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The ADVANCE, December 8, 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
Dog Bite
It wasn’t the first
time a dog had bitten
me, and it probably
won’t be the last. I’ve
been a runner since
I was a teenager, and
most runners have
been bitten by a dog
or two.
The incident happened three Mondays
ago. It was a beautiful autumn day — sun
ny with a bright blue sky embellished with
white fluffy clouds that were in no particular
hurry to cross the sky. I decided I needed a
little exercise, so I laced up my running shoes,
stretched my legs, and took off running down
a scenic country road.
I’ve run past this particular dog over a
hundred times in the last year. The Australian
Cattle Dog (people around here call them
Blue Heelers) is usually sprawled out on her
side in the grass near a porch in a neighbor’s
front yard. Up until that day, she never paid
me any attention.
But three Mondays ago, as I jogged up
the hill that curves by the neighbor’s house,
I noticed the Blue Heeler was standing by the
road watching me. Then I heard her make a
noise — more of a grunt than a growl — and
saw her charge forward.
I’ve been around dogs all my life. From
experience, I know to avoid eye contact and
stop running — dogs often lose interest when
the chase ends. I moved to the opposite side
of the road and slowed to a walk. I turned my
gaze away from the dog, and in my friendliest
voice said, “Hey, baby. How you doing?”
And that’s when I felt the familiar pain
in my lower right leg, just above my ankle.
Ouch. She hit me with the force of a locomo
tive and afterwards retreated back to her yard.
I walked to a safe distance away, then
looked back at the dog.
“Could she be rabid?” I wondered. “Why
would a dog who has never exhibited any ag
gressive behavior suddenly decide to bite me
today?”
No cars were in the driveway. I would
have to wait until the neighbors got home to
inquire about her vaccination status. I walked
home in a bit of shock and a little pain.
By the time I got home, my calf was swell
ing. Because I was wearing running tights,
there were only two minor puncture wounds,
but a bruise had begun to emerge in the shape
of a dog’s mouth. I cleaned it with soap and
water, then alcohol, then applied an antibiotic
cream and a bandage.
My mind drifted back to 1985. I was
home from college one summer and decid
ed to run a couple of miles (to the lake and
back). Just as I neared my turnaround point, a
small scruffy dog charged me, barking, snarl
ing, and showing me her sharp canines. And
just like three Mondays ago, I felt the pain just
above the ankle on the back of my right leg.
Ouch.
As I walked home in a state of shock,
my father happened to drive by in his big,
yellow Plymouth Fury. He knew something
was wrong when he saw me walking, and not
running. I showed him my bloody leg, and he
drove me home. Then he drove back to the
house to talk to the owners and inquire about
the dog.
“When I pulled into their driveway,
would you believe that little dog ran over and
started biting the tires on the car?” he told
Mom and me later.
The dog was a stray who had given birth
to puppies in the culvert pipe under the
neighbor’s driveway. She was a feisty little
thing — just trying to protect her babies —
and I guess she saw me as a threat.
Another time, a neighbor’s big black
dog trotted behind me as I jogged around
the block one afternoon. Wolfy nipped at me
playfully. I could hear his teeth clamping to
gether each time he leapt into the air. It was
kind of cute, until he made contact with the
fleshy, sensitive part of my derriere. Ouch.
But back to the dog and the bite I re
ceived three weeks ago. Luckily, the dog was
current on all her shots. Unfortunately, I was
not. After consulting with one of my doctor
friends, I learned I needed a tetanus shot, so
a few days later, a nurse injected me with the
Tdap vaccine (tetanus toxoid, reduced diph
theria toxoid, and acellular pertussis).
In retrospect, I think the dog may have
been trying to “herd” me. She didn’t seem
particularly angry, and she didn’t go after me a
second time. Indeed, Blue Heelers were selec
tively bred for controlling and herding cattle
with force, by nipping and biting stubborn
cattle’s heels to get them to move. Maybe she
mistook me for a stubborn cow. Or maybe she
was just bored that day and decided to bite
me to break the monotony of the afternoon.
I’ll never know. And I’ll probably never run
by her house again. But like I said, it wasn’t
the first time a dog has bitten me, and it prob
ably won’t be the last.
From the Porch
By Amber Nagle
Searching For Beacons
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
Fascinating.
I have been fasci
nated by flight since
my scoutmaster took
me for a ride to the
Georgia coast to dig
turtle eggs.
There were only
two of us in the small
J3, known as a Piper
Cub. I sat in front with a sandy bucket be
tween my feet. We landed on the beach and
had a gas can on the floor in the back.
Before you choke, the statute of limita
tions long ago ran out, and there was no
second thought on having a mess of scram
bled turtle eggs for supper if you could find
them. That was “before.”
As time crawled and sputtered onward,
aviation for me became more complicated
and sometimes fun, but the mystery of get
ting from one place to another was always
in the mix.
Old abandoned roads fascinate me, but
they are identifiable if only as ditches
through the woods.
Old airways, what passed for roads in
the sky, are not easy to find. There would
be no physical artifact unless some man
made item remains.
Aviation has had its share of adventur
ers and crazies. Think about the early air
mail pilots.
Scheduled air mail service began in
1920, sixty years after the Pony Express,
with pilots using ground-based landmarks
along the routes.
Airmail flying was a daylight operation
only with “lighted airway” routes connect
ing most large cities.
Rotating lights, “beacons,” which today
are seen at most airports, were spaced
about every ten miles, visible for forty, to
mark the way.
In most of the country electric power
was still years away, but “carbide lights”
were used for illumination in mines and as
headlights on early cars and in buildings as
“gas lights.” Theaters used the bright light
of gas lights to produce a bright white light.
Each beacon had a fuel shed at the base
where acetylene gas was produced by water
dripping onto pellets of calcium carbide.
The beacons were on fifty-foot towers
flashing every ten seconds at 5,000 candle-
power.
In the west, where servicing beacons
was impracticable, seventy-foot concrete
arrows on the ground pointed the direc
tion along the airway.
I looked for locations of beacons along
the airway route from Atlanta to Fort
Worth, TX. My father told me about the
beacons long ago, and results of my search
verified his memory.
The first beacon from Candler Field
(now the Atlanta Airport) was DG 3237
between Cliftondale and the Chatta
hoochee River on West Stubbs Rd. near
Old Campbellton.
DG 3279, the second beacon, was at
Bill Arp about a mile from my house.
I took a slow crawl up the highway and
discovered that the concrete pad for the
fifty-foot tower is still there.
The next beacons were at Hickory
Level in Carroll County then at Center
Point, south of Bremen. From there the
route entered Alabama.
Finding the routes and looking for arti
facts has become “another thing to do.”
joenphillips@yahoo.com
Could Republican internal
warfare help Stacey
Abrams become governor?
Donald
Trump is on
record as
having stated
that having
Democrat
Stacey Abrams
as governor of
the Peach
State would be
better than our
current Gov.
Brian Kemp. At a rally in Perry, Trump
said, “Stacey, would you like to take
his place? It’s OK with me.” She
almost did in 2018, losing to Kemp by
1.4% out of 3.9 million votes cast. She
just might succeed this time.
Abrams has announced that she
will be running for governor in 2022.
(No surprise.) Now Trump is saying,
“I beat her (Abrams) single-handedly
without much of a candidate in 2018.
I’ll beat her again, but it will be hard
to do with Brian Kemp, because the
MAGA [Make America Great Again]
base will just not vote for him with
what he did with respect to election
integrity and two horribly run
elections for President and then two
Senate seats.”
Trump goes on to say, “But some
good Republican will run, and some
good Republican will get my
endorsement, and some good
Republican will WIN!”
Before you get out your partisan
poison pens to jab me, let me pause
and state my bona fides. I am one of
the few columnists you will read that
doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid of either
party. I call 'em like I see 'em. And
what I see right now is a highly
organized Democratic Party in
Georgia and a fractured and fractious
Republican Party still obsessed over
presidential election results that are
not going to be overturned or
changed. That train has left the
station.
The late American pundit and
philosopher Will Rogers once said, “I
am not a member of any organized
political party. I am a Democrat.”
Were he around today, ol’ Will would
be a Republican, for sure.
Republicans seem to have this
innate inability to figure out who the
enemy is. Hint: It is not each other. As
I have mentioned in the past, I keep
hearing the epitaph RINO
(Republican in Name Only) hurled at
Republicans by other Republicans,
but I never hear DINO uttered by
Democrats.
So, here we are with a candidate
who came within a hair’s breadth of
winning in 2018 pitted against an
incumbent Republican governor
under siege by the “Fergit, Hell!”
crowd.
Abrams, the darling of the
national Democratic Party, will get
boatloads of money from deep-
pocketed out-of-state donors and
fawning coverage from the national
media and some local big city media.
Anybody with the sense of a sand
gnat will see that keeping the
By Dick Yarbrough
governor’s office in Republican hands
is going to be a challenge if
Republicans don’t get past their
internecine warfare.
So far, the GOP has four
announced candidates for the office:
Jonathan Garcia, a crew leader in a
Cartersville carpet mill; Dr. Kandiss
Taylor, a Baxley public school
educator and former U.S. Senate
candidate; one-time DeKalb County
CEO Vernon Jones and the incumbent
Gov. Brian Kemp. Rumors are that
former U.S. Sen. David Perdue is
considering whether or not to run.
(Cue the denim jacket.) For the
Democrats, there’s just one candidate:
Stacey Abrams.
Donald Trump and his supporters
seemed hellbent on bringing down
Brian Kemp at the risk of rending
asunder the Republican Party in
Georgia by focusing on the past rather
than the future. Speaking of the past,
it might be helpful to remember that
both of Georgia’s Republican
incumbents in the U.S. Senate lost
their reelection bids to political
novice Democrats last year despite
Trump’s backing. That seems to have
been forgotten.
Trump wants to put the kibosh
on Brian Kemp’s reelection chances
even though our state’s revenue has
grown by 13.5% this year, we have a
rainy day surplus of almost $4.3
billion, unemployment is at an all-
time low and for the eighth year in a
row, Georgia has been named the Top
State for Doing Business by Area
Development magazine. For
conservatives, he engineered a new
voting rights bill and a bill banning
early abortions. That deserves
Republican punishment?
There is no question this is up-
close-and-personal and not a little
vindictive for Donald Trump and his
Please see Yarbrough page 7A
^Ainianre
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