Butts County GaArchives News.....Terrible Adventure March 4, 1898 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Don Bankston http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00024.html#0005864 November 6, 2006, 7:53 pm Jackson Argus – Butts County March 4, 1898 Stark, Ga. – March 1st, 1898 You will have too excuse us this week, as our town was thrown into an uproar this morning that was about equal to the little excitement at Havanna when the Maine was blown up. Our little to do was this way: About 2 o’clock in the night the watchman on guard discovered a dead carcass on the outskirts of town. It was not only dead but it was unbearably offensive. So much so that the odor began to arouse the people. The man with the scavenger wagon was called in to do his part, but when he got within fifty yards of it, the mule fainted and fell to the ground and it was by the most powerful efforts of the man that he escaped from the stink which seemed to be as deadly as the shadow of the Upas tree. By that time an immense crowd had gathered and began to discuss the matter seriously s to the best way to get the thing out of town. One man said if they would give him a few minutes to prepare himself he could walk right up to it. So he filled up all of his pockets with Limburger cheese, eat a half dozen raw onions, three cans of spoiled oysters, and then drank a half pint of asafetida, and then started on his mission, but the poor fellow went down to the ground before he got in forty yards of the abominable mess. Another man in the crowd said he knew where there was a den of polecats in a log and that he would take a fresh guano sack and go and get the cats and he well knew that he could go straight to the hateful smelling old thing, but when he tried the polecat act it didn’t only kill the cats, but it disfigured the man very badly. By this time things had got considerable above fever heat and our gallant may who is always ready to defend this place even to the last drop of blood said that any man that would devise means to get rid of that plague should wear a golden star on the lapel of his coat for all times. Well, Uncle Nubbin Gunby said he had a Billy goat at home that when it got made could even out stink Old Scratch. So he goes and brings the goat and then says, “You boys just aggrevate the goat while I run up and down the street till I git right hot then I will shoulder that goat and go right straight and move the thing out of town.” Well, the boys got a bunch of firecrackers and tied them to where the goat’s tail should have been and set fire to them and got him as mad as “blue blazes” by the time Uncle Nubbin got back. He took up the Billy on his back and started to remove the curse from the town but when he got in thirty yards of the old thing, man and goat commenced vomiting and fell over on the ground. Well, the people began to talk about moving off and some said one thing and some another. But about that time we saw a fellow come staggering down the street full of “pop skull” whiskey and as every body watched him till he went down and pulled the carcass off and came staggering on back and said, “Don’t know what you was all making such a to do about, that wasn’t nothing, only the old whiskey question lying there as dead as a door nail.” And then everybody in the town said: Hurrah and whoop-pee For you and for me; Hurrah is what we all say: We have killed the old slink, But he gave us a stink To remember till judgment dash. Occasional Additional Comments: Butts County had just had an election and a bill that would allow for the sale of Alcohol in the county was defeated. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/butts/newspapers/terrible1934gnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/gafiles/ File size: 4.0 Kb