Rights To Harvest Hay.


The bi-monthly Public Works meeting was held Tuesday evening at the Council Chambers.

New business discussed included opening bids for rights to harvest hay at the Carthage Recycling Center.

Director of Engineering Sam Proffer stated that it is costing the city $600-$800 a year to mow the hay area at the center. Bids were taken, with a minimum bid of $20, to mow twice a year.

The highest bidder will take the full responsibility of making sure the grounds are kept neat and all hay is off. They will also be signing a two-year contract which can be terminated at anytime by the city.

"If they aren’t keeping up with it or doing a good job," said Proffer, "we can terminate their contract."

There were two bidders, Josh Lambeth with a bid of $40 and Larry Dighero with a bid of $100.

A motion was made by Committee member Don Stearnes to accept the $100 bid by Dighero to take to the City Council. It passed with all votes.

NASCAR to the Max

For the tenth running of the Brickyard 400 from 2.5-mile Indianapolis (IN) Motor Speedway, the race had never been won from the pole (first starting position.)

When this fact was mentioned to pole winner Kevin Harvick, he responded that although that was an intimidating statistic, he would have to be the one to reverse the trend.

Although Harvick lead the first 17 circuits, through much of the races early going, it didn’t appear that this would be the year the streak was broken. Tony Stewart dominated several segments of the race and even took home the five bonus points for leading the most laps. However it was Harvick who was able to use several late race caution periods to his full advantage.

Following a caution period with 15 laps remaining, Harvick, who was second, got the jump on the restart and passed Joplin native Jamie McMurray for the lead. Harvick was followed by teammate Robby Gordon who relegated McMurray to third.

The final caution of the day came out a few laps later and the race restarted with 10 laps to go. Harvick got a good start and was able to hold off all challengers for his first win of the season. Matt Kenseth finished second, McMurray third with Gordon fading to sixth.

Joplin native Jamie McMurray’s third place finish was his best since he won last year’s UAW-GM 500 in Charlotte, NC in only his second career start. The third place finish was worth over $250,000.00 to McMurray’s team.

This week’s race takes the teams to Watkins Glen (NY) International Raceway and marks the second of two road races of the series.

The course is 2.45-miles and features eleven turns of various banking. The road courses provides a different challenge to the teams who have to set the cars up for many different right and left hand turns and to the drivers who must shift gears multiple times per lap in addition to the various turns. Tony Stewart won last year’s race and Robby Gordon won the season’s earlier road course race.

Applyin’ paint has two distinctively different purposes. The obvious is ta make things look better. The functional purpose of paint, however, has nothin’ ta do with appearance. The function of paint is to protect the object bein’ painted from outside elements, typically the weather. I’m supposin’ that professional painters are well aware that a job that looks good doesn’t necessarily mean it is a functional paint job. ‘Course the real trick is ta have a function that is also pleasin’ in appearance, but no matter what, the effort of paintin’ is only worthwhile if it does the job intended.

The philosophy a friend a mine once took note of, that two thin coats are always better than one thick coat, came from a paint can. He may have taken it a little too serious, but then he did tend to use a spray can in an unventilated room on occasion.

This is some fact, but mostly

Just Jake Talkin’.

by

Metcalf Auto Supply

Click & Clack
TALK CARS

By Tom and Ray Magliozzi

Dear Tom and Ray:

I have been lusting after a convertible for a number of years and recently found the car of my dreams: a 1994 Saab 900 turbo convertible. It has a driver’s-side air bag and anti-lock brakes. However, my know-it-all friend claims that all convertibles are inherently unsafe, even going so far as to say that no convertible would pass today’s safety standards. He says they’ve all been "grandfathered in." I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there are safer cars out there, but the claim that convertibles had to be grandfathered in to pass safety standards seems a little implausible to me. What do you say? And should I go for safety or buy the dream car? — Susan

RAY: Nah. The stuff about being grandfathered in is bullfeathers. Convertibles do have some inherent safety weaknesses, but they have to pass all current-day safety standards in order to be sold in the United States. And the Saab certainly met all 1994 standards and then some, if memory serves.

TOM: The problem with convertibles is that they are structurally weaker than sedans because they lack roofs. The roof is a key structural component of a car because it attaches to all four sides of the car and helps keep the car from deforming. In a gross oversimplification, the roof helps keep the car "square," instead of letting it turn into a parallelogram (that’s where you’re driving along and the front-seat passenger is ahead of you, and the right, rear-seat passenger is riding next to you).

RAY: Because they’re missing structural roofs, convertibles all have to reinforced in other ways down below. And until very recently, that’s resulted in them feeling flimsier than normal cars.