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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1975-03-20, Page 4PA`,k!f'fi"R 4- NTONS dhoti WO4 EC9RDt rilURSPYY, MARCH 20} 1975 omment Food for thought Canada's arch -rivals have finally agreed on one point. Both Federal Agricultural Minister Eugene Whalen and Food Prices Review Board chairman Beryle Plumptre say Canadians are eating the wrong kinds of food. Check out their opinions yourself on grocery day. Watch other people's shopping carts. Down the aisles roll carts full of ready to serve pizza, bags of caramel coated popcorn, cookies by the pound, candies by the box, TV dinners, soft drinks, ready made pies and cakes and all descriptions of convenience foods and goodies. These things may not be bad for those eating them, but what Plumptre and Whalen have said is people are eating too much of this kind of food. Yet where would we be without them? Friday nights in front of the, television might get pretty dull without pizza or something to keep the teeth busy. A long linoup There will be a long, long, lineup of job seekers at post offices across the country this year if the wage set- tlemen,t sought by the letter sorters is approved. They have asked for a basic wage of $315 per week fQr a 30 hour week. Not bad. Almost as much as a lawyer makes, and much more than a local farmer makes, and he has over $300,000 invested and still works 50 hours a week! So you can see why there will be a Although, if there was less of this type of food eaten, the cost of eating would be greatly lowered for some individuals. Speaking of prices, did you ever realize just how little you spend on food? First unwrap all the groceries. You can't eat tin cans or paper wrappers you pay for. Set aside your soaps, deodorants, Toothpaste, razor blades,` and hair- sprays. Few of us eat dog and cat food, so don't include those either. Then there are the paper products. The bathroom tissues, facial tissues, and paper towels. If you can't eat it don't count it. What have you got left? About half a shopping cart of actual edible food? And look at all the other stuff you don't put into your mouth but still call food when it comes time to pay for it. Food for thought? long line-up to get a job at the post office. No worries, no investment, good pay and a soft job. Almost like being in heaven. On top of all that, the fringe benefit package will likely prove an attraction for doctors, engineers and businessmen. You get your birthday off as a holiday plus three more non - statutory holidays. And what about the postal service? Well, it can't get much worse than it is now...or can it? Sugar and Spice/By Bill Smiler The road : to travel Every year about this time, I turn a deep green, almost a turquoise shade, with pure, unadulterated envy. irggght. 4bout by that fairly new oc- casion in school life known as "Winter Break." It is a week's holiday during March, in which the poor, ground -down students, near a state of total exhaustion from not doing their homework, skipping school, and sleeping at their desks, have a chance to recharge their desks, have a chance to recharge . their batteries for the terriblt, gruelling term ahead, during which they will be worn to a frazzle from not doing their homework, skipping even more school because the weather is better, and falling in love because. it's spring. It's not that I have anything against winter break as such, or holidays in general. Far from it. If I had my way, we'd also have a fall break and a spring break and school four days a week the rest of the time. My envy is churned up by the seemingly limitless opportunities the rotten kids have these days to see the world, something I have desired fiercely since I was about four, and have never been able to fulfill. You should hear the young blighters, in the classrooms and the corridors. "Hi, Liz. Where y' going' winnerbrake? We're go'na Greece." "Hey, great. We're there lasyear. Snot bad. Lotta statutesnstuff. We got inna the wine. Terry puked all overtha teach." "Hey, great. But wearya goin' this year. Yer nawgunna jis stay homen get mouldy, arya?" "Helno. I'm gonna Spain. Sounds great. Bullfighters and flamencos. Hey, whatsa flamenco? Trouble is, we got ole Droopy - Drawers' anis wife for chaperones, and he allus wantsa goda museums an all that." "Yeah, tough. Oh well, he'll be dead by ten o'clock anya can sneak outa the hotel and hit the never even godda cross the border." "Ya. Minesa same. He's allus tokkin bout South See,, Islands anthat. Antha Depression. Antha war. Drag. Putt him on a south sea island with a coconut in one hand, a broad in the other anna lagoon in front ofim, an he wooden know which to take a bite outa. Kinda sad. Hey, where's Timmynthem going." "Oh, they're gonna Russia. Good deal. They goddan extra week offa school. Swurth the extra hundred bucks." Now, gentle -reader, it's not as though our students actually talk like that. It's just that they sound as though they talk like that. And I guess you can see that the foregoing conversation reflects quite vividly my bitter envy of these young punks who take off for Moscow and London and Rome with about as much awe as we used to have if we were going to spend a Saturday night in the nearest big town. Aside from those who are flying to faraway, exotic places that you and I- have only dreamed of, there are the others. Ask them what they're doing during winter break. Jim: "Oh, I'm jis gonna smash aroun in the snowmobile a liddel an maybe hit the pubs a few nights." The snowmobile cost ' more than his father had saved in eight years for the first mortgage on his house. Jeff: "Well, a few of us are gonna Colorado to ski. Snot bad. Just three hunnertanady bucks for a week." This is just twice what his father earned a month when Jeff was born. So. Mixed with my envy is a good solid streak of rage. Rage that I was born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong economic climate. It took me 21 years, and a lot of hard; cheap labor, and the risking of my life many times, to get out of this country and see some of the great cities of the world, only to find them bleak and blacked -out. 1--. ,3.9,1oi,,4.-a fiMt . ri n ."1 . F_ ,bru.s i .. t -e ec-sJame,is. n "Ya. _Rideon, Hay, javnee trouble din family and,paying off mortgages, too_bus kind. bread for your trip?"' Doo broke to travel. "Na. Worked three weeks last summer an And yet ... and yet; ... I feel almost sorry for saved twenny bucks, before they fired me. Tole these kids. It's all too easy. None of them can - the oleman iddus discrimination caws Ise bedder ever have the heart -thudding thrill I had when I lookin than the head waitress. He bleeved me. first rolled into one of the great stations of Then I tole im Ise gonna goda Manpower an London, England. geddanother job. He bleeved me. Tole Manpower And none of them can ever have the heart - I wannad a job as a go-go girl. They didden , thudding thrill I had as I rolled out of one of the havnee. So he put up the other four hunnert. He great Berlin stations, the bombs falling happily allus wannada travel himself, poor ole slob. He behind me. THE CLINTON NEW EUA Established 1865 THE !i MON NEWS -RECORD Established 1881 Published every .thurttday at Clinton, Ontario Editor - James E. Fitzgerald General Manager, J. Howard Aitken -. ��..m- *econd Class Mall r , letretlon no. 001 SUBSCRIPTiON RATES: CANADA 510.00 51/.li6 SINGLE COPY .2ao AND SHOVEL THE PRWWEWAY oN YOUR WAY OUT! LitWe and big I have recently been reading in a frayed copy of the Reader's Digest at my dentist's that man's legs are getting shorter all the time. The statistician who made this discovery says it is because of the Automobile Age: We are all riding around with our legs sort of half -tucked up under us. If this keeps up, the fellow says, we may eventually have, no legs at all. The billiard game, as we know it today, will be gone. This is caused, of course, not by evolution, but by heredity through the selectivity of the female. All through .history the girls have decided the future trend in the male chassis. Just as the queen bee selects the sturdiest drone, so do the ladies instinctively select men for the strengths which are considered important at the time. In the days of knighthood, for example, the man with the most appeal always had plenty of beam because horsemanship was so important. A man had to have a good seat, as we say down at the stables, and thus the fair ladies were inclined to select the fellow with the big caboose. It wasn't only that this was stylish, but the ladies (perhaps unconsciously) wanted their children, it turn, to have some extra padding where men meet the saddle. There are some indications, in fact, that- this has come full circle since Burt Reynolds has recently been selected by the ladies as the perfect man, mainly because of his prominent derriere. This is known as breeding and is the kind of thing which has meant the survival of the human race, if that's any comfort to you. You can see where this leads. Since the male leg is no longer vital except perhaps for basketball centres it is • no longer a major factor in this determining of who is going to be the daddy. Environment, then, conditions the choice of women and, in turn, determines the whole future of mankind and so the theory that man's legs may disappear entirely is not as far-fetched as you'd think. The push-button, mechanized age is clearly upon us already. I was in a wealthy man's home only this week where the head of the house had absolutely no use for muscles. Everything was automatic. The whole hoose made a faint, pulsating sound of high voltage as gadgets ran everything. The man does not stoke a furnace. He does not mow a lawn. A machine does it. He rides in a little seat behind it, humming and studying his nails. Here is the ,man of the future, required only to develop the index finger of the right hand. History shows us that he will be the type sought by women for the simple reason that they select the type best equipped for survival. He is the man who looks best in the sitting position he assumes for 90 percent of the hours he's awake. But the male, too, is selective to a degree, although not as much as his vanity tells me. Arid the male is looking for girls with long legs ! It is only that the female leg is attractive. It is also important. For all her gadgets, the housewife still has need for locomotion and in the course of preparing a meal may walk, if I remember the statistics correctly, two -and -a -half miles. Now we begin to see the dreary picture of the future; the human rate reduced to little men with shrivelled, stumpy legs, married to women who tower over them upon their elongated li mbs. I see them at Adinner, the husband sitting there in his high chair with the great, button -pushing index finger, which will have come to be the sex symbol of masculine beauty, the wife loping about like some sort of lovely giraffe. There is, in fact, only one bright note in our destiny. We won't be there for that moment of final humiliation of the male. From our early files .... • . • • • 10 YEARS AGO March 25, 1965 Antoine "Red" Garon of Clinton Laundry and Dry Cleaners Limited was returned as president of Clinton and District Chamber of Commerce last Thursday night. Huron County Council at the Wednesday morning session in Goderich sustained a recom- mendation by the Board of Management of Huronview Home f'or' the Aged to go ahead with plans for the construction of a 75 -bed addition. Clinton and District Cenotaphs Committee unveiled an artist's drawing of a proposed memorial to veterans who paid the supreme sacrifice in two world wars Commerce now totals 110 three more than last year ,- It was reported at the monthly meeting in the Town Hall this past Monday evening. One of the items on the agenda was whether parking meters would solve some of the parking problems in Clinton. No vote was taken at this time and it was left for a future meeting. Spring was to arrive at mid- night, -on Monday Marcb,20 but. it,..,,. actually began at 11:36 p.m. - just 24 minutes too soon. This is because at that moment (11.36 p.m.) the sun crossed the equator comencing north. This left the earth with .eq`u'al day and equal night. Sap is not running yet with the weather much too cold. The Farmers Allied at Gli.ddon Cleaners recently Enterprises Co -Operative ' .. installed a system of "Kelco" •stili --ho ---it tak ever :.a st-LckJ-44-9g st toting the latest can thing in assembling Clothes rac'Rs in a cleaning plant. Object is to speed up production. Burlington meat packing plant, according to FAME's board chairman, Mel Becker of, Ayr. The financial picture would improve greatly if the 13,000 members in South -Western Ontario would eachbuy a $100 share.. Miss Josephine Stirling returned to her home in the village 8n Friday, after spending several months in Port Elgin as guest of her sister, Mrs. Hugh McLaren. Although "How To Make A Speech" was the title of his talk, Flight Lieut. J.M. Gibson en- tertained Clinton Lions on Tuesday evening with his humour and pantonine on what not to do in making a speech. 25 YEARS AGO March 23, 1950 Clinton will go on the "Air" during Old Home Week this summer. A broadcast will he made from Clinton on Sunday morning August 6 over the CBC network in co-operation with the Canadian r Weekly Newspaper Association. Cliff Epps is the proud owner of a new Oldsmobile Sedan, pur- chased from Lorne Brown Motors. The letter firm 'reports the automobile business as brisk, with a waiting list for new cars. ' Paid up membership to the Clinton and District Chamber of 50 YEARS AGO March 26, 1925 H.E. Smith of Milverton has accepted the Prudential agency for Clinton, taking the place of A.F. Plaskett, who has tran- sferred to Stratford. Mr. and Mrs. John McDonald have taken up residence in Clinton on .Osbourne Street. Mr. McDonald is connected with the Canada Oil Co. The streets have been cleaned and it is about time too, on windy days they were dry and very dusty. It is not very often that we have clean swept streets in March. Miss, Sybil Courtice, who has been home on furlough froth .Japan, leaves on April 8 for sail for Japan on April 17. Harry Cochrane had rather a narrow escape from serious injury"N• hen he was out hunting near Holmesville. The gun which he was carrying accidently went off and the bullet just grazed his cheek. H.E. Smith has been appointed Prudential Insurance agent here. The Young People's League of Ontario Street Church took their play, "The Young Village Doc- tor, ' to Huron County Home where they presented it. for the benefit of the old folk. Markets were wheat, $1.40; barley .70c; butter .30c; to 33c; oats .40c; eggs .21c to 28c; live hogs $12.50 to $13.50. 75 YEARS AGO March 23, 1900 A change has been effected in R.W. McKenzie's hardware business. Melvin W.,klowell, who .has been with 'Mr. McKenzie for six years, has been admitted into partnership and the establish- ment will hereafter be conducted under the firm name of McKenzie & Howell. Will Young has rented the Wise farm on the Maitland at a yearly rental of $85. An excellent program was rendered in Bethelchurch on Doherty Monday night by the Malei14,,artette, Clinton, . - J.bser�-`tia`s`d-ecided to remain in Blyth. 'He has re- purchased his interest in the new union block from Mr. T.W. Scott and will build with the others. Herbert Nott has purchased the farm of Donald Smith, on the 2nd concession of Stanley. The other day Mrs. Bid- dlecombe bought the house and lot on Rattenbury Street from Mrs. Caline, at a reasonable figure and will move from her present home to the newly pur- chased piece in a few days. She has her property on Huron Street to rent. Mrs. Carlins intends to leave shortly for Toronto. Doherty yards are filled with immense sawlogs. They are waiting for spring so the mill can start running. By the time the season opens up, it will be a sight to see this yard in which' the logs will he soon converted to organs. 100 YEARS AGO March 25, 1875 Mr. T. Corbett, Harmony, who has lately leased the carding mill from Mr. Thos. Gibbons has just put in carding machines and is making every preparation to have the mill in thorough working order h, the time the wool season commences. Mr. Joseph Brunei] has opened a new Grocery in the Dominion Rion, Seaforth, opposite the pirst office. Mr. W.L. Wallace formerly in the employ of Messrs. Callander, Scott & Co., of Clinton has en- tered into partnership with Mr. Hugh Wallace of Londesborough, and the business at that place will henceforth be carried on under the name of Hugh Wallace and Co. Spring is officially here since Saturday March 20. We get letters 114 d: Dear Editor: We really appreciated the opportunity of telling our story ne>pa,pelr,.,�,41li..tr' n; - Ma" -ch of -Dines -month.-_— - he response from all members of the media has been very encouraging, and in those areas where we conducted- a fund-raising campaign, the results to date already indicate a substantial increase over past years. Thanks again for Your generous support, for it is only through an informed pti-blic and the co-operation of the media that we will make any progress in change for the disabled. Yours sincerely, (Mrs.) Pat Mortimer, Director, information services. Smile Some banks are pow issuing personalized checks that can have the depositor's picture imprinted on them. One man took full advantage' of this offer. He had a picture of his wife in her bikini printed on her new set of checks. When he handed her the checkbook, she was furious. "I hate to have my picture taken in a bikini," she howled. "Do you think I'd cash one of those awful things?" The husband merely walked 3ff, whistling softly to himself. Why not! women Dear Editor. The appointments to the Clinton Recreation Committee have been made. I would like to draw to your attention the representation on this com- mittee. In our lovely inactive town of 3000, I presume 50 percent of the children to be female, yet we have 100 percent male representation on the recreation committee. I also notice that there are three ,avid horsemen on the committee this gives the horses of Clinton a 25 percen representation. Is this democracy? To me, recreation mean arts, crafts, swimming hockey, ball, dancing, gym nastics etc. yet Clinton in terprets recreation as ball an hockey. Come on Clinton, let's get with it. 1975. is International Women's Year. o-, Sincerely, A Women's Libber Seniors deserve better centre Dear Editor : I would ask who are senior citizens? Today I am one, tomorrow it will be you. The seniors of today are the people who have assisted in giving you many of the things you are now enjoying. They struggled through the Thirties. Those who had work received very small pay. Would you believe $15 to $20 a month for a six day week and there was no welfare, mother's allowance, govern- ment assistance etc. If they didn't work, they didn't have. Their savings and insurance were used to keep the wolf from the door. Then and since, most of them assisted wherever they were needed. We now have crippled fingers, stiff knees and failing eyesight. We cannot go on doing these things. It is now your turn. We are asking for a Senio Citizens' Centre where we ca meet others like ourselves an take part in some of the social life that you enjoy. Most of us do not have a car, and do not have the means to travel an holiday in warmer climes. I fact, our whole life and mone are spent in Clinton. For a number of seniors, th daily trip to the Post Office, th grocery store and if they ca make the steps, and man cannot, the church, forms th most of their social life. Early in the century, senio citizens were a part of th family. Times have change and in changing we never stan still, we either go forward o back. We didn't have kin dergarten or nursery schools few years ago. Today they ar considered a necessity just as Senior Citizens' Centre is o should be considered necessity. It has been suggested tha churches and schools could be used as a drop-in centre. Take a look at any church calender ze how would reap you o andul impossible, .... _.thin... ,Would_J Sohouts--'would not --be . ap- propriate as they too could not be used anytime. The Town Hall also in unavailable much of the time. The Centre needs to be within walking distance of the main street and without steps so that all seniors could make use of it. It would appear that some of the public are afraid their taxes might go up. If those who have paid the taxes for the past 100 years took this attitude we would not he now enjoying many of the Things we take for granted. Let us get together and make this Centennial project a success. It can be done if we don't knock it and get down to work. Yours sincerely, a senior citizen, A. L. Holland, Clinton. News -Record readers M• en- couraged ' to express their opinionshowever. � pinione to s editor; necessarily represent the of, the N(ww-Nroord. may be used bY latter writers, but no letter will be published update H Can be verified by Phone.