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Times-Advocate, 1982-11-10, Page 4• • • • -Advocate, November 10.1982 Times Established 1873 Advocate Established 1881 Amalgamated 1924 {F - , • dvocate Serving South Huron, North Middlesex & North Lambton Since 1873 Published by I.W. Eedy Publications Limited LORNE [MY Publisher JIM BECKFFT Advertising K1.in.iger BIII BATFEN Editor • ' HARRY DFVRIES 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 `ABC' There are no losers The municipal election scene has now been clarified by the voters for the next three years, and while the losers will be licking their wounds, there no doubt will be times in those next 36 months when they will probably consider themselves the winners for not being confronted by the problems which the actual win - hers will encounter. It's not going to be an easy time in the foreseeable future for the newly elected council and school board representatives throughout the area and they should certainly be given every commendation for taking on the responsibility, for what on many occasions is a very thankless task. However, that commendation should also be ex - •.I.4: tended to the losers in Monday's election. It was throtigh their efforts that the electors had an oppor- tunity to exercise their democratic choice. It was an important contribution. At this time, commendation and thanks should also be extended to those officials who retired from the local scene this year, whether it was voluntary or at the direction of the electorate in their municipalities. Hopefully, their fellow citizens will comprehend the amount of time and effort those men and women extended on their behalf for a reward that canonlybe measured in terms of the self-satisfaction attained through serving one's community and fellow citizens in a most important capacity. Could save. lives While most people frown on tattle -tales, a group of tattle -tales in Alberta is drawing smiles from highway officials. The RCMP have been encouraging motorists to report reckless driving and any indications of drunken driving they see on a 22 -mile stretch of highway bet- ween Edmonton and Jasper. Drivers have responded by reporting other drivers on the average of half a dozen times a week. • The real winners in the novel program may be the tattle -tales themselves. They've obviously reduced the risk to their own lives and those of other people using the highway. In 1979, there were 42 deaths on the road and that was reduced to 21 when the project commenced in 1980 and last year it dropped to only 10. Close to 200 clovers were charged as a result of the Motorist involvement in telling on the menaces they encountered. It's a program that every motorist should consider, given the evidence that it sharply reduces the risks they face when they get. behind the wheel of their own vehicle. The apathy continued Despite a major advertising campaign waged by the Ontario government, electors 'in most parts of the province failed to heed the message paid for by their tax dollars to get out to the polls on Monday. Municipal voter apathy was evident in most com- munities, as it was in Exeter, where the turnout was one of the lowest percentages ever recorded at around 46.5. That probdbly isn't surprising. The 1982 election was marked by apathy in this community from the outset. The ratepayers could only muster one extra candidate for the nine positions on council and then on- ly half a dozen of them turned up at the ratepayers' meeting to listen to the candidates and the acclaimed officials outline their past endeavours and future considerations. Yes, the record was worse in some , other municipalities, but that's certainly not much of a consolation. If at first you don't succeed As most fashion -conscious people know, it is unwise to throw out clothes when they become out -dated. Sooneror later, those fashions will return in the cycles established by the industry to reap their, profits from a gullible and easily led public. People who have a habit of saving their clothes escape the undue cost of keeping pace with the fashion trends as they mere- ly dig through the trappings of a previous era to find what they require to be in vogue. It is not the fashion industry alone which is subject to such cycles. The politi- cians have made a habit of following the same patterns in many areas. Over the past couple of decades the politicians decided that big was best. They closed down the one -room school • house in favor of huge, centralized institu- tions; local governments in some areas disappeared in the interest of efficiencies espoused in centralized bureaucracies; and the mentally afflicted were taken from their communities to be transferred to the care of modern complexes established throughout the country. Some of the big is best mania was op- posed by a few diehards, but in the end "big brother" won the battles because he had control of the purse strings as well as the army of technological and profes- sional experts whom he paid to argue his case. But now, wonder of wonders, people are finding that big is not necessarily best and there's a very noticeable turn -around. • • • • • It has been proven that students dumped into an institution with a couple of thousand other young people are not getting the best in education. They become mere numbers, lost in a numbers game. The many tangibles and in- tangibles that should be known about • 1 them to provide the personalized educa- • tion associated with the little red school is unavailable, or at least can not be spew- ed out by the computer which has replac- ed the mental file of personality dif- ferences which the old school marm knew BATT'N AROUND with the editor all so well and used for the benefit of each student. There's been a change in thinking about those huge schools. Most cities have recognized that big is not better and for- tunately have had the results of a declin- ing birth rate to assist them in their move to smaller numbers. Big brother has apparently also learn- ed that centralized government is not the great boon which he foresaw. Regional governments are mired in bureaucratic inefficiency. The hometown government which had a personal knowledge of the needs and desires of its populace has been replaced by one seated some miles away and directed by people who can't hope to know what transpires in the countless neighborhoods over which they are ex- pected to govern. And now, big brother has decided that the mentally afflicted should be removed from those mammoth institutions to which they were relegated and be return- ed to the friendly and caring confines of smaller residences in the communities from whence they came. 0 • • * • Unlike fashion trend cycles, however, the transition is not as simple as going to the closet to dig out the narrow ties, the wide cuffs, the pleated skirt or the feathered hat There was considerable upheaval and stress placed on people when they had to conform to the big is best edict. They moved their families, went through the throes of making new friends and getting established in new communities. Some chose not.to go through that anguish and had to find new types of employment. Now, many of those people are being re- quired to face up to that same upheaval and stress in the big is not best edict. For some it is devastating. Goderich, for instance, stands to lose 213 jobs with the closing of the Bluewater Centre for the Developmentally Handicapped and that has been estimated at $5.2 million per year in purchasing power for the town. The compounding effect of that loss, of course, is of even greater magnitude. Do the bureaucrats who make the recommendations for these on again, off again, on again changes•ever,suffer from the obvious mistakes which they perpetrate? Oh no, you see that's how they keep their jobs. Once they get things straightened out there would be little need for their services, so they continue to turn black into white and then reverse the pro- cedure some years down the road to en- sure that their vast wisdom will continue to be required by the politicians, most of whom haven't the foggiest idea of the im- plications of their decisions on the people involved. It appears that big brother, to prove that he is big, can't do anything small. So rather than making small changes to ef- fect a trial procedure, he makes a big change. Don't close one or two centres if there are six that can be closed! Think big...whether you're moving from to small or small to big. • Like Getting ready for winter, in this country, is something like digging your own grave, and then carefully building your. own coffin. Winter is as in- evitable as death. But we go on trying, although it's difficult to get your mind on a bliz- zard when you are sweating through a torrid day in July. This year, there's been a tremendous amount of squirreling around our house, with, I might add, the concomitant withering away of currency. ' We've had a brick job done on the house, at ap- proximately $2,000. Not because the house was about to fall down, or that wind was howling through the cracks between the bricks, but because there was a fair chance that a brick from the back of the house might fall and hit on the head a newspaper boy, or even worse, the lad who shovels my back walk. Anybody can scratch up a couple of thousand, somehow; but it's turrible hard to get a reliable paper -boy, or a trustwor- thy snow -shoveller. We've put aluminum ' storm windows all around, which ran about $1,300 (if you need any windows, we have plenty to spare 15. not even counting the basement.) That should keep the cold out. It doesn't. We've been threatening our old oil furnace for about five years that we were going to put it out to pasture, after spending about $200 a year for repairs. Last winter, it got digging own grave the message, and ran like a rocket. But we were going to save money, and installed a gas furnace, at nearly another $2,000. Then they jumped the price of gas, almost ;Immediately. It reminded me of my infre- quent sallies on the stock market. The minute I buy in a new issue of CDC a couple of years ago. It im- mediately went from $20 a share to about $21.75. My acute knowledge of the market was once again proved. Today I'll sell you the whole blinking lot for a load of firewood and a tank of gas. That's how you prepare Sugar and Spice Dispensed By Smiley a stock, however solid, however rich its future, it immediately begins to slide. Anyone care for a thou- sand shares of Eldridge Gold Mines? Or 12 shares of Peelelder, which it eventually became, and is now unlisted? I have shares in Northern On- tario moose pasture that would paper a bathroom. Unfortunately, there are neither gold nor moose on them. I'd have settled, years ago, for a few moose. Hey, there, stranger, I'll bet you'd like a sure thing. How about . some CDC shares? That's Canada Development Corpora- tion. I was given five shares, Par value $100, for winning a contest. For each par B share, I receiv- ed, every couple of years, five common shares. The Par B went up to $160 a share, the common to about $13, from $5. Who could lose? So, with 2,000 laborious- ly saved dollars, I invested for a comfortable ole age. But I've got away from my theme, preparing for winter. Is there really any difference, come to think of it? Well, this fall we had the downstairs johnny fixed, after a year in which only an expert could flush it. We had a couple of real ex- perts this past summer - my grandboys. It would either not flush at all, or would go on running for hours. However, only reason we had it repaired was that my right arm was developing gangrene from taking off the lid, reaching into the icy, horrid water of the tank at the back of the toilet, and reaffixing the rubber bulb to the whatsit. Haven't got the plumber's bill yet, and don't care if I never do. But we're still working on "getting ready for winter." I walked right around the housek last Saturday, and took off two basement storm windows. One had no glass in it. The other had half a frame, but lots of glass, all smashed, on which I cut my hand pulling out the remnants of the frame. All. the other cellar storms are inexplicably missing. Our fridge is getting old and frosting up, lis , wife, but no _ Or Iei there: If it quits, we just move all our.•rafrigeaator food into the front vestibule. because icy wife refuses to put a screen door on the front ("It would spoil the lines of the big door") the vestibule runs about 30 Fahrenheit through the winter months. A com- bination fridge and root cellar. I can just see the guests arriving at New Year's tromping through turnips and spuds, falling over milk cartons, skidding on margarine or, better, but- ter, and floundering through a melange of frozen chicken, frozen lasagna, frozen fish, frozen frozen. My wife even freezes the bread, ex- cept for a few slices she doles out each day. But we have lots of firewood for the fireplace, if only it were in the cellar. We've had the windows caulked, and aside from a hole the size of a soccer ball in the back storm door, we're all set to suf- fer through another winter, sitting around in curling sweaters and assuring each other that •we've cut the energy bill. Until the bill comes in, and for some strange reason, is up about one-third. • And the same to you, dear friends. Outbreak of pediculosis About once every two years or so I come home and say to my wife: "Well we've got another out- break of pediculosis again," and she just shakes her head. There's no need for anything more to be said, although before I became a principal she never even knew what the word Meant. Come to think about it, neither did I before I got into this job. The Latin word 'pedis' refers to feet and if you've got pediculosis you've been visited bysome little walkers, umpers to be more exact. Head lice, if you haven't figured out what I am talking about. This time of the year seems to be . the worst. Children are starting to wear head -gear and often trade it around. Little boys go to camp with the scouts or cubs and sometimes come home with more than their mothers sent them. People still have some going to your doctor and getting the problem carefully treated, and thus letting it spread through the school or the neighbourhood. Perspectives By Syd Fletcher strong feelings about head -lice. Some think that it is a real disgrace to catch the little goobers, that somehow you get them because you've got poor house-cleaning habits or whatever. Not so. It can certainly happen to anyone. Probably the on- ly disgrace that I can see with the whole thing is not In the old days they us- ed to wash the child's hair with coal -oil, a kill or cure treatment believe me, if what the old-timers said is true. I guess you smeUed of coal -oil for a long time and people sure knew what your problem was if your hair hadn't been cut so short that it stuck out in all directions. Now though, there is an excellent shampoo that you can get from your 'druggist along with specific directions for its application. Be careful though, some kinds can be toxic if they're left on too long. Then comes the hard part. If you don't want the lice to come back you have to comb out all of the nits (eggs) with a very find comb (you can get a special steel dne for this purpose). The. nits look like dandruff but can't be moved with your finger- nail because they are 'glued' right onto the hair. If you have any further questions about this itchy topic contact your local Health Unit. I'm sure they would be only too glad to help you.