After months of high drama in the political theater of the Augusta Commission, there seems to be an interlude. It’s been several weeks since Commissioner Alvin Mason called for a few good men to fire Administrator Fred Russell and coerced command performances from department heads, some of which was staged and rehearsed beforehand. I know that because, as a former thespian, I can tell who has rehearsed their lines and who has not.

Advertisement

Commissioner Bill Lockett, who co-starred with Mason in some stirring performances, took a calmer part at Friday’s meetings, where several department heads presented ideas on saving money by privatizing parts of their operations.

It was so boring I could not keep my eyes open and kept wondering, “Where is Alvin Mason when you need him?” He and commissioners Joe Jackson, Corey Johnson and J.R. Hatney were absent, and I kept thinking in between long sighs and mini-naps, what was the point of going through all this if everybody wasn’t there to hear it. It would just be to do all over again.

The only spark came when Lockett on one end of the dais told Russell he thought he was moving too fast toward privatization, and Mayor Pro Tem Joe Bowles at the other end objected and said he thought he was moving too slow.

“Welcome to my world,” Russell said.

And the stage is set for the dramatic performances to commence at Theatro Augustus in the Marble Palace next week, because Mason wants to discuss the internal audit on salaries that seemed worse at first blush than it actually was. What the findings amounted to were that the salaries of several employees were shorted by $12 a year and the hourly rate for a part-time employee whose duties had increased from cleaning a 3,000-square-foot building to a 10,000-square-foot building in the same amount of time had increased to $10 an hour instead of the correct amount of $9.26 an hour. Also one employee received 10 percent above the new pay grade, which was higher than 15 percent of the current salary.

Those egregious errors are on Tuesday’s agenda to be rectified.

MUSIC OF THE NIGHT: I said I couldn’t keep my eyes open because it was a boring meeting, which it was, but that wasn’t the only reason. The late Archie McKay, the editor at the Valdosta Daily Times used to say, “You can’t soar with the eagles if you hoot with the owls.” And I say, “You can’t soar with the eagles if you howl with the coyotes and your dogs bark all night long.”

Against Ernie’s initial resistance, we moved the furniture out of our house and into a POD and are camping out on our screened porch with the dogs while the floors are being refinished and the inside painted. Yes, I know, we could have gone to the Days Inn or Motel 6 right down the road, but they don’t take dogs – at least not as many as we have. So here we are, enjoying the great outdoors, except for when the coyotes are on the prowl which they were all night Thursday. We were almost asleep when they started yipping and the dogs started milling around and barking. Then the coyotes would move on off, the dogs would settle down, and we would doze. Then I said, “Did you hear that?” and Ernie jumped up and said, “What?”

“The owl,” I said. “Listen. Did you hear it? There it goes again.”

“No,” he said.

He hasn’t been able to hear worth a darn since Vietnam and has had an occasional heart palpitation. Right before he was going to leave that lovely country, an Air Force doctor told him he could stay and they would check his heart out or he could sign a paper and leave. Ernie said he asked the doctor if he had a pen.

Anyway, after the owl stopped hooting, the armadillo who’s been digging holes all over the place must have paid us a visit because the dogs started snuffling and milling around with their noses in the air. Then the coyotes moved back across the pasture in another direction, and the hunting hounds at the Belle Meade stables started making a fuss. The bull in the pasture bellowed a few times, and pretty soon, the sky turned faintly gray and the trees began showing up like black lace against the sky. And before you knew it, the birds were twittering, and it was time to stumble around in the faint light, trying to find things among the jumble.

I know there must be men who like to move, remodel or redecorate. I’ve just never met one. But Ernie has been a good sport about it. I tried to make it all seem positive when I said, “Think of all the things we’ve cleaned out and thrown away. You know, it’s good to do this every so often.”

He just stared at me.

IF THEY CAN’T FIND YOU, THEY CAN’T HELP YOU: The man who delivered the POD was off-duty Martinez firefighter, Dino Cesarini, who, although experienced at finding places, drove past our house because we had no numbers on the mailbox or driveway.

After getting the POD down, Cesarini began educating me on the importance of having a marker at the driveway so that emergency personnel can find you if you’re having a really bad day. He said the delay that occurs when a fire truck, police car or ambulance is riding up and down the road searching for an unnumbered house often means the difference between life and death.

Late that afternoon, Cesarini and his wife, Lynne, showed up with a driveway marker and installed it. I asked him if it would be all right if I wrote about this, and he and Chief Doug Cooper said it would be a good opportunity to promote “address identification awareness.”

“We want the public to understand, if we can’t find you, we can’t help you,” Cesarini said. “Help us, help you. Be sure your address is clearly marked. Folks need to conduct a survey of their surroundings relating to address identification. And let’s not forget about our friends and family. Be sure that their homes are properly marked.”

The Martinez/Columbia Fire Rescue sells the driveway markers for $25.

And I did pay for the sign with home canned pickles and fig preserves.