Stories from Wednesday, August 3, 2005

It was March when Baltimore Orioles' slugger Rafael Palmeiro testified before Congress and had his Bill Clinton moment. He took an oath, stared a congressional panel in the eyes, wagged his finger and said "I did not have relations with those steroids."...

March 6, 1933-Aug. 1, 2005 ATWOOD -- Donald Albert Currier, 72, died Monday (Aug. 1, 2005), at the Rawlins County Health Center in Atwood. He was born March 6, 1933, at St. Luke's Hospital in Denver, Colo., to Howard and Anna (Karnes) Currier. He was raised in Hoxie, Kan. He was a pharmacist in Atwood until his retirement...

Gov. Dave Heineman came back to his one-time home of McCook Tuesday for a ceremonial signing of the "Endow Nebraska Act." The McCook YMCA -- which exists because of community giving -- was the site for the ceremony to promote donations to non-profit corporations in Nebraska. More than 75 people attended, including board members from the McCook and Nebraska Community Foundations...

Most of us like small-town America, or we wouldn't be living here. It's a relatively safe, friendly place to grow up, but as Mark Graff of the McCook Community Foundation pointed out Tuesday, many of us move away to make our fame and fortune. We're grateful that many, many people who have done just that, don't forget where they came from. When they give, their hometowns become better places to live and work...

Another county fair has come and gone and this year Danny and I had time to enjoy the midway together. A county fair carnival is quintessential small town America. Growing up in and around Denver, we had Lakeside Amusement Park and Elitch Gardens all summer long -- big-city versions of the traveling carnivals that criss-cross mid-Am-erica from early July through late August...

With a wrecker supplying the muscle, workers place ramps under the wheels of a tractor-trailer rig that rolled across the tracks about noon this morning at West A and Second in McCook. The truck's brakes apparently failed while it was being unloaded at the Frenchman Valley Co-op...