Page 4 Hang in There Hang in there, everybody--things are bound to get better. Now that our adrenaline has stopped flowing and we are no longer capable of those super-human feats of endurance which marked our behavior im- mediately after the flood, the tendency is to become gloomy, grouchy and dispirited. Evacuees, mindful of the devastation to their own homes, may become ill-tempered; hosts, fretting at the limitations of their budgets and cramped homes, may grow to resent their guests. Now is the time, then, to call on that reserve of good humor which each of us keeps tucked away for rainy days (you'll pardon the expression). Nobody really enjoys waiting in line, but it’s a fact of life nowadays that most of us will spend a portion of our days doing just that. Traffic is incredibly heavy, the lines at the supermarkets zig-zag out of sight, and merchants throughout the area brood that they can barely keep up with their customers’ demands. Before, we were all action oriented--ready and willing to go without sleep for 24 or 36 or 48 hours, happy to be able to serve. Now, though, with our lives settling into something akin to an old routine, it would be all too easy to snap and snarl when life as we knew it before the flood hasn’t resumed promptly. The point is really this: Rarely does an entire community have an opportunity such as this to test its commitment to the welfare of others. We have that opportunity, and history will remember what we do with it. Nobody said it was going to be easy. The Gamble the most dificult fact to convey to those who do not live in Wyoming Valley is the sheer totality of des- truction left behind by the Susquehanna’s receding waters. From Pittston to Shickshinny the story is the same, block after block of gutted homes and businesses with only an occasional undamaged area to relieve the eye. The damage suffered by the Wyoming Valley is truly extraordinary. The much publicized South Dakota floods failed to cause nearly the destruction that Agnes brought the East Coast. Almost any re- lief worker currently in the Wyoming Valley who has witnessed other disasters will tell you that this is the worst he has seen,ever. And the reason for this is that the totality of the disaster in terms of property lost, damaged, or ruined is truly incred- ible a fact that can only be appreciated when view- ed first hand. . The most pressing question which currently faces the municipalities and citizens of the Wyom- ing Valley is, “Will full recovery be possible?’ valley, said last week, ‘“They’ll bounce back. They always have.” He may be right, but the enormity and complexity of the task ahead is causing serious doubt in the minds of many citizens. It has been said $3 billion will be needed to repair flood damage in Pennsylvania. Gov. Shapp has traveled to Washington to beg for aid, and Sen. struction. Despite official promises, however, it is hard to see how this much money will be forthcom- ing. Unfortunately federal laws allowing aid to beyond the initial rescue and temporary housing stage. The fact of the matter is the SBA and FHA loans are not going to be enough to rebuild the entire economy of the Wyoming Valley. More than that will be needed. It is our hope that Pennsylvania’s representa- tives are successful in getting massive aid from economic recovery. Whether this will occur, how- ever, remains to be seen. Unfortunately, without massive aid, the economic future of the Wyoming Valley will remain a precarious gamble at best. By Eric Mayer It was worse than they could have imagined. The mud coated everything with a foul smelling slime. In places it sucked at the bottoms of their boots making movement difficult; other places it turned treacherously slippery. They trudged through the mud, down to Richmond Street. The street sign had been washed away but at the corner they recognized the Carlton’s house. It looked as though it had been plucked from its foun- dations and dropped. One corner was crushed in; the porch had been torn away and lay splintered around a telephone pole. A crude sign stuck in the mud clogged yard read, ‘For Sale-As Is. 50¢” Amy shook her head. ‘I can’t see Jim doing something like that. Its not like him.” They skirted an overturned garage that blocked the street. Apparently it had struck the Jones home because an entire wall had been peeled open to reveal the living room, couches, TV, coffee tables, and the bedroom overhead with its beds, bureaus and a mirror hanging on one wall-like a dollhouse thrown down in a fit of anger. On the front of the house someone had scrawled, with a can of spray paint, ‘Good-bye Richmond Street.” “You don’t think they’ll really leave do you,” Amy asked her husband. During the 15 years she and Jim had lived on the street, the Joneses had been their closest friends. They passed a vacant lot heaped with the detritus of the flood, roofs of dog houses, garage doors, picnic tables, bits of porches, a set of stairs, a picnic table. Finally they came to their own home. Outside it was intact ex- cept for some shattered windows and the brown scum that coated the siding nearly to the eaves. 7 Jim had to force the water swollen door open. Inside was chaos. Thick mud hid the rug, covered the jumble of lamps, chairs, tables, dishes and bric-a-brac that filled the living room. Shelves had been ripped from the walls. The plaster ceiling had fallen in, powdering the yellowish mud with white in We think it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Georg: McGovern, if nominated, will defeat Richard Nixon next November and we warn readers now not to take the auguries of the poll-takers too seriously until the campaign develops a bit. What should not be forgotten is that, divided as Democrats are, the great unifier is Richard Nixon. It is true that luck seems to be on the side of the GOP and that John Mitchell has stepped down (officially at least) as the campaign manager of Mr. Nixon but we doubt if this advantage, by itself, is decisive. The portents, in fact, are uncertain. There is going to be a solar eclipse this Monday as Democrats assemble, which is obviously a signal of something or other, but we guess that astrology is no more reliable than Gallup at this stage. After the 1968 Chicago convention, Gallup reported (Aug. 21) Nixon 45 percent; Hum- phrey 29; Wallace 18; Uncertain 8. That was a Nixon lead of 16 percentage points, an ap- parently irreversible advantage. Even on Oct. 10, the Times reported, “Gallup Poll Finds Nixon is Maintaining Large Lead.” But wait a bit! The final Harris survey announced that “Humphrey Broke Through to a 43 to 40 Percent Lead over Nixon; Wallace 13 Percent and 4 Percent Undecided.” The actual result was, of course, a sen- sational dead-heat of less that one percent— Nixon 43.4 percent; Humphrey 42,7; Wallace 13.5, and 15 million registered voters sitting it out. Why didn’t they vote? Maybe they had seen by the polls that a Nixon victory was a cinch and didn’t bother. When this column in 1968 twitted the long- suffering Gallup organization that the Humphrey emergence had not been forecast, _m Es Tricky spots. A heavy dresser from the second story: bedroom had smashed itself at the foot of the stairs. In an upstairs closet they found a sodden photograph album. John picked it up. At least he'd salvage something today; there was no question of cleaning up yet, the first impression was too overwhelming, too paralyzing. . Sitting beside the album was the metal tu John used to soak his feet in. His factory job had always required a lot of standing and still did, even now that he was foreman of his department. The tub must have floated as the water rose because the towel lying inside it’ was neatly folded and dry. Seeing that clean white towel sitting amid the mounds of filthy clothes, amid the have survived) Amy broke down and cried. She cried all the way back to the friends’ house where she and her husband were staying. She cried over the ruins of her life. For 25 years she and John had worked, worked overtime and on Saturdays. They had saved, had gone without vacations, had gone without so many things to be able to move into their own home in a pleasant neighborhood. And now it was gone-everything. The neigh- borhood, their friends, the home, the plush wall to wall carpeting, the TV, the stereo, the brand new dining room set-everything. 25 years of work. It was all buried in the mud, all soaked through, poisoned, ruined, gone. Impossibly and irretrievably lost. Amy cried and her tears traced tortured paths down her dirt smeared cheeks. “What can I do?” John asked his friends, “‘T’ve lost everything. ‘25 years ‘it took... I don’t have the money to rebuild and I'm too old to start over.” That afternoon John took the photo album into the backyard. Maybe it hadn’t been worth picking up. It was heavy and sticky and had the same sour stench as the mud. Besides, it was the oldest album. The new ones, filled with a few, carefully composed, technically flawless photographs, enlarged from color transparencies, were missing. The old album was a haphazard collection of small, black and white snapshots, taken with a cheap camera and badly exposed. “We can spread them out in the sun to dry,” John told his wife. So they sat in the grass and salvaged what they could. The emulsion was already pealing off many of the photos; on others, vague faces smiled up out of rusty stains. But it that John had snapped pictures of everything-not once, but two or three times-so nothing was left entirely undocumented. Here was the tiny apartment they had lived in when they were first married. Here was a Christmas tree, its top flat, cut off because John had over estimated the height of the living room ceiling. “Look, John. Our old Ford. Now why did you take a picture of that,’it was five years old when we bought it.” Mostly the pictures weren't of objects but of John and Amy. The young, smiling couple seemed almost strangers. This album had lain unopened for many years. “Remember how we used to go for picnics at the state park,’ said John. ‘‘I&didn’t cost us anything. I'd almost forgotte?? suppose it’s still there. There you are with our picnic basket-the one you used for laundry during the winter.” “That dress I have on is so terrible..But here’s another picture of the living room. We had a gorgeous view of the alleyway.” John had forgotten so much of this. The motheaten furniture for example and the ancient refrigerator. It hardly seemed possible. He had only happy memories of those days. : Seeing the dingy old apartment reminded Amy of the home she’d just lost. Ze for some reason she didn’t feel like w Not everything was thought. everything. “Well,” he said, ‘‘I don’t know what we're lost, she Not take a look around. We’ll manage somehow.”’ a spokesman replied patiently, “Not so!” From Sept. 28 he wrote, “HHH gained on the average about one-third of a point a day.” Many people, he accurately noted, ‘changed their minds during that period.” In the meantime, the convention process you are now about to watch is a uniquely American invention; it is preposterous in nearly every way and the aggravating thing is that it works pretty well. How can 5000 delegates and alternates, 80 percent of whom have never attended a convention before, meet for a presumed five days, and pick the right man for the most powerful job on earth? In that time they will hardly have a ehance to find where the convenient quick lunches are, let alone the rest rooms! And yet the in- credible performance goes on fairly well, as it does every four years, with the Democrats this time fighting to stay alive, the Republicans to stay awake. What stands out spectacularly on the eve of the convention is the enormous power of the temporary chairman, Lawrence O’Brien, to make rulings on credentials that may decide the outcome. As an afterthought both parties in a sleepy final session will also ratify the choice of a vice president, normally picked as the opposite of their chiefs, often incongruously. In 1884 Blane and his running mate Logan detested each other and as a versifier put it, “We never speak as we pass by-Me to Jim Blaine, nor him to I.” Radical Bryan, 36, found himself linked to a Maine Banker, Arthur Sewall, 81. In 1940 Willkie had never before met Senator Charles McNary. And how many can tell today who was Gold- water’s running mate? (All right, we looked it up—it was Congressman William E. Miller, Thissa 'n Thatta I suppose that if I tried hard enough I could find out which wily legislators worked with the Shapp Chap to plot and establish the unbelievably tricky salary grab of the legisla- ture, the governor and other state officers; some judges and I know not who else, but the knowledge wouldn't do me much good. I would only establish what I already know, that the average present day poitician of this Commonwealth sees public office only as a means for private gain. Itis pretty hard to believe that it is legally permissible for state senators and represen- tatives to establish a board of unelected citizens, whose notions of a salary raise auto- matically become law, unless challenged and voted down by the Legislature. In fact, I don’t believe it is and can only hope that somewhere in the state there are some honest attorneys who can and will challenge this monstrosity of a law. For what politician is going to resist the lure of greatly increased personal income with no more work added to his present stint of two days a week, when all he needs to do is sit back and let this blow at the taxpayers take effect—to his benefit if reelected? As I get it, the judges will get the raise at once, but the governor and members of the legislature now holding office cannot get it during their present term. Of course the Chap is eligible for reelection even though a thoroughly unpopular governor, but assemblymen in the house only get a two-year term at present, so if the grab goes through, as it probably will, they will get the raise in January, if and when they are reelected. The salary boost will take a legislator in the state house from $7200 a year to $19,200 a year, plus $6000 more for expenses. This is quite a raise, but through the chicanery of the method, the legislators won’t even have to have their vote counted and they will be able to come to their constituents in November and claim that they were really against the raise, but didn’t get a chance to register their stand against it. Of course, they will not think of turning back to the state, the amount they feel that they are overpaid. Some of the legislators have brought up a weird argument for justfying the raise. They say that it will attract to the legislature a better type of man, who will be worth more— but on the other hand, most of them are up for reelection, so what they are saying is that they would be better legislators, if paid more. This same argument is brought up by corporation management every year as an argument for the astronomical salaries paid to management officials—and I have no more faith in the management argument than I do in that of our poor, threadbare legislators. In both cases, it is thinly-disquised human greed. In the one case, management runs corporations for their own benefit rather than for the stockholders and in the other, the legislators run the state government for their own benefit, rather than for that of the tax- payers. In both cases, nobody is trying to stop them from quitting and letting somebody else have the job. It may be that they are not nearly so competent and talented and in- dispensable as they think they are, and that New York.) To summarize the extraordinary nature of this number two political figure, one heartbeat from the White House, there have been 15 occasions when there was no vice president at all (a total of 36 years) and nobody was any worse for it. This is too flippant a way, however, to momentous conventions in American history. Anybody can see with half an eye that there are issues at stake here whose handling will affect American politics for a generation. On the. mechanical side the.Democratic party is trying to reform itself and our guess is that neither party is ever going to be the same again. We have always wondered why American political parties, unlike European counterparts, don’t have biennial or annual meetings of some sort. There now seems a good chance that the Democrats will try this. We guess that the Republicans will follow, if the trend is to more disciplined parties. Among Democrats there is an almost classic struggle between ‘‘Regulars’’ and the “Outsiders,” with the latter making a revolutionary power play to take over the party. We aren’t sure that simplistic reforms that give proportional representation to answer but the mass infusion of new delegates and wider participation in the mystical process of electing an American king is of extraordinary interest. Into this drama emerges the accidental figure of George McGovern. President or not, we suspect his emergence will never let the scene be quite the same again. The horror of some middle-class columnists in discovering that McGovern not merely advocates a more equable sharing of America’s wealth, but the new guy, who will work for less, can do a ‘better job than they can. In any case, it is impossible to blame inflation on the labor unions, or to blame them for asking for a big raise. The example set for them shows an utter disregard for inflation * and an utter disregard for the taxpayer by our state legislature. x ; The last time our sapient law-givers tried to stick us with a raise (and it didn’t come off) the promise was forthcoming that the legislature would cut down its membership and save the amount of the raise—the ex- penditure would be the same. Just what happened to this very sensible idea, by the way? Well, some of the legislators, who hap- pened to be equipped with at least some conscience, did bring up a bill for paring the size of the legislature, but, of course, it was voted down. Just which politician do you think is going to vote himself out of office? » really means it, is funny. He is asking the right questions, what to do about the growth of corporate power, the dominance of economic giants, the corrupt relationship of big business and politicians, the disparity of wealth among ‘‘haves” and ‘‘have-nots.” McGovern is accused of offering figures that don’t add up, but it should be said in all fairness that Mr. Nixon has been trying to add up his budget for four years a\§# appears to have missed the mark by $100 billion so far. From the political viewpoint, Sen. MeGovern has probably made a mistake to let the election be a test of his economic program. Voters normally vote against somebody and this year shouldyg a refer- endum, for good or ill, on Mr. Nixon. Are employment around six percent? Are they content with taxes that widen the gap between rich and poor yet don’t balance the budget? Are they happy with smart bombs and mined harbors, with smashed electric plants and dikes, a policy that in essence adds up to the crucifixion of a small nation? Maybe Sen. McGovern is unwise in the short run to offer distracting economic proposals now but America is here for the long run, and soomer or later his ideas must be discussed. In the meantime, now as always, you can tell the difference between a Democratic and Republican convention in a glance. The Republicans are comfortable chamber of commerce types, with ladies in blue hair rinse, eager to let the Jews and Irish know they sympathize. The Democrats are younger and noisier, cruder with the great weight of world problems on their shoulders. That's the difference. We advise you not to lay your bets on the result for a whildy, fe The argument, as poor a orglas I have ever heard, was that passage twould deny their constituents proper representation. Of course all we need to do is to look at the newspapers to see that the more represen- tation we have, the more it costs us. We could well do with a lot less of it. I suppose a lot of my readers share the feeling of hopelessness that comes os<r me when I consider the fact that our elected representatives, who promise us all sorts of economies and reduced taxes when they run for office, as soon as elected, organize themselves into a sort of elected mafia for the purpose of lining their own pockets at the expense of the utterly helpless taxpayers. There must be others who feel as I do, because in today’s paper I read a poll which gave public opinion as to the credibility and honesty of twenty occupations. At ti bottom -of the list was ‘‘used car salesman’ and just above it* politician.” scription, $6. per year. Call 675-5211 for subscripfions. Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks Editor: Doris R. Mallin News editor: Shawn Murphy Advertising: Carolyn Brennan pe
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers