I've Been Fishing

Jake and Frank Johnson and a big grouper

Yours truly has been a very busy guy the last couple of weeks. Jake graduated from FSU with his master’s degree in finance, and I took the opportunity to go to Tallahassee for four days of fishing in the Gulf of Mexico with him. The fishing was great, and the time with Jake was even better. While I was there my Clearwater buddy, Larry, invited Jake and I to go to the Bahamas with him on his boat to do some fishing. Of course, we accepted. I drove back to Fannin County after fishing with Jake, and four days later turned around and drove to Clearwater, Florida, for the Bahamas trip.

In the mean time, Jake had a job interview at Lockheed-Martin in Orlando. He interviewed in the morning and received a text that afternoon while driving to Clearwater to Larry’s house that he was going to get a job offer. Needless to say, that put him and Meredith and me in a great mood.

I got to Clearwater on Tuesday, the day after Jake’s interview. I don’t do long driving well. I find it incredibly boring, and I start to go to sleep after a few hours on the road. It’s a nine hour trip to Clearwater, and it’s one that I did too many times when we were moving up here. Thanks to two cups of coffee and a large Red Bull I made the trip safely albeit a little wired.

On Wednesday we did last minute shopping and loading of Larry’s boat. On Thursday morning at 3:30 a.m. we departed for West Palm towing the boat. By 8:30 a.m. the boat was in the water, and we had cracked the first beers.

Larry recently repowered his boat with twin 300 horsepower engines. The boat is capable of going over 60 miles an hour. I learned on this trip that it is impossible to drink a beer or eat chicken wings in an open boat going over 40 miles an hour. God knows I tried. It's a three hour boat trip, and I was hungry and thirsty. I arrived at Grand Cay, Bahamas, wearing beer and chicken wings.

Grand Cay is one of the northernmost islands in the Bahamas. It’s small with a population of just under 400 people according to the 2010 Bahamian census. Larry has been going there since he was a young man and may the best known white man on Grand Cay. Jake has been there a number of times with Larry, and is pretty well known himself. The fishing was spectacular, the weather and the seas were great, and the food was phenomenal. The conch fritters are the best I've ever eaten, and they have a dish called cheesy lobster that's too good to believe. We caught plenty of grouper, snapper and triggerfish to bring back to the States, and we didn't run out of beer or booze. What more can you ask for?

We returned to the States and Clearwater on Monday. The next day Jake and I drove to Tallahassee. Jake took care of some last minute things, and on Wednesday we drove to Fannin County. A couple of days later Jake received his formal job offer from Lockheed-Martin, and we learned the Mike has a pass and will visit us this weekend. The garden is growing, and all is good in my world.

That’s probably the last of my traveling for the summer. I was away from the cabin for 10 days in a 15 day period leaving Meredith to handle the garden and the new dog. Now she will get to go to Orlando to visit friends and help Jake find a place to stay and get his new place set up.

Meanwhile, in Fannin County the big news is the election. The two important contested races are for county commission chairman and sheriff.

For commission chairman, I’m voting for the challenger, Stan Helton. I’ve met and talked with him. I think he’s more attuned to present day realities and will help bring Fannin County government into the modern age.

It’s not really a difficult choice. The incumbent commission chairman, Bill Simonds, is a disaster waiting to happen in my opinion. The most recent revelation is that the county’s insurer paid $660,000 to settle age discrimination claims by four county workers that Simonds fired when he first became chairman. I’ve seen the settlement documents, and it’s clear that the insurer paid full value to settle the cases to avoid the risk of taking them to trial. As I understand it, soon after Simonds fired the four workers, all of whom were over 50, he turned around and hired four younger workers. That’s a prima facie case of age discrimination—something any halfway competent county administrator should know.

That’s not Simonds’ first mistake. He’s made a lot of them, and I’ve pointed out some of them in the guest columns I write for one of the local weekly papers.

You would think that Simonds wouldn’t have a chance of getting re-elected but I’m not sure about the politics around here. The big local weekly paper, the News Observer, is nothing more than a shill for the county administration. I think the fact that local government gets to pick the newspaper to be used for legal advertisements has a lot to do with that. It’s a large and steady source of revenue for a rural weekly newspaper.

To give you an example of how slanted the News Observer can be, the headline of the first story the paper ran on the age discrimination settlement said the county was found “not guilty” of age discrimination. That’s misleading to say the least. My concern is that News Observer readers have no clue how bad Simonds really is though I have to say that many people I speak to realize that the News Observer slants its stories. Maybe I’m not giving Fannin County voters enough credit.

The race for Fannin County Sheriff is also interesting. It pits the incumbent, Dane Kirby, against long time Blue Ridge Police Chief, Johnny Searce. Searce’s family has been around here for a while and is well-known and generally well-liked as I understand it.

I’m voting for Kirby. I’m currently taking the Fannin County Sheriff’s Citizens Law Enforcement Academy class (CLEA), and from what I’ve seen, Kirby has introduced policies and procedures at the Sheriff’s department that comply with nationwide best practices for police departments. Having defended quite a few police cases, I think I know a little about the subject, and I’m very impressed with what I’ve learned about the department.

Since I am new to local politics, I don’t know whether competency and good stewardship is enough to get re-elected in Fannin County. It may be that family ties and loyalties are more important. One thing is for sure—all the candidates for all the offices have deep roots in the community. That's clearly a prerequisite if you're going to run for office in these parts. You’re not going to find any candidates that weren’t born and raised in the area. If you've got a last name like Lebowksy, Silverstein, Yacavone or Kunta Kinte, forget about it.

And that’s all I got to say about that.