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The Brussels Post, 1979-08-01, Page 14WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1979 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 w%Lrr Behind the scenes 4Brussels Post Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10,00 a Year. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each. IIMUSIE L$ ONTARt0 Mostly when one writes an editorial in a weekly paper, it is about a local issue. Some people wouldn't consider-the crisis of the Vietnamese boat people a local issue, but perhaps they haven't considered far enough. Areas not too far from here are doing something about the problem. In Tavistock seven refugees have been settled in an apartment through the help of the Tavistock Mennonite Church. Another family was recently settled in Millbank, and a Wingham family noticed the plight of some other South Asian refugees long before the Vietnamese boat people started leaving - so they took in some teenagers from a Thailand- refugee camp. On the day this editorial was written, two letters to the editor of the London Free Press indicated disapproval of bringing in anymore of the Vietnamese refugees to Canada. One of the biggest objections seems to be that once here the Vietnamese will take over jobs that could be filled by Canadians - a very strange notion indeed. If there are so many positions out there that the refugees can fill, why weren't the Canadians going after them before this? The Vietnamese are prepared to take anything, including a lowly job like picking worms. Are Canadians? You often hear stories of farmers who have to get people to come here from other countries because they can't get any Canadians to work on their farms due to the long hours and hard work it involves. It's easy to live in this great country of ours with no real great crises (compared with those of the South Asian countries) and turn our backs. But what if the shoe were on the other foot and Vietnam was the country with all the wealth and room and Canadians were the ones out there on the ocean and suffering in refugee camps not knowing from day to day whether they were going to live or die? Just how would Canadians view the situation then? Of course, things aren't all bad. There's a lot of people in Canada who obviously care what happens to the refugees as they go about setting up volunteer groups to help out and find places for the refugees to stay. It's great to see some human charity in action especially since we're now supposed to be in the "Me" generation where people have a tendency to think more of themselves than others. Perhaps Brussels could take its cue from these other small towns and help to sponsor a refugee family or help out in some other way. Then we could really live up to that reputation that's been promoted so much - the one that states that Brussels is the friendliest town in Huron County. by Keith Roulston. Prime topic of conversation these days on any street corner, across any backyard fence, and certainly with any chance meeting in, a supermarket is inflation. Remembering the good old days when things cost less has always been a pleasant preoccupation for nearly everyone, at least as far back as I can remember. Maybe there was a time in centuries past when the old days weren't remembered fondly but I don't think there's ever been such a time in the 20th century. For me, though, it hasn't been the fact things keep going up in price that bothers me so much as the fact that even paying more, I'm often getting less. • I'm presently in the midst of stripping accumulated coats of paint off an old kitchen table we bought from a friend. I don't know how old it is but it's still in fine shape after maybe fifty or 100 years of wear. It's replacing a kitchen set that's only 10 years old. Over the years many of the chairs from the old set have disappeared so we ordered some unpainted chairs. Of the six ordered, two had to be sent back because so little care is taken in curing the wood nowadays that the rungs on the chairs dried out and split during shipping. But at least, the chairs are real wood. Today when you look at a nice carved piece of furniture in a showroom you'd better give it a rap with your fingernails because it just might be plastic. Solid wood is virtually unheard of in furniture today. Wood of any kind sometimes seems scarce in furniture. I get even more uptight, however, about food. No I don't complain much about the price of food because I grew up on a farm and live with farmers on all sides of me and I know that very little of the price of the food is taken by the farmers. What I do object to is that we're not getting as good quality in many areas. Here we live in the middle of one of the richest agricultural areas in the world and yet we're hard pressed to get fresh produce for our tables unless we grow it ourselves. Because of modern manufac- turing and distribution systems, the milk you drink may have come from a cow on a farm just outside town but it may have travelled to Barrie or Toronto for process- ing before it got back to your table. The eggs you buy might have come by a nearby farm but unless you have a special deal with the farmer, they're likely a week or more old by the time they make it to your refrigerator. Some foods are not like wine: they do not improve with age. Oh I know in many cases the food products have improved to some extent because of better storage techniques. A week-old egg may actually be in better shape than a three-day old egg of a half century ago because of refrigeration, better sanitary conditions and new storage techniques but why shouldn't we be benefitting from techniques, not being penalized by getting eggs that are at least a week old? On the other hand there are some things that are really hurried along when we'd be better off if they weren't. Because of the economics of the situation these days, farmers have to push produce through their food factories as quickly as possible. The "efficiency" of the modern farm is such that slaughter time often comes now before an animal reaches the equivalent of its teenage years. Chickens have hardly learned to crow before their heads come off. They're force fed under a 24-hour-a- day light to make them grow faster. Hogs are given high-octane feeds that may give them stomach problems but will get them off to market before they have a chance to suffer too much. Such practices help keep the farmer in business and help keep the cost of food down to the consumer but they sure don't do much for the tastebuds. Nobody wants to eat a tough, fat old pig like they sometimes did years ago or an aged chicken rubbery enough to bounce off walls even after hours of cooking but there is something to be said for a little more aging than most of our meats get in today's agricultural food factories. The less for more realities of inflation hit in so many other places too. You pay more for a car and get one that falls apart faster. You pay more for taxes only to find services have been cut back. You pay more for a gallon of gas but it probably takes-you less distance than it would 10 years ago because the car burns more. It happens in liesure activities too. You pay more for books these days but many of the books seem to be getting thinner. Down in New York on Broadway people are paying up to $25 for a ticket to get in to see the traditional Broadway musical but because of the costs the musical is seldom the lavish spectacle it once was with dozens of dancers and expensive costumes and full orchestras playing lush music. There is only one area lately when I've seen the trend reversed. On a recent visit to the beach I see that the ladies, unlike a couple of years ago when they were paying more and getting less and less material in their bathing suits are now getting -much more for their money. We men aren't though. .0111111.60".3111"1619k.„ Do you care? Getting less for more Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error the advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. While every effort will be made to insure they are handled with care, the publishers cannot be responsible for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or photos. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley It's a little like being an observer of the Fall of the Roman Empire. That's how I feel as I read and hear the latest energy crisis news. One of these days, in the not-distant future, the last drop of that black stu ff is going to drip into the last receptacle. How then, brown hen? Will we freeze in the dark? Well, a heck of a lot of red-blooded Canadians will need every bit of that red blood to avoid doing so. It's not as though the hand-writing has not been on the wall. It's just that nobody has been looking at that particular wall. We've all been looking out our picture window, instead. I've been thinking about it during a partizularly busy week in which a dentist saved one of my ancient teeth, a doctor gave me an allergy shot, and a barber removed some of my ancient white hair. Seedlets to sa, I droe my ancient car to each of these y places. v None of them is more than a ten-minute walk. On my way to one of them, I drove down to the dock, parked, and watched about three thousand boats trying to wiggle their way out of marinas, so that they could open her up and cut a swatch across the lake with their oilburners. At the doctor's people were complaining because the air-conditioning wasn't work- ing. The dentist used a high-speed drill in his air-conditioned office, with all the fluorescent lights on. The barber was sweating, turned up his air-conditioning, washed his hands in hot water, and switched on his electric clippers. By George, I thought, it's going to be quite a change. I visualized the dentist pumping away with his old foot-powered drill. The doctor giving me a shot by flashlight; because there are no windows in the joint. The barber using the old hand-powered clippers and* shaving my neck with cold water, in a steamy-hot barber shop. efore the fall It wouldn't bother me too much. I was brought up on wood stoves, coal-oil lamps, a block of ice in the refrigerator, and a coal-burning furnace. But it sure would bother the doctor, the dentist and the barber, along with practic- ally every human being in North America under the age of sixty. It's going to be quite an auction sale, I thought, when that last drop of black stuff flows from the last spigot. Listen to the auctiorieery. "Lincoln Continental, 1982 model, like new. Tear out the insides and you have a grand out-door tee room for the kiddies. What am I bid ? Do I hear thirty dollars? "Here's a real steal. A forty-foot cruiser with built-in cupboards, septic toilet, sleeps six. Get a teamster to tow it into your back yard and you have a dandy sleeping cabin for guests, Will somebody start the bidding with twelve dollars? "And here's another beauty. Three 1980 Thunderbirds, worth $23,000 the day they were bought. Cut the tops off, remove the wheels, and they'll make beautiful flower beds. Not ten dollars apiece, not even nine dollars each, but the three for $24.98. "And here's today's superspecial. She's only thirty-five years old and guaranteed to work day or night, not like those electric things that were always breaking down. An almost automatic dishwasher. Yes, ladies and gemmun, the real thing. This little lady came on hard times. Her husband had a heating oil franchise. She's willing to' wash your dishes like they've never been washed before. Only $300 a week." And so on. Snow mobiles, aircraft. It's going to be a great day for the junk dealers. On the other hand, there's the bright side. ,lust as people today pay fabulous sums for junk furniture dug out of attics. the good folk of 2010 A.D. might go as high as $200 for an ancient, beautifully-finished Cadillac or a fine specimen of fout-burner electric stove with infta-red oven. They'd make (Continued on Page 8)