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Times-Advocate, 1982-03-24, Page 4heti 4 • Tim*MVecitS, Mardi 24, 1212 Times Established 1873 Advocate Established 1881 Amalgamated 1924 vocate Serving South Huron, North Middlesex & North Lambtor>i Since 1873 Published by I.W. Eedy Publications Umited LORNE FEDY Publisher JIM BECKFTT Advertising Manager BILI. BATTEN Editor HARRY DEVRiES Composition Manager ROSS HAUGH • Assistant Editor DICK JONGKIND Business Manager Published Each Wednesday Morning at Exeter, Ontario Second Class Mail Registration Number 0386. Phone 235-1331 ' SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada $20.00 Per year: U.S.A. $55.00 C.W.N.A., O.C.N.A. CLASS 'A' and `ABS' tr •yy1i,_u The answer is known Exeter council members are wise in delaying any decision regarding a referendum on disarmament in conjunction with this fall's municipal election. As the executive committee correctly notes, there is no guarantee that there will even, be a municipal election, and it would be a waste of taxpayers' money to be forced into a situation where all the election machinery had to be put into gear for a referendum, particularly when the outcome of the public opinion can be pre -judged and at the same time end up being of little consequence. There's little doubt that the residents of Exeter would vote overwhelmingly in favour of world disar- mament but there is also little doubt that it won't have any effect on the world powers. - Disarmament has to be a two-way street and the chances of the people in Russia getting the opportuni- ty to vote in a simialar referendum is nil. The outcome of a vote in Exeter would be as affir- mative as one conducted to see whether ratepayers wanted to have crime banned and the positive results on those who perpetrate crime would be just the same as those who stock -pile nuclear weapons. Cost up, service down Followers of columnist Bill Smiley will be pleas- ed to know that his disappearance from last week's editorial page was not due to his sudden demise or a debilitating illness or injury. He was the victim of poor postal delivery. Bill's weekly column, ironically marked "rush", arrived on March 17 after the paper had already been published. It was addressed correctly, even to the point of bearing the postai code:The post mark indicated it had been received in a Toronto post office on March 10. The time lapse gives ample evidence that postal officials still have a long way to go to prove to Cana- dians that the enormous increase •in postal rates is justified. It never took that long to arrive when Bill was spending only 17 cents for postage. Why the delay now that the price has gone up to 30 cents? The \s_ ten i ig *Fon r.,. i We can, indeed, feelsonpesympathy for the fami- ly of six that moved from Ontario to Manitoba for the husband and father to take a job, only to lose that job and end up on welfare. Davis Clapper, 25, was laid off after only a month because . the . company said he had unsuitable work habits, The town council in Rivers, Man., tried to get - the family to return to Ontario rather than pay them social assistance. A successful appeal to the provincial social ser- vices advisory board, however, has forced the com- munity to pay the family $887.75 a month. But now the sympathy starts to wane. Whoa Doiiy..,. An era ended in the area last week with the termination of door-to-door milk delivery, and while only a few people will be adversely affected, it does signal a ma- jor change and perhaps will spur some colorfulrecollections for many readers. When Exeter was flourishing as a village back in the late 1800s, cows were a familiar sight in the community. Most families owned one. Each day one of the lads of the community would go around the streets picking up the cows and take them to pasture at a central location. At night, he would gather them up and drive them home, where a member of the family would set about milking the cow to provide milk for the table and supply- ing mother with milk and cream for her baking and making butter. Cows had disappeared from the scene when the writer moved from the semi - rural setting of downtown Winchelsea to settle in the "big town", but the tradi- tional march of the cows through the streets of Exeter was still carried on by the late Louis Day, who had a barn located behind the present municipal office. Each morning Louis could be seen tak- ing his two milk suppliers to their pasture in a field in which the writer's living room is now located and each night he brought them back home. On many of the trips he was accompanied by a group of youngsters, many of whom also delighted in watching the other farming activities which transpired at the Day barn in downtown Exeter. There was the annual hay harvest when Louis brought home the winter supply of feed on his horse-drawn wagon, and the spring task of carting away the manure, always welcomed by his neighbors. It was the last vista of a practice that 1 That monthly payment include`*217 toward the mortgage on their house, and $6jt4.75 in welfare vouchers for food and clothing. Mt`.Clapper and his wife don't want vouchers; if they can't get cash, they said, town officials should deliver groceries to their door. The -Clappers got to Rivers with a $3,000 federal relocation grant. With it, Mr: Clapper 'said,' heput a down payment on their new house and bought a $250 white cockatoo, a color television set and a stereo and . cassette player with digital time clock. A month later, the family is on welfare. There's something wrong with the system. . end of era had been familiar at most homes in town at the turn of the century. The arrival of the town's first dairy. pro- mpted the change as cows soon started to disappear from the scene as the dairy relied on area farmers to bring in their BATT'N AROUND with the editor milk to be processed and delivered to local homes. It no doubt was welcome relief to the bare-footed youngsters in the communi- ty who no longer had to worry about the cow -plops on the street. While it signalled the end to a colorful part of the town's history, it was replac- ed by an equally colorful portion - the delivery of milk by horse and cart, the lat- ter giving way to a sleigh in the winter. When the writer lived in the house beside the local swimming pool, the delivery man on the route was the late Bill Haley, and he and his boss, Bobby Hatter, were perhaps the best-known residents of the community as they visited homes along their route daily. Bill's horse was Dolly and through the years they had built up a relationship that was similar in many ways to most human relationships, in that the female member of the team didn't pay any attention to the advice of the male member. She knew where she wanted to go and that was all there' was to it! Bill talked continually to his steed, but it was always the same conversation: "Whoa Dolly". When Bill alighted from his cart to make a delivery, he could be heard repeating "Whoa Dolly" as the horse kept plodding along the route. Her mpster would make his way through the backyard to the next home, cross over the street to cover homes on ' the opposite side and when his metal basket had been depleted of its wares, he would find that Dolly was waiting for him at the precise spot where she stopped every morning so he could replenish his supplies and go through the whole pro- cedure again for the next homes on the route. It was a well-known fact that Dolly knew the route as precisely as the driver and she was always in the right spot at'the right time. There were those who actually suspected the horse knew the route bet- ter than the driver, and there were occa- sions when that benefitted one of the delivery -men who was often known to not have his faculties in full gear after "the night before". In retrospect, it was probably the ter- mination of the use of one-horse power that started to erode the viable economic basis of door-to-door delivery, coupled with that other modern invention, refrigeration. It also increased the cost of road hockey games as the kids had to start using pucks instad of road apples. The number of customers presently be- ing serviced indicates that the end of the era will not affect too many, but unfor- tunately those who will be Affected the greatest are senior citizens who often are unable to get out to secure their needs, particularly in the winter months. Whoa Dolly! 1 "Good news — I got a month's advance. The bad news is they called it `severance pay!' " This anger is different There's a dull, thumping pulse of anger in the often turgid bloodstream of the Canadian people these days. Now there's nothing wrong with anger, good old-fashioned rage. It purges the spiitit. Don't you always, feel better after a good fight has cleared the air? But this is different. The current anger that per- vades Canada doesn't purge, it seems to curdle and leave a residue of bitterness that engenders more anger. Almost everyone is 'angry ; businessmen, farmers; doctors, teachers, welfare reci- pients, immigrants, house -wives, the elderly, the English in Quebec, the French in other provinces. It doesn't seem to rest on the usual reasons for anger; .prejudice, poor crops, jealousy, slippery politicians, the cost of living. It appears to be based on a massive feeling of frustration• across the' country. And it is turning Canadians, normally a docile and fairly happy-go- lucky lot, mean. Really mean. It stinks up the at- mosphere, man. There is a frustration because we seem to be drifting from a proud na- tion into a melange of malcontents, without uni- ty or purpose. There is frustration because nobcitly can quite put his finger on•the malaise, and either point to it, or do something about it. Farmers are furious because, no matter how hard they work, however benevolent the weather, they seem to be slipping deeper into a guagmereof debt, low prices, high in- terest rates, and foreclos- ing mortgages. I don't blame them. Doctors are disgruntled because they feel they are the pawns of politic ns. Sure, they have a hi in- come. But they wor like Teachers are a little taut as they see the dark ages returning, when The Board was second only to God, and sometimes neck and neck, with a demand ,for lock -step, regimented education, constant in- terference bypeople who ignorant totally of education, and a standard Immo, m Sugar and Spice Dispensed By Smiley dogs for the most part. They have spent years and thousands acquiring their skills. They have no pen- sion plan. They don't call in sick when they have a sniffle, as so many workers do. They can't go on strike because they just can't. They take a holiday and it costs them triple, because their income vanishes. They make a lit- tle more than a plumber or electrician, on most jobs. They're frustrated. And I don't blame them. Sinai] businessmen are caught in between a stone and a hard place. Inflation and unemployment. It costs them far more to operate, and there are far fewer people who can buy their goods. People on welfare can't live with any sort of digni- ty on what they receive. Senior citizens who work- ed their butts off to. pro- vide for the "golden" years, are discovering that the gold is brass, due • to punitive tax measures. of living that is steadily slipping downhill, because they are not militant. Labour is livid as the feelers come out from Ot- tawa about wage control. Mixed with their frustra- tion is plain fear, fear of losing the job, the house, the marriage, when they are forced onto the dole, or pogie, as we now know it. Housewives live in a constant state of frustra- tion and something akin to fear, as they try to make two dollars do what one dollar would do ten years ago and simply cannot. About the only thing most people would want to be just now is a senior civil servant who has just been granted a fat increase in salary, properly indexed. All he/she has to do is keep the nose clean, build a small empire (preferably looking al the conditions of the poor) and maintain a low profile. I forgot the fishermen. They go out in any kind of weather, bust their,tails to bring in vital protein, and take a royal screwing from the packers or the government, not to men- tion the Canadian public, which simply doesn't eat enought fish, because for years it has been gorging on beef and pork and chicken. They are angry, too, and I don't blame them. Well, what are we to do with all this pent-up anger? We don't want to declare war on somebody, just to give us a national unity and purpose. That would be as bright as kill- ing the horse because he is pulling the wagon, badly. instead of pushing'it, into the ditch. Surely we must all look towardOttawa, that Mec- ca of impoverished in- tellectuals, layabouts who couldn't sell chili in Inuvik, time -servers, fat egoes,.party bagmen, and confused little people of all ages, sexes and factions, who think they are leading us. As the anger in the coun- try grows, our "leaders" fight duels on Parliament Hill, one with a bludgeon, another with a sabre, and the old, tired, cynical one with a rapier. One never quite knows who is being struck or stuck. As an old member of the armed forces, of this coun- try. I am used to being led by boneheads. But there was nothing in the con- tract that said this must follow in peace -time. Rise up, ye people, and turn thy wrath on Ottawa, and blowtorch - the cockroaches until there a: a only a few left, to perpetuate their species. I have spoken. Locals handle emergencies In big cities a fire department is something that people take for granted. You pick up the phone in an emergency and before you know it you can hear the sirens com- ing down the street. In a small town, things are different. As soon as you put the phone down you may well hear the siren but it's not from one of the trucks. The siren is the one set on top of the fire hall calling the Volunteers in to man the vehicles. Things are a lit- tle more modernized now and many of the volunteers carry 'beepers' which warn them to get to the nearest phone, or even carry a radio which gives them the whereabouts of the fire. . Manx of the fire depart- ments in small towns now are surprisingly well- equipped with modern machine operators, are well-trained at such places as the Sarnia Industrial Fire Prevention School. Perspectives By Syd Fletcher tools ranging from oxygen masks to pie. "Jaws of Life" - giant\metal cutters that will go right through the metal of a car like soft butter, As well, the volunteer fire-fighters, who range in regular occupations from hank managers to One volunteer fireman told me a little about that course. They had three teams, each working on a large hose. At the centre of the field is a huge horse - trough affair filled with kerosene and other goodies. Near it' is a pipe from which natural gas comes under pressure. A match is tossed into the mess and the job is to get up there and turn off the gas valve. The firemen said that if a person didn't know fear before Thep he would cer- tainly'hat)e a taste of it when he approached that valve. The noise was like a steam engine's whistle right at your ear plus the roar of the fire. Two hoses were sprayed on the fire to keep it at bay as the third team approached. Sounds like fun, eh? It's nice to know though that the local boys have had some good training in their trade in case an emergency happens in our small towns.