HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-04-25, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2013. PAGE 5.
I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life, but I still
remember my first one with great
fondness. I started out as a newspaper
editor.
The editor’s chair is not usually offered
to a greenhorn kid with no relevant
experience, but this was different – I owned
the newspaper. I was also the publisher,
advertising manager and (lone) feature
reporter.
I’m fairly certain the editorial departments
of The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Daily
Star didn’t lose a lot of sleep over the
launching of my periodical. It only lasted
for a single edition, peaking at a circulation
of one. It consisted of one front page
which featured a news flash hand-printed
on kraft paper and accompanied by a
(very bad) drawing of something with
feathers. The headline: “UNUSUAL BIRD
SPOTTED ON MR. RUTHERFORD’S
LAWN.”
Well, whaddya expect? I was nine years old.
I didn’t last long as an editor but the first bite
of the newspaper bug proved highly infectious.
In the years that followed I tried on a lot of
different hats – farmhand, seaman, English
teacher, salesman, actor, radio commentator,
television show host…
And here I am again – back in the news-
paper business. Only a columnist this
time, nothing as exalted as the editorship, but
still.
Mind you, I have a ways to go to
fill the shoes of Newt Wallace of Winters,
California. Newt’s been in the newspaper
business since 1947 – and he operates
at a journalistic level even more
fundamental than writing or editing. Newt
delivers copies of the Winters Express to
customers on the same route he’s trudged
pretty well every publishing day for the past
66 years.
That’s right, Newt Wallace is a paperboy – if
you can call a 93-year-old guy who delivers
your paper a ‘boy’.
He was delivering papers even before
that. He had his own route at the age
of 12 back in Musgokee, Oklahoma. Then
he did a stint in the navy, accumulated a bit
of a bankroll, heard there was a small
paper for sale ‘way out in Winters, California,
hopped a train to check it out and bought
the Winters Express, lock stock and printing
press for $12,500 back in 1946. He ran the
paper and delivered the copies until 1983
when his son took over. Wallace senior tried
retirement, found it didn’t fit and asked for his
delivery job back.
“I don’t hunt or play golf;” Newt told a
reporter, “I deliver papers.”
Is he going to give it up now that
he’s heading for the century mark? Nope.
“He tried to quit,” his son recalls, “but
I tell him, ‘Show me three friends who
are your age, retired and still alive. He
thinks about it and then he goes back to his
desk.”
The news business is like that – it gets in
your blood.
If I ever grow up I’m going to apply for a
paper route too.
Arthur
Black
Other Views
Delivering the best job in the world
There is no one among us who, by now,
has not heard the news of the bombing
of the Boston Marathon’s finish line.
This incident is another sad chapter in the tale
of the world we live in spinning out of our
hands.
News coverage has been non-stop and now
with the age of digital media, anyone with
internet access can look at pictures that belong
in a war zone, not at the finish line of one of
North America’s premier sporting events.
There has been no shortage of anger. I have
been angry about what I’ve seen and heard, but
as the days have gone on, I have found myself
relegated to a state of sadness.
In watching commentary on this gutless act
that has killed three and caused horrific injuries
to over 150 more, the term that keeps coming
up is “normal”.
Many Americans have been waiting for
things to “get back to normal” after the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In
discussing the idea of normalcy in times such
as these, over and over again you hear that our
pre-9/11 idea of normal could be gone forever,
never to return.
Even in the last nine months, as North
Americans, we have been faced with some of
the most horrific incidents I’ve seen in my
lifetime. In July, 2012, we had a man open fire
at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight
Rises in Colorado killing 12. Later that
summer the world watched the sick saga of
Luka Magnotta, the Scarborough-born man
who is accused of killing and dismembering
Lin Jun and sending his extremities across the
country through the mail. In December Adam
Lanza tore through Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newtown, Connecticut gunning
down 20 children and six adults.
As baseball was out of season in December,
Major League Baseball teams wore a patch on
opening day earlier this month to honour
Lanza’s victims. And now, not three weeks
later, bombs tear through hundreds of people at
the Boston Marathon.
It hurts to accept this new normal. A new
normal where people risk injury, and even
death, by going to see a movie, going to a
sporting event or going to school goes against
everything we have come to know and hold
close to our hearts about the lives we lead in
Canada, or the United States.
Spending last weekend in New Jersey with
family, including two young cousins aged
seven and nine, it hit me a little harder. Of
course we all know that the youngest victim of
the Boston Marathon bombing was Martin
Richard, who at eight years old, would fall
right in between the ages of my cousins Olivia
and Maddy.
To imagine one of them gone as a result of
such an act of cowardness and terrorism is
sickening to my stomach, and yet we hear
stories of the living suspect, Dzhokar Tsarnaev
at a party on the night of the bombing at the
University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth.
The world has certainly spun out into a place
where I, along with plenty of others, don’t
seem to recognize it any longer.
As someone who has visited Boston on
many occasions and is very familiar with the
area in which the bombs were detonated, I
can’t help but feel sadness for the people of
Boston. The Back Bay community is home to
Fenway Park, as well as some of the nicest,
most caring people you’ll meet.
The community is full of strong, resilient
people who will go on, despite what anyone
may throw at them. The days following the
attack have only served to prove that.
Boston strong
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
There used to be a television show that I
watched with my family about a group
of people travelling to different,
random dimensions called Sliders.
The show featured a varying number of
people, depending on the episode and the
season, jumping between dimensions. It
followed their adventures, and misadventures,
in those new worlds.
Sometimes the worlds were nearly identical
to the one that they called home (that they
were trying to get back to), other times they
were completely different.
Sometimes the inhabitants of the new world
were human, other times they were other
species.
Regardless of the adventure, however, there
was one constant; they always found some
flaw in the world that made them anxious to
get to the next one.
One of the worlds they visited was only
featured for about five minutes. In it the legal
system has run amok and you need legal
representation to do everything, even order a
hot dog from a restaurant.
The joke is made, as they ‘slide’ to the next
dimension, that if someone in the last
dimension didn’t like what they had done, they
could sue them.
I laughed when I saw that episode the first
time in my living room in Goderich more than
a decade ago. When I recently started
rewatching the show, thanks to the magic of
Netflix, I found myself a little less amused by
the idea.
It hit just a little to close to home to be
funny.
At the time, I couldn’t pick out one
particular instance where legality had over-
ridden common sense, but, thankfully, we
live in an area where people are ridiculously
over-concerned with what everyone else is
doing.
In last week’s issue of The Citizen, we ran
two stories about hockey players having their
‘victory lap’ in a fire engine after receiving
some kind of accolade.
The exact circumstance that spawned both
discussions (and thus both stories) was the
Blyth Brussels Midget Rep squad who
recently were crowned Ontario Champions.
They were, simply put, the best team in any
of the leagues they played in.
So when I was told they got a police escort
from Blyth to Brussels and got to ride around
in a Huron East fire truck, I thought literally
nothing of it beyond being happy that they got
to enjoy that moment.
As a kid, I got to do the same thing
once or twice. Sure, going through the
streets of Brussels may not be quite the same
as riding around The Square in Goderich,
however I’d imagine that, with the sirens
going, it’s a remarkably great feeling for the
kids.
Sure enough, however, there were people
who, instead of being happy for the kids or
minding their own business, decided that
had to come to an end. Who cares if people
have been doing it for decades without
mishap? Someone else is having fun and
enjoying themselves and that has to come to an
end.
Okay, maybe that last sentence wasn’t
exactly what went through the mind of the
‘concerned citizen’ but I’d imagine it was not
far off.
Apparently, one of the complaints was about
how late it was (11 p.m.), and, to be
honest, I could understand this complaint if
every single team won the all-Ontario
championship. If over a dozen nights featured
11 p.m. rides, then it might get a little
overplayed and a little frustrating. This was,
however, a single team. If the siren and the
hooting and hollering woke anyone up at 11
p.m., I’m sure they could get back to sleep
easily enough for the one time this year that
will likely happen.
Other complaints circled around legality and
the ever daunting statement, “But someone
could get hurt and sue us!”
I love Huron County because of how often
common sense prevails (compared to other
places in the world), but I really have to admit
that these people are starting to get under my
skin.
These milksops need to remember that this
part of Ontario is where the salt of the earth
feed a good chunk of the rest of the province’s
inhabitants and that isn’t done by being scared
of our shadows.
It shocks me to realize that, for the most
part, the generation that is making these
complaints is the same that likely rode on
the handlebars of bikes, or put their own
children in the back window of over-sized
vehicles during road trips or did other things
that, if they happened today, would likely
bring the wrath of the police and Children’s
Aid down upon them (despite the fact that
these people are still around to make these
complaints.)
Any avid readers of my column know that I
love to use other forms of media to reinforce
my point, so I’ll turn to country music to teach
the lesson this week, and The Wilkinsons to
help me out here.
In their song Nobody Died, they recount all
the things they did as children including buying
beer underage with a fake ID (I’m totally not
condoning that), blasting out their eardrums with
rock and roll music, fighting, swearing and
breaking rules and none of these resulted in (as
per the title) death.
Other songs point out that kids rode
skateboards without helmets, ate dirt, played
outside, often times wandered communities with
their parents having no way to find them except
yelling their names and yet here we all are today.
Children and teens are being robbed of all
those experiences.
Most of them will never know what it means to
bushwhack a trail through a stand of trees, or set
up a bike ramp to do tricks off of in a forest or
leave home at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning with
no plan and not make it home until 9 p.m.
that night. Heck, most of them probably have
GPS on their phone and will never know the fun
in being lost on some back road on their bikes
and finding shortcuts and treasures on their way
home.
Anyway, the long and the short of it is, do these
kids a favour and let them be kids.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Did I hit an interdimensional vortex?
“If it’s very painful for you to criticize your
friends – you’re safe in doing it. But if you
take the slightest pleasure in it, that’s the
time to hold your tongue.”
– Alice Duer Miller
Final Thought