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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1974-12-18, Page 2Sugar and Spice By Bin Smiley WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 197 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros.Publishers, Limited. Evelyn Kennedy - Editor „ Dave Robb - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association. Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $6.00 a year, Others AtIVIA 1,1r $8.00 a year, Single Copies 15 cents each. Second class mail Registration No. 0562. Telephone 887-6641. BRUSSELS ONTARIO VERIFIED CIFICI.A.A710N Brussels Post duaitaadilmm. ESTABLISHED The first census Once upon a time, there was a writer who liked to tell stories. Often he would link up the events in a story with some contemporary happening. The writer was a Doctor named Luke. One of his best known stories was about a pregnant girl at the time of the first Census. It was a peculiar kind of Census. There were no mail-in-questionnaires. No Census-takers knocked on your door. As a matter of fact, it was the, other vay round - you knocked on the door of the Census 'aker. If you insisted upon doing that to-day, you would likely scare the government out of its Census. However, the Census takers today have sophisticated methods for collecting data and' feeding it into computers along with pension cheques and the time tables of high school students. The government has more reason than ever to be scared out of its Census. Canada has a population of over twenty-two million. According to archaelogists, the whole thing got started by Asian tribes who migrated across the Bering Strait. The way we treat the Indians and Eskimos (the descendants of the Asian Tribes) we seem to have lost our Bering. The world population is about three billion. Every month, we add another six million. We're pretty good at counting people but we're beginning to get concerned about how we're going to educate, clothe, feed and house them, provide medical care, social security, employment and look after their garbage. In Bethlehem, right in the midst of that first Census, a young couple had a bdby. While the whole country thought the important task was to count people, this child came into the world to tell us that people count. Rt.Rev.Wilbur K. Howard Minister, Emmanuel United Church Ottawa; Moderator, The United Church of Canada To the Editor Help Santa, drive carefully Dear Sir: Every year, my job in Canada becomes a little bit harder, in spite of -- or perhaps because of — our vast technological achievements. You see, each year, I receive a larger number of heartbreaking letters from young folk who say they could manage without Christmas presents if only I could send Daddy back. My research shows that Daddy was in a fatal traffic accident, and it is very hard for a little one to understand how it is Daddy can go off to work, fishing, shopping etc. right as rain, but never come back. Through the pages of your paper, may I ask for the help of all the drivers in your coverage area? We have just come through Safe Driving Week in Canada, and everybody has seen a barrage of safety messages. Please remember them, not only through the hustle and bustle of this holiday season, but all through 1975, Then, I will be better able to concentrate on finding the kind of giftS that make up the more routine requests from our children. Let's have no more sad, desperate faces at Christmas time. Wishing you and yours a very merry and safe Christmas I Ho Ho Ho, Santa Claus In the so-called good old days, a great many who are now middle-aged men were in the newspaper business. That is, they had a paper route and made a bit of spending money, even in the depression years. I was closely associated with a paper route myself, although I didn't exactly have one. My kid brother did. I was sort of his business manager or financial adviser. Every Saturday. night, after he'd made his weekly collections, I would inveigle him into the bathroom, lock the door so nobody could hear, and give him some sound business advice. I'd remind him that he was too fond of candy and pop and other tooth-rotting confections, that he had no willpower, and that he'd only squander his hard-earned fifty cents if he didn't invest at least part of it every week. He didn't know much about investments and wanted to put some of his money into a piggy bank. I'd tell him severely that that was no way to make his money grow. He should give it to me and watch the interest pile up. He'd bawl a bit, but then he'd come around after a bit of arm-twisting, and see the point. The point was that I was stronger than he was. I'd always let him keep part of it , maybe twenty cents. I'd take the other thirty cents and invest it. I invested it in the Saturday night movie, a bottle of pop and, a chocolate bar. It was a wise investment and paid good dividends. The many movies I thus enjoyed enriched my experience of the human condition, enlarged my vocabulary, and added to my personal pleasure in life.. It took him about two years to catch on, two of the best years of my life. There was, of course, a confrontation. He swore I had conned him out of at least sixty dollars. I scoffed at this and told him it was only about fourteen. But the little devil had been keeping his books. Last time I saw him, in Germany last spring, he informed me that with compound interest, I now owed him $44,000 and if I didn't come up with it, he'd be interested in taking it out of my hide. I am still an inch taller than he, but he out-weighs me by forty pounds. So we compromised. I told hiin that if he paid all my expenses on my trip, I'd dig up the money somehow. He did. And thank goodness I haven't seen him since. All this has been brought to mind by ,a recent development in the delivery of daily newspapers. It is just another sign of our affluent age, when even the kids have so much money they don't have to work. For years, I've taken two daily newspapers, morning and evening. They take Opposite political stands, and both are so warped that if I take a stand in the middle of their polarized points of view, I am right in the temperature zone, which prefer. At any rate, it seems that these titans o the press cannot, simply can not, secur young carrier girls or boys to peddle thei papers. The morning paper has simply given up. No delivery. The evening paper has hired [independent agents "operating their own vehicles." This means guys who drive around in their own cars and hurl the paper out the car window in the general direction of your house. In the good old days of about six weeks ago, I felt a little tingle of warmth when the door-bell rang. "Ah, the paper boy," I would remark wittily. And it was. The boy, or sometimes girl, was faithful and loyal, even in the foulest weather. I knew the counrty was going to hell in a hearse, but I felt that this was one hummock of decency and virtue in a m orass of miseries. Now I feel a very strong tingle, not of warmth, but of rageatpaper-delivery time. It is my custom when I arrive home after a hard day on the assembly line at the pupil-factory, to take off my jacket and my shoes, and take on a cold beer before proceeding to peruse my paper. This entire routine has been spoiled, not to say desecrated, by the new delivery method. I still -go through the first parts of the procedure, but the beer tastes flat as I stew around, waiting for the paper. It arrives any time between four and seven. That means I have put back on my shoes and gone out in my shirt-sleeves in the winter wind to search around in the snow for my paper as many as four times. This is not conducive to lowering a man's blood pressure. At least they put the thing in a plastic bag. But this is covered in three minutes when it's snowing, which it always seems to be when I go out to look for my paper. To add insult to injury, I receive a letter from the circulation department of the big, fat, rich, lousy newspaper telling me that the price is going up and that "We feel this is a reasonable price to pay for dependable delivery to your driveway six days a week." Well, let me just say to the circulation manager that I don't want the paper delivered to my driveway, but to my house. My car can 4 t read. And let me add that the service is not HI CNOnflabie, in its present condition, And let me further add that if you can't do bet than that, I will shortly tell you what you can do with your newSpaper, This is a direct appeal to all parents. Please dut off your children's allowances, so that at least some of them will be available to peddle papers in the old way. This is a cry from the heart, Civilization is sinking. Must this last vestige of nortnalcy go down with it?