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The News
SERV,NG THE pE?PLE OF MADISON COUNT' 1,
GENERA NC 2s7 1
k\APSHALA- *?
82nd Year No. 31 PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE COUNTY SEAT AT MARSHALL, WEDNESDAY, August 10, 1983 1 5* Per Copy
In Mars Hill
Voters Approve
Sewer Bond
Construction of Mars Hill's new sewer pro
ject is due to start early next spring and be
completed in the spring of 1965, according to
Town Manager Darhyl Boone.
Voters last Wednesday approved, 261-56,
the sale of $1.5-million in bonds to pay for im
provements in and extensions to the town's
sewer system, including a new treatment plan.
Out of 694 eligible voters, 317 cast votes in the
referendum.
Mayor Bill Powell said officials were
"tickled to death" at the outcome of the vote.
"It's what people really want ? they spoke," he
said.
Boone said the project now goes into the
engineering stage, and that this should take
about six months, after which the project will
be put out for bidding.
In addition to the sewer bonds, the project
will be supported by a $915,000 grant and
$1,029,000 loan from the Farmers Home Ad
ministration. Mars Hill College is donating a
site for the treatment plant.
Local Election
Officials Named
The Madison County Board
of Elections has announced
the appointment of local
precinct election officials.
In the North Marshall
precinct, Marvin Ball has
been named to serve as the
registrar. Conley Goforth will
serve as the Democrtic judge
and Michael Jenkins will
serve as the Republican
judge. In South Marshall, Don
West will serve as registrar
while Jackie Ball will be the
Democratic judge and
Michael Jenkins will serve as
the Republican judge. In
South Marshall, Don West will
serve as registrar while
Jackie Ball will be the
Democratic judge and Irene
Clark will be the Republican
judge. ,
In Laurel (Township 2^,
Francis Gunter has been ap
pointed as registrar. Mary
Tweed will serve as the
Democratic judge and Otis
Chandler has been named as
the Republican judge.
In Mars Hill (Township 3),
Woody Ammons has been ap
pointed to serve as registrar.
Dick Anderson will be the
Democratic judge and Jean
Flowers will serve as
Republican judge.
In Beech Glen (Township 4),
Jack Radford will serve as
registrar. J.D. Thomas will
serve as the Democratic judge
(Continued on Page 4)
$15,000
Grant
Photo by tab Koonig
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE Liston Ramsey,
right, presents check for $15,000 to Vanda
Cook, treasurer of the Laurel Volunteer Fire
Dept. Laurel Fire Chief Lawrence Cutshall
and volunteers Jimmy Joe Shelton, George
Cook and Louie Zimmerman look on.
Grant Will Improve
Fire Protection
By ELIZABETH SQUIRE
First of Two Parts
Madison County volunteer
fire companies this week are
busy making plans for im
provements in coverage of
fires that can be made with a
$100,000 legislative grant.
Every minute that can be
shaved from response times,
fire chiefs told The News
Record, is vital in a county
where some houses are half an
hour from a firehouse.
Even after the new $100,000
is spent, the chiefs agree, pro
blems will remain. But yie
situation is getting better.
Marshall Chief Jackie Davis
said that the Eddie Sexton
home in Shelton Laurel was a
total loss in a fire several
years ago because the Mar
shall firemen had to drive 28
miles before they could start
fighting the flames. Now, he
said, a new firehouse in Laurel
will cut the response time to
three or four minutes.
Davis and other fire officials
say the new Laurel depart
ment and the new West
Madison department in Spring
Creek are prime examples of
what the county needs ? more
satellite companies to respond i
quickly, rescue people from
house fires and keep things :
under control until the larger <
companies can arrive with
more equipment.
Until the Laurel and West
Madison companies were
started, Marshall's depart
ment was handling calls up to
55 minutes from its firehouse.
Now, according to Assistant
Chief Bobby Allen, response
time will be down to about 20
minutes.
The Marshall fire company
now cove;* ur. area ^Crom
Petersburg to the top of Hot
Springs Mountain and to the
top of Doggett Mountain. Last
year the company responded
to 92 fire calls.
Mars Hill Chief Gordon Ran
dolph said his company needs
28 minutes to get to parts of
Wolf Laurel, but that a truck
now on order may cut this to 20
minutes. The Mars Hill com
pany covers Grapevine, East
Fork, about halfway to Mar
shall (where the phone ex
change ends), and U.S. 19 as
far as Yancey County, plus all
of Greater Ivy and south on
19-23. The company responded
to 78 calls in 1982 and has had
about 48 so far this year, he
said. About two-thirds of these
calls are "structural," he
said.
It's difficult to respond to
calls effectively beyond a five
mile radius, said Marshall
Chief Allen ? especially in
winter. So the county fire
chiefs now have "wish-lists"
of areas where small satellite
departments could be set up.
Marshall would like to see
such satellites in Hopewell,
Sandy MujJi ^nd the Shut-In
ai f. M.s- V'Hi^ s !ist incj'iries
East Pork, ; Orapevine,
Greater Ivy and, especially,
Wolf Laurel.
Tony Webb, of the U.S.
Forest Service, which helps
local fire companies in areas
where forest fires are a factor,
has his own "wish-list" ?
Bluff, Eb's Chapel, Spillcorn
and Sodom. Chief Lawrence
Cutshall of Laurel agrees with
the last two and hopes his
company can expand to have a
truck in each location.
Hot Springs Assistant Chief
Wesley Staude, who says his
company has been round
(Continued on Page 4)
Commissioners
Approve Sales
Tax Increase
. A new half-cent sales tax
was approved, effective Oct.
1, by the Board of County
Commissioners on Friday.
The local-option tax was ap
proved by the state legislature
in its waning days two weeks
ago, largely at the behest of
Speaker Liston B. Ramsey
(D-Madison).
The new sales and use tax
will be returned to the county
on a population basis out of the
total tax collected by all coun
ties that adopt it. Thus, of
ficials explained, Madison
stands to gain more from the
extra half -cent tax than it gets
from the current one cent
county sales tax, returned on
the basis of total sales in the
county.
Some 40% of the revenues
received by the county from
the new tax must be spent on
school construction or on retir
ing debt due to school con
struction.
Sewer Work
Begins Monday
Work is scheduled to begin
next Monday on the First stage
of the project to renovate the
Marshall sewer system. The
first portion of the project will
/'?tiLiull osw lin^s along Walnut
Creek Road in Marshall.
The construction on Walnut
Creek will necessitate closing
the road to all but local traffic.
According to Ron Brazil of the
state Department of
Transportation, both Walnut
Creek Road and U.S. 25-70
(Business) will be closed off
beginning Monday morning.
Traffic coming into the
downtown Marshall area will
be detoured to N.C. 2X3. Brazil
said the roads are expected to
be closed for the next four
months while crews install the
new sewer lines.
The board also approved
liring of two new county
employees ? Soma Cody as an
tide in the Upper Laurel day
rare center, and Evelyn Price
is a meal-site manager for a
lew feeding center planned
or Spring Creek.
The Board of County Com
nissioners on Friday
iuthorized publication of a
_?gal Notice warning that a
lew state law "may drastical
y effect any oil, gas or
Tiineral interest which you
night have in land located in
the County of Madison."
The notice, which appears
as a legal notice in this issue of
The News Record, provides
that mineral rights owned
separately from land may be
extinguished if the holder has
not listed the rights for ad
valorem tax pikposes for the
last five years. >,
An unbroken surface-land
claim dating back 30 or more
years, the notice says, may
now be sold without
separating the mineral rights
from it.
Road Projects
Are Approved
Blacktopping for three sections of roads in
the county, including one of only three unpaved
primary roads in the state, was approved Fri
day by the Board of County Commissioners.
Zeno Ponder, of the State Transportation
Board, explained to the board that the blacktop
jobs are part of what he considers an essential
program of getting all committed roads paved
in the county.
The three projects are:
' 1. A 1.3-mile stretch up to the Tennessee
line of former State Road 212 (now County Road
1344) at the head of Shelton Laurel Creek, to a
paved road on the Tennessee side that joins
U.S. Route 23 at Rocky Fork on the way to Er
win.
2. A 1.4-mile stretch of County Road 1114
from the river to a paved section in the Sandy
Mush area ? in effect creating a new paved
road from Marshall to the Asheville area.
3. A short stretch of County Road 1551 in the
vicinity of Madison Manor.
A special hearing was required by the
Continued on Page 2
From Madison County To Music City, U.S.A.
By Robert Koenig
It takes Mike Cody six hours
to make the drive from
Madison County to Nashville
these days. His first trip to the
country music capital took
him many years of practise.
A Walnut native, Cody
makes his home in Nashville
now and visits his family and
friends to get away from the
hustle of Music City. He's fin
ding it harder to get home to
Walnut lately because he's
kept busy touring the country
promoting his first recording,
"Fiesta", on radio and televi
sion stations across the East
Coast.
The singer-songwriter found
time to stop by The News
Record office recently to
discuss his record and his im
essions of the music in
dustry
"Fiesta" has hit the charts
and is playing all across the
country. Michael Cody may
not replace Michael Jackson
at the top of Top-*, but Cody
reports the song is going well
and moving up on the
in the
perience, and you can't get ex
perience without a job."
Program directors at radio
stations receive dozens of new
records each week.
The program directors are
hesitant to play material from
new singers until listeners in
terest picks up. Meeting with
the disk jockeys and program
directors is an important part
of getting the initial exposure
an unknown artist needs.
Cody's been getting that ex
posure by appearing on televi
sion and giving radio inter
views.
A week before his visit,
Cody appeared on local televi
sion in Philadelphia The pro
gram is carried on cable TV to
more than 2 1/2 million
viewers in the New York-New
Jersey area. "I've spent the
past month talking on the
phone with disk jockeys."
Cody's recording company
is supporting the record with
advertising in the music in
dustry's trade magazines.
Billboard aird CashBox.
Reviews of the record have all
21
|i|hm
released.
After months of waiting, the
release came as a surprise to
Cody. He told us that news of
the record's release came
from his friends back home at
WMMH. "I was on my way out
(he door one day when the
phone rang. WMMH was the
first station in the country to
play the record and they call
ed me to let me know the
record was out."
Cody worked at the Mar
shall radio station while he
was in high school.
It was while in high school
that Cody first became in
terested in music. His music
career began when he joined
with Harlan Rice, Terry
Davis, Curt McWilliams, Jim
Stapelton and Joby Sprinkle to
form a band called "White
Water". Cody credits
Stapleton and Davis with
teaching him the fundamen
tals. "I never took lessons, I
just watched Terry and Jim
play and they showed me
some chords. I used chords
they showed me to write some
really bad songs."
while attending Mars Hill Col
lege.
"I learned a lot about music
from playing the flute. There's
something about a flute, it's
the closest instrument to the
human voice because of all the
timbres you can get out of it."
After two years at Mars
Hill, Cody went on to Belmont
College in Nashville where he
studied music industry
business. He returned to
Walnut in 1961 because, "I
decided I was tired of school
and wanted to devote my time
to songwriting."
While writing, he supported
himself by working in a spor
ting goods store and working
in nightspots in Weaverville,
Mars Hill and Asheville. When
he wrote "Fiesta", he knew it
was time for him to strike out
for the big time in Nashville.
"Fiesta" may well become
a big hit overseas. The song is
set in Acapulco and tells the
story of a love affair during
the annual summer celebra
tion. On the record's flip side,
Cody sings the song in
Spanish. He expects the bil
ingual treatment of the song
the songs on the album will be
"Spanish Dreams" and
"Rita's Cantina" which Cody
describes as a cross between a
Marty Robbins song and one
by Jimmy Buffett. The album
will feature other ballads and
several uptempo tunes.
What's next for the Walnut
singer and songwriter? If
reaction to the new album is
favorable, Cody expects to put
a band together for a tour.
Plans are also in the works for
recording a video to promote
the album.
Cody enjoys his new life in
Nashville. He told us, "It's in
spiring. Nashville is a
songwriter's town. Being in
such a creative community,
it's easy to be focused on your
work."
Despite his new found suc
cess, Mike hasn't forgotten the
folks back home. He still tries
to get back to Walnut about
once a month to visit with his
parents, Plumer and Dorothy
Cody.
Does Madison County's
most successful musician
have any advice for other
aspiring musicians? "The
MICHAEL CODY