Here's What We're Getting in the $54M State Funding Package

Zack and David break down recent headlines, including Senate Bill 2114, which places additional demands on local sheriff’s offices when it comes to ICE cooperation. We walk through what the bill actually changes, what many counties say they’ve already been doing, and why the “it’s no big deal” take doesn’t calm people who feel like their safety could depend on which county line they cross. We also get blunt about the language floating around online, especially the idea of “reporting” someone you merely “suspect,” and how easily that turns into profiling instead of evidence-based law enforcement.

Then we shift to Mississippi state appropriations and what a $54 million Golden Triangle package means for local projects, plus our frustration with stopgap funding and political games around MSMS facility needs. We round it out with a Kratom ban reality check, a quick guide to Columbus Pilgrimage and the Tales from the Crypt tradition, and three local storylines including tourism planning surveys, radar mapping for unmarked graves at Sandfield Cemetery, and Artemis II memories tied to Columbus Air Force Base.

Transcript

Cold Open And Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:01

I don't know what he has come up with today to talk about. I'm not asking you to hide anything. Yeah. No, put it out there. Let the people see it.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

I've never not worked in a hospital working environment.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

You can't argue with anybody when they're putting facts in your face. Zach, that's a hard question. I have no answer for it. From the opinion page of the commercial dispatch. This is Between the Headlines.

What Senate Bill 2114 Does

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Today on Between the Headlines, Senate Bill 2114 stands ready to be signed by the governor, and this particular bill will change the way local law enforcement agencies deal with ice. Or it could. Or it could. We'll talk about that. Also, we've got some pet projects receiving funds from Jackson. We'll talk about appropriations. Also, tales from the crypt, pilgrimages, all kinds of fun. But first. Retirement looks different for everyone, so your plan should be built around you. For over 40 years, Financial Concepts has helped people create retirement strategies that fit their lives. Our team in Columbus takes the time to understand your goals and build a plan that works for you. Wherever you are in your journey, we're ready to help. We plan retirement. Financial Concepts is a registered investment advisor. This episode of Between the Headlines is brought to you by Bank First, a bank headquartered right here in Columbus, Mississippi. That means your banking decisions aren't made hundreds of miles away by someone who doesn't know you. They're made here locally by bankers who know your name and care about the community. At Bank First, we're more than bankers. We're your neighbors. Whether we're cheering in the stands, catching up at a local pancake breakfast, or celebrating milestones across our community, we're part of the moments that matter most. Stop by your local Bank First branch or visit BankFirstFS.com to learn more. Bank First is a member FDIC and Equal Housing lender, Bank NMLS 454063. You are listening to Between the Headlines. Your host is Zach Plair, who is the managing editor of the Dispatch, and my name is Dave Chisholm. Today we want to open up talking about Senate Bill 2114, which um has created a little bit of anxiety out there. Absolutely. And then we've got others saying that it's not really going to be a big deal. Zach, what is Senate Bill 2114?

SPEAKER_03 2:31

Well, as I understand it, it's um it it codifies the uh a lot of these counties' sheriff's offices were already working with ICE, you know, voluntarily in some form or another. And this bill gives them uh this this bill makes that mandatory and it gives them the three choices uh for how they're gonna do that, um, which could range from anywhere from, hey, if you stop somebody in your normal course of order and you find out that they're undocumented, call eyes, up until getting more training to for deputies to assist in enforcement measures to a greater extent. So locally, we've got two things, or we've got three things at play here locally, and I think that uh given what this bill is and what this bill is seeking to accomplish on some level, I feel like the uh our local law enforcement, our local sheriff's offices, uh or regional rather sheriff's offices are looking at this d at least from the outset in a pretty responsible way. What they're saying is we were already doing the model where when we stopped somebody and or or we came across somebody uh in our normal course of order, found them to be undocumented, we already detained them in called ice. Like we we already did that. That's what we're gonna continue to do in all likelihood, which I think is I mean, that's obviously reasonable.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Aaron Ross Powell So based on that, is it a fair assessment to say that local sheriff's office have said, you know what, we've kind of already been doing this. Right. That's what they're saying. And and this bill is uh somewhat of a redundancy and more paperwork.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I mean what it does is it makes something that they were already voluntarily doing uh the minimum mandatory standard. Uh uh the the greater issue in well, there there are several. So let's start on the law enforcement side. One, we're already doing the what they call the jail model of this program, which is um what we already discussed. We've got somebody doing what we normally do, they're undocumented, now we're colonize. Was voluntary, now it's mandatory, whatever. Okay, that's what we're gonna do. Two reasons that they are citing for that being the choice that they are likely to make is that one illegal immigration or undocumented immigration, however you want to phrase that, it's it's not really that big of a deal here, according to them. It's not me telling you that. It's them saying, okay, according to the sheriff's office. This is not something that we run into a lot. We might run into it twice a month or whatever. Um and secondly, we've got other things to do and limited manpower to do those other things. So we're not going to go out of our way to, you know, be more involved with, or we're very unlikely to go out of our way to be more involved in this type of uh enforcement that the federal government is tasked with. Uh, because we've got stuff at home that we've got to deal with from people who, you know, just in our normal course of order, we've got plenty to do, and we've got such limited resources and limited manpower and high turnover and all of the things that you would expect to be present in a job like that, that it's present here.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Um now So I don't think that that Eddie Hawkins is gonna get his SWAT bus out there and and take it around and and do raids uh and or do any racial profiling, and he said as much. Yeah, he said as much. And and so part of this this feels like much ado about nothing.

County Lines And Profiling Fears

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Is is that uh in okay, well what about there are 82 counties in uh Mississippi, uh David. Uh let's just say that you are um let's just say that you are a Hispanic person, documented or not. Let's start there and work our way out. Um okay, so Lowndes County, Octabal County, Clay County is telling you we're not gonna we're not gonna increase, we're not gonna get more actively involved in immigration enforcement. It's not a problem. If we catch you doing something else and we got and you don't have documents, we'll call ICE, but other than that, you know, Pontius Pilot. And say you believe that that is the case. There are 82 counties in Mississippi. Say you want to drive to Jackson, say you want to go see, you know, say you want to travel outside of the Golden Triangle. Okay. All right. Say you end up in, and I'm not trying to pick on any specific county. Wayne County. Scott County, whatever, Sharkey County, and you go in there, they've made a different decision.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

They're sitting there on the side of the road looking for people with dark skin.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

Say you get boxed in in Winona and you're just going to see your aunt in Greenwood, and you end up at the end of uh at the end of that trip, instead of ending up in Greenwood, you end up in Louisiana. And I'm gonna tell you something else that is the matter with this. I am a strong advocate, believe it or not, in proper immigration enforcement. If you're not documented and you get caught, the consequences for that are the consequences for that. Um do I believe that those consequences should be so ha ham-handed, haphazard, and severe when you don't have an otherwise criminal record? I uh okay, yeah. So that's where the more, I guess, liberal tendencies come in, where I feel like we should be uh maybe remediating that better. We should be looking for and incentivizing paths to documentation and citizenship uh in certain cases. Uh if you've got a criminal record other than being here illegally, then there shouldn't be those avenues. I'll say that right now. But come on, man. You can't tell me that this hasn't been ham-handed, uh, that the that the focus on immigration enforcement doesn't have isn't a more or less a political statement more than it is a functional practical statement of of anything. And you can tell that by the way it is being enforced, you can tell that by the number of people who are citizens or who are documented immigrants that are in and up in detention centers in Texas and Louisiana or El Salvador for weeks, months trying to talk to their lawyer. I mean, those stories are everywhere and they're disproportionate to what should be happening. So if you are and and at the same time, you've got people who are saying, I mean, just the Facebook comments on the story. Um out of one side of your mouth, you've got, if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. Out of the other side of the right's mouth, it's um uh we literally had somebody uh comment if you see somebody you suspect is an illegal immigrant, call and it was, I guess, the ice hotline or whatever. Okay, so one, who's doing the looking? Two, what are you seeing, and what evidence are you using to suspect that that person is undocumented?

SPEAKER_02 10:40

So as I listen to you, what I'm hearing is you don't have a beef with going after criminals or crooks or people that are are breaking the law. Right.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

I don't have a problem with deporting people who aren't supposed to be here.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

But what you do have a problem with is the profiling and the racial profiling. Correct.

SPEAKER_03 11:01

That is inherent with this sort of the the zeitgeist that has uh uh d uh uh been caught up in all of this politically.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:13

And you can't deny that that's happening. Going back to the question, if you are in a grocery store and you see someone you suspect is an illegal immigrant, what evidence are you using?

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Well, uh, by virtue of what you said, see somebody, that's with your eyes. I mean, if you see them, they don't speak any English and they look to be Mexican. Right. That that um that right there obviously would be, you know, profiling, prejudice, whatever you want to say. Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

But you don't have any real information that that person is undocumented other than oh, they're brown, oh, they're not speaking English. Well, they must not supposed to be here. But you but that's not actual evidence of of documentation or not. It's just not.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

I'll tell you this those people are out there, and those people do exist, and and I don't agree with those people, but I don't know how many people here locally are of that persuasion. Shh. All right. Well, look, we'll let the listeners decide on that. What I will say is that for four years we had a president who was not present in the Oval Office, and the borders were wide open. And so here we are.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

There's not any evidence to support that, man.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

There's a lot of pictures. There's a lot of p that shoot, you don't think you're taking a picture of anything, man.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

You look at the stats.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Let me ask you this. Is a lot of this angst and anxiety expressed by Miss Chavez and others based on uh Who is a citizen, by the way?

SPEAKER_03 13:00

Who is a citizen and is scared to death to leave the county and is and her has family that's scared to death to come to her daughter's birthday party because they don't want to get racially profiled by the sheriff's office.

unknown 13:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:12

Of some county of some county in between.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

But isn't a lot of this uh based on a potential uh ruling on a court case that doesn't even exist yet, uh that that supposedly the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments to change uh the birthright citizenship deal, because I don't think that's gonna fly. I don't think the court has the appetite, just my opinion, to to visit that at this point.

The Double Standard Thought Experiment

SPEAKER_03 13:41

Well, I would certainly hope not because it's a tenant of it's a tenant that our founding fathers made available to folks for a reason. But I I wanna go a different I want to go a different route here. Okay. Um I find that a and and you can look at the proof here of the selective enforcement of immigration and immigration laws. Look no further than this hypothetical that I'm about to give you. And I I want to tell you, David, and I want to say to the listeners to be very clear that this is a hypothetical, this is not an accusation, this is a thought exercise. I'm just happening to use David because he's a business owner and he's sitting in front of me. Um David, so you you got a pool business, you're short one year, short three people. And you really need those three people, and those three people show up in the form of three Hispanic people who have it looks pretty dubious on the outset, you know, limited English. They don't seem to have a lot of papers that they can provide you, but you need the help. You say, you know what, we're gonna we're gonna take the Bill Clinton way here. Don't ask, don't tell, and we're gonna pay cash.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Well, now he was talking about something else in that regard.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

But uh but uh you're like, you know what, this isn't any of my business, and I need the help and I'll pay cash and it'll be fine. And then you're in one of these counties that has increased enforcement, fixing a pool, and the sheriff's office rolls up on you with an ice agent, and they take those three people away, whisk them off to Louisiana or Alligator, Alcatraz, or wherever. What happens to you?

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Well, first off, um what happens to you in that situation? Well, then I get punished and rightfully so. How do you get punished? I'm gonna get punished. Because I'm in in your scenario, uh equipping my company with slave labor. Well, modern day slavery.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

You're also breaking federal law, right? Are you going to Louisiana or El Salvador? I'm not. Right. Are you going back to your home country where your ancestors came from? I am not. Okay. Are you going to Lowndes County Adult Detention Center or whatever county that you're in?

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Uh hopefully not. It's about I am.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Probably not. No. You might pay a fine. You're probably just gonna get finger shook at you and go, come on, man, and then they're gonna leave. Now let me give you another scenario. You rob a dollar general at gunpoint, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:46

Now, this this doesn't sound hypothetical here. That happens a lot around.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

All right, sorry, go ahead. Well, the hypothetical part is you rob the dollar general at gunpoint. And we're friends, and I see you coming out, and you're in the parking lot, and you've got all those bags and you got the gun, and I'm out there in my vehicle, and you're like, Zach, give me a ride.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Did I steal cash or beer? Just asking. It doesn't matter. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Um if it's beer, I'm definitely giving you a ride. But you get in there, I give you a ride, and I'm taking you away from capture. Well, we get caught anyway, right? What happens to you? I go to jail. You get arrested for armed robbery. What happens to me? Accessory the fact accessory after the fact, and you want to know what my punishment is gonna be? They send you to Italy. I wish. No, it's the same as yours. Okay. So tell me why in that scenario you and I would get treated the same. But in a scenario where you hired where where you either knowingly or probably knowingly hire three undocumented immigrants to work at your pool business, they'll get whisked away to alligator Alcatraz and you'll just keep whistling and find more help. And and I think that that kind of thing, as well as comments like, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, but if you see something that you suspect, then call, it all says the quiet part out loud. And we're better than that. We're just better than that. You can enforce immigration laws, you can deport people who aren't supposed to be here, you can root out and find criminal cells without messing with Miss Chavez. You can do that. And the fact that we're not willing to look at it the same way that we would look at any other crime says a whole lot about who we are and says a whole lot about what this is. And that is all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

I don't have a whole lot of disagreement there. Um, simply what I would say is if you're a business owner and you're engaging in the in that kind of deal, then you are uh muddying the waters of the labor market, you are cheating, and it's unfair to other businesses. So for those that are doing it the right way, kudos for those of you who are uh, as I said earlier, doing the slave labor kind of thing. Well, I'm gonna have to side with Zach on it. It's it is a problem. And I think the way to address it is through proper leadership at the state level just to make sure that the labor market is not soured, okay, by uh by cheap labor and by uh, in my purview, entitlements and things that encourage people not to work in whatever form that might take.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Well, and I mean in going back to the topic at hand, this particular bill, I think it's crazy that a person who is a documented immigrant or somebody who's a citizen here who happens to be a Spanish-speaking brown person um is gonna have to worry about what county they're in as to what might happen to them, or whether they're gonna have to prove their citizenship, or whether they're gonna have to spend a couple of days in Louisiana doing that. I I think I think that's nuts. And I think that incentivizing that type of behavior on the state level is it tells us a little bit about who the legislators are and who Tate Reeves is too. And that's where I'll leave that.

How To Send Us Comments

Golden Triangle Appropriations Breakdown

SPEAKER_02 20:37

All right. If you would like to opine tips at cdispatch.com or just give us some public comments. We might follow up on this topic as time allows. We'll take a break and come back, talk about the appropriations and about other things happening here in the friendly city. Since 1935, Lowndes Farm Supply has supported the Greater Columbus Trade Area with products and knowledge for the farm, ranch, and garden markets, along with lawn, hunting supplies, outdoor clothing, and boots. Go check them out at 69 Co-op Road in Columbus. All right, Zach. So I'm looking in the paper here, Wednesday's edition. And lawmakers passed a$253 million bill, and$54 million of that went to the Golden Triangle, that is Senate Bill$2189. And there's some interesting things in here. So Zach, before we really dig into it, um tell us uh from this fifty-four million dollar package, uh, what is the uh general disbursement within the Golden Triangle?

SPEAKER_03 21:48

Well within the Golden Triangle, you've got I've obviously there's there are there are projects that are being funded. There are projects that are being funded in, you know, in all of the All the counties and cities and uh folks in on Lowndes County, uh there's eight hundred thousand dollars to help them buy that uh uh 109 acres that they've closed on for the uh GTRA.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Um that's for a uh the building of a an additional railroad track?

SPEAKER_03 22:20

No, no, no. That's what uh uh Matt was telling us about last year. GTRA that 109 acres that they're buying for future development, mainly as a buffer to keep somebody else from buying it and building something they don't want to be there.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

And there was something else uh uh to do with the port, right?

MSMS Funding And Political Games

SPEAKER_03 22:37

Yeah, million dollars for a new railroad spur there. Um uh 11 million, eleven and a half million dollars to repair uh pole gymnasium, which uh but but built in 1927, that was pretty needed. Uh here's where I want to you're you're upset about that four million dollars uh going to start Veloch Tabah. I'm gonna make your same argument, but I'm coming from the other direction. Okay. One million dollars for MSMS and it's for the Hooper building.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Yeah, well, the kids need an air conditioner.

SPEAKER_03 23:13

Bless their hearts. I I mean, yeah, they do, but uh they need other things too. And remember when the legislators were uh real just hair on fire about um oh, these facilities, they need all of this work, they need all of this investment. It's just terrible for these kids. Okay, well, when they could use that for political capital, their hair was on fire about it, they were talking about it, they were using that as the impetus to move that campus to MSU. Well, now then that that is no longer politically viable we're giving them a Flintstone vitamin and a band-aid. If it was a problem when you thought you could use it, isn't it still a problem even though you can't use it? And I and I think that that's I think that really digs into the the the problem. It's a game. Yeah. And and I don't I'm gonna be real honest with you, and I don't mind telling you this. I know you're gonna disagree with me. There's gonna be a lot of our listeners who are just gonna get their face sour when I say it.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Good. Talk to us about it.

SPEAKER_03 24:22

I you know, I I I like Rob Robertson. I get along with him well. Um, I respect him. Um I deal with him uh qu quite a bit. And uh, you know, I don't expect that to change. And there's a lot of people who hate on Rob Robertson that that that I would defend him on because I I I know the guy a little bit better than some of the people that are saying some of the terrible things about him that they do from time to time.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Well, I hate what he does.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

This is garbage, Rob. Come on, man. You sat down, you talked to us, you talked to everybody who'd put a microphone in front of you, and you talked about how you know how much the facilities needed in MSMS if they were going to be viable. All right. Jerry McGuire, show me the money. Mm-hmm. All right. Flintstone vitamin and band-aid now that you can't get your project done, once you can't get you can't abscond with the school and take it over to MSU. So now they get a million dollars for uh the Hooper building, which I mean, something is better than nothing, but you can't keep just if it's a problem that needs to be fixed and that school is gonna exist, they haven't had the funding. They haven't had real funding in years, decades. Do it right for God's sake, and let's get this done and over with and quit kicking these guys when they're down just because you can't use them anymore. Well and that and that's shameful. And I and I direct that at Rob, I direct that at DeBar, I direct that at Hoseman, I direct that at everybody that was involved in this. If they need real money to make real changes to their real facility issues, then give them real money.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Maybe just maybe the million dollars is a stop gap, because I think Hooper's gonna have to come down brick by brick, window by window. Oh, it's on the historic registry. Well, it ought not be. It looks like a jail. I've already said that. I just don't see that building being the permanent home for MSMS. And a million dollars, that's that should go that that should do something.

SPEAKER_03 26:29

I'm okay. Because you use that place as a political launching pad they did for two years. And now all of a sudden you can't do that anymore, and the problem isn't as big as it was, or it's not as urgent as it was. What's the truth? Or, well, here might be the truth.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

Let's back up to a year ago, the Starkville Octivia County School District was working with um said legislators, and there was this idea that was floating around that was potentially going to cost the taxpayers of Mississippi up to a quarter of a billion dollars if it went all the way to build the uh I was calling it the Taj Mahal High School over there, uh the partnership high school. Okay, which is they're still building still a thing, but it you know, now it looks like the uh good people of Starkville and Octibi Hall will get to do what the other 81 counties get to do, and that is pay for their own dead gum school sands four million dollars. Sans four million dollars.

SPEAKER_03 27:48

I wouldn't be so sure that there wouldn't be more money coming in future sessions.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

Well, uh yeah, there's that, but but you check it out, okay. Let's set everybody's hair on fire with this ungodly amount of money that we're going to potentially appropriate to one county. And then you know what? Next year, four million dollars doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Right? That's what I see.

SPEAKER_03 28:14

Yeah, that's a good point.

Kratom Bans And Gas Station Drugs

SPEAKER_02 28:16

So that's still four million dollars that does not go to Lowndes County, that does not go to Columbus Municipal Schools, even though their buildings are falling apart. So, you know, uh Andy Boyd, Chuck Younger, if you're listening, where's our piece of the pie? Okay, we need to have a dog in this fight. I know we're getting some stuff, but um what is so special about Octibihawk County? I like Mississippi State, I like Starkville, but where's our piece of the pie? That's where I am with this. All right, Zach, before we get into our our last topic, I want to ask you. The aldermen in Starkville uh have rejected a partial ban and have criminalized all Kratom. Synthetic Kratom don't matter.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

Dude, what uh like if you have taken ibuprofen, not tylenol, ibuprofen.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

Like, this is a big I I don't know anything about Kratom, truth be told, but I know people that that have taken it and do taken it and they swear by it. Swear by it.

SPEAKER_03 29:26

And then there are other people who swear it like k killed their relatives and stuff, like or or or put them in rehab or made them junkies. Like it's it's a it's a crazy, crazy spectrum of uh advocacy and rejection on Kratom.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

So if I go to Starkville and I have Kratom juice or serum and it's in my pocket and I'm in possession of it, I can go to jail now. And if I swallow said serum, then I've also committed a crime. Right. Well, right.

SPEAKER_03 30:02

Well, Starkville is very late to the party because uh five, six years ago, Lowndes County and Columbus did these bans too.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Okay, so I can't have it here either. Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

So if you do have it, you're gonna need to clean out your truck. Well, I I I know a good turn it into Eddie Hawkins and say you found it off of an illegal immigrant.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Oh boy. I had a guy that was um doing some contract work for me, and he arrived at my warehouse very early, and he was he was hacking and wretching. Yeah. And uh, and I said, dude, and and this was during COVID, I said, um, I said, hey, is uh is your Kratom getting to I knew he took Kratom. I said, is it is it making your stomach upset? He was like, nah, but this ivermectin is kicking my ass today.

SPEAKER_03 30:55

Well he didn't have heartworms, so that's good.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Well, at least not after the fact. That's right. Maybe, maybe, Zach, we should go to a county that that where it's legal and and do a between the headlines special edition there. And I I'm wondering what kind of stuff we'll talk about because we get out of hand when we're sober. Sober.

SPEAKER_03 31:16

Oh, yeah. Well, I'm gonna tell you I can't do that is because I have one very hard and fast rule that I think everybody really should live by is that gas stations aren't pharmacies, and you shouldn't buy your drugs there.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Here, here to that. That was free of charge between the headlines. All right. So um we've got pilgrimage and we've got tales. Yep.

Pilgrimage Tours And Tales From The Crypt

SPEAKER_03 31:41

What's up, man? All right. Well, you know, pilgrimage, you've got the homes uh that you can tour between now and I believe April 18th. It's gonna have some uh pretty cool stuff. Uh if you want to see, if you want to get a tour of the Amzi Love home, you better do it this year because they're retiring it from the pilgrimage after this year. So uh that's a highlight uh that you can go see for the last time potentially.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

So for someone who is curious about this but has never done it before, where do you sign up for these tours?

SPEAKER_03 32:14

Tickets are available at visitcolumbus.org, so through the CVB.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

All right, very good.

SPEAKER_03 32:20

Something about Tails, and uh I really like the uh uh Tales from the Cript program uh particularly that MSMS does through uh Chuck Yarborough uh in his hist his history class. Uh and it's been featured all over everywhere. But um and they they've done it on the 8th, they're doing it uh today on the 10th, and then they're gonna have uh uh two uh performances, one on the 15th and one on the 17th. So after you do your taxes uh by the deadline, you can celebrate by going to see Tales of the Crypt. Uh Death and Taxes go together. Death and Taxes go together, yeah. I tell you what. Um so um Tales from the Crypt obviously is a pe uh these kids research. Um they they research people who you know have histories here that they can find. They get in period costumes, they go out to friendship cemetery, and they uh, you know, they they play these people and they, you know, educate and inform the audience, which the audience is pretty big. There's uh good many people that come to this every year. One thing that I read in the story was this is the only place that does that. And uh uh Chuck Yarborough may not know this story, but uh for a time that wasn't true. Because believe it or not, uh I'm from I'm from Warren, Arkansas, town of six thousand people, uh maybe even smaller than that now. But uh uh I went back home and I was the editor of the paper there for uh nearly seven years after I got out of college. Um little weekly newspaper in, you know, a handful of traffic light town, right? But there was a history teacher there that was pretty innovative, always looking for good ideas wherever she could find them, and she would implement these pretty ambitious ideas. And uh one of the first things I covered after I went back to the paper was she had I don't know whether she met Chuck, I don't know whether she read about it, I don't know whether she heard about it, or I don't know if she had been over here at Columbus. But uh she did a Tales from the Crypt type program based on this one. And she was doing it, uh she did it until she retired, like three or four years before she retired. And uh uh and they didn't do it at a cemetery. What they did was they they did the research, they did the period costumes, they did all of that, but they had to make the headstones, and they did a a makeshift cemetery with poster, you you know, with these sort of cardboard headstones uh out there in the front lawn of the high school. And and people came to that man, and it was really popular, and that was actually the first Tales from the Crypt that I ever saw, and it was in my hometown in I think 2006, and it was based on the one here. So, you know, before I knew anything about this one here or Chuck Yarborough or anything else, uh he was having an impact on my day, and he was having an impact on uh a lot of kids in another town he'd probably never been.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

For sure. I think the best history that's told is the individual stories. I mean, when when you're in high school or middle school and you take social studies and you and you read these summarized mass narratives of how the history of the world led to this and to that and to the other, you know, you get a general sense of how we are and what we are, but but hey, these individual stories, that's where it's at, and that's what really gets people tuned in to concrete, tangible history. And I'll tell you this, these kids, they absolutely work their hearts out when they when they put together these these skits and these monologues, and it it's quite something. And I hope the tradition continues, and I hope that when uh Ms. uh Dr. Yarbra decides to retire or whatever, I hope it somehow continues. Perhaps his great-grandson will continue it. And I don't plan to be buried at Friendship Cemetery, but if I were, I would want to think about, you know, what would my monologue be? Some kid gets up there. Yes, I am an old pool man and a podcaster was I. Back in Catfish Alley Studio, did I recite? Keeping it real, did I?

SPEAKER_03 37:05

You gotta wear that hat though if you do it, kids. You gotta do it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 37:10

Well, if they have bad hair, they need to wear it for sure. As do I. It's been fun. Yeah, but there's so much more going on. What are three things that I may have missed?

Tourism Survey Graves Mapping Shuttle Memories

SPEAKER_03 37:21

All right, three things to know. The Columbus Lounge Convention and Visitors Bureau has surveys out to 150 event organizers, community leaders, and public officials to help identify tourism growth opportunities. The data will be collected and presented at the CVB's April 30th board meeting. So be looking out for that. There might be some new tourism growth areas that are identified. Number two, radar sensing technology could soon be used to locate unmarked graves at Sandfield Cemetery. The city is looking to partner with Mississippi State University's Anthropology Department to map graves at the city's oldest black cemetery. Part of that effort could also include research to help identify who is buried in some of those graves.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

But don't take that radar out on the river if you are in the Bass Master tournament.

SPEAKER_03 38:09

It doesn't need to be forward-facing anyway, whatever that means.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Yeah, that might turn into a story, a little teaser.

SPEAKER_03 38:14

All right. So number three, the Artemis II mission sparked a number of memories from locals about uh shuttles carried on the back of planes that once came through Columbus Air Force Base. The last of those was the Atlantis, which made a pit stop here in 2009 to much fanfare. Back in the day, about fifty toilet seats were made for space shuttles at Sanderson Plumbing. Cool stuff.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

I didn't know there were that many commodes aboard the the the craft, as it were.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

I tell you, Columbus is center of the universe.

Wrap Up And Farewell

SPEAKER_02 38:46

And and and and now you know. Well, when I was in middle school, I kid you not, the um I don't remember what the space shuttle did. I think it touched down at the air base or took off or something, but our bus driver hollered at all of us, there's the space shuttle, and the the bus just erupted in chaos. And I was looking out the window trying to see the space shuttle, and I never saw the space shuttle, and I'm so sad about it. But um, reach out to us, tips at cdispatch.com. You can also follow me on Facebook or X at the Chisholm Double Zero and leave a public comment. Keeping it real here in Catfish Alley Studio and Historic Downtown Columbus, your host has been Zach Plair, and I am David Chisholm. Y'all stay friendly out there.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

I'm just a simple old country boy, but uh I think that makes sense. I've stepped out and I've said what I had to say.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

You've been listening to Between the Headlines with Zach and David. That's what old people do.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

That is.