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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1979-04-11, Page 2SPUME LS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1979 wamil° Serving Brussels and the surrounding community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Evelyn'-Kennedy - Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association 40,4 Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9.00 a Year. Others $17.00 a Year. Single Copies 20 cents each. len Brussels Post A good move Deputy-reeves are being phased out of the County Council system offering a break that could be fairer to both taxpayers and the town and village councils. Councillors voted for this move by a 36-16 vote and by 1981 there will only be 29 members on council instead of the current 45. County council has provided a break for the taxpayers who won't have as many salaries to pay. In a day when cutbacks in unnecessary cost are being urged by government county council is helping to do its part. This is not to say that deputy-reeves are not a necessary part of a township council as they can be a valuable asset when the reeve is unavailable to attend important meetings or look after important issues. And that is a function they will continue to fill. But it's not really necessary to have deptuy-reeves at a meeting of county council when the reeve is there to present his township's view of a certain situation. The county has made a wise move in its elimination of deputy-reeves and other forms of overstaffed government could take a lesson from them. Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston Who can we believe? Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley One of those days Right from the first, I knew it was a day, "I shooda stood in bed," as a third-rate pugilist, Kingfish Levinsky, once said after being flattened by the great heavyweight Joe Louis, in round one. • Got up, took a tug at the strap of my wristwatch to take it off and wash; broke the strap. Nothing serious. Cheap plastic junk. But it turned out to be applied to the watch by one of those unseen geniuses who lose one of your socks in the wash, and produce four extra beer bottles when every case of empties is full. I'll probably never be able to wear the watch again, unless I glue it to my wrist. Serves me right. I hadn't a watch for 30 years, and never felt the need for one. But my wife bought me this one last summer, in the duty-free shop at London airport. And now I find myself neurotically flipping up my cuff and glaring at the hair on my left wrist, like all the other anxiety hounds in the country who are not going anywhere, don't need to know the time, but are constantly flipping up their arms like trained seals and looking at their watches. Who needs a watch: Life is going quickly enough, without the evidence on a little I dial. The very word has nothing but '• unpleasant connotations. "Watch what • you're doing there. Watch out. Watch your step. Watch the late movie. Watch your wife. Watch that guy hanging around your daughter. Watch what you say in mixed company." O.K. I shrugged off the watch. Went down and got my breakfast. Usually, it's toast and tea. This particular morning, I had more time, so I fixed the works: real coffee, bacon, fried bread and a nice sloppy fried egg on top of the bread. A drooly great breakfast. Thought I'd eat in my favorite chair in the living room, and read my morning paper in the spring sunshine pouring in the window. So I put my grub on the kitchen counter and started cutting the fried bread and egg into bite-sized pieces, so that I'd need only one hand to eat. Something skidded. The plate slipped off the counter, sprayed grease all over the front of my pants, and smashed to smithereens on the floor. I emitted a most unlady-like few words, salvaged the bacon Ifrom under the sink and started cleaning up. Have you ever tried to wipe up just one lousy semi-fried egg from a kitchen floor? It reminded me of the old days, when I'd drop a quart milk bottle and sponge up what seemed like a gallon of milk. And it was the first time I'd had to change my pants since I was about two. Well, I should have stopped right there, stripped to the skin, and gone back to bed for the day. But, as faithful readers know, I believe that bad things come in threes, and then you have a good streak. As it happened, I was going to buy a car from a chap that day. With impeccable logic, I reckoned one more minor disaster would occur, and I'd be home free for a while. If it didn't, the car would be a lemon, to complete the trio, and I wouldn't buy it. It did. The minor disaster. I sailed out of the house, figuring I'd slip and break an elbow, or the car wouldn't start. Nothing of the sort. Stuck my hand in my coat pocket. No keys. No car keys. No house keys. And I'd left the latch on. Stood at the back door, ding-donging like crazy for five minutes. Blasted if I was going to climb in the cellar window and wreck my second pair of pants. Finally, the Old Lady appeared. She'd been in the bath tub. She was not ecstatic with our marital state. Grease all over the kitchen, my watch busted, and the second last set of plates also busted. She felt like busting me. Anyway, I finally set off with a light heart. The three baddies had happened, and the rest of the day would be glorious, the car a winner, and everything golden. Well, you probably know the rest. Late for work. Thirteen decisions to make at same. A hair in my grilled cheese at lunch. Lukewarm coffee. Banker who had prom- ised me the loan out to lunch for two hours. Tried to sneak in a quick visit to doctor for allergy shots; and he forgot I was there for an hour. Late for my appointment to meet car seller. We'd both forgotten to pick up the safety check certificate. Rushed off to the garage, telling car seller and wife to wait for me at licensing bureau. Arrived at garage breathless, but still time. Nobody home but gas pump jockey. Mechanics out jogging. Jogging! Phoned license bureau to tell short, ill-tempered seller with beard to hang on. They hadn't seen him since I left. Wait 25 minutes. Sweaty, gasping mechanics arrive, sign certificates. Rushed back to licence bureau. No sign of• car seller, inside or out. Got all papers ready. Waiting, fuming, inside, then outside. "Turkey's probably gone to the bank or something." At five to five, phoned his apartment. He was there. He and his wife had waited OUTSIDE the license bureau (not enough brains to stay in and keep warm), had decided I'd changed my mind and wouldn't be back, and were at the moment packing to go to the city for a week. With my car. And the license bureau closed at five. Tottered home in a daze, expecting the house to be burned down and my wife pregnant. Or vice versa, the way. things were going. And then I started to laugh. And laugh. I had to be administered a strong dose of cough medicine to cool me out. Somebody once said that the Lord works in mysterious ways. He sure does. Wonder what He had against me that cold March day? Maybe it was a lousy car, and He was trying to warn me. To the editor: The near-tragedy at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg,' Pennsylvania brought home to many people the feeling of helplessness we live with in the modern technical world. Just who can we believe? For years now we've been hearing critics of nuclear power on one side talking about the dangers of the power plants and on the other side our nuclear "experst" in government and with the utility companies have been telling us that everything is fine and the critics don't know what they're talking about. This same putting down of the critics was going on the day before the accident happened as representatives of the power companies in the U.S. tried to discredit the movie,The China Syndrome) which has predicted the possibility of a nuclear accidnet. It couldn't happen, they said. And the next day when it did happen, they were trying to tell us that it really didn't happen and generally downplay what was going on. If it hadn't been for U.S. government officials who were more honest and contradicted the representa- tives of the company with their bland, reassuring statements, we still might not know what happened. Yet we're still getting the same reassurance. The other day on a Toronto radio interview show two "Experts" on nuclear power in Ontario said that it couldn't happen here. Yet the protest groups like CANTDU have even more ammunition now than before. The , problem with being an ordinary citizen in these times is in trying to make a well informed decision. Because of my job in journalism in the past decade, I think I'm probably a little better informed on most of these subjects than the ordirtazry man in the street. Yet. I still feel totally inadequate When it comes to the know- ledges necessxary to really make a decision in'or against something like atomic power Plants. I can make a •common sense decision such as the fact that such plants shouldn't be built in the heart of Canada's foodlands when they could be built on the rock of northern and eastern Ontario, but as to the actual safety of the plants, I'm over my depth. No matter what the activity these days, there is somebody who's against it. We have protesters against nuclear plants and against seal hunting and against chemicals in foods and against spraying of spruce budworms. For every arguement against, there is a reassuring industry or government voice saying that everything is hunky dory and the protesters are just misinformed busybodies. In the seventies) I think there probably are a lot of misinformed busybodies running aroudn protesting anything that moved. We got into the habit of protesting thins back in the sixties and some people still haven't gotten out of it. How do you separate the genuine protesters from the kooks? Then too, how much of the protest is real and how much protest against change? We look back now and see many' things that people were against that now are accepted as fact. People were once persecuted because they had the nerve to say the world was round. Remember too the hysteria-1°f the early 1950's when there was a Communist hiding under everybody's bed and we were all out building fallout shelters to protect us when the Russians invaded. If we followed the advice of the protesters in many of these things we'd probably end up looking pretty foolish a hundred year from now, maybe even 10 years from now: And yet just like the China Syndrome often enough the protesters have proven to be right. So many times int he past decade the impossible has turned out to be true. Ralph Nader showed the lack of safety in cars over the protest of industry officials who told us everything was safe and-Nader was some kind of, nut. (Coninuted on Page 19) Safety In regards to your item on motorcycle accidents in "Short Shots" in the April 4 issue, I would like to bring to your attention that there exists in this community a group of motorcyclists whose objectives include the instruction and safe operation of motorcycles. While we primarily oriented to offroad activities this seems like the ideal situation for under age operators and beginners to In this day and age we are all so ready to criticize the young people, but not nearly so ready to praise them. If they do something wrong everyone knows, if they do something good only a few know. Well, here in Brussels we sure have some good kids, kind and thoughtful, On Monday evening I received a wonderful surprises a nice hot supper with bake goods to last a week. The Brownies and their course hone their skills and develop a proper respect for their mount's capabilities before venturing out on public roads. The Maitland Dirt Riders are glad to welcome new members. Further inform- ation can be obtained from any member or by calling our secretary Doug Little, RR 1 Atwood. (519) 356-2486. Yours truly, Chris Lee, RR 3, Walton leaders made and delivered my husband's and my supper. Having just come home from the hospital and supposed to take it easy, it was really appreciated. No one will ever know what a wonderful feeling it gave me, So lets remember to praise more often and for-get to critize so often. Bessie Blenkhorn To the editor: Some good kids