y Richard Cooper

LAMAR - A difference of $1.8 million stands between Wachovia Bank and the city of Lamar relevant to the disputed value of the vacant O’Sullivan building complex, an amount that remains as the logjam standing in the way of its sale.
The city has had the property appraised by Shaner Appraisals of Overland Park, Kan., who determined its value to be $1.1 million. Wachovia made a counter offer of $2.9 million that the city council unanimously rejected in a special closed meeting, November 6. No further negotiations have taken place since that time although attorneys for the city, White & Goss of Kansas City, are keeping the door open for renewed talks according to City Administrator Lynn Calton.
With an appraised value of $1.1 million, the way is cleared for the city to file for condemnation of the property as the first step in acquiring ownership of it through the process known as eminent domain. The filing would be in Barton County Circuit Court, but there has been no indication of exactly when that will occur.
According to Calton, the condemnation/eminent domain proceedings would lead to the city paying the $1.1 million and becoming the owner. It was incorrectly reported in the November 8 edition of the Democrat that the city was only acting as a liaison between Wachovia and an interested buyer. As the actual owner, the city would then sell the property to a developer who would renovate it and lease space to one or more businesses. One interested developer has been 1900 Gulf Street Partners, LLC of Dallas, Texas. Calton said they will definitely be considered as a possible developer, but the door will be open to other interested developers as well.
Calton speculated that once filed, condemnation proceedings may consume three to four months, delaying the city’s purchase of the property well into 2009. He also speculated on other issues that could influence the time required. Financially ailing Wachovia Bank has been acquired by Wells Fargo Bank. Federal officials first advised a sale to Citigroup, but its collapse ultimately led to acquisition by Wells Fargo. Calton said there is the possibility that Wells Fargo could instruct Wachovia to clear up the sale of its foreclosed properties quickly hastening completion of the O’Sullivan purchase. Then, he said the negative side of the issue is that Wachovia could challenge the condemnation proceedings in court creating a further delay of indefinite duration.

By ROB WARDEN
© 1972 Chicago Daily News

(Editor’s note: The following article was printed in the Friday, Nov. 24, 1972 edition of the Des Moines Tribune and a copy of it was brought to the Democrat by Kevin Little. We thought our readers would get a kick out of a walk down memory lane).

When Arthur Aull bought the Lamar (Mo.) Democrat in 1899, he promised the people the truth. And that’s what he, and later his daughter, Madeleine, gave them for the next 73 years - the simple, scurrilous truth.
Since 1900, when Aull started putting the paper out daily instead of weekly, there hadn’t been any changes in the content, appearance or philosophy of the Democrat until it was sold on Nov. 1.
The basic rule was “tell everything”
While most newspapers probably would have been content to report merely that George Phillips had been charged with drunken driving, the Democrat told not only who and what, but also why:
“George came in from Verdella Tuesday evening. He was drunk as a lord and weaving about the east part of town in his truck...On his arrival (at the jail) he greeted Sheriff Bassett with the remark, “I’m one drunk s-- o- a b---.” And there wasn’t any doubt about the veracity of the first three words of this statement.”
A story about a wedding contained this gem: “Bill (the groom) is a good old boy and has a lot of friends. He likes to get married now and then but we’re all pulling for a happy and prosperous life for him and his new bride”.
The Democrat also covered divorces. “It seems that he slouched off and became a vagrant, leaving her and not returning,” one story concluded. The headline on another divorce informed: “Ella Runs Off With Her Brother-in-Law While Husband and Children Are in Church.”
For the children of Lamar, the paper has been said to be a great educational force, a sort of primitive Sesame Street. The kids have learned to read young because they just couldn’t wait to see what was in the Democrat.
“When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to take the paper and hide it, but I would read it when I could get hold of it,” says Mrs. Pat Earp, a fortyish Lamarian who, incidentally, is married to a third cousin of one-time Lamar Constable Wyatt Earp of Dodge City and Tombstone fame.
The modern-day Earps have popped up from time to time in the news: “Jack Earp was dancing with Harold Needham’s girlfriend in the Diner Beer Garden. Harold walked up and knocked Jack down. The latter got up and was handing Harold a bad beating when onlookers stopped the fight.”
Perceptiveness
Although the Democrat invariably reeked of sensationalism, it also had an uncanny perceptiveness about national and international affairs. When Japan invaded Manchuria, it warned the United States was in imminent danger. Pearl Harbor fulfilled its grim expectation.
When the Literary Digest published its poll indicating Alfred M. Landon would beat President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, the Democrat prophetically assured readers that “the Literary Digest is a busted commodity.”
And the Democrat ranted about the “political racketeers” in Kansas City long before most other journals learned to spell Pendergast.
As far as anyone knows, Aull made only one special exception to his tell-everything rule. That was in a 1919 story about the Lynch lynching. A St. Louis man, J.W. Lynch, Jr., was convicted of killing the Barton County (Lamar) sheriff and the sheriff’s son. At the time, Missouri didn’t have capital punishment, so when the judge handed down a life sentence, irate locals lynched Lynch.
Aull beyond doubt knew every man in the necktie party, but never told. “That’s the one time he didn’t tell everything,” recalls a former editor of the Carthage (Mo.) Evening Press, which exchanged local items with the Democrat. “I don’t blame him. Hell, I would have done the same thing”.
This case, and the Democrat’s coverage, prompted the Missouri legislature to pass a capital punishment statute.
Aull has made a general exception to telling everything. That was in obits. “A gentleman and lover of nature went from us Wednesday night” said a typical obit.
Aull told Madeleine when he turned the paper over to her a few years before his death in 1948, “Remember Honkey (that’s what he always called her), you can’t call a man a s- o- a b- after he’s dead.”
Aull’s two other daughters, Genevieve and Betty, were graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. But that, in Aull’s eyes, was a dubious credential. The fact that Madeleine majored in English and history played no small part in his decision to pick her as successor. He needled a Carthage publisher who had strongly supported the journalism school: “At least I won’t have to drill the journalism school out of her.”
Her Father’s Daughter
Some subscribers thought the paper would go to hell with the departure of the 200-pound, bushy-browed Aull, but Madeleine was her father’s daughter. Here’s what she wrote about a baseball game between Lamar and Joplin:
“The close of the game found Mr. Frisby (the Joplin catcher) and the plate umpire engaged in a heated argument which was lost by the former, just as he had lost the ball several times during the afternoon. The last play of the game had the crowd in an uproar. With the winning run on second, McCoy (a Lamar player) hit a hard grounder to the first baseman, who threw home. But Mr. Frisby dropped the ball. He finally retrieved it, but Washburn (another Lamar player) was able to score from second through fast, daring base running. He fell just as he reached the plate and broke the small bones in his left hand. Some of the fans and players insisted that Frisby tripped him. Personally, we didn’t see any such action on the part of the catcher, but we don’t say it didn’t occur.”
One of Madeleine’s headlines, on a story about a hunting accident, said: “Shot a Polecat and His Friend With One .22 Slug”.
She, like her father, continued to cover weddings: “The groom is a prominent steam-shovel operator.” And divorces: “Jesse was a good worker when he was sober. He was devoted to his three little daughters, in his way, but he simply couldn’t let liquor alone.”
First-Name Basis
She studied her beat like a book. The most important part of the beat, of course, was people. Madeleine was on a first-name basis with nearly all of the 4,000 residents of her shady little town, which is a mile off U.S. 71 about 125 miles south of Kansas City.
Lamar, a Democratic island in the sea of southwest Missouri Republicanism, gave the country one great Democrat in addition to the newspaper.
Harry S. Truman was born there in 1884, and Madeleine proved that her father had willed her perceptiveness when she accurately foretold the Lamarians’ upset victory over Tom Dewey in 1948.
A little bit of chauvinism, maybe?
Madeleine says not! Under similar circumstances four years later, she supported Adlai Stevenson as ardently as she had supported Mr. Truman, but predicted Ike would win easily.
Moreover, Madeleine wasn’t particularly awed by the fact that Harry, as she invariably referred to him in her news columns, was from Lamar. During the campaign she headlined a story about a farmer who harvested 81 bushels of oats to the acre. It was mentioned only in passing that the farmer, Vivian Truman, was the brother of the president.
Monitors the Mood
In 1948, Madeleine monitored the mood in Barton County, which is solidly Republican outside Lamar, and concluded it might go for Mr. Truman. If that happened, she figured he was a cinch nationally. Even the immensely popular F.D.R. had lost the county in ‘40 and ‘44. As it turned out Harry Truman did carry Barton County, 3,008 to 2,577.
Readers over the years came to accept what the Democrat said as gospel. And a false rumor hardly ever got off the ground because the people knew if there was any truth to it, it would be in the Democrat.
The Aulls, of course, made enemies through their incessant journalistic invasion of privacy. Old Arthur was sued for libel three times and assaulted once. Of the latter, he wrote: “Fortunately, we wore our old straw hat, which was some protection and we have a rather heavy head of hair which protected us somewhat. It certainly would have ruined a bald-headed guy with no hat.” Madeleine was sued once and never assaulted. All four libel suits were dropped when the plaintiffs cooled off.
Treat All Alike
Probably the only reason that the Aulls weren’t run out of town on a rail was that the readers knew, above all, that the Democrat treated everyone the same.
Arthur frequently was called upon to chastise himself for recklessness at the wheel of his roadster. He had numerous accidents. He always was at fault. He always reported it. And when Madeleine was divorced from Carl Van Hafften 20 years ago, it was front page news in the Democrat.
“A lot of people cuss the Democrat,” says Ruth Davis, the Republican Barton County clerk, “But they just about break down the door to get it when it’s delivered.”
The Democrat has a circulation of about 4,000, and the paper boys’ jobs are simple in Barton County: Every house gets one.
Because the Democrat has no wire service to provide breaking national or foreign news, most subscribers supplement their reading diets with the Kansas City Star, the Springfield News or Joplin Globe.
One-Member Staff
The Democrat carries only two outside features - the Blondie comic strip and Dear Abby. Everything else is written by the one-member editorial staff. The paper is six pages, six days a week, and Madeleine and her father wrote more than 100 million words in their careers - about 10 times as much as the combined works of Balzac, Shakespeare, Will Durant and Mickey Spillane.
The new owners, Missouri Secretary of State James Kirkpatrick and his son, Don, already have made some changes in the paper and plan more. The first thing they did was take the 80-cent-an-inch adds off Page 1. They replaced the bold-face single-column headlines with bigger type that spreads across several columns and they even run pictures on the top half of the front page.
“Now,” laments the county clerk, “it looks like the Joplin Globe. I don’t know if people can get used to it.”
One thing won’t change, however, and that is the paper’s strong political partisanship. The Kirkpatricks, to be sure, are Democrats. Madeleine would have it no other way. The mere thought of Republicans putting out the Democrat would make old Arthur roll over in his grave.

JEFFERSON CITY - The Missouri Public Service Commission’s Cold Weather Rule, designed to help customers with heat related utility bills, became effective on November 1, 2008 and will remain in effect through March 31, 2009.
The Cold Weather Rule applies to natural gas and electric utilities under commission jurisdiction that provide heat-related service. Municipally operated systems, cooperatives, and those that provide propane delivered by truck are not under commission jurisdiction, and therefore the rule does not apply to them. The Cold Weather Rule has been a part of the commission’s rules and regulations since 1977.
The Cold Weather Rule provides the following. (1) Prohibits the disconnection of heat-related service when the temperature is predicted to drop below 32 degrees during the following 24-hour period. (2) Provides more lenient terms permitting reconnection of service for natural gas customers. (3) Prohibits the disconnection of registered elderly and disabled customers who meet certain income guidelines who make a minimum payment. (4) Allows a customer to register with the utility if 65 or older, or disabled to a defined extent. (5) Allows customers to budget payments over 12 months. (6) Allows customers to extend payment of pre-existing arrears beyond 12 months. (7) Does not require a deposit if payment agreement is kept. (8) Requires that customers be notified by mail 10 days before the date the utility intends to shut off service. Attempts must be made to personally contact the customer 96 hours prior to and immediately before actual shut off. Written notice must be left at the home when service has been discontinued. (9) Requires that the customer be notified of possible financial help in paying the utility bill. (10) Allows for the reconnection of service for less than the full amount owed.
If a customer is faced with a heat related utility bill that he/she cannot pay in full, it is the customer’s responsibility to contact the utility company and provide all required information relevant to the situation, make a minimum payment, and enter into a payment agreement.
More information on the Cold Weather Rule may be found at the commission’s website, www.psc.mo.gov or by calling the Consumer Services hotline at 1-800-392-4211.