Well, it‘s official. To be brutally honest, I had hoped it wouldn’t come to pass. And even if it’s childishly selfish and overly indelicate to say as much, I really don’t want it to happen. Actually, I somehow thought it would never happen to me. But, just like those who came before me here in Happy Coal Valley, one of my kids is relocating to another state. And along with her goes two of my grandkids.

Yes, Gage Andrew and Taylor Kate will be residing somewhere near Knoxville, Tennessee within the month. I’d cut my hand off if I thought it would change that fact, but after a week of stewing on the latest heart-wrenching news, I have resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to have the use of both of my hands for the foreseeable future. If I could cry, I would. Truth is, I want to.

I guess I’m supposed to be happy for my son-in-law as his well-deserved and long anticipated promotion has finally come about. And I should be content in the knowledge that he works hard, amply provides for my daughter and her kids and their finances can only improve as a result of this move. But I keep thinking about the miles of separation that will be between us and frustration damn near overwhelms me. Tennessee? A 13-hour drive by car? Suddenly, Pottsville doesn’t seem so far away.

Whatever. I figure I’ll focus on the upside of things. I figure they’ll be safe and sound down there in the Bible belt. Think about it. If you were, say, a terrorist, would you waste any perfectly good batches of nerve gas on any part of Tennessee? Um, they won’t need a furnace, or snow tires anymore. Although, they grow cockroaches down there big enough to carry away my grandkids. Isn’t Fort Knox in that state? Doesn’t matter. Our currency isn’t based on gold anymore, so Goldfinger II isn’t going to happen. Tennessee is the home state of one of the most-recognized insane persons the world over: Al Gore. He’s so thoroughly crazy, his fellow cow-tippers wouldn’t even back his run at the presidency. I dunno.

A cursory Google search tells me that Knoxville is without doubt the murder, rape, sodomy and aggravated assault capitol of that entire state. Okay, I made that sh*t up just in case my daughter reads this. I know, resistance is futile. Give it up, Dad.

I don’t know, but it just seems inherently wrong to go shopping at anything called Piggly Wiggly’s, okay? Ack-a-me is doable, hayna? Piggly’s ain’t. Anything with pig in it’s name sounds like it ought to be built within walking distance of a ramshackle trailer park. And what about the hordes of Baptists? What about them? Spend enough time with them and you’ll be cheering when queer boys get chained to pickup trucks and taken for a lengthy spin. And Pat Robertson might even start making sense to you. Gage watching The 700 Club? My grandkids taking ten seconds to say a one-syllable word? Shhhhh******ttttt, maaahhh. I’m speechless. Plus, what do they call piss-the-beds down there? Field plowers? Andy Kaufman was right.

Resistance if futile. Got it.

All I know is, I’m gonna miss my little biking buddy, and I’m not really sure why I will have to. He’s been by my side so for long, I can’t imagine not seeing him for weeks, maybe even months on end. At the tender age of five, he’s done more and seen more than any five-year-old could even hope to experience, and he’s done most of that exploring right by my side. I always figured that the only kid to grow up on the internet in Wilkes-Barre would one day settle in Wilkes-Barre. I figured wrong.

This harkens me back to when all of my high school buddies finished college and quickly moved away never to return. What’s more important? Money or family? Based on what I see, most people would sell their souls for a larger SUV, so I must be the oddball when it comes to love of money. Besides, if family was more important than money, there would be no such things as those horrendous daycare warehouses. Sorry, but the long-distance family thing doesn’t work for me. I guess I’m being selfish all over again. I’m going to work on putting a happy face on all of this, it’s just that I feel like I’m being divorced.

I’m rambling, aren’t I? Truth is, I’m not sure when that phenomenon will cease, but I’m trying to cope. It’s just that a piece of me I didn’t even know I had has been ripped right out of me.

And it hurts.

Much like the leaves themselves, the leaves brouhaha just won‘t go away.

WILKES-BARRE – Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton says leaves played no role in Thursday’s flooding, but a city councilman insists they did and is calling on the city to devise a new plan to address leaf pickup and storm-drain cleaning. “I think there are some situations in some of the streets where, if catch basins were clean, it would have minimized that (the damage),” Councilman Michael McGinley said. “They’re doing a great job, but we need to come up with a better plan to have the storm drains cleaned more often,” he said. “Some were filled all the way to the top with leaves and silt.” McGinley said he would support paying overtime to city workers for more frequent leaf pickups and to clear the streets of leaves more regularly.

Everything McGinley had to say was reasonable right up until he said he was willing to authorize more overtime pay. Last I heard, somebody estimated the city’s outstanding debts to be in the $51-56 million range. That’s a lot of outstanding debts. Plus, when the current administration took over, it had to float a $10.5 million Tax Anticipation Note to cover the previous administrations unpaid, overdue debts. Now they tell me the city needs another $5 million TAN to get that intermodel bus center project completed. And while the bus center and the resulting streetscaping project will add much to a rapidly improving downtown environment, we need to resist the urge to start spending money willy nilly style.

Remember, we’re going to be voting by districts. And our district councilmen will be concerned about their districts and their districts alone. And as a result, we’re going to receive a steady diet of councilman saying we should authorize overtime and what have you so as to please their 8,000 or so constituents. Leaves here. Graffiti there. A catch basin or two over there. Mowing the grass down there, and Voila! there goes your financial discipline.

Despite signs of progress all around us, we still need to balance the budgets. We still need to run the city more like a business. We need that one eye on the bottom line at all times, or we’re going to get into financial trouble all over again. This current administration has presented balanced budgets and managed to live within their means. And that trend needs to continue no matter what.

All I’m saying is beware of city council folk bearing overtime.

As to the raging debate about the flooding, I was out there during the height of the storm. And I was out there early the next morning to eyeball it’s immediate aftermath. Yes, there are plenty of leaves on our streets. And, yes, they do cause a problem in some isolated spots. But…when the manhole covers are launched skyward by the raging waters and the catch basins are back flowing water into the streets, the leaves are less of an issue than the improper storm water management up on that overdeveloped hill above us. Flooding seems to be the ‘norm around here, and we’d better get used to it.

With that said, short of spending money on overtime, Mike McGinley is correct. Since many of the residents in this city don’t seem to give a flying fu>k about maintaining their properties and the direct byproducts of said properties, we probably need to be doing everything possible to lessen the severity of the next flood that we all know is coming. The vexing question is, how do we manage that without spending too much money?

The sad part of all of this leaves nonsense is the fact that people ignore the obvious on a daily basis. Either through stupidity or laziness or both, residents see the leaves and whatnot collecting out front and won’t do a damn thing about them. But, if the storm drain gets clogged up and their precious basement takes three inches of water, then they’re fighting mad and not going to take it anymore. I regularly clean the catch basins down at the end of this street. And George from the gas station across the intersection does likewise and cleans the basins on Butler street. It sure beats flooding, but we’re not lazy assholes like most of the rest of you. We don’t bitch, we do.

You want Wilkes-Barre to go leaf-free from here on out? (Dream on) Fine, then tell us how we’re going to pay for it and everything else people often get a hankering for. The wish list is infinite, but the same cannot be said of the finances.

Questions, questions, questions, flooding through the minds of the concerned resident today.

Unknown. He disappeared and then at the end of a recent column by Renita Fennick, there was a smallish blurb stating that his column would no longer appear as he was no longer employed by the Times Leader.

I didn’t enjoy his column, and I thought a lot of the stuff he penned wasn’t nearly as good as some of the content that blogs offer. In my mind, if you’ve got all week to mull over a rather short story, it ought to be a kick-ass column more often than not.

Somebody floated a rumor wherein Steve Corbett would be returning to the Times Leader, but would he really trade the sunny confines of Southern California for Wilkes-Barre?

Good ole Walter. He wants to run the world, but he can’t even get a blog down correctly. How sad is that? I noticed that he was spamming everybody within striking distance and finally started getting called out on it. Here’s a guy who thinks every Web site out there should be a billboard for his relentless political posturing. How ignorant is that?

As far as I’m concerned, all that he’s managed to do by invading the local internet is damage is chances of getting himself elected. His inane rants are sophomoric, his reasoning is beyond questionable and while he criticizes practically everyone and everything, his typical puddle of piddle is always devoid of workable solutions, if any at all. And yet, he publishes that useless twaddle for all to see.

I’ve learned that it is virtually impossible to convince a dodo that they are indeed a dodo, so I’m hoping he figures it out come election night when he gets trounced.

Vote for the comment spammer?

NOT!!!

Oh, yeah. The morning after the marauding leaves ripped bridges down and suchlike he called Sue Henry at WILK and had the following to say. And I quote: “The city never comes by to pick them up, so they get scattered all over again.”

Um, where I come from…here, that’s what they’d call a bald-faced lie. And we’ve got the pictures to prove it.

I say again, DUH!

When Wilkes-Barre’s in trouble I am not slow. It’s bitch, bitch, bitch and away I go!

I dunno. UnderWalt sounded kind of dumb. But there is no denying that he is Wilkes-Barre’s #1 blamestormer.

A money bringer?

Nah, I’m still very, very skeptical about all of that. For instance, when the real casino is built next year, it’ll have everything you might need within it’s walls, so there will be no benefit--no foot traffic--to any adjacent businesses.

In addition, somebody or other went to Connecticut and interviewed the town folk where the original Muckegan resort lies, and to a person they all said there really wasn’t any spin-off business to speak of from that casino. It’s more or less a one-stop shopping outlet.

And who’s it going to bring money to other than those pretend Indians? I dunno. We shall see, but I’m not grooving this Sin City routine. Remember how we got to this point. Out of control government spending and mismanagement brought us the casinos. In lieu of responsible governing, they give us slot machines?

Sounds like double taxation for those who choose to participate.

I don’t think you’ll see this in any Kramer reruns anytime soon.

Ranks right up there with Andy Kaufman’s tirade on Letterman:

Later