and hope to see you soon.

Oh my. The schools aren’t sterile. They’ve got germs there and dogs, too. Of course, drugsniffing dogs are probably cleaner than a lot of people are. I think they should quit hassling the students and let them smoke their pot in peace like we used to.

Everybody in town knows where you got the money for your new vehicle – or rather where your boyfriend got the money for you. It’s just so sad the old man is now dead because of the stress you all caused him. You, your boyfriend, and your child are being watched all hours of the night and day. Your time is running out. You three will either end up in jail or dead.

After Rose Ballard Durham mentioned www.thekentuckiannews.com in her column this week, I went to the web site and checked it out. They’ve got some good stuff there. There’s a great column on timber theft and some good video. The one on the Southern Appalachians and timber theft was outstanding.

Attention LCC: So there is this chick that is a sophomore at LCC. She is nothing but a spoiled, two-faced, brat. Whenever things are going her way she is fine, but once you speak out against her she gets all defensive. She believes she is always right, even when there is no doubt she is wrong. She believes she is the only one with problems. The only way you can be her friend is if you are stuck up her behind, or agree with everything she says or does. It irritates us to death when she goes around blaming her life on other people for having better lives than she has. She says these stupid things like, ‘I am fat’ or ‘I am ugly’, just to hear someone tell her she isn’t. I mean, who does that? Seriously she is so fake. What does she think people are, her pawns, sent to her to do her bidding? Like when she dates a guy, it only takes her a week to tell him she loves him. I wish love was that easy for us. Then she goes and flirts with her guy’s best friends, and when he calls her out on it, she lies and says that the boys were flirting with her. See, her ex-boyfriend loved her (still does), but she dumped him when he asked her if something was going on between her and her guy’s best friend. Then after two days we heard that she was crying because he was flirting with another girl. She decides that she wants to get him jealous by flirting with all his best friends, and telling everyone she was dating her guy’s best friend. Then the ex finds out about it and he wants to fight the friend. I mean, hey, he thought there was something going on between them then he hears that they are dating just after they broke up. It makes you think. The little girl is faker then Barbie. If you asked us, those three girls she used to hang with did right by telling her bye. I am just surprised they hung around that long. Then one of her ‘best friends’ goes and tells her all these lies on those three girls, and you know what she believed her. Well, we just wanted to warn LCC that there is yet another ‘fake’ among them, and she will be exposed. Oh by the way, the guy you accused of writing that note didn’t, so stop going around and saying he did. One of us knows.

I just got the Medical Leader out of our mailbox and I would like to say a couple of things about that. I don’t want that paper. It is a nuisance to those that get it in the mail. It is an unnecessary burden to the postal employees who have their Friday mornings taken up with it, and to the postal carriers who oftentimes have to go to distant houses, who have no other mail, just to deliver it to people who probably won’t read it. God only knows how many trees are used in each publication. Begone!

Hi to everyone. This is Star sending lots of love to ya’ll from Texas. First of all, I want to thank Debbie and Sharon for calling 911 when the fire broke out at my mamaw’s. It’s neighbors like ya’ll that is the reason Mamaw never wanted to move out of Rocky Hollow. Again, thanks for trying to save her house. To Tildy, Dreama, and Dede: I am so glad that ya’ll got out alive and unhurt. We have had enough loss in this family. I love you all very much and I hope that you know it. I’m sorry that everything that ya’ll owned along with some of baby Brock’s stuff was lost. But material things can be replaced in time, we can’t replace ya’ll if something would have happened to ya’ll. To my best friend Tammy: Thank you so much for your support, and for trying to help in every way that you can. You are a part of this family. I didn’t make you a part of it, Mamaw did and that is the way that is. There have been a lot of hurt feelings in the past few months and it is time to start bridging the gap. We are family and will always be. If some people have a problem with you going to help when you did, then let them open their mouths and say something, because where were they when this happened? Who helped and who just came over and said I’m sorry and then tried to start something? You are a true friend and I think some people are jealous of that. You don’t ask for anything but friendship, and I know that you went to help because you love Tildy, Dreama and the girls and they know that, so don’t worry about anyone else. I love you very much, you are my best friend, my sister, and I am proud to say that you are a part of my family. I would also like to thank Freddie for cooking and sending it over, and to everyone else that helped, thank you so much.

To the Jenkins Fire Department: I want to thank you very much for trying to put my mamaw’s house out when it caught on fire 2-23-08 in Rocky Hollow. I know you all tried your best but it was too late. The only thing that I don’t understand, there was a fire hydrant right beside the house but it didn’t have enough water pressure to help. But I guess we thank the City of Jenkins for that. What is the point of fire hydrants if you can’t depend on them it you really need them? Maybe my mamaw’s dogs would have survived if hadn’t been for that water pressure problem, but instead they burned to death. I hope and pray that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. I’m just glad that my aunt and cousins got out and were not harmed, but everything else was completely lost, everything that remained of Mamaw’s and my family’s. We will never be able to come back home and sit on the front porch and catch up on things that have happened since the last time that we were back home. Rocky Hollow will never be the same.

A tree farmer in central Kentucky cut a plot of timber, and then went to work on another part of his land for a few days, after which he planned to return to the first area and cut the felled trees into logs. While he was working in the second area, thieves stole the cut trees from the first, and probably set a new record for profit margin in timber theft because they not only dodged paying the owner of the trees, but also avoided labor costs – a very low overhead enterprise. He has been unable to get a prosecution, and it is uncertain that he can sue civilly under the timber trespass act because the timber wasn’t standing when it was stolen. The legal system has once again distinguished itself.

The logger who takes two months to make $50,000 is probably getting a lot of sympathy from everyone, I guess. As for me, it takes a year and a half to make that much, and I sometimes work two jobs. I am hindered, though, by having to stay inside the law in the work I do. I prefer what I do, though, because it would make me nervous to have to be looking over my shoulder all the time for angry landowners. That apparently doesn’t bother some.

I agree that rehabilitation is an important factor in managing the drug crisis. I don’t see, though, why we have to put up with drugmotivated burglaries, beatings, robberies, and being run off the roads by people so zonked they can’t see the roads, until we get the rehab centers. I also don’t want to be bothered by traffic noise and partying to the point I can’t sleep. I also think that law enforcement could provide more security for our neighborhoods by cleaning out some of these drug centers that everyone down to the little kids know about. I’m getting a little tired of hearing people referring to these lawbreakers as ‘sick’ after they’ve committed some blatantly criminal act. It has been said many times that other areas have been able to manage this crisis better than Letcher County has, and I think it’s past time that we start copying whatever they’re doing. Most people seem to think that a lax and permissive court system bears a lot of the responsibility. Remember, it’s easy to be liberal and tolerant for those living in neighborhoods that aren’t affected.

The excitable boy in me fell sick from lonely nights, tired souls and wasted love, only to be revived by your hope and now you convince yourself you are not in love with him, while I pine in the valley from unwelcome truths. Your womanly beauty is wasted on your ex, but not on me. and not on him. Time is a trial for the curious mind and I stand alone and await conviction – convince me otherwise.

This is to the young adults who seem to think that those nasty flannel pants they wear in public are acceptable. Well they are not. First of all, they are pajamas. Second, you wear them dragging the ground so they are dirty and very nasty looking. These pants are not for day wear out in public. Wasn’t it bad enough for those of us who know what is appropriate and how to dress ourselves, that we have to suffer through your ‘muffin tops’? Now we have to see your nasty pajamas. please go to the Dollar Store, buy some appropriate clothing and leave your dirty pj’s at home.

The March 4 1998 Mountain Eagle quoted then Commonwealth’s Attorney Will Collins as saying "timber theft is a rapidly growing cancer in eastern Kentucky." Read it and hope more can be done in the next 10 years than in the last. Support Leslie Combs’s HB498.

In my opinion this timber theft problem could be solved overnight. All that is needed is for the lumberyards to quit buying from people they know to be thieves. What they are doing is buying stolen property and that is illegal, and I think they know it’s illegal. They have never been required, probably because of political pull, to obey the law. The statute is KRS514-110 and it’s doesn’t leave any doubt of the consequences of dealing in things stolen.

I very much resent the criticism of Leslie Combs’s bill, HB489, to control timber theft. First, Leslie Combs is a straightup person. She will listen to you and if she agrees with you she will say so. If she disagrees she will also say so, but when she gives her word you can bank on it. She got out front on this vital legislation, and she is not going to back down. Second, legitimate loggers should support this bill as much as landowners do. They probably stand to gain more than anybody by having this situation cleaned up. Anyone who is as resistant as the caller criticizing her was arouses suspicion. How would this bill harm him? Third, I don’t know what 27 trees are worth, but I’m pretty sure they are worth more than $300, and that’s all it takes to make it a felony.

We are hung up in a legal affair, and I don’t know whether the opposition or our own lawyer is the biggest problem. We keep having motions and hearings but never seem to get anywhere, or be able to see any end to this, but we keep getting what seem to be unreasonably large bills from the lawyer every two or three months. We’ve got to wonder if this case is being strung along just to squeeze more money out of us. It seems that judges would keep a closer eye on what’s going on and sometimes question the way these things are run.

A judicial system that doesn’t punish people for burglarizing and beating up elderly people, that only gives a slap on the hand to an official for selling drugs in a school zone, and that doesn’t even give that to a county worker for stealing $16,000 of government money, isn’t going to get very excited about stolen trees, or stolen anything else. So, good luck to timber laws – they won’t be enforced. People who tolerate this should realize one thing: industrial and tourism facilities won’t move into a lawless place, be it the ghettos of Washington, D.C. or Detroit, or the coalfields of eastern Kentucky. Those people don’t come in blind, they check things out.

Deep love is transparent and obscured at the same time. Mine is a thousand miles down and you are floating on the surface trying to figure out if it’s really your salvation or just another shipwrecked vessel. From here you look like a figurehead on a pirate ship that can’t quite lay claim your beauty. Take a deep breath and swim to me. Your perception is my fate.

I think it is a shame that UNITE has not done its job in Letcher County. There have been several overdoses this month. Why are the drug dealers still on the streets? They have destroyed so many lives but their own. The drug dealers are out here buying new houses, cars and anything they want while the rest of us are paying for funerals and watching our loved ones be put in the ground. How many more people are going to die before we get these people off the streets? Do we need to take this into our own hands and get rid of them ourselves? You pick them up and they are back on the streets the next day selling again. Why don’t you keep on going back, why do they keep on getting out and never get into trouble? Do they use their drug money to buy off the judicial system or what? If the lawyers weren’t so money hungry they wouldn’t defend them and they would go to jail – quit helping them. You can refuse service to anyone – let them pay for what they have done. They chose to be drug dealers so as the saying goes – they made their beds let them lie in them. Tell them if they can’t do the time then don’t do the crime. There is one dealer that has been selling for 20 years now and has never had to serve over a week for it. He was in trouble in two different states and is still selling and just bought a new truck. What is wrong out there? How do they get out of trouble when you catch them with the drugs at their house and have hard evidence that they sell? I mean, you get these people willing to risk their lives to set up these dealers and then just let them go – what’s the deal?



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