I hope everyone reading this has heard about the momentous birthday Jefferson County is celebrating this year. You know, the one that requires so many candles the fire department has to supervise when we light up the cake.
If this is news to you, don’t blame the 50-member committee that has been working hard for a year to spread the word about Jefferson County’s Bicentennial.
In recent months, they’ve peppered the county with activities and plan a big bash on Saturday, Oct. 6, when the whole family can enjoy the Bicentennial Exposition at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds in Hillsboro.
The Bicentennial officially dates to Dec. 8, 1818, when the county was created by an “act of the territory,” three years before Missouri became a state. Jefferson County was formed from parts of St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve counties and was named for Thomas Jefferson, third president of the U.S.
If our earliest citizens had gone with the moniker of the president at the time, we’d be called Monroe County, 13 years before the county 150 miles north of us was free to choose that name.
I’m not complaining – as I’ve written before, Tom supported the free press and I have a bust of him on my desk. But we’d stand out a bit more with Monroe, since there are only 17 U.S. states with counties bearing that name while there are 25 others just like us. That’s half the country, folks. Oh, well, Jefferson it is.
Please read about our county’s fascinating 200-year history on Pages 1B-32B in today’s paper.
It’s a lot to digest, but I can add a little more to the plate. We, fellow residents, live in a land of discovery.
Did you know that Jefferson County – the Kimmswick Bone Bed, precisely – was where archaeologists worldwide got the first proof that mastodons and early humans coexisted?
The revelation came in 1979 when a volunteer unearthed a 10,000- to 14,000-year-old stone spear point made by hunters of the Clovis culture right next to the ancient bones of a mastodon.
I worked for the Daily News Democrat in Festus in those days and rushed up the highway in my little blue Chevette to report the story in time for the noon deadline.
I wormed my way through other local and national reporters to get a good spot to take notes and ask questions, and then found a phone to breathlessly call in my story.
Our photographer rushed back to the paper to develop his photo in the newsroom darkroom, with the whole package making it on Page 1 and to the on-site press in time for the paperboys.
The Clovis point and two others found nearby are preserved in “critical storage” at the Mastodon State Historic Site in Imperial and replicas of all three are on display at the site’s museum.
That was the biggest local discovery I’ve witnessed, but there have been others over the years, including a recent one you may not be aware of.
Did you know the city of Pevely has discovered how to stop time?
Kevin Carbery told part of the story in the July 12 Leader.
He wrote about the Pevely Board of Aldermen’s decision against spending $4,000 to repair the large broken clock on the front of Pevely City Hall, choosing instead to keep the clock in place and just cover it up with the municipal logo.
Apparently, the clock, installed in 2008 when City Hall was built, has had a number of maintenance issues.
But why is it necessary to cover up a device that has the time right twice a day? That comes to 14 times a week and 728 times a year.
The reason, we suspect here at the Leader, is a true coverup.
If that clock ain’t unbroken, why not fix it, as urged by Pevely resident Janet Monsen, who said she and others were saddened by the board’s decision. Barring repair, why leave the clock hanging in its frozen state?
Kevin looked deeper. He began to notice that Pevely residents and officials who attend the aldermanic meetings were showing no signs of aging between the every-other-Monday sessions. And his own mirror seemed to show positive effects on mornings after sitting through marathon meetings – within close proximity of the stopped clock.
Hmmm.
I know what you’re thinking – that in the space of 800 words I went from writing about a scientific discovery of mammoth (excuse me, mastodonic) proportions to an unproven, although plausible, conspiracy theory.
Try not to blame me.
I got a little fuddled when I did the math and realized we’re making a big deal out of a county whose age is only three times mine.
I’m pretty sure that makes me a “venerated” journalist and calls for me to warn the fire department in advance of my own next birthday cake.
It’s a head-scratcher on how the math works, but by the time we hit the Tricentennial in 3018, the county’s age will shrink to only twice mine. I’ll have to work on taking that fact in stride over the next century.
After all, those Clovis points are way older. And did I mention? I’m moving to Pevely.
