Platte County Fair time is here, good news for those who consider the fair the highlight of their summer. Whether you worship it or simply think it’s kinda fun or whether you rarely attend, there’s no denying it almost always draws a crowd. It will draw a crowd again this year, though sometimes crowd size is dictated by the heat. Get ready for some fun–and some heat. The weather app on my phone has these high temperatures predicted for each of the days of next week’s fair: Wednesday, July 20: 98 degrees; Thursday, July 21: 97 degrees; Friday, July 22: 98 degrees; Saturday, July 23: 96 degrees.
Enjoy.
A sincere thank you to the Platte County Fair organizers for reaching out several weeks ago to invite us to broadcast a Landmark Live from the fairgrounds in Tracy. I had unfortunately made a prior commitment that will prevent us from doing the show on opening night, so it won’t happen, but we do appreciate the offer. The fair’s invitation was given in plenty of time, as I normally don’t make commitments that far out, but I had already committed in this particular instance. My prior commitment won’t be as fun as a show from the fair, I feel confident of that.
Let’s plan on getting Landmark Live back at the fair in 2023.
The other day I drove by the fairgrounds and suddenly my belt buckle got four inches bigger.
Potentially hawt. Steamy, even.
Honestly, I don’t spend much time reading romance novels. Maybe look to the guys on page 3. Speckman and Kamler might be into it, not sure.
But if you like romance books and such, there’s a Romance GenreCon festival being held Aug. 4-6 by Mid-Continent Public Library. You passion-loving readers will have the chance to meet your favorite authors and participate in a range of activities, including games, craft and cosplay.
Enjoy. Feel free to let us know how it goes. If you call to tell me about it I’ll be expecting you to speak slowly and put some emotion into it.
The average price of gas in the Kansas City metro is $4.31 per gallon as of Monday, yet the prices in northern Platte County are $4.35. Still not sure why northern Platte County gas prices are typically higher than other areas of the metro. Prices in the Antioch/North Oak area over the weekend were $4.05 per gallon, for instance. Pretty significant difference.
If you’ve repeatedly tried being polite and patient but it’s just not helping, there comes a time to make some noise.
People of Parkville in zip code 64152 who are upset with slow delivery by your local post office–and there are many of you, I can testify to that, because you have testified to me–I think it’s time for you to contact the office of Congressman Sam Graves and report your concerns. Be specific. Graves’ office has been effectively helpful with issues our newspaper has faced with postal problems in Kansas City in the past. Whether you’re a Sam Graves supporter or you’re not, this much I can tell you: Graves has a very knowledgeable and helpful roster of congressional staffers who work well on behalf of the congressman’s constituents.
Letting your frustrations be known will often help in these type situations. It is helping in Platte City with a similar problem. The people of Platte City made noise about frequent and lengthy power outages and it seems on the surface to have helped prompt some action by Evergy.
Sometimes I think folks become complacent about routine services and assume it’s that way everywhere else. It’s not. Most communities have more reliable electricity than Platte City does. Most communities have faster mail delivery than Parkville does.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Rocker Ted Nugent is coming to Ameristar in Kansas City on Aug. 6. We reached out to his PR peeps hoping to get the controversial musician to drop in on an episode of Landmark Live, but the people at Tedquarters told us Ted is not doing video interviews these days. They instead asked us to submit some written questions. I asked local musician/frequent Landmark Live co-host Brad Carl if he wanted to handle the honors. Brad came up with a half dozen or so fantastic questions for “Nuge,” which we found out is what his staff calls him. Expect Brad’s writeup soon.
Still bummed about the lack of video interview opportunity from Nugent. It would have been a fantastic back-and-forth Landmark Live episode with the controversial entertainer.
A piece of interesting knowledge you may have missed in last week’s follow-up article about Evergy reliability issues, specifically in certain areas of Platte City. DJ Gehrt, city administrator for Platte City, describes the two different Evergy-serviced areas of the city this way:
The Evergy service area that suffers the most outages can be geographically described as the old/original town which is generally defined as north of Hwy. 92/downtown and south of Hwy. 92 along the Second and Fourth Street corridors. “Essentially everything west of the Platte County R-3 campus,” Gehrt explains.
The second service area described by Gehrt covers the newer parts of the city consisting of Windmill Creek, the Platte Valley Market retail area and the I-29 service area. “This is generally along Hwy. 92 from the interstate to Marshall Road and includes Running Horse Road, Prairie View Road (McDonald’s to Roberts Chevrolet) and Platte Falls Road,” Gehrt says.
The short version: Area one has a lot of outages, outages that typically last for long periods of time. Area two outages are much less frequent.
But what about the properties that are very close to the boundaries described above? That’s where things get weird.
“The school district campus and the Wells Bank/Roxanne’s retail center are on the boundary between the two service areas. In general it appears as if these two locations have fewer outages than the original town segment, however, there are times when these two areas (the school district and the Wells Bank retail strip) still have power when the old section is out and sometimes when these two sections lose power when the Platte Valley Market (Price Chopper) area still has power. Power outage impacts on these two boundary properties are very inconsistent,” Gehrt says.
Clip and save for reference.
(Make your 2024 fair plans with Foley by email to ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)