LITTER BUGS: Our area is known for its scenic beauty, so we
should all do our part in keeping it clean and litter-free.
That’s the gist of an e-mail we received from John Blackwell who
recounted what he saw one recent Sunday when he took his nephew
Tyler on a kayak trip.
“We started out on Campus Drive across from the Guidance Center
and ended up in Limestone,” John writes. “We saw two majestic big
bald eagles by the New York state-Pennsylvania border.”
That’s not all they saw, however. He writes that along their
route they counted at least 15 discarded shopping carts, most
ending up by the Tuna bridge.
“It looks like a shopping cart cemetery,” he said.
They also spotted “hundreds of tires” from the downtown area to
Limestone, along with small plastic shopping bags and plastic pop
bottles along the banks.
“I’m hoping soon there’ll come a day when we all join together
to have a ‘Clean up our River Day’ if we’d like the bald eagles to
move into our community,” he added.
LIGHTNING BUGS: On a lighter note, pardon the pun, John Hardy
called in to report that when he was sitting out on his porch in
Derrick City one night last week, he spotted some lightning
bugs.
Humidity, of course, draws those luminescent bugs, and that
recent heat wave undoubtedly lured a lot of them to porches and
backyards.
BOOSTER CLUB: A local resident called to report that for once,
Bradford didn’t have the highest gas prices in the area. Last week,
as he went across the New York state border to Onoville, N.Y., he
noticed that gasoline prices on the Seneca Nation were a penny
higher than they were in Bradford.
“Bradford always gets a bad rap for having the highest gas
prices in the region,” he said.
Duly noted!
AL RITCHIE: Bob Matzner called to add to our conversation about
Al Ritchie. Bob said his grandfather was with Al Ritchie when the
latter got shot on North Street.
“My grandfather was a bootlegger,” Bob told us. “He had to take
off for Buffalo for a while after the shooting!”
Bob also said he remembers back when the old-timers talked about
another Al – this one with a last name of Capone.
“I remember them saying the closest Al Capone got to Bradford
was a bar in Limestone, N.Y. I think it was called The Golden
Circle.”
