Today's News

A food drive held by two Shelby County teens during election week has proved to be very successful, according to Starla Martin, mother of Jacob Martin.

“The food drive brought in 4,762 food items,” Martin said, adding that did not include a food collection box at W.J. Andriot's, located at 718 Main Street.

Employees at that location said the box was not full but did contain a substantial amount of food.

The woman’s phone message was clear and strong and, as is the case with many of its ilk, absent of name, number or even e-mail address:

“Your paper put an endorsement of Barack Obama on the front page. You should have put an endorsement of John McCain on the front page.”

She didn’t elaborate. Her point and reasoning were understandable, and there was no problem with her vitriol.

But her perceptions were more than a little hazy.

Shelby County stayed in the red.

Though Sen. John McCain lost the national race, Shelby County gave him nearly the same majority the county gave George W. Bush four years ago. McCain took almost 62 percent of the votes here. He had 11,451 votes to Sen. Barack Obama's 6,871 votes.

Jeff Mackey and his wife, Chrystal, have had many heated debates leading up to yesterday's election. In the end, they, like the majority of people in Shelby County, voted for the McCain/Palin ticket.

Sometime during the last couple of decades, the exact moment seems to have gone unrecorded, a witch toiling over a boiling caldron somehow threw in the right mix of eye of newt, cats whiskers and the dander of Cousin It to conjure up a spell that suddenly made Halloween very important.

What always had seemed to be a fun little candyfest that captured the attention of small children, their parents and their dentists for, oh, maybe two weeks now has become some sort of monthslong homage to all things scary and saccharine.