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The ADVANCE, September 29, 2021 /Page 5A
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
—James Russell Lowell
editorials
The Wheel Fell Off
From the Porch
By Amber Nagle
Well, the front
wheel of the riding
lawn mower fell off
again Friday — third
time this year. My
husband, Gene, had
hopped aboard the
seat, cranked the big
orange zero-turn lawn mower, and driven it
down our long driveway to cut the grass at
the front of our property. Ten minutes later,
I happened to look out the laundry room
door and saw him walking back up the hill
toward the house carrying something. He
looked hot and disgruntled.
I stepped out onto the front porch to
ask what was wrong. That’s when I saw the
big tire in his hand.
When he got close to the house, he
threw the tire and the big metal frame into a
flower bed and blurted out an expletive that
would make my mother cringe. He then
huffed by me and into the house, slamming
the laundry room door behind him. Thud.
I stepped off the porch and studied the
wheel. The long bolt that affixed the orange
wheel frame to the decking of the lawn-
mower had sheared off again — just like the
other two times. The first time it happened,
we drove to Home Depot and bought a sim
ilar bolt. That bolt lasted about a month.
Then, we ordered the exact replacement
bolt from an online shop and waited a week
or more for the bolt to be delivered. When
the package arrived, it contained two bolts,
almost as if the vendor knew one would
fail — as if the parts company was saying,
“Here’s a spare, just in case.”
The actual repair process only takes
about an hour, but Gene and I are starting
to believe our efforts are in vain — that we
are throwing away our money, wasting time,
and getting our hands dirty and greasy for
nothing.
I understand my husband’s frustration.
We’ve gotten a lot of rain recently, and the
grass is growing like weeds, which is kind of
funny since a lot of our turf areas are actu
ally weeds, not grass. It’s been hard to keep
up with the grass cutting, even when the
riding lawnmower is functioning properly
with four working, attached wheels.
After Friday’s wheel incident, I fol
lowed Gene into the house.
“So ... what happened?” I asked gently.
“I was driving along, then all of a sud
den, the ride got really bumpy,” he said.
“Next thing I know, the wheel rolled away
from the lawnmower at a 45 degree and fell
over in the grass.”
I envisioned the wheel rolling away on
its own — going rogue. Of course, I dared
not laugh.
We all encounter periods when things
just start breaking or falling apart. We’ve
been on a roll recently. Looking back, I
think it all started in the summer when I
realized that the radio and speakers weren’t
working in the car due to a blown out ampli
fier. We fixed it with a part we ordered off of
eBay. Since then, it has been one thing after
another. We have a cracked windshield that
needs to be replaced, a big tree that fell dur
ing a recent storm that needs to be cut up
and burned, an overhead light fixture that
sizzles when we flip the wall switch, a Weed
Eater trimmer that won’t advance its twine,
a washing machine with a malfunctioning
door, an air conditioner that has decided
not to blow out cool air, and now the riding
lawn mower is out of commission — again.
It’s hard to work full-time and manage
all the broken stuff around here sometimes.
Our weekends consist of fixing broken
things then catching up with the backlog of
chores. It can be exhausting at times.
When my father was alive, he often
joked that he “was going to take that chain
saw and throw it out into the river,” or “take
that trolling motor and throw it into the riv
er.” Whatever he was frustrated with at the
time, that’s what he noted he was going to
hurl into the deep waters of the Ocmulgee.
It was just his way of voicing his aggrava
tion. He never really threw anything in the
river — well, not that I’m aware of.
I’ve witnessed Gene get so annoyed
with a project that he slung his tools into
the woods. I eased into the woods and re
trieved them.
When something fails or an unexpected
problem arises after a laborious, tiring pro
cess, people often use the idiom, “then the
wheels fell off,” to describe the disaster. The
irony of our most recent lawnmower story is
that the wheel actually fell off — no idiom
required to describe that fiasco. Gene was
simply riding along, and then the wheel fell
off — literally — for the third time this year.
Ugh!
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR...
Our American
Heritage and
Legacy is Toast!
Tucker Carlson: Joe Biden revealed
why he supports illegal immigration in
201S, he wants to change the country.
Joe Biden could stop the influx of
migrants at the southern border, but he
won’t.
“An unrelenting stream of immigra
tion.” Why? Joe Biden said it. To change
the racial mix of the country. That’s the
reason. To reduce the political power of
people whose ancestors lived here, and
dramatically increase the proportion of
Americans newly arrived from the third
world.
And then Biden went further and
said that nonwhite DNA is the source of
our strength. Imagine saying that. This
is the language of eugenics. It’s horrify
ing. But there’s a reason Biden said it. In
political terms, this policy is sometimes
called the great replacement — the re
placement of legacy Americans, with
more obedient people from faraway
countries.
They brag about it all the time, but if
you dare to say this is happening, they’ll
scream at you with maximum hysteria.
And yet here you have Joe Biden
confirming his motive, on tape, with a
smile on his face. No one who talks like
this should ever be the President of the
United States.
The president has a moral obligation
to represent all Americans equally, not
just those of a specific color.
For four years, remember, they told
you Donald Trump was a racist. But has
anyone shown that Trump ever in his life
said anything half as disgusting as Joe
Biden said on that tape? No. No one has.
Daniel Reeves, Augusta, GA
Veteran, U.S. Air Force
COVID Masks
The constant wearing of the face
mask to protect people from becoming
infected by COVID virus has potential
drawbacks that should be given serious
consideration.
The air we exhale is made up of C02,
and moisture from our lungs and small
amounts of mucus from our mouth as we
talk, sneeze or laugh is deposited on the
mask over time, accumulating varying
amounts of moisture that the mask col
lects, becoming wet. This moist mouth
cover is touched, pushed about, adjusted
and constantly taken on, off, and pock
eted over many times. People’s hands
touch many, many objects collecting
germs that are deposited on these masks,
creating a Petri dish of possible serious
sickness.
Moisture plus heat plus bacteria plus
time equals potential illness.
Ergo, follow the science, not the pol
itics.
Michael C. Gioia
£4M0N0 &U2S STICKS TU2 MNPfRte*
Philip Weltner used his
pickaxe for public good
He was
called “Mr.
Anonymous, Jr.”
I thought about
him the other
day, after I read
the U.S. Depart
ment of Justice
has launched a
statewide inves
tigation into
Georgia’s pris
ons, focusing on prisoner-on-prisoner
violence and whether the state is violat
ing inmates’ constitutional rights by fail
ing to adequately protect them. This
past week, members of the Georgia
House Democratic Caucus Committee
on Crisis in Prisons held their own hear
ings as well.
The more things change, the more
they remain the same. Long before Tom
Murton became warden of the Arkansas
prison system in 1968 and discovered
massive abuses in the system that led to
his dismissal — He was the inspiration
for “Brubaker,” a fictional account of
that incident and portrayed by Robert
Redford — Dr. Philip Robert Weltner
was getting himself arrested in Camp
bell County (now a part of Fulton
County) and placed on the chain gang.
The year, 1912, and Dr. Weltner
wielded a pickaxe, posing as a convicted
forger when he actually was deputy so
licitor general of Fulton County. Welt
ner was seeking to expose abusive prison
officials and point out the less-than-
ideal treatment of inmates. He allowed
himself to be “outed” after a couple of
days in order to focus public attention
on abusive prison officials and point out
the less-than-ideal treatment of inmates.
Alas, here we are 119 years later and it is
deja vu all over again.
But I submit Philip Weltner’s un
dercover work back then was a lot more
dangerous than in today’s 24-7 news cy
cle and social media blather. He was one
of a kind. I was honored to know him.
Dr. Weltner was the father of the
late Georgia Cong. Charles Longstreet
Weltner, a Democrat who represented
the Atlanta area in the U.S. House of
Representatives from 1962 to 1966.
Charles Weltner was one of only
two Southern members of Congress to
condemn the 16th Street Baptist Church
bombing in Birmingham in 1963 that
killed four girls and injured a number of
others. He was the only member of the
state’s congressional delegation (and the
only Democrat from the Deep South) to
vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He
was liberal when that was not a popular
position in our state, to state the obvi
ous.
In 1966, Cong. Weltner refused to
run for reelection when the state Demo
cratic Party demanded he sign a loyalty
oath that would require him to support
Lester Maddox’s gubernatorial cam
paign against Republican U.S. Rep.
Howard “Bo” Callaway. Weltner said, “I
love the Congress, but I will give up my
office before I give up my principles.”
And he did. Cut from his father’s cloth.
Charles Weltner later became a
judge in the Fulton County Superior
Court and then an associate justice of
the Supreme Court of Georgia. In June
By Dick Yarbrough
1992, he was elected chief justice. He
served just a few months before his
death in August 1992.
Dr. Philip Weltner was also the fa
ther of Callender Weltner Dorsey, a
Steel Magnolia of the first rank. She was
married to Jasper Dorsey, who became
vice president of Southern Bell’s Geor
gia operations and a valued mentor to
me. So was Callender, although she suf
fered fools poorly, and I tried not to give
her a lot of opportunities to suffer.
An unabashed Roosevelt New
Dealer, Philip Weltner clashed many
times with segregationist Gov. Gene
Talmadge and had a role in scuttling
Talmadge’s senatorial campaign against
Richard Russell. He was a social re
former, ahead of his time. He worked
tirelessly for prison reform, juvenile jus
tice, public education and race relations.
In 1933, Dr. Weltner was named the
second-ever chancellor of the University
System of Georgia and later president of
Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, from
1943 to 1953. When he arrived,
Oglethorpe was unaccredited and facing
serious financial problems. When he re
tired, the school had been reaccredited
and was in solid financial shape.
Dr Weltner was a close associate of
philanthropist Robert Woodruff, who
was known as “Mr. Anonymous,” and
who financed so many long-lasting proj
ects including the Memorial Arts Center
in Atlanta with the quiet help of Dr.
Philip Weltner. Hence, “Mr. Anony
mous, Jr.”
So why am I telling you this? Kids
today are all about tearing down our past
and are no doubt blissfully ignorant of
the good works of giants like Dr. Philip
Weltner, who came before them. They
need to do their homework and under
stand there is a right way and a wrong
way to do things. History has shown he
did it right. He used his pickaxe for
good.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@
dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373,
Atlanta, Georgia 31139 or on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/dickyarb.
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