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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-12-02, Page 240A FRS ASS° i.872 Brussels Post Box 50, Brussels, Ontario NOG 1H0 cmT. Established 1872 519-887-6641 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community The Christmas doll Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited A Andrew Y. McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1981 Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of, Circulation. Authorized as second class mail by Canada Post Office. Registration Number 0562. $13 a year 40 cents a single copy Try Brussels first Christmas is a comin' and with it, the mad rush to get Christmas shopping done, In order to avoid all the hassles of traffic, lack of parking space and the wall to wall crowds of people in the big city stores, why not give shopping in downtown Brussels a try? Perhaps you can't find everything you need here, but surely some of the gifts you have in mind can be picked up just as easily here, as elsewhere. We have some good stores in Brussels which can not only help with gift ideas, but also with Christmas baking needs and decorations. Local businesses are here to serve you. Take advantage of what they have to offer, thus avoiding the wear and tear on your car, a saving on gasoline costs and at the same time providing your community with support. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley To be or not to be? Retired, that is. This is the question that many codgers of my age or near it grapple with in those lonely dark hours of the night when you've had too much coffee and can't get into the ravelled sleeve of care, as Shakespeare put it. Or get to bloody sleep, as some of his less flowery countrymen would put it. It's a question that has also stirred a great deal of agitation among sociologists, medical reporters, and old guys who are healthy as trout and are about to be kicked out at the age of 65 with a speech, a copper watch, and a pension that will have them eating dog food by the time they are 68. It used to be a gold watch. Not no more, not with gold hovering around the $400-an-ounce mark. In fact, just the other day, I dtig out my father's gold watch, which was give me on his death by my mother, because I was her favorite. I have never worn it, because I don't wear vests, and it's a big, heavy brute that must be slipped into a vest pocket. You can't wear it on your wrist, or put it in your hip pocket. It's as big as an alarm clock. I took a long look at it, and if it hadn't been Sunday, might have hustled down to my friendly gold buyer. But roots, or conscience, or common sense, took over, and I sadly put it away again, with such other memorabilia as my war medals, my hip waders, and a fading picture of my first real girlfriend, in a box in the basement. Roots told me it was a precious symbol that should be passed on to my eldest son, of which I have only one. Conscience told me it was a rotten thing to do. And common sense told me that there was probably about one-eighth of an ounce of gold in it. I am, however, holding in reserve a broken tooth with a gold When I came back from overseas and was discharged, I was given a form to present to my own dentist, listing the dental work to be done, at government expense. He was a typical WASP. He looked at the list of work; Which was quite extensive, after a term On short rations in prison camp, and laughed. "Ho, ho g. Bill. You don't want all that gold cluttering up your month. This was signed by a French-Canadian. They're great for geld in the teeth." If that dentist is alive today,1 Would be quite happy to strangle him, I went along with him, while noting his prejudice, and instead of having a mouthful of gold, I got one little inlay. If h e'd followed directions, and counting the teeth that have been pulled, or fallen out, or broken, my mouth would have been worth about $4,000 today, instead of maybe $6. Well, this hasn't much to do with retiring, which we started on way back there, but it does show what inflation can do to a man. What about retiring? I look around at colleagues who have chosen early retirement, or who have been forced to retire because of that magic, arbitrary number, 65. Some are happy as hummingbirds and swear they would not even put their noses back into the old shoe factory (high school). Others are miserable, plagued by illness and a feeling of being useless. The latter drive their wives out of their respective minds, hanging around the house, getting • in the way, edging into senility. Thus I waver. I thought some years ago that I would soldier on until 60. Surely 40 years of work is enough. Then I am swayed by my father-in-law, who recently retired at 86, and my wife, who can barely stand me at home for a weekend. If we lived in a decent climate, I'd probably be retired and happy. There's nothing I would like better than to saunter down to the square, playa game of chess with some other old turkey, drink a little'vino, and watdch the girls go by, with cackling remarks. Try that in the local square, and they'd be carting you off to the last restingplace, frozen solid in a sitting position. Why don't we all give up, we old gaffers? You know why? Because we are not old gaffers at all. In my chest beats the heart of a 15-year-old maiden (who has been smoking since she was two.) In the old days, we'd be retired, happily playing chess or shooting pool, because our Sons would be looking after us, and our wives Would feed US well, and know their place, and our daughters-in-law would be producing hordes of grandchildren to light us on our Way. These days, we are still looking, after our sons, and our wives are avaticioUS and spoiled, and our daughters-in .law are already separated from our sons and hot keen on having more than one and a half children. Oh, I k eep my staff on its toes. Otte day I announce firmly that I'm going to retire next June. Their faces light up and they say, "Oh, chief, how can we .get along without you." Another day I say, "Well, haven't decided Christmas was near and oh how she dreamed Of a pretty new doll wrapped in a pink shawl. But Santa was poor this year it did seem And mommy said, a new doll he couldn't bring, But maybe some other small pretty new thing So she gave up her dream of a doll. Her mommy and daddy planned and they thought "We'll make it seem like a new doll Santa's brought." So they painted the doll with the sweet faded face And wrapped her in a shawl trimmed with "old" ribbon & lace, But what they didn't see was the child on the stairs, Watching them work with great loving care, So they painted and sewed and worked thru Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, something every Canadian agrees with: until he has to listen to somebody else say something he thinks is wrong. The thought came to mind a couple of weeks ago on listening to a radio commen- tary by Stepehn Lewis on the subject of some infamous anti-abortion ads in Toronto. Mr. Lewis today is a media person but earned his fame as leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party. Both he (and his father David, leader of the federal NDP) spent many years working for left-liberal causes. He fought or equity, for the underdog, for openess in society. He battled for honesy in government, a battle that often brought him hard against the sometimes-autocratic nat- ure of the Bill Davis blue machine. Few people would be stronger advocates of the right of free speech than Mr. Lewis. That was before the anti-abortion ad issue. The ads in question were prepared for use in the Toronto subway and bus system. They showed a toy soldier with a tear in his eye because "There will be a lot less children to play with this Christmas". The ad then quoted the number of therapeutic abortions given the past year. Immediately when the word about the plans leak out the pro-abortion lobby began to scream loudly. The ads were in bad taste, they said, although the ads seemed downright subtle compared to previous anti-abortion ads seemed downright subtle compared to prevous anti-abortion ads which showed an aborted fetus. The ads would cause some women who had had an abortion to be filled with guilt at this time of the year when love ; should be in the air. It would depress women who had lost a child through more natural causes. Mr. Lewis in his radio column brought up all these things plus taking on the English grammar in the ads. He spent about a minute of the three or four minutes talking about how it was incorrect to talk about "less" children, that it should be fewer, that the only way to have "less" children was to have each child smaller. It proved to him, he said, what kind of uneducated, primitive minds support- ed the anti-abortion campaign. Leaving aside the fact that there are doctors, lawyers, university professors and artists who are against abortions, whatever happened to the Stephew Lewis of political fame standing up for the poor, the uneducated, the little guys? HAD THEIR WAY Well Mr. Lewis and his fellow abortionists had their way. After a vigorous campaign of pressure the Toronto Transit Commission reversed its decision to accept the ads. Justice was done from the liberal, right- thinking point of view, Of course had it been a pro-abottion-on-demand advertisement that jet. What With inflation and all, y'know,..” And their faces drop into feet, and they say, "that's great, chief. How cbuld we get along' without you?" And I Smile. To Myself. I've finally figured out the solution. Retired men, unless- they have sortie insane hobby, like Making rose trellises, drive their wives the night, And the parents did wonder if they had done right. Next morning the child saw the beautiful face, Of a doll in a pink shawl trimmed in ribbon , and lace, "It's the best Christmas yeti", she squealed with delight. Then mommy and daddy knew they'd done right. For she'd wanted a doll in a pretty pink shawl And Santa had brought her the best gift of all The love of her parents shone up from the face Of a doll in a pink shawl, trimmed in ribbon and lace. Iona Moore Brussels had been cancelled it would have been a denial of freedom of speech. Simlar inconsistencies in liberal, modern thought can be detected in the reaction of many liberals to the Western Guard, the Ku Klux Klan and other neo-nazi groups. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, these freedoms taken for granted in our society liberal thinkers are often willing to withold from such groups because they don't like what they have to say. In London these days there is a bitter dispute over what should be taught in the schools. Here in Huron County liberals came out fighting when some people wanted to limit access in the schools to some books which they felt weren't fit for students. The liberals said that the students were capable of judging for themselves. But in London the same kind of people who were in favour of students judging for themselves are now against it. The debate has been on whether or not to give the " creationist" view of the beginning of the world equal time with the "evolutionary" theory. Fifty years ago the battle was to get the "evolutionary" theory into the schools against the "creationist" view so things have exactly turned around. Leading opponents of this new move have been the professors of the University of Western Ontario. So much for free thinking. IT'S ALL INTOLERANCE Intolerance is intolerance whether from the left of the political spectrum or the right. Trouble in this world comes when people feel that they have found the only secret of the universe; what they know how the world should be run and no one else does, At one time only the Pope was supposed to be infallible. Today it seems half the population is. The new religious converts, those struck-by-lightning, born-againers are ready to force their way of thinking down anyone's throat because„ they have the only true answers. The educated, left-liberal elite are i often just as bad because they have seen the light that hasn't come to the lesser types. Such thinking is dangerous no matter who it comes from; no matter how well-meaning people are. Movies like the James Bond type tend to portray great dangers to the world that come from evil men plotting to take over • the world. Yet the greatest tragedies have come because of people who were convinced they were right, that they had a cause. Hitler, Stalin, Hi Amin and the Ayotollahs, Richard Nixon, all thought they knew something that o...ter people didn't, that they had to put the world in its proper order because no one else was capable of it. The day we think that we have the right to shut off the other guy's freedom of speech, no matter how little We like what he it saying, We are heading down a dangerous road. crazy. If my wife will sign a written agreement, duly witnessed, that she will go out and get a job (she once Was a waitress, shouldn't be any trouble) the moment I retire, I'll do it. I don't Want her hanging around the hOiise, Spoiling my retirement. (ABC Behind the scenes by Keith Roulstdn Freedom of speech for who?