4 Alarm Fire In Fruitland, From A Reader

No details..standing on deck and can hear popping and a 4 alrm call from the fire dept.

Our Decorations Are Complete, For Now

We spent the day today decorating 300 W. Main Street in Downtown Salisbury.

There's a main tree in our foyer in which we will invite all of our readers to come by during the week and drop off any gifts they'd like to donate to local children.

Bring the kids by and see the decorations. The main tree has thousands of lights on it and hundreds of ornaments. We look forward to seeing you and we hope you enjoy the decorations.

UPDATE: I have republished this Post because of the overwhelming traffic we have seen because of it. You see, throughout the day today we have been swamped by just a ton of people coming by the building to see the decorations and lights in ALL of our windows. If you'd like to give the kids a treat, come on down this evening and just drive by, if you'd like. Everything will be illuminated for your viewing pleasure each evening throughout the Holidays.

If you look carefully at the main tree with the white lights you'll see many ornaments on the tree that come directly from the White House, cool Harley Davidson ornaments, ornaments for children, animals lovers, you name it.

All in all though we're so pleased so many people have taken interest in it today and we hope to see many more of you come by. To the anonymous commenter that is claiming Tracey and I are making up our own comments, that's just ridiculous. Get in the spirit and try to enjoy life, rather than attempting to bring down others.

Merry Christmas DelMarVa.

NBA Owners Won. Big. But The Players Can Live With It.

As the talk starts to build of all the little concessions the NBA players got in the last week to make an NBA labor deal happen in time for games on Christmas day, remember this:

The owners won.

In a massive way. This is an Attila the Hun sweeping through Eastern Europe kind of win — devastating and total.

David Stern and the owners came into these NBA labor talks saying they lost more than $300 million last season and $400 million the year before that. By getting the players to agree to what is in practice a 50/50 split of basketball related income (although the deal allows the players to get to 51 percent if revenue increases enough) the owners got the players to essentially accept a 12 percent salary cut that will cover those losses.

This will come to more than $3 billion back in the owners’ pockets if the deal lasts the full 10 years (both sides can opt out of the deal after six years). What’s more, the deal means the players will have shorter contracts with lower raises going forward. Plus, the system now ties the hands of larger market, bigger spending teams helping depress salaries that way.

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Sam's Club Pulls Lego Bible Due To Complaints

The author of The Brick Bible, which uses Lego blocks to tell biblical stories, says Sam's Club has yanked his product from shelves because customers complained it is too vulgar and violent. He says he feels as though he's being singled out because his book simply contains literal depictions of Bible stories.

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LOST PUPPY

The owner of the puppy is distraught! Got out the door and was attacked by neighbors dog, then ran! Lives on Queen Avenue and is probably still in the area...it's very small, about 2 lbs.; a Chihuahua. I have a picture on my phone which I will send to you. Answers to the name of "Foxy". If found, please contact Danni @ 443-235-4559.

County Officials Clamp Down On Sussex Sheriff

GEORGETOWN — County administration has issued a 48-page memo aimed at reining in Sussex Sheriff Jeff Christopher. In the Oct. 31 memo, Sussex County Administrator David Baker ordered the sheriff to stop several recent practices – including making traffic stops and transporting prisoners – or face a charge of insubordination.

Baker said the sheriff’s actions are putting his deputies in violation of state law and county policies, possibly negating the county’s liability insurance.

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NASA Launches $2.5 Billion Rover To Red Planet

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA has launched its next Mars rover, kicking off a long-awaited mission to investigate whether the Red Planet could ever have hosted microbial life.

The car-size Curiosity rover blasted off atop its Atlas 5 rocket at 10:02 a.m. ET Saturday, streaking into a cloudy sky above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here. The huge robot's next stop is Mars, though the 354-million-mile (570-million-kilometer) journey will take eight and a half months.

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Discovery Of Two Bodies Could Bring Craigslist Death Toll To Three

CLEVELAND – The discoveries of two new bodies could bring to three the death toll from a Craigslist ad that police say lured victims into a lethal robbery scheme.

A body found Friday in a shallow grave near a mall in Akron may be that of a missing man who answered the ad, the FBI said. And a sheriff in a rural county said later in the day that the body of a white male without identification was found in a shallow grave about 90 miles away.


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HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER 11-26-11

Dangerous Games

This is not the best historical article, but it may bring back a memory or two.

Over the years children have come up with games that were not in the best interest of their health. But kids will be kids and we didn’t have all the electronics that kids have today and had to just come up with something to occupy our young and immature minds.

Since almost every boy carried a pocket knife, a game was played called “mumbly peg”. This was played by two boys who faced each other and threw his knife so as to miss the other boy’s foot. If you hit his shoe (or worse), you lost the game. If neither boy hit his opponent, the one closest to the other’s shoe was the winner. It seems stupid now but we thought it was great fun. Usually, a large crowd would gather to witness the activity.

Another, even more stupid, was the practice of two boys sitting opposite each other at Leo’s Confectionary which is gone now but was located at the apex of Main St., Long Ave., E. William St., Truitt St. and Mt. Hermon Rd.. They would each put their forearm on the table touching each other. A lit cigarette was dropped between them, burning both participants. The first one to pull away was the loser. This was strictly a macho thing and I never had the lack of good sense to try it. It was always sure to draw a sizeable crowd though.

Car games were another popular past time. “Rat Racing” in Pocomoke Forest was always popular. Even though it is not hard to get disoriented in Pocomoke Forest, we always knew there were only two roads bisecting the Eastern Shore – Route 13 and Route 50. Eventually, you had to come out to one of them. I can’t ever remember an accident doing this. Maybe someone would miss a curve and wind up in a field, but the way cars were built back then, nothing was harmed.

Drag racing was really popular in the 1950’s. A race was usually arranged at the Oaks Drive-in and from there a steady stream of cars left to go to the designated stretch of lonely road somewhere out in the country to pair off and “get it on”. The first official track was in Georgetown. They had a track that was all of 1/8th of a mile, about half the distance of other tracks. Delmar opened their track in the late 1960’s. Anyone who paid the entrance fee could be put in a Class and race other cars in the same Class. It was neat to see somebody pushing the gas pedal to the floor on Dad’s prized Oldsmobile or Buick. If Dad’s only knew what Junior was doing to his family vehicle.

When someone my age looks back most of the memories are good ones. We didn’t have drugs to screw up our heads. Only sailors and convicts had tattoos. Modesty was the norm at any social level. Teen pregnancy was almost unheard of although it did happen.

When that did happen, they changed from happy-go-lucky teenagers to parents and started raising a family. It was called responsibility and everybody took it very seriously. No more stupid childhood games entered their lives. They had neither the time nor money for suddenly something so foolish. The world has sure changed and not for the better.