Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Home Journal Opinions PERRY, HOUSTON COUNTY, GA. 31069, THURSDAY, JULY 9, 1970 We feel compelled to comment ever so often on the shortage of doctors in Perry. Perry is growing as rapidly as any other community of this size in the state and we expect a jump in popu lation when the new Pabst Brewery opens in a couple of months. We need more doctors. Everybody knows that, even the doctors who are here now. We know of several efforts that have been made in the last year to attract doctors to our community and we know that efforts are even now Our hats are off to all those law enforcement agencies that did such an outstanding job the past few days try ing to control the unreal traffic and people jams at the Rock Festival site near Byron. State and local law officers were confronted with the most difficult task imaginable when nearly a half million rock fans and curious on-lookers came into the Byron area over the weekend to the festival. Besides the traffic and people prob lem, officers had to contend with kids who had taken over doses of drugs and countless other problems caused by such a large gathering of people. Some officers had to search the mass of people looking for run-a-way teen agers whose parents had reported them missing. Some were found Some We think the City has done an ex cellent job in controlling gnats and mosquitos this summer. The idea of spraying the city for the insects from the air has evidently helped to keep the pesky bugs at the lowest level in recent years. We have been expecting the annual gnat invasion for the past two months and we are grateful the tiny critters have not broken through into Perry. We were pleased to see figures re leased by the Georgia State Chamber of Commerce last week that shows re tail sales in Houston County up by some 27.2 percent for the first quarter of 1970 over the same period a year ago. Such growth in retail sales makes ************* SUPPORT PERRY ************* HAPPENED I JfajgX, WAY BACK WHEN.. I From Our Newspaper Files Os The Past I 5 YEARS AGO - Police Chief B. E. Dennard reported quiet July 4 holidays with only two fender-bendings in the city and no one injured . . . Thomas 1. Storey, recent graduate of the Southern Baptist Theo logical Seminary with a master of church music and education at the First Baptist Church . . . Houston County School Supt. Davis A. Perdue told the Houston County Commissioners Tuesday that the new Board of Education Building will be completed aboyt August 15 ... At the meeting of the Perry Kiwanis Club, a demonstration of direct dialing was presented, featuring a talk with Senator Herman Talmadge. 10 YEARS AGO - Mayor and Council of Perry voted to establish the Perry Planning Commission to begin a program of planning and zoning of this rapidly expanding town of 6,000 i. . . Mrs. Aurelia C. Evans, of the Houston County Welfare Dept., receives congratulations as the new president of the Georgia County Welfare Directors More on Doctor Shortage Law Officers and the Festival City Has Kept Bugs Away Business is Good in Houston underway to secure doctors or another doctor to Perry. It is our opinion that efforts can be made more extensive to get more doctors into Perry. All of our doctors in Perry are extremely dedicated and hard working men in their profession. But we need more of them ... we need them soon. We would like to see efforts stepped up along these lines and do whatever is necessary to get Perry some additional doctors . . .or mst one more doctor. —B. B. were not. Drugs of all kinds were common place at the festival and law officers did what thev could to control the drug problem. The simple fact is that there was just not enough officers available to do much about the count less drugs that were floating around among the kids. Middle Georgia (hopefully) will not see the likes of the weekend’s rock festival again. It created so many problems that to list them all would stagger the imagination. We are thank ful the event is over and that there was no more trouble than what we had. It could have been worse. . . . Now comes the clean up. What a job that’s going to be. . . . Bye, rock fans. —B. B. In past years, new residents have said that the only thing they didn’t like about Perry was the gnats. We are not sure whether the gnats just didn’t show up this season or the city’s flying bug killer has kept them away. We like to think it’s the air plane sprayer that has made this sum mer the nicest in several years for backyard barbecues and more time outdoors. —B. B. us all aware of just how rapidly Hous ton County is growing. Houston Coun ty and the Middle Georgia area is “where the action is” in economic, in dustrial and residential growth. The upsurge in retail sales for the first quarter puts Houston 15th among the 159 counties in the state. —B. B. Association . . . Larry Ellison sold enough Home Journal subscriptions to be the first boy winner of a bike . . . New Houston County Hospital, million dollar facility, to begin receiving patients . . . Centerville’s $115,000 water system completed, now serving 140 customers. 20 YEARS AGO - Dr. Felix M. Smith, graduate of the University of Georgia, has opened an office for the practice of veterinary medicine in Perry. Dr. Smith, who was a B-24 pilot in the Bth Airforce in World War 11, is a former resident of Cordele ... A large group of Houston Countians are taking swimming lessons at Vinson’s Valley this week under the instruction of Red Cross personnel . . . Good Showers in several sections of Houston County Sunday brought much-needed relief to badly parched crops, but more rain is badly needed, local farmers say . . . Members of Perry Boy Scout Troop 96 won the placque for the best “Scouting Spirit’’ at Camp Benjamin Hawkins at Byron last week. When Will Perry Get More Doctors? <cJ\l\axins. *U/iomfiion ■L** j^BF' "A Rose By Any Other” - * U was bad enough being named Harper back in the days when only the villians in Western movies were using the name until Haul Newman came along and gave the name some aspects of glamour. Now all illusions of glamour concerning my first name have been swept away by three little words on a menu. If anybody had called me on the phone and told me about it, or walked in here with such a story, I would have figured they were just putting me on. But 1 sat there at a table and looked at the menu with my own two green eyes and in a square at the bottom of the left side it said, “ONION RINGS MAXINE.” Now, how would you like to have your name linked with onions? Such mundane, ordinary, pungent little vegetables that make you cry when you cut them, leave you with smelly hands after handling them, and a smelly breath after eating them? What do they use for a bad examble when they’re trying to sell breath purifiers? Onions, that’s what. Curiosity got the upper hand and we ordered the things. Turned out to be one crosswise slice from a huge onion, french fried and somehow kept together in that big slice. They were tender, delicate, delicious. (Hmmm- in view of those last three words, maybe the use of the name is appropriate, after all! Ouch! Who threw that rock?) 1 can’t really feel insulted, since I’m so crazy about onions I smother hot dogs and hamburgers with them, throw them in my tossed salad, cram the meat loaf and salmon croquettes full (have to divide them up with non-onion-eaters in the house), and even chop them up in a plate full of blackeyed peas. Guess who keeps the breath-purifier folks in business single handedly? As far as the glamour of the name is concerned, I guess 1 ruined it at home We think the Houston County Rec reation Department is doing a good job in Perry this summer. This is the first time the recreation department has moved into Perry and offered their many programs to youngsters here as well as adults. We know that many youngsters in this community would not have had any organized sports this summer ii it had not been for the recreation de partment’s programs. The recreation people have youngsters all over Perry participating in several leagues of baseball and other sporting events. They have also attracted many par Recreation Dept. Doing Fine Job pretty early. Mother named me Maxine because when she was a child she knew a girl by that name who was older but was very beautiful, sweet and kind, and made such an impression that Mother vowed to name her first daughter for her. Poor Mother! what a shock she was in for. At about the age of two, her little Maxine had temper tantrums and got down and beat her hard little head on the floor until it had knots on it. It took a lot of beating on the other end to stop that, and she and Daddy said I screamed so loud every time they approached me with a switch or an open palm that they were afraid they would be accused of trying to murder me. Grandma and Grandpa Harper lived on a farm, so one time my folks took me out there to spend the week-end in the coun try but made the mistake of telling them they had brought me out there to tame me where nobody could hear. “The very idea! You’ll do no such thing!” said my horrified Grandma. (She latter had good cause to regret restraining them, for I distinctly remember the only spanking she ever gave me when I was about four years old.) A picture of me at about that age shows a rather chubby, defiant little blonde with one clenched fist resting on a hip. My folks somehow accomplished a miracle, however, by not giving up or giving out of switches, and it was a very docile little girl who entered the first grade at the age of six. Only under the direst provocation does the dormant temper ever rise to the surface, but I know it’s still there. Knowing it, and knowing myself, helps to keep it under control. That’s why I didn’t do more than lift one eyebrow when 1 read “ONION RINGS MAXINE.” 1 just kept my mouth shut and enjoyed the scrumptious things. ents into the program and the enthusi asm has been all the recreation of ficials could have asked for. We think it is a good idea to give youngsters something to do in the long summer months when many of them normally would be idle. We know that public recreation is frowned upon by some in Perry and the City Council of Perry voted not to participate in the County program. We think some attitudes may change after the very evident success of the recreation program in Perry this sum mer. —B. B. Branch It was Saturday morning, July 4, about 9 o’clock People were everywhere. They were in tents, cars trucks, ditches and any place they could find a piece of ground to stand or lie on. One guy who was high on hashish (a form of marijuana) was riding a Honda up and down a nar row dirt road that ran between two rows of pecan trees and he was shouting “Hey, man, I’m one of the Hell’s Angels and I’m here, man, I’m really here.” J They were really there, too. Somewhere around 300,000 of them. There were many that were real Hippies and some that said they weren’t Hippies. I don’t know what they were. There was motorcycle gangs that were made up of some of the toughest ))) people I’v ever seen. They came in all age groups. Some were 14 or 15. Some were 25 or 30. There was also some 2 and 3 years old and some even younger wandering around in dirty clothes— most of them crying. They were all there at the now famous Byron Rock Festival. They said they came to see and hear the rock singers but many came to join in on the “Hippie Life Style.” A 17 year old boy from Newport News, Virginia, was taking a long slow drag off a pipe filled with pot. He sucked on the end of the pipe and held the smoke in his lungs as long as he could hold his breath. He later told me that by doing that a pot smoker gets more out of a drag than just exhaling the smoke right away like a cigaret. “You ever use any hard urugs?” the 17 year old was asked. “No, man, I wouldn’t touch that stuff but I’ve seen some of it around here,” he said. “There was this one guy I saw last night that was shooting up with some pony right out there in the crowd while the music was playing,” he said. (Pony is slang for heroine and shooting up means taking a shot in the arm with a needle.) I asked the boy from Virginia if drugs were easy to buy at the festival and if there was an abundant supply. “Yeah, man, there are all kinda drugs here,” he told me. “Pot is the cheapest here I’ve ever seen it anywhere and I’m thinking about buying up some and taking it back home to sell ... I mean, .»| you know, man, it’s really that cheap,” he said. * In another area of one of the campgrounds, about a hundred boys and girs were lined up at a string of open air showers wating their turn to try and cool off in the 100 degree plus tempera tures. Some were clothed, some were partially clothed and some were completely nude. Nobody really took notice of the people standing there in the nude. It just seemed to be a natural thing to them and both boys and girls walked past each other in the showers seemingly without noticing one another’s nudity. “When is the big fun time going to end for all of you?” I asked a bearded, long-haired boy of about 18. “Look, dude, I don’t give a about finishing college and going out to mork my off in that world out there,” he said in a very calm and direct tone of voice. “What I mean is that I don’t care about any of those things right now, man. I might later when I don’t have a choice but right now I’m enjoying my thing like this festival here. ... Do you groove what I’m saying, man?” The time is coming when the 18 year olds will have to take a serious look at this society and take their place in it. There’s a lot of 18 and 19 year old kids who will do just that. I’m not really that con cerned about it. There’s a lot of them in Vietnam and other places “doing their thing” right now. There’s a lot of them in colleges and universities “doing the.r thing” by attending classes and mak ing good grades. . . . The 300,000 here over the weekend are just a few of the youngsters. . . . We’ve got plenty more who are capable and willing | to to “do their thing” for America, their state and " their community. I hate to see all the young people tagged along with those who infested the woods and pecan groves at Byron over the weekend. I’v got confi dence in the majority of the young folk. . . . Just look around right here in Perry and you’ll see what I mean. “Perry’s Hometown, Community Newspaper For The Past 100 Years” The Houston Home Journal BOBBY BRANCH President-Editor-Publisher MAXINE THOMPSON Associate Editor BOBBY HOLLIS Advertising Manager WOFFORD SIN YARD Production Manager Published Every Thursday By THE HOUSTON HOME JOURNAL, tNC. G. OGDEN PERSONS, Vice President LEWIS M. MEEKS, Secretary-Treasurer (. Entered at the Perry, Georgia Post Office, 31069 As Second Class Mail Matter