Monday Night Football on Morehouse Highway

Football fans' hearts may have raced a bit if they drove on Morehouse Highway in the past couple of days. Parked off the street was one of ESPN's six mobile units for Monday Night Football.

Did a resident on Morehouse Highway win a Monday Night Football promotion? Was a football player or MNF analyst in town? Well, not exactly.

Greg Thorne, the mobile truck's driver and engineer in charge for the mobile command unit, explained that he was visiting family en route to the Meadowlands for a Jets-Ravens game and was doing some interior work on the truck, which is one of six used by MNF. "This is where all the execs at ESPN sit and all the operations people sit and Internet guys...I had some time off and I figured I'd work on it. We're doing interior work - floors, doors and lights," he explained.

No Rick Sanchez? No Adrian Peterson? No big cash giveaway?

"Nobody won anything yet," Thorne said. (Andy Brophy)

Bob Stone, a member of the town's Board of Finance, must have done a double-take when he read an article in the Deerfield Valley News, a newspaper in Vermont, where Stone has a home.

What was the article about?

It seems the town of Wardsboro in Vermont is building a girls' softball field, but the Wardsboro folks aren't spending $350,000 or organizing a referendum.

The softball field will actually cost only $1,600 - for those without a calculator that's about 0.45 percent as much as Fairfield's new softball field is costing.

Not only that, but abutting neighbors are actually in favor of the proposal.

Stone brought a copy of the article to Tuesday night's Board of Finance meeting, but it didn't create a lot of conversation.

Local contractors and excavators are volunteering their time to build the softball field in Wardsboro, and the $1,600 is going to pay for backstop fencing and six-by-six upright posts, according to an article by Christian Avard in the Deerfield Valley News.

"It's the only way to do it in a small town," Nancy Perkins, one of the abutting neighbors is quoted as saying in the article. (Andy Brophy)

Not cheery news, but a reminder of the importance of family and friends, if nothing else.

Seems a 69-year-old man died on South Pine Creek Road and his death wasn't discovered for about two weeks. The mailman noticed an odor coming from the man's house and that he hadn't been picking up his mail, according to Fairfield Police.

The mailman told a neighbor, who alerted police on Labor Day weekend.

Police said the man had been dead for about two weeks and that his family and friends didn't know anything about him.

RIP. (Andy Brophy)

Officially the fall doesn't start for two weeks from today, on Sept. 22. Yet there's already a chill in the air (no Indian summer?) and we in Fairfield are seeing the signs of a changing season. School has started up with youth sports, and many Fairfielders are entering the new year with Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year, year 5771) at sundown tonight. (Mike Dinan)

It's also a time of remembrance as we look back. "About Town" put a call into Fairfield Fire Chief Richard Felner's office to get details on the town's annual ceremony marking the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. This year, Sept. 11 falls on Saturday, and the ceremony will be held at 9 a.m. at the Fire Station 1, 140 Reef Road. (Mike Dinan)

We also said goodbye this week to former Fairfield residents that we can mention here. We hear from Shaughnessey-Banks Funeral Home that former town resident Christine Boeh Kattler passed away at age 64. Born on Feb. 16, 1946, in England, to the late Robert and Violet Boeh, she was a lifelong area resident who graduated in 1963 from Roger Ludlowe High School. Christine had been employed for more than 20 years at Wright Investors in Bridgeport. Friends are invited to attend a Memorial Mass on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2010 at 11 a.m. directly at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Fairfield. (Mike Dinan)