No Road Department fan
The Washington County Road Department are bullies with bulldozers. They will bully, they will harass, and they will retaliate. I live on a short gravel road on the side of a valley, and they have undercut my bank for 30 years, taking some five feet of my property and moving the center line of the road. For 30 years I have talked to them, written to them and emailed them. Once I shouted at County Judge [Jerry] Hunton, and once I made a series of photographs showing exactly how they undercut my bank, which I carried to their office and showed to them. All to no avail. While this was going on, they allowed two of my neighbors to build past their fencelines out into the county road; and when they graded last fall they destroyed 30 feet of my fence. They also mowed down a pretty little redbud tree.
My JP, Rick Cochran, asked County Judge Marilyn Edwards to inspect the situation. She arrived with several county employees, and first thing after we shook hands, our new county attorney, Steve Zega, asked me whether I had actually seen county equipment destroy my fence. It went from bad to worse, but for the most part I managed to keep my temper. Finally, I just had to walk away.
A few days after that a county Road Department employee suddenly showed up to repair my fence. He had with him three men, two trucks, a front-end loader, a treated corner post, a huge chain saw, and a post hole digger. He intended to dig the hole for the post by hand and, when he hit rock, to drive the six-inch-wide wooden corner post by banging it with the bucket of the front-end loader.
I told him I would fix the fence myself. When I do, a tractor with an auger will dig the post hole, the post will be slid into the hole and clay tamped around it. There will be no banging with a front-end loader.
If that is how the County Road Department sets a corner post, and if these same people build and repair our bridges, then no bridge in Washington County is safe.
Whoever wants to walk my frontage with me should call me and we’ll set a time.
DORIS DEHNE
Fayetteville
Asking religious questions
Those running for the nation’s highest office will be asked legitimate questions regarding national security, the military, foreign affairs, trade agreements, etc. I want to ask — I want the press to ask — the candidates legitimate religious questions.
For instance, I want to ask Sen. Ted Cruz if he firmly believes that gays are waging a jihad against his definition of morality, then if elected will he classify homosexuality as a form of terrorism and send gay jihadists to Guantanamo?
CHARLES E. WALLING
Fayetteville