West: Photo 'evidence' found of Armour Cheese Plant

By MIKE WEST

Afraid yours truly could never make it as a weather prognosticator .

A what?

Prog-nos-ti-cator! Not to be confused with pro-cras-ti-nator, which happens to be my worst habit.

Forecasting the weather is one thing. Prognosticating it is something entirely different.

The dictionary defines prognosticating as to forecast, predict, prophesy or foretell.

The example of usage is "economists were prognosticating financial Armageddon"

That sounds pretty serious. (By the way, procrastinating is stalling, delaying, goofing off.)

And that's why the folks on TV prefer to be called weather forecasters instead of prognosticators. (Yes, it sounds a whole lot less threatening.)

Unfortunately (for me) I took the recent Fourth of July weather forecasts a little more seriously. I thought the prognostications sounded like it would rain all day. That made me procrastinate. Ultimately, It was a beautiful day and night. Yes, it was "sticky" but the early morning clouds faded away and it was a perfect day for picnicking and fireworks.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad I missed the world's largest fireworks show in Nashville. I'm never going there for that. Just the thought of messing with what huge crowd wrecks my nerves. No way!

Well anyway, my family ended up dividing our Fourth of July into two events with a few fireworks on Tuesday night and the rest for the weekend unless I continue to procrastinate.

Where's Bill Hall when we need him?

*

As reported earlier, we were definitely set straight about the former location of Woodbury's Cheese Plant.

This time, Wallace Burke came into the Courier's office with photographic proof. You see, Wallace's father, R.H. Burke, ran the Armour Cheese Plant for years after relocating from Missouri.

While part of the plant (it's offices) fronted on Main Street, much of the facility was along Water Street. (Check out the map above.)

The cheese plant operated until about 1970 when it was sold. Ultimately, most of the plant was demolished and is now the parking lot for Woodbury Funeral Home.

The above aerial photo, taken in the 1950s, shows the Cheese Plant in full operation.

Initially, the plant received raw milk and processed it into cheddar cheese. Ultimately other processes were added with the plant producing loaves of processed cheese as well as sliced cheese under several different labels. The plant worked 85 to 100 employees year round depending on the season.