Platte City Chamber of Commerce officials have decided to stick with clear as the official color for downtown holiday lights when new ones get ordered for Main Street buildings in time for next year. Yes, please note that this year’s lights will be the ‘old’ ones, the new strands don’t get here and put in place until the 2026 holiday season.
There had been consideration of switching to colored lights, but Jamie Kacz, chamber of commerce executive director, said she likes the idea of keeping with the white lights because she believes it helps keep the downtown streets brighter and more safely lit for the public.
It’s hard to argue with that common sense.
Here’s a name from the past for you, when we’re talking about Christmas lights in Downtown Platte City and such. In the 1990s, Platte City had a very small scale holiday lighting gathering, nothing near as large as what the Thanksgiving Eve tradition has become these days. In the 90s, there weren’t nearly as many business owners who had lights on their buildings, and those who did were responsible for purchasing/installing their own.
And in the 90s when discussions were held about lights for downtown, I specifically recall one business owner stressing the desire that everybody be consistent with their color choice for a more uniform look on Main Street. And her strong preference “for a more classy look?” Clear lights.
That business owner? None other than Fannie Kilgore of Fannie’s Restaurant fame.
So if you like the tradition of clear lights in Downtown Platte City, tip your hat to Fannie for pushing that approach decades ago.
By the way, Fannie died in January of 2000 at the age of 66. She had operated Fannie’s Restaurant in Platte City for 13 years.
Have you been following the NBA betting scandal that broke last week? I hope you have. If you haven’t and want a primer, go over to my Twitter account (find me at ivanfoley), as I’ve been retweeting some of the national coverage on this. I especially want to guide you to a tweet that shows highlights of a particularly crappy performance on the part of one of the defendants, a player by the name of Terry Rozier. It was comical that the NBA says it conducted its own investigation and found no wrongdoing on the part of Rozier. Lol. Did they not watch the tape? Obviously the FBI does not agree with the NBA’s lack of findings.
It’s an insider information betting ring. Allegedly. Some arrests have already been made by the FBI in what the agency says has been an investigation spanning “years.”
This alleged illegal operation, which included players Terry Rozier, Damon Jones, and Jantay Porter as well as coach Chauncey Billups, allegedly used non-public information—such as a player’s intention to leave a game early due to a fake injury—to place profitable “prop bets” on a player’s statistical output. Sportsbooks, which initially flagged the suspicious betting activity, are considered victims in the case.
Also tied to the NBA is a situation of rigged, mafia-linked poker games: This scheme, which allegedly involved Billups and Jones, was a high-tech cheating ring run by members of the Italian-American Mafia. Players were lured to participate in high-stakes poker games that were rigged with hidden cameras and other surveillance tools. Billups and Jones were allegedly used as “face cards” to attract “high rollers” to the games.
As written before in this column space, I’m not a big NBA fan. In fact in a column earlier this year–on April 23, to be exact– I referred to the NBA as “mostly a junk product.” I was being kind.
One of the reasons for that point of view has always been some shady looking extreme “runs” within each game. You’ll look up and the score might be 36-8 and before you know it the team that was trailing by 28 points is now only down by two or has taken the lead. I mean, that stuff can legitimately happen on occasion, but it seems to happen waaaay too often in the NBA to be legit.
In the NBA, things often look ‘sus,’ as the kids say. For the boomers, that’s short for suspicious.
I hope it never happens but I won’t be shocked if the FBI one day investigates the NFL. Have you ever watched a game and said to yourself “Self, if I didn’t know better I’d think that was fixed.”
In particular I hope the FBI never looks at an AFC Championship game that featured the Chiefs playing at home against the Cincinnati Bengals on Jan. 30, 2022. Remember that one?
That’s the game in which the Chiefs dominated the first half, leading by 18 points at one point in the second quarter and 21-10 at the half. KC whizzed away a chance to make the spread even larger right before halftime, remember that? After half, the Bengals came back, the Chiefs offense went completely south. The game eventually went into overtime. Cincy got the ball first in the extra session and kicked a field goal. Then the Chiefs took their turn with the ball, and the game ended when KC (surprise! or not) threw an interception.
There was some really suspicious decision making and very curious actions by one Chiefs player in particular. I even wrote about those ‘sus’ actions and identified the player by name in my Feb. 3, 2022 column a few days after the game. In that column, I wrote this about that particular player: “It almost looked like he was compromised in some way.”
Kudos to you if you remember which player I’m referring to. Larger kudos if you remember that column drawing attention to it.
As a big NFL fan, I hope the FBI doesn’t see anything suspicious enough in any past games to do an investigation on the NFL. But if they do, I won’t be shocked if some curious eyeballs land on that Jan. 30, 2022 AFC title game between the Chiefs and Bengals. Yikes.
(Find Foley saying ‘sus’ whenever he sees an NBA game on TV. Email ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)
