PAGE FOUR
EDITORIAL
Most people pay for it...pay a lot,
either in higher insurance premiums
“or higher taxes. But here in the Back
Mountain it’s a tremendous bargain--
as a matter of fact it’s free, except for
“a voluntary contribution or two which
at least a significant percentage of the
citizenry chooses to overlook.
“It” is ‘‘fire protection’. If you
don’t have it, your household
insurance rates skyrocket. If you're a
city dweller, you likely find it included
in the city tax rate and, even then, you
are at the mercy of labor unions and
the city political structure.
In the Back’ Mountain, volunteer
groups in virtually every municipality
provide fire fighting and often
ambulance services without any tax
support, without any remuneration to
the volunteer firefighters and raise by
private donation and fundraising
projects equipment and operating
funds needed each year.
They buy trucks now costing $50,000
EDITORIAL
Further information on the proposal
to assign the Dallas post office as a
branch of the Wilkes-Barre post office
seems to indicate the controversial
proposal is an addenda to another
more basic plan.
The initial plan was to consider the
merging of Shavertown, a Wilkes-
Barre branch, into the Dallas office,
~ which is less than a mile away
compared with about 10 miles to the
Wilkes-Barre office, the present
‘GROSSMAN
each’ and more. They donate long
hours to regular training at their own
expense. They serve the community
in projects unrelated to firefighting
and emergency services. And they
come when called, even for false
alarms, at any hour of the night or
day, willing to risk their lives if
necessary to provide a kind of
security for area residents.
It’s almost amazing, that in the
cynical world of the Seventies, such
men and women are working
consistently and conscientiously only
to be of service to their neighbors.
The least the public can do is
support their solicitation, such as the
drive now underway for Dallas Fire
and Ambulance Inc. There is no
minimum, no penalty if you are
unable to give...only courteous letter
of request.
How can the citizenry, in good
conscience, deny them?
--by Ray Carlsen
Shavertown parent.
Then Wilkes-Barre postal
authorities apparently suggested the
Dallas modification.
In any event, we are also advised
that pending legislation on postal
reorganization which is now before
the U.S. Congress has resulted in a
moratorium against any post office
closing or status change while the
legislation is pending.
--Ray Carlsen
by Howard J. Grossman
Statistics are often misleading and
do not represent the realities of life
when it comes to consideration for the
elderly. This is especially true in the
situation which faces the senior
citizens in Northeastern
Pennsylvania.
More than 13.2 percent of the total
population of 875,000 residents within
the seven counties of our region are 65
years and older. The percentage
relationship to the total population
threatens to increase in the 1980
census, and there is little prospect
‘that this percentage relationship will
be lowered in coming decades.
Knowing that a large segment of the
region’s population falls within this
age group has led many persons to
conclude that the region has faced and
will continue to face particular
problems which other regions do not
face. A basic problem is attitudinal
rather than physical, insofar as the
senior citizen is often considered to be
a liability and not an asset or a
resource.
While recognizing the particular
problems of the senior citizen in the
area of housing, income, jobs, health,
sight of the tremendous resource this
population group can offer
Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Volunteerism is a strong motivating
force throughout the United States,
and the senior citizen group can offer
a potential for tapping into their
experiences and judgements so that
community problems will have a
better chance of being solved.
If, in, fact, the trend continues
toward a larger segment of the
population in the age group 65 years
and over, and if, in fact, more persons
retire at an earlier age so that the age
group normally associated with senior
citizenship becomes a much larger
group, then an all-out effort should be
established to use these resources
toward community development
problem solving.
There is specific legislation
designed to provide assistance to
senior citizens. The Older Americans
Act of 1965, as amended has created a
new emphasis toward senior citizen
issues. The prestige of a White House
Conference has allowed a focusing of
problem solving toward the aged. All
counties in Northeastern
Pennsylvania have area wide
other developments have allowed a
new focus on the senior citizen, much
remains to be accomplished.
Sometime ago the senior citizen was
identified as the forgotten American.
In many respects, we still have not
changed our basic attitude toward
being someone who is useless to
society and must be cared for and
considered as a nuisance.
© In stead, weshould take every step
possible toward using the senior
citizen and considering that age group
as a special part of American society
and encourage all persons within the
age group capable of contributing to
community development to fully
participate in planning and
maintaining community resources
and programs. In this way, we will
have achieved a better quality of life
for all Northeastern Pennsylvanians.
To Lee Richards, sports columnist,
Sir:
I have difficulty believing you call
_ yourself a sportswriter after reading
your past two columns, concerning
the Olympics.
The Olympics are not for the United
States alone. Doubtless, you were in
favor of pulling out from the games,
but neglected to notice that the
American team was not. The decision
had been reached even before the
team arrived in Montreal.
So too, your treatment of Olga
Korbett was unfair and unnecessary.
Any one following the career of the
young gymnast realizes she loves the
United States, and her people.
And she is a crowd pleaser. Despite
a somewhat poor showing at the
recent games, Olga had the support of
the capacity crowd behind her, and
it’s enly too bad that the U.S. has no
one like her, or Nelly Kim.
"Howard Cossell may beat his
favorites into our heads, but be
careful of pointing the finger. Week
after week, we suffer the/ same
predictions, the same astute guesses
concerning football, baseball, or
basketball that come rolling out of
your typewriter. ABC still spells
“Olympics’’ to many of us, so until
you don suit and tie as an anchorman
yourself, please: enough is enough.
I for one give the network much
credit. It is ABC that gives: our
winning athletes victory dinners, for
family and friends as well. The
Olympic committee, however, prefers
wining and dining board members,
and not the athletes who won.
At least I was glad you saw the
“Olympic Spirit” in the victory lap of
Edwin Moses and Mike Shine. I was
white put-on, to show the American
way, and it was hardly that.
In addition--much to your
disappointment, I imagine--rest
assured that a lot of people would pay
money to see all those “Communist
dolls’’ perform. And why not?
Certainly it’s no worse than paying to
see a bunch of doped-up, higher than a
kite, grown men bang one another up
on a football playing field--but then, I
forgot: that’s the American way.
Maybe the Communist system is too
harsh, but I feel our own government
could spend a little less time and
1
by the Rev. Charles H. Gilbert
This time my meditations are in a
different key. Or I should say ‘‘about
different keys’’! And not piano keys,
either. I sat with my feet propped up
on the front porch railing, with my
eyes meditating on the big old adding
machine I had just lugged up from the
cellar.
I'm getting it in condition to be
offered to the collections of oddities
and endities that are being
contributed to Saturday’s ‘‘Yard
Sale’’ at Mount Zion Church. Mount
Zion people are fortunate in having
lawns and yards and perhaps we need
to clean house and bring things
together for a more or less
commercial sales project. This on the
theory that many have stuff ‘n’ junk in
their houses that they don’t want any
more, but that some other people
might be glad to get at a bargain
price.
So I said, “This is a good time to get
rid of the old adding machine that I
once paid $36 for.” It really does add
figures to figures and gets right
answere if you punch the right keys
and pull the right lever. It is one of the
few machines I have never been
tempted to take apart to see how it
works, if it does! If you use the dollars
and cents and right signs you can see
“how much money you could add to
what you have and be a rich man.
That is fun if you can take it for fun.
1 was awfully poor as a child but my
dear mother never told us so, for she
was a proud New Englander for whom
it was all right for everybody to be
thrifty, but you didn’t have to call it
poor. But I did wish we didn’t always
have to go without things.
At our school we used slates about
9x12 to write on; it was cheaper than
paper. I was also taught to be saving
of paper, like used envelopes, like
Abraham Lincoln wrote his famous
speech on. On my slate I used to draw
pictures of bags and bags of money,
lots of it. I could write labels on the
bags such as a hundred dollars, or a
thousand, or better yet a million, a
billion, a trillion, and why limit
oneself in making bags of money of
any amount like skillions of dollars,
bags piled upon bag somewhere.
1 felt they would be safe on my slate-
-and I never knew of losing a cent of
all that. Nor did robbers ever think it
worth while to steal when all one had
to do was draw more pictures of more
money.
I don’t remember what I used all
that mint of money for. Even though I
was so poor that kind ladies
sometimes took me to the store and
To the Editor,
The Lake-Lehman School Board has
been told by state inspectors that the
Noxen Elementary Bldg. will be
condemned.
Existing elementary schools in the
district are not adequate to house all
of the Noxen students. A new building
must be built, but the location of that
building must be determined by the
needs of the district as a whole. the
school board plans a district wide
census and a needs assessment study
to determine where the new building
should be built.
The people of Noxen don’t want to
lose their neighborhood school. They
say new elementary schools have
been built in other areas of the
district. They want a new one built in
Noxen or modular buildings put on the
site of the existing school. They don’t
want their pupils bused to other
schools in the district. More than 90
percent of their pupils walk to school
and home for lunch. The Noxen
Building does not have a cafeteria.
They do not want a teacher shift that
would benefit the pupil-teacher ratio
in the district as a whole.
Ross, Lehman-Jackson, and Lake
Elementary schools have had a pupil
teacher ratio varying from 39-1 in
Kindergarten to 31-1 in sixth grade.
Variations in other grades are
generally 24 to 26 to 1.
The per pupil teacher ratio at Noxen
is so low as to make it .fiscally
irresponsible to maintain the school or
consider building a new one at the
present site. There are slightly more
than 80 full day students using the
building at a cost of almost $1,100.00
per pupil. The full day classroom ratio
is from 14 to 18 pupils per teacher.
There are so few Kindergarten
students that only a half sesseion of
Kindergarten will be held.
Dividing the number of teachers in
the district by the number of pupils,
the average classroom size would be
24-1. The problem being where the
pupils are the teachers aren’t, and
where the pupils aren’t, the teachers
are.
The parents of Noxen want a hot
food service provided at their school,
and books are fit to read, and more
time and money helping our gifted
athletes.
Let’s face it. If something isn’t done
for our athletes, we’re going to be just
another country at the Olympics in
1980, and not the United States of
America we all want to see.
Jane Lutz
\
£4 Rotary
plans
supper
Dallas Rotarians this
week announced plans for
the sponsorship of their
annual turkey day dinner
on Nov. 6 at the Dallas
High School cafeteria.
Rotarian Dale Parry is
chairman of the event,
which is scheduled follow-
ing a home football game
for the Dallas Mountain-
eers.
Tickets will be available
by fall fair time, according
to committee reports. a
so children from the other areas can
be bused to Noxen. Considering the
district as a whole, and the tax dollars
service, it is difficult, if not impossible
to consider it as an interim plan.
They say if some of their students
must bring ‘bag’ lunches to school,
then bus the children to Noxen from
Ross, Lake, Lehman-Jackson and let
them bring ‘‘bag’” lunches. Only six
students at the Noxen Building
carried their lunches last year; and
they are proposing to have large
numbers of elementary students from
other areas ‘‘bag” their lunch to a
building threatened with state
condemnation. Do they think this is a
reasonable position?
The school board has considered
busing Noxen’s 5th grade pupils to
another building in the district and
making : a teacher shift and class
assignment change that would benefit
the students of the district as a whole.
Most pupils in the Lake-Lehman
District ‘are bused to school in
Kindergarten beginning at age five -
except at the Noxen School.
The Noxen parents say they will not
allow their eleven year old fifth grade
students to be bused. If it is less
expensive to the district as a whole
than starting a hot food service and
busing children INTO Noxen, then one
small segment of a school district
should not be allowed to dictate what
should be done - and, what conditions
it will accept. In rural school districts
busing is a way of life. It is a practical
necessity.
‘bought me some new clothes, I never
realized I was being treated to charity
clothes. Funny, I never thought to
spend some of those bags of trillions to
buy more and better clothes for more
people all around me.
I regret to say it never entered my
head to waste any of those skillions of
coin by putting big money on the
collection plate on Sundays. Nobody
had as yet taught me to tithe; I hadn’t
got as far as fractions in school yet. As
I remember my ‘‘addition’’ in those
days I’ had no intention of giving any of
it away, not even to the Lord! Guess I
was really a dyed-in-the-wool miser.
In later years I learned that there
was such a thing as squeezing money
so tight that it made you practically
sick with what is called a ‘poverty
consciousness’; the opposite of that is
the ‘prosperity consciousness’. I like
the idea of thinking of one’s riches not
in terms of that money I used to draw
on my slate, but in the real stuff.
We get joy and gladness from living
on rich ideas, rich in thinking,
inspirations that one just has to have
which is not related to those old
dustybags of money, made of chalk
dust on a slate. It’s the wealth of
discovering meaning in a Greek word,
like that word I gave you a few weeks
ago which means ‘full measure of’.
The School Board reserves the right
to bus children between buildings of
the district as they see fit. They must
act in the best interests of the people
as a whole.
Jackson Township is presently the
area in the district with the greatest
growth. It has never had an
elementary school. The Lehman-
Jackson Elementary Building came
into being because there was no room
for the junior high students from
Noxen, Ross, Lake, “Lehman, and
Jackson Twps. in the existing
buildings. The decision was made to
remodel the old Lake Lehman High
School, turned elementary school, to a
junior high facility. A new building
had to be built for the displaced
elementary pupils: :
The Lehman-Jackson Building is
now for grades K-5 from Lehman and
Jackson Twps. The sixth grade wing
houses all of the students in the
district including Noxen, Lake, Ross,
Jackson and Lehman. These students
are bused from the outlying areas in
special ‘‘express’’ or shuttle buses.
The: Lake Lehman School Board
could not justify a decision that would
meet the demands and calm the
threats of one small segment of the
district while being detrimental to the
students, teachers, and taxpayers of
the district as a whole.
Mrs. George A. Butler Jr.
RD 2
Dallas
Ray Carlsen, Editor & Publisher
Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks, Editor Emeritus
Joseph ‘“Red’’ Jones, Advertising
Charlot Denmon, News & Advertising
Virginia Hoover, Circulation
Bea LaBar, Circulation Asst.
Blaze Carlsen, Asst. to Publisher
Susan Heller, Office & Production «
Olga Kostrobala, Office & Production
Eleanor Rende, Office & Production
Jane Lutz, Office & Production
Randy Steele, Advertising Art & Photography
Sally Riegel, Office & Production 3
W.R. Risse, News and Advertising
Greg Mercurio, News and Advertising Art
MEMBER
N:N-A::.
Association - Founded 1885
March 3, 1889. Subscriptions, $9 per year.
Telephone 675-5211 or 825-6868, POSTMASTE®:
Box 366, Dallas, Pa. 18612.
Ww
I guss the words one can think up
and put down by hitting some
wealth for me than the rows of keys on
that old adding machine. But I hope
whoever lugs that adding machine
home will find it useful in adding up
Wood proposes
sunset measure
Sen. T. Newell Wood, R-20th,
recently cosponsored legislation
establishing an orderly system for
abolishing many agencies, boards and
commissions that no longer can
justify their operations, a measure
popularly known as a ‘‘sunset’’ bill.
Wood explained that public
hearings will be held with regard to
this ‘Sunset’ legislation, and the
agencies in question will have the
burden of proving public need for
their services. Any = agency
reestablished will have a life span of
six years before it again comes up for
review. )
‘“Taxpaying citizens are keenly
aware that we can ill afford the
expense of state government as it now
exists--a constantly growing monster
with an enormously expanding
tendency to regulate activities whick§
would function better unregulated,’
Wood said.
‘“The potential savings to taxpayers
will be significant if we abolish or
consolidate many overlapping , and
unnecessary agencies, boards and
commissions. Too often, the cost of
running these agencies far exceeds
the cost of the problems they were
created to solve.”
Wood, who is minority whip,
continued, ‘‘The bureaucratic
tentacles of our octopus-like state
government have grown
tremendously without proper
accountability to the public.”
He cited the Weather Modification
Board, which has met about 20 times
since its creation in 1968, as an
excellent example of a non-productive
government agency. The sever,
Agriculture Department on the
science of weather modification
through such activities as seeding
clouds, reducing lightning and fog
suppression.
“The State Lottery Commission is
another bureaucratic farce which
could be abolished without loss to the
taxpayers,” Wood said. ‘‘The State
Lottery is operated by the Revenue
Department. State Lottery
Commission members have collected
more than $66,000 over the last four
years for travel and expenses while
their meetings have produced nothing
of significance, as all actual work is
done by the Revenue Department.
“This legislation would terminate,
by July 1, 1978, activities of smaller
boards or agencies, such as those in
the Departments of Agriculture,
stated. ‘‘In this way, we would work
into the more complex departments;
Welfare by July 1, 1982.”
“This does not necessarily mean
that all agencies would be
terminated,”” Wood emphasized, ‘‘but
bureaucracy seeks to expand its
powers, bloat payrolls and squander
taxpayers’ money rather than to
evaluate its wusefullness. This
legislation would require that this
evaluation be made,”’ Wood
concluded.