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COMMERCIAL SILLINESS ANNOYS CUSTOMERS / 4A Tuesday, July 13,2021 barnesville.com Barnesville, Ga. 30204 HERE’S THE SCOOP SUBMITTED Champs Landon Sneed makes a play at the U10 All-Star World Series in Louisiana over the weekend. His team, the Spalding All-Stars, won the championship. He is the son of Ashley and Will Sneed and the grandson of Dana and Al Moltrum and Frank and Jan Sneed all of Barnesville. SEE 3A GOP tax forum is tonight There has been much grumbling here about in creased property values and personnel from the assessor’s office visiting and inspecting proper ties and tonight those fed up with the process can learn more about it and vent if they desire. The Lamar Republican Party will host a forum to discuss values, as sessments, millage rates, property taxes and how tax money is spent at 7 p.m. at the courthouse. The event is open to the public. Local GOP chair Ash ley Gilles will moderate the forum and county commission chairman Charles Glass will speak and answer questions. The forum will be gin at 7 p.m. For more information, call Gilles at 770.557.9277. Subscribe. Your name goes on the label in this box Former school bus driver arrested WALTER GEIGER news@barnesville.com A former Lamar County school bus driver was arrested July 6 on one count of enticing a child for indecent purposes. Edward Hubert Burge, 63, of 1202 Everee Inn Rd. in Griffin was arrested following a probe by sheriff’s investigators. Sheriff Brad White said Burge made “borderline” comments in written materi als given to pre-teen students. “The district attorney’s office signed off on the charge,” the sheriff added. Burge appeared before chief magis trate Paul Kunst July 7 where bond was set at $5,000. Burge must also stay away from the child involved. He made bond later that day and was released. “The Lamar County School System was made aware of an inappropriate writ ten contact between a bus driver and a student in late May. The driver was im mediately suspended, pending investigation, and the driver imme diately resigned. The Lamar County School System fully cooperated with law enforcement. The safety of our students and staff is always our top pri ority. As a personnel matter, we have no further comment at this time, ” school superintendent Dr. Jute Wilson said in a prepared statement which was issued July 7. BURGE THE HERALD GAZETTE/WALTER GEIGER Bizarre crash injures three, damages store Three people were injured Monday morning when the driver of a Toyota 4Runner lost control while southbound on Veterans parkway, ran off the road and into the Reliable Mart parking lot and hit a Ford pickup truck which was parked. Officers on the scene suspected the driver of the Toyota was stricken by a medical condition before the crash. The Toyota driver and two people in the truck were injured. One person was critical and taken by ambulance to a Macon trauma center. The front of the C-store suffered significant damage. For updates, monitor barnesville.com. Need a job? This is for you Plenty of jobs are available now in Lamar County for those who want them. In fact, the Industrial Development Author ity is teaming up with seven local employers to help fill open positions at a hiring event Thursday, July 15. The average hourly wage here is $21.65. Weekly wages have increased by 27.6% over the past year, according to IDA executive director Kathy Oxford. Thursday’s Job Fair will be held at the civic center from 10 a.m. -1 p.m. Employers partici pating include Gordon State College, Jordan Forest Prod ucts, Continental Tire/Aldora Mills, Ervin Cable Construc tion, Waffle House, Connect/ Southern Rivers Energy and the Lamar County School System. For more information on this hiring event, contact Oxford at 770.872.3773. Boy pulled from pool still critical WALTER GEIGER news@barnesville.com A seven-year-old boy pulled unresponsive from a pool at a local BnB July 1 remains in critical condition at Egleston Children’s Hospital in Atlanta. At last report, the boy was co matose and on a ventilator. After an heroic effort by first responders at the scene, the boy’s pulse and blood pressure were reestablished and he was taken to Spalding Regional then flown to Atlanta. At the time of the incident, the owner of the BnB was under a cease and desist order from the City of Barnesville regard ing rentals which he ignored. He is operating outside zoning restrictions and has no busi ness license. Acting city manager Tim Turner said the ongoing opera tion of the BnB known as The Black Chateau remains in litiga tion. JB Strauss to be featured at historic Grant's Lounge reopening in Macon Barnesville native JB Strauss will be featured at the grand re-opening of historic Grant’s Lounge in Macon this Thursday and Friday, July 15th and 16th. Grant’s Lounge originally opened its doors in 1971 and is the place many claim was the “birth place of Southern Rock”. Some of the world’s great est performers played on the nightclub’s stage, including The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Wet Willie. Strauss’ influence ties his Barnesville and Macon roots with a hint of the mystery and beauty of Georgia’s Golden Isles. He now lives in Nashville and tours nationwide. With original tunes influ enced by the heavy, electric, southern style of the bands who played at Grant’s back in the day and several contem porary artists such as Brent Cobb, Chris Stapleton, and Jason Isbell, Strauss combines their sound with his own, which are also reminiscent of poetic, witty, singer-songwriters such as John Prine, Gram Parsons, and Jim Croce. Strauss followed in the legal footsteps of his father and both grandfathers and with a law degree of his own JB stepped out of the traditional role of the courtroom and instead writes and sings songs about the sto ries hidden beneath the surface of life in the deep south. Deftly balancing the very human quali ties of the south’s sometimes enigmatic contradictions, along with the essential spiritual redemption that must follow, he claims these songs are “part of the foundation of who I am as a person and now as an artist.” For example, in Man Pos sessed, the title song of his de but EP, JB expresses this when he speaks of his grandfather’s life as a prosecutor and judge and “how that life wore him down like river over stone...he became a man possessed with moving on.” Another cut on the EP, Pissant Hill, is a humor ous, yet poignant, tale of a man whose fatal mistakes land him on death row in Georgia’s Re- idsville Prison. Since there’s no one to claim him once he dies, his fate becomes a date with a pine box on a real piece of land on prison property reserved for unclaimed souls. Also influential are the years JB spent with family and friends on Georgia’s Golden Isle and his music is also redolent of the intricacies and depth of life within the marshes and intra coastal waterways. “Leaning on the islands’ life-giving elements to feed the soul when the rivers of home run murky,” he says, also influenced two Southern rock-inspired tunes, “Carolina Siren” and “Lady Cuscowilla,” as well as the acoustic “Wrong Side of the River.” A few weeks before the pandemic brought everything to a screeching halt in March of 2020, something else happened that led Strauss down another remarkable path. “I did these writers’ rounds when I first got SEE STRAUSS 6A JB Strauss is touring nationwide. ©2021 THE HERALD GAZETTE, BARNESVILLE, LAMAR COUNTY, GA 30204, 770.358.NEWS