Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1973-12-05, Page 2Windy Weather Sugar and Spice By Bill Smiley DNTARtO WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1973 ' Serving Brussels and the surrounding community published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros. Publishers, Limited. Evelyp Kennedy - Editor Tom Haley Advertising \ member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association, Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $4.00 a year, Others $5.00 a year, Single Copies 10 cents each. Second Class mail Hegistra.tion'No. 0562. Telephone 887-6641.' Watch your driving! • This week is safe driving week in 'Canada. The need for such a week, and for cautious, informed driving all year long, is obvious. Last year more than half a million traffic accidents occurred in Canada. As we become more conservation conscious, perhaps the slowing down of traffic to a voluntary 50, miles per hour speed limit will help reduce accidents and highway deaths, as well as providing for a more efficient use of fuels. Safe driving weeks apparently help to reduce fatalities in the 1972 Safe Driving week fatalities were reduced to 53, compared with an average weekly traffic death toll of 115, people throughout the year.. In an 'effort to extend safe driving practises throughout the year, amol especially in the approaching winter season, the Canadian Safety Council provides the following winter driving hints. SO YOU'RE STUCK Clear away as much snow from around the tires as possible. Spread a little sand, rocksalt or ashes under the tires and insert carpeting in front of the rear tires. Then gently rock the car back and forth, shifting quickly from forward for reverse, gradually increasing the distance travelled with each rock. If the going is heavy, this is the time to put on tire chains. But remove them as soon as the road is clear .to preVept damage to the road surface and car as well ,as heavy tire chain wear. BRAKING — FOLLOWING DISTANCE You need a much greater distance in which to bring vehicles to a halt in icy conditions, This means drivers should maintain a greater following distance in these conditions. They should also'reduce speed to decrease their stopping distance. It's a sure bet that drivers whose vehicles ram others from the rear are negligent. Winter driving in these' conditions requires a different braking technique. Motorists should pump their brakes, gently and intermittently, to bring their vehicles to a halt while maintaining steering control. THE SKID Keep your cool. Don't slam on the brakes. Maintain a firm grip on the wheel. Take your foot off the accelerator and steer in the direction the rear of the vehicle is skidding. Don't over-compensate, When you feel The car regaining traction, straighten your wheels. But drivers should, be prepared to handle a second skid in the opposite direction. VISIBILITY Don't be a peephole driver. Motorists need maximum visibility at all times In Winter .conditions as even a light • snowfall reduces perception considerably. Keep your windows clean — front, rear and sides. Use windshield Washers often When driving in slushy conditions and, if driving at night i stop occasionally to clean headlights and taillights. BUt When visibility' nears zero in a heavy snowfall, parking is the answer, "Didn't happen to give any' thought to moving, the trtitki eh tiOeper'P! It seems that in the seventies, the wholeworld is lurching, as, most of us do in our private lives', from One crisis to another. Crippling strikes, crippling food prices, crippling political' scandals, and now the energy crisis,' so-called. A crisis may be defined as a turning point. Perhaps it's time we reached some turning points and did some turning in new directions. • What so many people of the affluent post-war years don't realize is that crises are nothing new. Every generation faces them, meets them, and resolves them, - somehow. War, depression, another war, the bomb. All these have been universal crises in this century. Beside those big ones, a hike in the price of beef is less than monumental, and , even the expected energy crisis is small potatees.(I must be hungry). If the energy crisis becomes more than newspaper headlines, and shortages and rationing occur, it might be the best thing that has happened to the fat-cat Western world for generations. We are in grave danger of turning into slobs, physically, mentally, emotionally and morally. Maybe we need a good purge, in the form of a sharp cut-back in our soft way of living. Get rid of some of the fat, even if it reqdires a surgeon's knife. Take a day in the life of an average family. Someone, very often the husband in these degenerate days, gets up first and turns the thermostat up to seventy. The beast in the basement starts gulping Mote energy. Our friend shaves with his electric rant. He goes down and gets his orange juice out or another beast that has been, burning eledtricity all night, precluding nothing. Then he flips on two burners on the electric stove cute for coffee, one fdt bacon and eggs. 'When they're ready, he Janis smite bread into the electric toaster. Then the mother stumbles down and turns the burners back On. rat er drives the eight blocks to work, stinking up the etiVirtinrnerit and binning energy:, The kids Waffle off to a school which is probably burning far more tons of coal a day than it, need to. That school has thousands of lights which are On' &en on a bright do. At home friend Wife throws the laundry into an automatic washer Which uses large quantities of hot wat er Which has taken a fair artiotilit rif electricity to produce. Then . it goes into the automatic dryer, run by electricity. Then she tackles 'the ironing, and we all know what heats an iron in this day. She decides to wash her hair. More hot water. Then she sits under the electric dryer with fresh coffee made on the stove burner. At this time of year, probably half the lights in the house are on, merrily chewing up the watts. And so it goes, right across the land, all day, long. The television set burni juice far into the night. Advertising signs pop on and eat more juice. Industry belches its wastes and burns energy with a lavish hand. Might now, in our kitchen, the electric Oven is glowing red.lt will be for the next two hours, Know what's in it? One large potato, being baked. Multiply the juice being consumed by this one family by about' five million in canada alone and I think you'll agree that we're a pretty extravagant, even sluttish lot, when it comes to being prodigal with natural resources that are going to be exhausted and can never be replaced. And I •haven't even meritioned such ridiculosities as electric tOoth-biushes arid electric carving knives. Don't get me wrong. I'm no Spartan. I'll drive to work rather than walk, And leave that great hulking, rusting monster, that required so much energy to be built and burns up so much more, sitting in the parking lot all day. The point is, I could walk to work, and it wouldn't hurt me. In fact, it would be jolly good-for Me: And I don't expect my wife to get out the scrub-board and wash her hair in rain-Water. Eiut it might be jelly good for her, if she had te, Women, arid men, have too much time these days,t6 sit around and worry about their nerves. Our fairly immediate ancestors didn't have time for nerves and dicers: They didn't need pick-up pills to get going: There. was no alternative unjust getting going. They didn't need three martinis to Whet their appetites. They were just plain, hungry'. Nor did they need sleeping pills to get off at night. They wee just plain peeped. Im not Staked of any energy crisis. It might' even be interesting, Anyway, I have my own' energy crisis every day, 'when the alarm goes off at 7,1S. That's *hat I all a real triSIS.