I called Lewis the Plumber in Thomson last week and asked him whether he was happy with the way the election turned out.

"You better believe it," he said.

Lewis always speaks his mind on matters political and otherwise, and I rely on him to tell me the latest local buzz.

I asked him whether anybody had been teasing him about the Joe the Plumber thing, and he said the men he drinks coffee with every morning at McDonald's have run it into the ground. During those morning caucuses, the Democrats sit on one side and the Republicans sit on the other side and rag each other about politics and world affairs.

He said he almost got into a fight the other morning when one of the Republicans said he didn't see how Lewis could vote for someone with Barack Obama's record on abortion. Lewis asked the man whether he believed in capital punishment, and when he said he did, Lewis accused him of being hypocritical, so the debate degenerated into some name calling, but Lewis said everybody had cooled down by the next morning, which is fortunate because a good plumber is worth more than a pot of gold.

WHEN YOU'RE A VIP, IT SHOWS: Commissioner Alvin Mason is back from Newport News, Va., where he was doing some training at Fort Eustis for his job at Fort Gordon. While there, some of his co-workers wanted to see Mr. Obama speak in Norfolk.

As they walked into the crowded stadium, looking around for seats, one of the ushers came up to Mr. Mason and asked him whether he was a VIP.

"And I told her, yes I was," Mr. Mason said. "And she said, 'Well, who are you?' And I said, 'I'm a commissioner.' She said, 'Oh, a commissioner? From Norfolk?'

"I said, 'No, Richmond.' And so I'm assuming she thought I meant Richmond, Va. And so she brought me to the front, to the VIP seating, where the mayor and Gov. Tim Keane was there. And so we just sat down right behind them and enjoyed a great view of Barack Obama's speech that night. It was absolutely wonderful."

WHAT FAT? Augusta commissioners are halfway through their budget work sessions, and Administrator Fred Russell keeps asking them to tell him whether they want to cut $3.4 million from next year's budget or balance it with a 1.588-mill ($55.58 on a $100,000 house) increase. But they don't want to do either.

A week ago, Recreation Department Director Tom Beck proposed cutting $788,500 from his budget by closing recreation centers and parks. That won't happen.

And last week, Public Services Director Michael Greene's proposal for cutting $527,233 from his budget, which included reducing custodial services by a third, prompted Mayor Pro Tem Betty Beard to say she knows times are hard, but they have cut so much in recent years, there's not much left to cut.

Then she noted she'd heard that morning that all the employees in some company had decided to take a slight pay cut rather than face layoffs.

"And when we feel we have to do something, rather than not being able to walk down our streets, not having a lovely city, not having recreation for our children, maybe all of us will be willing to sacrifice just a little for the good of the city," she said.

Commissioner Don Grantham said he was thinking along the same lines and was going to come up with recommendations for cutting the commission's budget.

"And then we'll ask others if they're willing to do the same," he said.

Afterward, he said, "If the bosses don't take a cut, how in the hell can you ask anybody else to take a cut?"

BAD BUSINESS: Mr. Grantham deserves credit for his efforts in getting the city out of its risky $160 million bond swap that would have cost the utilities department more than $1 million in interest this year alone, and $2.4 million more to get out of if they had waited to terminate the deal in October instead of last year. Over the life of the swap, the city could have lost $40 million, Mr. Grantham said.

What happened in 2006 when the commission voted to give up a fixed rate on the bonds is that they got sold a bill of goods on a deal most commissioners admitted afterward they did not understand, which isn't surprising since very few people do, not even bankers and financial advisers. Those who do have taken governments to the cleaners across the country because, as one man said, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

A salesman for Gardnyr Michael Capital convinced then-Commissioner Richard Colclough the city could benefit from the swap, and he convinced the others -- except for Mr. Grantham and Commissioner Jerry Brigham .

Implementing the swap cost the city about $3 million in fees to Gardnyr Michael, which brokered the deal; Deutsche Bank; Image Consulting, a Pottstown, Pa., firm; and Kilpatrick Stockton, which split $75,000 with then-City Attorney Stephen Shepard .

Footnote: In September, Jefferson County, Ala., which had a $3.2 billion sewer debt because of interest-rate swaps, was $4.7 billion in debt overall and was on the verge of bankruptcy.

1436 WRIGHTSBORO: One of the bad things about being a reporter is that much of what you write and research never makes it into the newspaper. Such was the case with a story I wrote about Wrightsboro Road seven years ago. I came across the file when I was throwing things away in preparation for my departure from the working world.

While researching the story, I learned about the Dawson family and got to know four of the children of Horace Sr. and Mary Belle Smith Dawson: Mary Ruth Dawson Collier , now deceased; Josephine Dawson Taylor ; Horace Dawson Jr. , former ambassador to South Africa; and Dr. Leonard E. Dawson , former president of Voorhees College.

Horace Dawson, who lived in Washington, D.C., sent me a four-page typewritten letter filled with wonderful details about their lives growing up at 1436 Wrightsboro Road, along with where the other family members lived and the businesses there. Here are some excerpts from that marvelous letter, none of which ever made it into print:

"I believe I am entirely correct in saying this was the first piece of property bought into the Dawson family following the migration from Norwood to Augusta, purchased by my father in about 1922, following his return from France and World War I. I have written about this in the family history, a copy of which I am enclosing. I would not have you miss the fact that five of the descendants of Joseph Dawson, the man born into slavery and who took his mother and sister out of it, five of his offspring, beginning with my father, lived on Wrightsboro Road."

1438 WRIGHTSBORO: "And so, I hear that Mr. Zion has the temerity to flatten 1438, the house next door to ours and which was lived in for so long by Mr. Birdie Horton and his wife, Miss Addie , his mother, Miss Minnie , and for a time, his brothers, Bill (the auto mechanic) and Ulysses . Perhaps that is why I have become so reflective -- the idea of someone tearing down Mr. Horton's house! It is unthinkable. Mr. Horton was Somebody, perhaps the nearest thing to a mayor of our little section of the city, certainly the boss of Wrightsboro Road.

"In real life, he was chauffeur for Mr. Clark, about whom all I knew was that he was a powerful somebody who lived up Walton Way near the Bon Air Hotel in a great big house. Just what he did or what position he held I never knew. ... Mr. Horton had a car, a telephone (without a doubt the first in the neighborhood) and there was a lawn in front of his house with a bird bath in the middle of it. He had a hose, too, and would stand there each evening watering not just his lawn and flowers but also the dusty street in front of his house, allowing us -- the boys mainly -- to run beneath the sprinkling arch. On Christmas morning, he had music groups come to stand in front of his house and sing carols, just like Mr. Clark, I suspect."

"An imposing, as well as a dignified figure, he would spring into action at the first sign of anyone misbehaving in our block. 'You take that noise and that fighting somewhere else,' he would assert. 'We're not going to have it around here. This is a decent neighborhood. Mr. Horace and Miss Belle are trying to raise these children right, and we're just not going to have your mess around here.' ... As I said, imagine someone tearing down Mr. Horton's house."