John Snalt, a member of the MGODGAOALGMPTA (Make Good Old Days Great Again Or At Least Get More People To Attend) advisory committee, says he has been working tirelessly to restore the annual event to its former greatness, or at least to a level of greatness that can be considered both good and old for at least one day.

“We spent a lot of time carefully studying what made Good Old Days successful in the past,” Snalt said. “The biggest crowds came in 1986. In more recent years, one of the most popular attractions was DockDogs.”

DockDogs, for those unfamiliar, is the event in which highly motivated dogs sprint down a dock and launch themselves into a swimming pool in an effort to see which dog can jump the farthest. It has long been regarded as one of the festival’s more understandable traditions.

According to Snalt, the committee’s research showed that 1986 had a major factor working in its favor.

“1986 was also the year of the great flood,” he said. “We do not believe it was a coincidence that attendance peaked during the same general era in which large portions of the county had recently been underwater.”

The committee reportedly spent months exploring ways to recreate the conditions of 1986. Several proposals were rejected after being described by engineers as “catastrophic,” by accountants as “unfundable,” and by attorneys as “the sort of thing that would follow you for the rest of your life.”

“We had one very promising concept involving levees, backhoes, and just a truly awe-inspiring amount of dynamite,” Snalt said. “But those good-for-nothing lawyers started using phrases like ‘federal charges’ and ‘multi-agency response,’ and that really killed the momentum.”

Forced back to the drawing board, the committee began searching for individual elements of the 1986 experience that could be reproduced without requiring evacuation maps, massive casualties, or court appearances. That is when they found what Snalt calls “the breakthrough.”

“In 1986, millions of people saw that famous photograph of cows standing on a roof here in Bourbon County,” he said. “And when you look at the timing, it’s hard to ignore the possibility that roof cows were the secret ingredient all along.”

This year’s featured attraction, Roof Cows, is intended to test that theory with what organizers describe as “a data-driven, family-oriented aerial livestock experience.”

Current plans call for the construction of a long, low building with a reinforced flat roof in Skubitz Plaza. Several cows will be positioned on top, where they will be given a short running lane before launching themselves toward a 250,000-gallon pool below in a bold reimagining of DockDogs, but with substantially more insurance paperwork.

Festival organizers say the event will combine nostalgia, local history, and the unmistakable thrill of watching an event conceived with enormously poor judgment executed before your very eyes.

“We’re not entirely sure why images of cows on roofs near floodwater captured the public imagination,” Snalt admitted. “But the data doesn’t lie. People saw roof cows, and shortly afterward Good Old Days had huge crowds. That’s what science people call a pattern.”

Asked whether cows are naturally inclined to sprint across rooftops and leap into deep water before cheering spectators, Snalt said the committee prefers to remain “solutions-focused.”

“There’s always negativity when you’re trying to innovate,” he said. “People said the same thing about DockDogs. Granted, in that case the dogs actually wanted to do it, but still.”

The proposal has already drawn praise from residents who say the festival has been missing the kind of bold thinking that can only come from selective memory, questionable historical analysis, and a total misunderstanding of causation.

Snalt confirmed that the plans were finalized on April 1.

“These ideas really seem to come together best on that date,” he said.

The recent attorney general charges against a sitting commissioner for unlawfully and willfully entering a polling area for purposes other than voting during the last election have raised some concerns for local resident John Snalt. Snalt feels that laws saying someone running for election can’t be present in a polling area are silly and outdated.

Snalt explained, “Someone on Facebook left a comment saying a commissioner was facing charges because they were too close to ballots in a voting area. At first I wasn’t sure what to think, but thanks to all those Facebook comments, I’ve made up my mind.”

“These nonsense laws that outlaw sitting at a table being used to process ballots were written back when people were traveling by horse and buggy. Maybe it made sense to say you can’t go into a polling area to do your work years ago back when people were concerned about the integrity of the election process, but we live in modern times and laws have to change. Change isn’t going to happen unless we make it!” said Snalt.

To bring attention to the issue, Snalt is planning a “lock-on protest” at the next election. He is asking for volunteers to go into the polling area during early voting and chain themselves to the commissioner’s table to raise awareness of how ridiculous he feels these voting laws are.

When asked if he saw any issues with encouraging others to commit a crime, Snalt said, “I haven’t read any of the statutes related to this so it isn’t a crime for me.” Snalt feels he can’t be charged for a crime if he doesn’t know it is a crime. “A comment by someone I don’t know on Facebook said it would only be illegal if we knew it was illegal, so I don’t think we’ll get in any significant trouble, but we’ll be able to let our voices be heard and bring attention to these senseless voting interference laws.”

Snalt looked a bit confused when asked if he saw any contradiction between saying he wasn’t familiar with election laws while also claiming to protest those laws. “I’m not sure about all that, but people on Facebook said that you shouldn’t be prosecuted for something you don’t know is illegal, so we are going to do our best to get all the chains locking us to the chairs and table before anyone can show up and tell us about any ridiculous laws that would say we aren’t allowed to be in there.” 

Snalt also plans to distribute earplugs to make it harder for any of the protestors to hear anything that might inform them of any of the election interference laws that they plan to protest by “unknowingly” breaking. 

When asked why they were starting the planning so early, Snalt explained, “There is really only one day each year when we can announce something like this, and today is the day it can be done. If we wait until closer to the election, we’d have to wait to announce it until 4/1/2027.”

If a local Bourbon County resident’s plans come to fruition, Bourbon County will have a new monument in front of the courthouse. John Snalt, a graduate of Fort Scott High School, is raising funds to put a large commemorative pylon on the courthouse lawn.

“We are constantly making history in Bourbon County, and this monument will be a way for future generations to appreciate what has been accomplished,” Snalt explained. He said he wants to make sure that people 100 years from now can fully appreciate all the hard work that went into keeping Bourbon County alive.

The pylon is designed to have four sides. One side will cover achievements related to education. “The goal is to record noteworthy events,” he said. “We’d like to list the number of graduates in the county each year and any relevant educational achievements made in the county.”

Another side would be dedicated to achievements in sports. “When a local team gets to state finals, we want to make sure people remember it,” said Snalt. He said seeing what your community has done in the past is a good way for future generations to aim high themselves.

Another side will be dedicated to business achievements and show new businesses that have opened or places that have closed.

The fourth side would be dedicated to local government and highlight key events. “This side of the monument will help record the names of people serving in local government as well as notable events and achievements,” explained Snalt.

The monument will start out mostly blank, so information can be added each year. “We want this to be a type of living historical record where the acts and achievements of today are recorded for the future,” said Snalt.

Originally, the monument was designed to be 20 feet tall in order to accommodate records for the next 50 years. However, recent events have sent Snalt back to the drawing board to design a much larger monument.

Based on rapid turnover in the county commission, Snalt says a 20-foot monument would only have enough room to handle the records for the next two years.

“Don’t forget we don’t want this to just be a dry record of names,” he said. “We want more of what was actually happening. That includes the good and the bad, so we plan to include things like the significant lawsuits that the county is involved in.”

Snalt said that when the current commissioner turnover and the vast number of lawsuits being started are taken into consideration, the monument will need to be approximately four and a half miles high. That larger size requires a much larger budget. Snalt is hoping for local residents to join the cause and help him raise the approximately 3 trillion necessary for the granite needed in construction. “We hope to have enough donors to start construction in exactly one year from today on April 1st.”

Snalt was previously involved in the efforts to build a snake pit in Gunn Park back on April 1st, in 2024, and inspired the alligator petting zoo plans from April 1st, 2025.

In what stargazers are calling a “bold step toward celestial stewardship,” the Bourbon County Commission voted Monday to approve a new rural dark-sky ordinance so strict that residents will no longer be allowed to use vehicle headlights at night anywhere in the county.

The ordinance, passed after what attendees described as “an unusually confident discussion of lumens,” sets maximum allowable outdoor light levels at just below “a jar of lightning bugs with a towel draped over it.” Standard vehicle headlights, porch lights, flashlights, and “overly ambitious glow sticks” are now considered unlawful light pollution.

Commissioners said the new rules are necessary to preserve residents’ God-given right to see every star in the heavens, including several “fainter ones that have historically been none of our business.”

“We have lost touch with the natural darkness that is a vital part of Bourbon County’s attractive quality of life,” one commissioner said while holding a printed chart no one could read because the room lights had already been turned off in anticipation of the vote. “If people need to travel after sunset, they need to plan ahead, drive slower, and perhaps ask themselves whether the trip is really worth disrupting Orion.”

Under the new ordinance, drivers must now choose from a list of county-approved nighttime navigation methods, including moonlight, memory, passenger-operated lantern shielding, and “quiet instinct.” The commission is also expected to publish a voluntary map of roads considered “less ditch-prone.”

Reaction from the public has been swift. Farmers raised questions about operating equipment before sunrise, parents wondered how evening activities would work, and several teenagers were reportedly delighted to learn the county had made it illegal for school buses to pick them up before sunrise.

At the same meeting, commissioners tabled a related proposal that would require all porch lights to be replaced with “period-appropriate candles in shaded mason jars.” That measure is expected to return next month after further study by the county’s newly formed Subcommittee on Responsible Gloom.

At press time, officials were considering a minor amendment allowing one headlight per vehicle, provided it is pointed mostly downward and described in county records as “more of a suggestion than a beam.”