G-men and P’Pool
It was urban legend day Monday in The Spin Cycle.
The Doc was given an anonymous letter that two of our staffers received. Anonymous letters are sometimes fun to read because people tend to say what’s really on their minds behind the cloak of anonymity.
This one was fun.
The writer has been a reader of The Messenger for more than 25 years, the letter said, and thinks we do a good job for the most part.
However, the writer thinks our “likes or dislikes” are indicated by the way stories are played in our pages. If we like it, apparently it shows up on the front page. If we don’t, you’ll find it under a rock somewhere.
Next up was our lack of coverage of County Attorney Todd P’Pool’s civil suit. P’Pool is being sued by a former client in his private practice over a financial issue. We were in the process of putting a story together on the suit last month when the trial was postponed.
It turns out P’Pool’s attorney had surgery that forced the delay. A new trial date has not been set. We will provide a story concerning the suit in the days leading up to the trial, whenever that may be.
The writer also said that “lawyer talk” has it that Hopkins Circuit Judge Jim Brantley keeps postponing the trial while advising P’Pool to settle the case because the judge doesn’t think it will “go the way P’Pool thinks.”
Brantley is not working the suit. It is being handled by a special judge out of Hopkinsville. Brantley couldn’t preside over the trial. He was one of two other attorneys who worked with P’Pool on the case the county attorney is being sued over.
The writer wasn’t alone in the next issue that was brought up in the letter. It stated that a popular Mexican restaurant was raided by G-men who carted away a “large number” of illegal workers. (We also had a couple of phone calls with the same rumor.)
It wasn’t.
The letter says the restaurant was closed for a couple of days with a sign that read “Kitchen Broke.” The writer says that’s a bunch of bunk and challenged us to call the Health Department for the truth.
We did.
We were told the air conditioning unit wasn’t working at the restaurant and the department advised them to close down until it was fixed if it became so hot in the kitchen that employees were perspiring around the food.
(The same day The Doc was told the rumor about the Mexican restaurant being raided, another call came in claiming that two Italian restaurants in Madisonville had shut down. Both had signs at the establishments that clearly said they were closed for vacation.)
Finally, the writer, fearful that we’re not keeping up with the changing times, gave us a few tips on how to survive in the coming years.
We appreciate them.
Keep the letters coming.
Don Perryman | Don Perryman | 
July 14, 2009 8:17 pm
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