7
PAGE FOUR
EDITORIAL
Just the Beginning
There is a bittersweet quality about this year’s
Back Mountain Memorial Library Auction which is
evoked by memories of what once was but is no
more, and by dreams of what may be.
There is little doubt that the auction will seek
new accomodations next year. Sprawling and
bursting over the auction grounds with all the
vitality of the successful endeavor it has become,
the auction would have sought new grounds even
had the death of Myra Risley not forced the issue.
Now Lehman Avenue and Risley’s Barn, for the
past 25 years transformed each summer into
everybody’s idea of Hometown U.S.A., will
become, well, just Lehman Avenue and Risley’s
Barn.
We will miss the people who for years were the
auction. Bill Moss, chugging around town in his
decrepit Falcon, sorting and cataloguing and
stacking used goods in every particle of barn
space; Howard Risley and Harry Ohlman, outfitted
in raccoon and straw hats, cleverly inveigling
auction-goers to up their bids; Herman Thomas,
reliably spending a bundle on whatever outrageous
item was offered across the block to open each
auction. The auction thrives in part because these
men, and many of their hard-working associates,
cared enough about our community to put it across.
Next year will be a crucial one for our beloved
library auction. Old-timers may well be tempted to
think they’ve done their part, given enough;
newcomers may not be sufficiently enticed by the
concept of community service to give as un-
stintingly of themselves as the auction demands.
We do not think this will happen, but there can be no
harm in being forewarned.
An end and a beginning, memories and
dreams—the 25th Annual Library Auction is all of
this and more.
Nonpublic Schools
Coming as it did on the heals of the Penn-
sylvania Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw the
state’s income tax, another court decision, this one
by the United States Supreme court, declaring
state aid to private schools unconstitutional will no
doubt have serious fiscal consequences in the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Even before the Supreme Court decision Gov.
Shapp warned of the financial collapse of Penn-
sylvania’s public school system. In light of this he
has outlined a plan for a federal assistance to
public schools set up along the lines of the present
highway trust fund. -
In the meantime it is being predicted that
without state aid to parochial schools many of these
schools will be forced to close, thus putiing an
“extra burden on Pennsylvania’s public education
system. Whether this will prove to be the straw that
breaks the camel’s back is pure speculation at the
moment, but alternate plans for state aid to
parochial schools are already being discussed.
As pointed out in Chief Justice Burger’s
opinion, the 1968 Pennsylvania Nonpublic Educa-
tion Act was passed in response to a cost crisis in
the state’s nonpublic schools. It was argued then,
as well as now, that nonpublic schools had to have
state aid to prevent the overburdening of public
schools.
We agree with the Supreme Court decision
that, despite the fact that public assistance is
limited to courses ‘presented in the public
schools,” that the “very restrictions and surveil-
lance necessary” to insure that courses are taught
in a “strictly nonideological’’ manner ‘‘give rise to
(excessive) entanglements.”” We also agree that
“in a community where such a large number of
pupils are served by church-related schools, it can
be assumed that state assistance will entail con-
siderable political activity.”
We, unfortunately, have quick answers to the
fiscal problems this decision will most likely cause,
but we realize that expediency must, although at
times painfully, suffer at the hands of principle.
Tie SDALLASCP0ST
An independent newspaper published every Thursday morning by the Greenstreet News
Co. from 41 Lehman Ave., Dallas, Pa. 18612.
Entered as second class matter at the post office at Dallas, Pa., under the Act of March 3,
1889. Subscription within county, $5 a year. Out-of county subscriptions, $5.50 a year. Call
675-5211 for subscriptions.
The officers of the Greensfreet News Co. are William Scranton 3rd, president and
managing editor; J.R. Freeman, vice president, news; William W. Davis, vice
president and general manager; Doris Mallin, secretary-freasurer.
Editor emé¥ritus: Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks
Editor: Doris R. Mallin
News editor: Shawn Murphy f
Advertising: Carolyn Gass
by Eric Mayer
Changes
Summer’s officially here
Summer's officially here, having oozed in
a couple of weeks ago in a wave of humidity.
The nights’, already starting to nibble back
into the evenings, have lost their stars to a
perpetual overcast that seems less an in-
trusion of cloud than a thickening of the air
itself. ;
Amid the dark heaps of bushes in the
backyard, shifting constellations of fireflies
blink cooly. Distant lightning beats a slow
electric staccato behind the mountains,
heralding silent storms that never arrive. The
only time it rains is after the charcoal’s been
lit.
The last rain knocked the petals off the
peonies and tiger lilies have taken their place.
If the bulbs of those ubiquitous flowers are
really edible there’s many a feast to be found
beside our country roads.
Though most of the roses have gone the
way of the peonies, there’s one bush in full
bloom beside the house. Somehow its con-
trived to climb up into the limbs of the larch
tree and thrives, oblivious to the fact that the
transitory stream which nurtured its spring
has pulled its usual summer disappearance.
All that’s left is a shallow puddle, where toads
occasionally pass sweltering afternoons,
drinking (as toads do) through their wrinkled
skin.
There seems to be a high toad population
here. Last summer one lived under the boxes
that are piled on the porch. It was his custom
to emerge on rainy nights to sit on the lawn
while spending less agreeable times in the
corner of a small glass cabinet whose door
had been left ajar. The toad did have an
irksome and potentially dangerous (for him)
habit of sitting on the doormat, and once
managed to get caught, quite pathetically
between the screen and the door. More than
once he essayed a foray into the kitchen, only
to be escorted politely but firmly out. -
Medieval housewives used to keep a toad or
two in the pantry to deal with roaches, but the
practice is generally frowned upon today.
The toads should be good for the garden
though, since they can reputedly devour as
many as 10,000 insects during the course of a
summer. Unfortunately I’ve yet to meet a
Hix
by Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks
It was the slickest piece of salesmanship
Hix has encountered for some years, and Hix,
who now numbers herself among the cred-
ulous elderly, swallowed the bait, hook, line
and sinker.
Hix is perfectly willing to lick her own
wounds, though the cost of the lesson ran
pretty high, considering that sewer levies are
coming up and the food markets slap on ten
cents more per loaf of bread every time a car-
load of watermelons gets sidetracked some-
where in the south when the railroads go on
strike.
Hix, in the days of her connection with The
Dallas Post, carried on a running feud with
furnace companies, those gloomsters that
scared the daylights out of elderly women by
means of slick salesmen who gained access to
the cellar, and came back upstairs wiping
their brows and saying, “Ma’am, it’s lucky
your furnace hasn’t blown up. You gotta do
something right away, sign on the dotted
line.”
Not to mention fly-by-night aluminum
siding merchants who painted dismal pic-
tures of a house falling down around an
elderly resident’s ears. Out-of-town concerns
harvest a fortune from the Back Mountain.
Nobody needs to bite on a proposition. If a
nitwitted resident does not make exhaustive
inquiries before making with the checkbook,
that is her tough luck and she has nobody to
blame but herself. And maybe her dimin-
ished bank balance may serve as a warning to
some other old lady.
The spic and span low-bodied truck
executed a U-turn on Pioneer Avenue, and a
courteous young man jumped out, encounter-
ing Hix on her way back from the mailbox.
THE DALLAS POST, JULY 8, 1971
Of Toads and Tomatoes |
‘toad that’s a match for a rabbit.
As a matter of fact, I'd be surprised to
meet a fence that’s a match for one. We have
very eccentric rabbits here. They’ve ap-
parently developed quite a taste for the lime
that’s supposed to keep them at bay, and,
gourmets that they are, they pass up such
staples as parsley, lettuce and carrots, for
exotic delicacies like dill, sunflower stalks
and onion tops.
Diminutive as it is, the most arduous task
connected with the garden is worrying about
it. Is it getting enough rain? Is it going to fall
prey to cotton tailed predators?
The soil is excellent and outside of an .
occasional weeding or watering the plants
require no coaxing. The tomatoes, planted
with a bit of epsom salts and checked daily for
sucker growths, may turn out to be the stars
of the show, although the potatoes are looking
monstrous in what is supposedly fine potato
growing soil.
The woods, from which the rabbit menace
emanates so stealthily, edges the plot on three
sides, creating too much shadow for the
cantaloupes that Kathy and I planted—rather
extravagantly considering their chances for
success. The back corner of the plot is given
over to pumpkins. Originally I had visions of
the vines crawling heroically out into the
forests, but it appears now that they're
headed for the egg plants. I'll have to
remember to isolate the renegade things next
year. I'll also have to remember that packet
of lettuce seed goes further than one might
think. Presently I am growing what can only
be described as a lettuce bush. J
Anyway, I hope to prove to myself, that
vegetables aren’t created in cans; that they
can spring miraculously from the earth, even
if in ridiculously crooked and cramped rows. I
might also know by then whether the beans
from the unmarked bag; the ones that are
sagging over onto their sides at the moment,
are in need of poles or just feeble.
In the meantime, since it is after -all
summer, its very important for nothing to
become too important.
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“Remember me?’’ he inquired, ‘I helped
my uncle do a roofing job for you once several
years ago.”
“Sorry, but I don’t remember your name.
What are you doing in that beautiful truck
with all the gadgets in it?”
We admired the gadgets, two tanks and a
long reel of heavy duty hose, plus sectional
ladders.
“I always notice roofs,” the young man
went on, “and I see you've got five or six
curled shingles. Have you had any water
damage?”
‘Nope, no water damage. What do you
want to do, cement them down?”
“Well, they really ought to be taken care of,
a stitch in time, etc. etc. If you catch it now,
it'll be good for years.”
I surveyed the roof. It was a long way up,
and I wondered idly how he had spotted four
or five curled shingles. Hix is not tuned in to
shingles unless they sail off in a high wind.
But a man who had worked on roofs would
naturally have telescopic vision. It’s like an
editor’s spotting a glaring error in a headline
on the fromt page. Nobody else notices it, but
to one who has been accustomed to reading
proof, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
“We could fix that for you in less than an
hour.”
“Fix it how?” .
Cement down the shingles to keep them in
place. And probably that chimney needs
some cement around it. Whole thing won’t
take more than an hour, maybe less.”
It sounded like a small charge operation,
one well within the monthly budget. One
moment the little man was going up the
Insights
by Bruce Hopkins : Illus ions
I called the New York Telephone Co.
business office the other day, and I got a re-
cording telling me that the number I was
calling had been temporarily disconnected.
When I finally got through, the operator told
me she would connect me with a represen-
tative and I was immediately disconnected.
On the third try, I was connected with a re-
presentativeto help me initiate service at my
new apartment. She sounded exactly like Lily
Tomlin, and I kept trying not to laugh. I gave
her my name.
‘Is that b-as-in-Betty-r-as-in-Robert-u-c-e-
h-o-p-as-in-Peter-k-i-n-as-in-Nancy-s?” she
asked.
‘Yes, I think so.” But I wasn’t sure. All
those names had made me momentarily
forget my own.
“Is this to be a listed number, Miss
Hoskins?”
‘‘Hopkins,” I enunciated carefully, ‘Not,
Hoskins.”
‘“That’s,
Nancy-s?”
‘‘Right.”
‘Now, ma’m,” she said, “I need your—"’
‘“‘Excuese me,” I interrupted, “but it’s sir,
not ma’m, ma’m.”
‘Oh, yes—heh, heh, it’s Mister Hopkins.”
‘Yeah, but call me Bruce.”
pitches lower.
H-o-p-as-in-Peter-k-i-n-as-in-
I said four
‘‘Alright, sir, now have you had service
with our company before?” She asked that as
if there were a thousand other companies I
could have had service with. I replied that I
had: with Bell in Pennsylvania. She then
asked what city.
“Horsham.” I told her.
‘Sir, would you spell that please?” I think
she thought she was getting her first obscene
phone call of the day. But I cleared it up: ‘“h-
o-r-as-in-razzamatazz-s-h-a-m-as-in-
Mercutio.” I explained that I'd had the phone
disconnected when I left there in June, 1970.
‘‘And what was the number at that phone
sir?”
That threw me. I have enough trouble re-
membering my trouser size let alone having
to recall a phone number I had over a year
ago—and never called myself on.
“You see, sir, if you are able to recall the
number, I won’t have to charge you the $40
deposit on the phone. Would you like to think
about it or find it and call me back?’ she
queried nasally. Wonderful—a take-home
exam. I told her I'd do my best to find it. She
theninquired as to what ty pe of phone I had in
this Horsham place, and I replied that it was
one of those jobs with the dial in the receiver.
When I was in Horsham I was going through
my decadent period when I thought that a
trimline phone represented some sort of
status symbol
ladder from the roof of the front porch, the
next he was leaping along the roof, hose in
hand.
‘‘Wonder what kind of shoes he’s wearing?”
I asked myself, remembering an ominous
clattering years ago when Johnny Tibus was
pointing up the chimney. ‘His makeshift plat-
form came loose, and there was Johnnie,
clinging to the chimney and perfectly safe,
but marooned. His platform, in bits and
pieces in the side yard, had made a three-
point landing, and his pointed trowel had
divided a ripe tomato into perfect halves.
I carry insurance, as every householder
does, but no amount of insurance can com-
pensate for a dead body in the driveway.
“He’s wearing thick sponge rubber
soles,” the courteous salesman reassured me.
I went on about my business, and next
time I looked, the roof had changed its spots.
From stem to stern it was a dazzling
aluminum and the workman was still
spraying, calling for cement around the
chimney. :
I. have always considered a red shingled
roof hideous, so this did not upset me to any
great extent. On the other hand, if I had my
druthers, I druther have a variegated blue
and green shingle roof, suggesting shadows
and sunshine. Still and all, it looked as if the
coat of aluminum paint might reflect the
summer sunshine away from the attic. I
revised my mental calculation of cost, up-
ward. With that whole roof sprayed, it was
going to run to a bit more than I had figured.
What happened to the four or five curled
shingles, I didn’t know. Probably buried
under the aluminum. :
‘Would you like another trimline model?”
she asked hopefully.
‘No, I'd like a plain black phone. There is
one already in the apartment-
“Sir, you should be aware that having had
our service previously entitles you to the
privilege of selecting a trimline model or a
color phone if you so desire.” She made it
sound as if I didn’t have to pay for the pri-
vilege. But I knew better. .
“No, thanks. I’d like plain black. It doesn’t
show the dirt.”
The representative sighed in defeat, and
then proceeded to itemize the charges. My
charge would be based on 75 message units
per month. When you live in New York City,
you are charged a certain number of message
units based upon how far away you call within
the city, and how long you talk. In other
words, you are charged individually for local
calls. For example, if I call from my ex-
change to a 224-exchange, I am charged an
initial fee of two message units for an initial
period of five minutes. If I talk longer than
that, I am charged one message unit for each
additional three minutes or fraction. So if I
talk for five and a half minutes, I am charged
three message units. If I call a 598-ex-
change, however, I am charged six message
units for an initial period of four minutes. If I
talk longer than that, I am charged one
But the chimney could certainly use a spot
of assistance. ‘‘Awfully bad around the
chimney,” was the word from the roof.
“Well,” said the courteous young man,
“You can figure it’ll be good and tight for the
next fifteen years.”
“‘In the next fifteen years,” T a “F
won’t give a whoop whether the roof is tight or
whether it leaks like a sieve. I won't be
around to notice.” o
The apparatus in the truck kept pumping
away and the peony plants in the flowerbed
took on a freckled appearance. Silver
freckles. ;
The truck cooled itself off and the little man
came down off the roof, folding his ladder
behind him.
“Well, give me the bad news,” I invited, ~
checkbook in hand, ‘I always like to pay on
the spot for these small jobs.” :
The C.Y.M. said he’d do a spot of figuring.
He beamed when he reached the bottom of the
column. “Three-seventy”, he concluded.
you've used a lot of stuff. "n
“Three hundred and seventy. It works out
to a few cents more, but we’ll forget the odd
change.”
Now nobody needs to tell me I shouldn’t
have made out a check, I should have {$aited
for a bill. After I had satdown and engaged in
a little commonsense reflection, I phoned
First National. ‘Kill check No. 253 when it
comes through the mill. I’ve been took. The
next move is up to that firm down in New
Jersey.”
“Sorry, it’s already been cashed.”
“Three-seventy? That can’t ue :
The Love of Mother Bell
v
message unit for each additional minute or
fraction thereof. So that if I talk for four
minutes, five seconds to a 598- exchange, I am
charged seven message units. All of this is
easy to follow if I consult the six-page, fine- **
print-chart in the front of my phone book,
keep a record of every exchange I dial and the
amount of time I talk, figure out the initial
period charge and the additional period
charge, add it all up, then compute five-and-a- |
half cents for each message unit over the 75
units I am alloted per month, and see if it
agrees with the phone bill. If it doesn’t, I will
be so confused and mentally fatigued that I.
won't really care whether I'm being cheated
or not, and I'll pay the bill. Besides, the whole
thing is done by computer, and everyone.
knows computers, and they don’t know any-
thing except what they're told to know. (It's
kind of like high school.)
I did manage to find the phone number f
where I lived in Horsham (it didn’t ring any
bells when I looked at it), and so I should have
a phone within the next few days provided I
can get the business office instead of the re-
cording telling me the business office
And I :
wonder if I'm being charged two message
units to listen to a recorder? If I am, I'd better =
start listening to it for the full five minutes.
telephone has been disconnected.
Nobody’s cheatin’ me, I'll tell ya’.
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