By JAMES CLARK / Editor for the Southern Standard (McMinnville, Tenn.) Mac Britton looks at a tickety tock Blues Clues clock Friday morning during the final minutes of the week-long Astro Auction. Pictured in the background, from left, are Bobbie Powell, Marie Padgett and Lori Del Padgett. They came, they saw, and most importantly, they…

By CHARLES W. JOHNSON / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard As WastAway inches closer to beginning operations on Belmont Drive, a public hearing has been set for Aug. 26 for citizens to voice possible objections to the trash collection facility.Before WastAway can apply for its business permits, the County Commission must formally approve of…

By AMY SATTERWHITE / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard Jackie Powers, center, snuggles with the family’s two children, Dallas, 9, and Dylan, 5 and family pets after losing one pet and the contents of their home in a house fire on Shellsford Road Monday. (Amy Satterwhite photo) A Shellsford Road family is picking up…

By AMY SATTERWHITE / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard GRIBBLE For the price of $1, city and county emergency workers combined Friday in an effort to improve services and response times.Four crew members of the city’s new fire substation welcomed their ambulance service counterparts and are looking forward to working with them. They spent…

Ethel M. Breedlove Hash, Jim Layman, Evelyn Hardison Aldridge Ethel M. Breedlove Hash, 89Rock Island resident and Warren County native Ethel M. Breedlove Hash, 89, died Aug. 7 at NHC after an extended illness.A retired dietitian with River Park Hospital and a member of the Presbyterian Church, she was the daughter of James H. and…

By Diana West / Columnist One reason I didn’t want to exchange $8 or $9 for a couple of air-cooled hours with Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman in “The Sum of All Fears” this summer was the Hollywood decision to take the Tom Clancy novel’s villains — Islamic jihadists plucked right from the headlines —…

By Will Stewart / Columnist “What we have here… is failure to communicate.” I used to associate this quote with the movie “Cool Hand Luke.” But after a recent episode in which I thoroughly embarrassed myself, every time I hear that line from now on I will always think of the Windy City.I was accompanying…

Our Viewpoint With the horrors of hanging chads still in our collective memory following the presidential election fiasco in Florida in 2000, we as Warren countians should count ourselves lucky to have one of the best election commissions anywhere.The process of administering an election is sometimes taken for granted by the general public. It is…

It’s easy to judge people when you’re not in their shoes, Lynn Smith has learned.At 54, Smith has entered cosmetology school in what some believe is an unlikely choice since he has worked in factories for 32 years as a lead man and receiving clerk.But there’s a practical reason he’s there. When he was laid…

By AMY SATTERWHITE / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard Officials hope a flood free bridge will be completed by October. Christine Harvey remembers when her grandmother used to come running.It was the flooding at Hickory Creek that scared her, and Harvey said her grandmother, who lived down the road, would rather stay with the…