The Brussels Post, 1974-02-27, Page 2Brussels Post
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1974
Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.
Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario
by McLean Bros.Publishers, Limited.
Evelyn Kennedy - Editor. Tom Haley - Advertising
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and
Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association.
Subscriptions (in advance) Canadal$6.00 a year, Others
$8.00 a year, Single Copies 15 cents each.
Second class mail Registration No. 0562.
Telephone 887-6641.
Is your paper late?
PTABIL,ISHED
1872
Nile Township farm
• 0
Sugar and Spice
By Bill Smiley
To the editor
Dear Sir
I was pleased to read that 1 was
the winner of the year's subscrip-
tion to your paper. The survey
Was a good idea as it gave
everyone an opportunity to
express their choice in articles.
We look forward to each issue.
'Yours truly,
Glen lathes
the
Dai
eas
con
+41,•••••••••••
rf
,
a
It is quite respectable to complain about the Post
Office these days.
'Every one lambastes them and this newspaper is
no exception. We should say though that our local
P.O. does a good job and we are always treated
helpfully and politely there.
A weekly paper needs the mails desperately.
They bring ads from our advertisers and copy from
our correspondents. But most important, the Royal
Mail (or Canada Post it's called now) transmits our
papers to our subScribers. In the absence of the P.O.
we'd have very few readers of our weekly efforts.
Every week we get letters (they seem to reach us
o.k.) complaining that it takes ten days to get, to.
Kitchener or two weeks to reach someone in a suburb
of Toronto. Probably every other weekly in Canada,
has lost subscribers over this problem of late arriving
papers. "It's just no good getting your paper ten,
days late. I like'to attend auction sales and they are
over by the time I can read about them in the paper",
one reader wrote us.
The fact that their copy of the paper takes a week
to get from Seaforth to Chatham upsets people and
rightly so. It also leads them to suspect that we, not
the mails, are the culprits. "Would, you please mail
my paper when you mail all the rest," one reader
wrote, "so that I can get it in a reasonable lenth of
time?"
We assure this person and all Our other yeaders
that all our papers are mailed at the same time and
that the papers get lost, usually after they leave our
hands.
We don't know what the answer to the problems
between the weeklies and the post office is. The post
office is very co-operative in helping to run down the
problem with issues which are regularily received
Ite. But then someone else's paper arrives late and
we get another letter from an angry subscriber.
We can only suggest that you notify us by mail
when your paper is, habitually late and we'll check
with the post office and try to get your paper to you in
good time.
In the meantime, don't blame us and please don't
accuse us of preferential treatment. We repeat that
we do mail.all copies of the paper at the same time.
Just ask our editor. He's in hospital in London
and he was mailed a copy of last week's paper from
Stratford on Wednesday night. The paper reached
him on Monday afternoon. We think it walked to
London.
One of these days I'm going to have to sit
down and have a little talk with myself.
It will go something like this: "Look ,
Bill. It's time you acknowledged that you'll
never be in the British Consols competition
for the curling championship of Canada.
Let's face the fact that a great
competitive spirit, tremendous desire, and
the heart of a lion are not enough. You also
need some skill and some muscles.
"You curled in a local bonspiel last
weekend. Won two,' lost tow. Not bad.
You're a fifty-percenter in sport. But on
Monday morning, when you bent over to
tie your shoe laces, you couldn't straighten
up again. Somebody had shoved a knife in
your back, just above the tail-bone. If your
wife wasn't pretty handy at straightening
things out, you'd still be going around on
all fours. '
"Why don't you forget that silly
business of running up and down a sheet of
ice like a rabbit galloping sideways,
pounding the surface with a broom while
some idiot yells, ."Sweep!" as though you
were washing the dishes instead of
sweeping your guts out?
"Why don't you stop blaming the ice for
being too keen or too heavy, when you
know perfectly well it is you who is too
heavy and not keen enough?
"Why don't you stop blaming the skip
for not giving you the right ice, when you
know full well you couldn't hit his broom
with a front-end loader?
"Why don't you give up the game,
except for the safe position of critic behind
the glass, where all the really good shots
are made?
"Why don't you just go down to the
recreation room at the curling club, and
fight it out with Capt. Dalt Hudson for the
undisputed Russian Billiard Championship
of the club? After all, you beat him once,
five years ago, when he was only 72. •
"And while we're having this agonizing
appraisal, why don't you do the same about
your golf? A few years ago, when you were
in the nineties, it is true that Jack
Nicklaus and Arnie Palmer were' trembling
in their boots. They knew a corner when
they saw one,
"But ; as often happens to a dark horse
charging for the big money, something
liapperied„ It was bad enough having,
trick shoulder And a trick knee, But it was ,
when you.st pulling those trick. shots,
that you sh ould have 'gait.: like the booming
drives that used to go 100 yards straight up
and 100 yards straight down, landing
twenty feet behind the tee.
"Why don't you just play golf with ,your
wife, whom you can beat 'handily if you
remember to say, "Woops! Don't lift your
head! ", just as she's starting her swing."
Yep, it's pretty sad when you have to get
down to the concrete, and discover it's
fresh-poured cement.But that's the way it,
goes with us aging athletes. We have only
our shining memories to fall back on.
I was a pretty good track and field
athlete, in the sprints and jumps. One year
I was a cinch for the junior championship.
Everybody told me. So the night before the
track meet,. I went out with some other
guys, stealing grapes. An over-zealous
gardener chased us four miles. Next day,
however, with a tr emendous burst of pride
and speed, `I managed to finish third in the
° 100 yards, fourth in the 220.
In' the days when you didn't have to
be a big slavering brute with haunches
like hams I was a pretty fair football
quarterback. And I have a broken noseand
two rickety knees to prove it.
In the airforce, I enjoyed, and was good
at, formation flying. Only trouble was that I
sometimes formated with the wrong
people. One day I took off in a cloud of
dust, spotted another Ty phoon, my leader,
and joined him in close formation.. Rather
to my surprise, he circled the air-strip and
landed. I did too. I climbed out and walked
over to ask him what was wrong. I'd never
seen him before in my life. My squadron
was off in the wild, blue yonder
somewhere, one man Short.
I can't help envying the kids of today
They can learn golf and curling, sports they
can use until they're decrepit, while they
are y oung.
year. My only acquaintance with golf wa
after ball. We sold them back for a dints
diving, for balls into , the river water haze
people earning away up around $3,000
into which the lady golfers pumped ba
When 1 was a kid, golf was far the rich
1
As, for curling, that was a game playe
by eccentric old gehtlemeit oh an ou tdo('
rink,
But, by golly, the rich and the eccentric
old gentlemen didn't go to the poolroom
and we did.
Maybe I started too late to amount 1
anything on the ice or the links, but 1+11
take' any of these other old fogies on
the eclat; felt cloth,
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