Working on the 8th part of the Citizenship Badge

The 8th part of the Boy Scout Citizenship Badge consists, only partly, of going out and taking pictures of the important and unique aspects of the community and using them to make a presentation in either a slide show, speech, ppt., digital presentation or a photo exhibit. We chose to visit some of the public service organizations, utilities and places where people gather...like the library, city park & pool. We also visited some historical sites as well. Of course I couldn't post all the pictures of the different places that we visited, but here is just a little sampling.
Since this is a citizenship badge the first place I took Brandon was to the Volunteer Fire Department. What better place to find good citizens. These men & women volunteer their time to helping the community fight fires, assist the police in motor vehicle accidents and are also trained in various rescue techniques. Most are off duty EMT's & Paramedics as well, but not all of them. Some are off duty fire fighters from different counties, as well as just plain good citizens who work in various other forms of employment.

The volunteer firemen were all out on a call, so we didn't get to see any of their equipment except for what you see in the first two pictures, nor did we get to talk with any of them.

We did however run into one of their wives who was with her husband when the call came for him to report to the fire station. She put herself to good use while waiting for Matt to return to the station. Tori was busily sweeping the floors and we asked her if she wanted us to take her home, but she said that she would just wait for Matt, of course unless he was going to be gone for several hours and then she would just drive herself home.

Another one of our stops was to one of the City Fire Departments. They were very nice and joked with us telling us that they were going to charge us for taking so many pictures since I was Matt's grandma. They changed their minds about charging us for all the pictures that we took of their fire station & equipment and decided to just give Matt a hard time next time he came in. All of their trucks were neatly parked in their places all shining and clean. The fire truck in the picture above was outside being readied for a fireman's funeral and his "Last Call" to duty before he would be sent home.

This picture is on the Berea College campus and Brandon is standing in front of Lincoln Hall where his deceased grandfather worked as Director of Safety & Security for many years. His name was also Jimmy and I guess I was destined to always be married to a Jimmy.

In the distance is the old L & N Railroad Depot which is now being used as a Welcome Center. The Depot is in the center of what is now called the Old Town Artist Village. Most of the buildings here are historical in nature with an old hotel building and the old jail being used for the sale of craft articles, such as wood working, pottery, glass blowing, weaving...just some examples of the local artisans wares.

We visited here because of its historical nature and also because this is one of the places where people in our community gather.

This is Owsley Fork Reservoir one of the man-made lakes where the city gets its water. We were very pleased to see water in it. Last year we were told that you could almost walk across it because of our water shortage. The water level is down a little because we haven't had any rain to speak of lately, but it's not too bad. This is where we were heading when we saw the little miniture horses. I called them miniture ponies, but I stand corrected by a few of my blogger buddies who have seen them before or know people who raise them.

Read the sign above the door. I didn't know that you could swim for free on Tuesday nights and Brandon & I were very pleased to learn this. I wonder how crowded it is here on Tuesday nights?


Here's a picture of the city pool and a favorite gathering place for one and all. Just look at that brown grass though....This is how grass looks around town except where it is shaded by trees. It's so dry here that when we were taking pictures of the hospital, police department and city hall we just took a picture of the buildings and tried not to get the ugly dry grass & shrubbery in our pictures. I sure hope Brandon & I aren't wanted by Homeland Security, because when someone else was out taking pictures, they were stopped and questioned, hehehe.

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The city pool if located on the grounds of the Berea Community School (grades K-12) which is also known as the Athletic Complex and City Park (the school grounds are known by those names, not the school.) Talk about a city making good use of the school grounds, and it works both ways...the school has a fantastic athletic complex with the pools and many fields for sports and athletic events, and it's shared by the whole community as well.

We visited the utility companies, but I know you don't want to see a picture of the city's sewage treatment facility and neither did I, so this is the closest we got to sewage...a manhole cover...now I know we're on somebody's watch list. hehehe.