Nice guitar, ShortBusX. The traditional way to ground a tele is to strip back the ground wire, flatten it out and simply sandwich it between the bridge and the wood. This gives a nice large contact area for the ground connection and fits nicely with the Flintstones vibe that us tele players love.
As for truss rod adjustments, you can file out a slot at the end of the body to get to the adjuster without removing the neck. You'll see this "mod" on a lot of old teles. Fender originally went for the heel adjustment because of the weak spot that a cavity under the nut causes in traditional instruments. Of course, when you're using maple as your material it's less likely to break than (say) mahogany anyway, plus the stepped headstock design puts loads of material there to play with. Dear old Leo designed a neck that can be easily replaced but coincidentally designed a neck that is pretty near impossible to break in the first place. Just another quirk of the whole Fender concept.
With regard to tele tone, I've never been a lover of the US standard/series teles either. They're just a bit tame really. I think it's a combination of the brass bridge plate and the pickups. The HWY 1 series now have horrible sounding overwound Alnico III pickups, ugh (IMO, of course).