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The Houston Home Journal
Bobby Branch, President-Editor-Publisher mmNML
I' NewUpAper
Official Organ City Os Perry And Houston County. Georgia
A Prize-Winning
' Newspaper
. . jimmy chapman pMiL »y»o 1 074
Production Mgr Sports Editor vjlPAii/ •» A m
Bett r Newspaper I
Contests
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JOEHIETT JANICE COLWELL EMILY MONTGOMERY
Advertising Mgr Bookkeeper Society Editor /^^mationai^
"An Award Winning Georgia Weekly Newspaper"
HOUSTON HOME JOURNAL THURS., OCT. 24. 1974
V J
Medusa Open House
\j/c toured the Medusa Cement
■'Company’s plant here Tuesday
-during open house ceremonies and we
•are impressed with the people who
run Medusa and the efficient, com
plex plant,
; Medusa has one of the finest cement
plants in the nation at Clinchfield,
'('•a., 8 miles south of Perry on High
.way 341. Medusa manufactures
;Portland Cement from raw materials
Itaken out of rich deposits in the
Jground here for world-wide
'.distribution.
We are also impressed with the
officers and board of directors of
Medusa from Cleveland, Ohio, who
—B.B.
Produce More, Have
f
i
t
i Over a generation ago, freedom
Jfrom want was incorporated in the
charter of the American welfare
state. The federal government
jassumed obligations to its citizens
that could only be maintained through
endless government deficit financing
find inflation. Now, freedom from
J>vant threatens to become a cruel
hoax unless inflation can be con-
I rolled.
I A plain-speaking editorial in a
McGraw-Hill publication asserts,
I‘There is no easy path that will take
iis where we want to go. The easy
baths lead backward or nowhere.
There is no way to produce less and
I ■ ■ . .1
Put It Back Together
What do you suppose other nations
t,l\fnk of the habit of self
condemnation and criticism of our
own U.S. political, economic and
social institutions which has become
such a universal failing in the United
• States over the past decade or two? If
we do not value our own institutions,
how can we expect others to? For
years, most of our major industries
have been castigated in public for just
about every economic and moral
crime in the book. Self-proclaimed
critics have torn apart our social
relationships on the gounds of gross
unfairness to minorities and sexual
bias. Criticism of our government
The late 1950’s were not, at the
time, considered to bo the greatest.
Things were pretty slow, and the
nation's total output of goods and
services only increased between one
and two percent annually. The rate of
inflation was down around 1.5 percent
during the early 1960’5. Then came
the transition from the Eisenhower
stability years to a new decade of
razzle-dazzle growth. Now, some 20
years later, after a war or two and a
record-breaking series of federal
deficits, inflation is really moving,
but the country is not.
New political thinking will have to
If anyone thinks Uncle Sam’s
hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats
can ever be instilled with the habit of
penny-pinching, they are sadly
mistaken. After all, a bureaucrat’s
importance is measured by the size of
his budget.
What happens when this kind of
philosophy governs spending
decisions is reported by the editor of
the Northwest-Signal, a newspaper in
Napoleon. Ohio. As he puts it, the
philosophy of the U.S. government
seems to be. “Never spend a dime
when a dollar will get the job done....’’
He received a special order 12 X 16-
inch manilla envelope, mailed at
government expense, from the Equal
Opportunity Commission office in
\\
»J
•kiBPHWI
—B.B.
Good Old Days
No W
PAGE 4-A
were all here Tuesday for a board of
directors meeting. It was at this
meeting that the directors voted to
begin a more than $3 million ex
pansion of the plant here. Medusa
officials have taken a keen interest in
this plant near Perry and have shown
their confidence in the future here by
going forward with his expansion of
the facilities at Clinchfield.
We are proud of Medusa as well as
all of the other industries in Perry.
We salute the management and
employees of Medusa and all in
dustries in Perry during this “In
dustry Appreciation Week’’. A job
well done.
have more. No way to sit on our
aspirations and expect things to take
care of themselves.... There is only a
productive or a nonproductive way.
The productive way calls for all of us
to join together. Not in perfect har
mony, not in ultimate brotherhood or
in some high-flown crusade. But in
the simple recognition that we all
business, labor, government and
private citizens have a job to do.”
There can be no guarantee of
security for individuals or for nations.
Security hinges on character and
hard work-productivity. “There is no
way to produce less and have more.”
—B.B.
institutions and loss of public con
fidence in them has reached a
crescendo in the agonizing year of
Watergate.
Isn't it time we begin putting
something back together? American
institutions are not that bad. In fact,
they are pretty good if compared with
those of other nations. Pride in things
American on the part of the people of
the U.S. is becoming one of the
scarcest and most badly-needed
commodities in the land today. It
would be a ghastly thing if the people
of other nations started believing the
U.S. is really as bad as its own people
claim.
go into the job of reducing inflation
and encouraging real economic
growth. The toughest kind of
economic trouble a country can face
is double-digit inflation combined
with a recession. And that is precisely
what too much political tinkering with
the works of the American economy
has produced. Most people today
would trade the current brand of
stagflation for a breathing spell
resembling (hose much-reviled
sluggish years of the 1950’5--those
good old days when prices went down,
as well as up.
—B.B.
Washington, D.C. In the envelope was
a one-page, B>2 X 11-inch news release
that could easily have been folded into
a regular business-size envelope.
Upon checking with an envelope
supply house, the editor found that
100.000 of the special envelopes would
cost approximately $6,435, while
100.000 standard size number 10
business envelopes would cost only
$603 unprinted.
Obviously, the bureaucrats in the
office of the Equal Opportunity
Commission did not care even a
smidge about saving $5,832 in tax
payers’ money. As the editor con
cludes, why should they: “It’s only
money isn’t it, and there’s plenty
more where that came from.”
—B.B.
’’Publicity! Publicity!”
*
The Slanted Side
By Joe Hiett jLp
V
Have you ever noticed that most
youthful bicycle riders don’t have the
foggiest idea of proper use of bikes,
bike courtesy, or laws pertaining to
bike riding? I live on a particularly
kid-oriented street and it seems that
almost every day I have to break a
law to prevent maiming or killing a
kid who isn’t “ridin right.”
It seems that anytime a motorist
approaches two bike riders, the two
automatically careen to opposite
sides of the street, forcing the auto
driver to thread his way between,
thus endangering both bike riders,
and himself. Sometimes I want to yell
out the window, ‘‘Okay, you dum
dums, both of you get on one side of
the street!”
How many times have you pulled
onto a rather dimly lit street and
narrowly missed a bicycle rider with
no headlamp or tail light, usually on
the wrong side of the street? And the
kid always seems to be a real ‘‘smart
alec”, feeling he owns the thorough
fare.
If I were a policeman, I would
prosecute every case I saw of im
proper bike riding. It is dangerous,
especially to (he rider. But the same
mommas and daddies who scoff at
this are the ones who yell “Lawsuit”
if their little darling is run over, even
if it’s the kid’s fault.
I watched the ABC special Monday
of last week on injuries, and I’ll agree
with GHSA head Sam Burke - the
television show concentrated on
negative aspects of football entirely
too much. According to ABC’s
“learned” figures out of 1,000,000
players, about 800,000 are injured. No
way, man! That’s eight out of ten.
Even if scratches, bloody noses, and
fingernails are included, I doubt those
figures.
And the section on coaches who jerk
(heir kids around - it for sure isn’t in
Rev. Dan Ariail
_ j First Baptist Church
TWINKLE, TWINKLE
.-^ r> ,
The heavens declare the
glory of God: and the fir
mament sheweth his han
dy work.
-Psalms 19:1
Two men, the one a minister
and the other a scientist, were
both taking a trip and hap
pened to sit next to each other
on the same plane The
scientist found that the other
man was a preacher and
began to speak at some length
the Perry area. Both at Perry High
and Westfield, as well as in the county
league, that sort of thing simply isn’t
tolerated. (I’m not saying coaches
sometimes don’t FEEL like kicking
tails... for dumb plays, but they don’t
do it.)
That program to me was a slur on
Westfield and Perry High. Marvin
Arrington, Lee Martin, and Percy
Hardy would not resort to such tac
tics. OR CONDONE IN
TENTIONALLY INJURING A
PLAYER. SPEARING IS
OUTLAWED.
And at PHS, Bob Morrow, Rick
Duncan, David Crockett and Allen
Shaw also teach football the right
way. Encouraging fights, “dirty”
football, et al., simply isn’t done. At
both schools, the coaches are good
enough not to have to resort to that
sort of thing.
I am here and now going to put in
my two cents worth on the Industrial
Tax mulled by the County Com
mission. Surprisingly to most people,
I'm for levying up to one mill to use to
attract new industry to Houston
County... if it’s to be used county wide.
If it simply goes to the two Chambers
of Commerce, I’m “agin it”. This
county needs to pull together, like all
good mule teams.
I fully realize too much tax is levied
on property owners. But if a mill’s tax
can help produce new industries in
our county, the taxpayer in the final
analysis profits from the tax. The new
industries would pay much tax of
their own, relieving the owner, and at
the same time would offer new em
ployment to Houstonians.
Os course, the expenditure of the
money would have to be closely
regulated... and substantiated, to
prevent “siphoning” into somebody’s
pocket.
about his feelings toward
religion. He had, he said,
never cared much for
religion; as far as he was
concerned, it was all summed
up in: "Now I lay me down to
sleep", just so much whistling
in the dark and the projecting
of our hopes on the back
screen of the universe. The
minister said that he had
never been particularly in
terested in science, that he
just didn't care much for the
subject. As far as he was
concerned, the whole thing
boiled down to: "Twinkle,
twinkle, little star; how I
wonder what you are.”
The world in which we live
has such obvious order and
beauty that someone has said:
“Saying that this was all an
accident of nature is com
parable to saying that the
unabridged dictionary is the
product of an explosion in a
print shop.”
Just outside of my office
window, in the yard of Dr.
A.G, Hendrick, is a lovely
ginkgo tree. That tree always
turns about this time of year to
a fiery yellow-orange-gold, a
blaze of color splashed against
the blue of the sky. the greens
of the ivy and evergreens, the
red-brown of the nearby brick
buildings, and it seems to
stand there daring anybody
not to offer thankful praise to
God for all this beauty.
BOBBY a
BRANCH tH
OUT ON A
J
Small Cars
Remember when politicians (a lot of them)
drove big cars? That’s not the rule of thumb
anymore. For instance, Perry Mayor James
McKinley is now driving a Toyota; State Senator
Ed Barker drives a Volkswagen and Perry City
Councilman D.K, (Dot) Roughton drives a Dat
son....lt just goes to show just how much times are
changing.
Os course, you can’t blame it all on the high cost
of gasoline; it just isn’t fashionable for elected
officials to ride around these days in Cadillacs.
Clean Up Time
Most all newspaper editors have bad
know they do because many editors around the
state are friends of mine and one of the worse
habits we have in common is “stock-piling”
reams of old papers and other junk in our offices.
A visit to my office usually “shakes” folks who
have not entered this domain of old news releases,
unpublished copy, magazines, political campaign
literature, stacks of various studies and surveys
and many, many other items.
About this time each year, I am forced by the
necessity of survival to clean off my desk and
generally put my office in some kind of order. I
began this past Sunday afternoon, hesitantly and
without much enthusiasm, to sort through and
throw away the seemingly endless amounts of
“good stuff” I have accumulated over the past
few months.
The first drawer I opened in my desk revealed 3
dusty bottles of black berry, peach and pluj?*
wines given to me by some reader who has sin*
lapsed from my memory. Now, being one who is
apt to sample the liquid from the grape from time
to time on a special occasion, I was astonished I
had not sampled this nectar. But upon inspection
of the contents of the bottles, I recalled why they
have aged in my desk drawer; all of the bottles
were full of rather large particles of some foreign
nature and very cloudy in texture. In the trash can
they went.
Next came (from the top of a filing cabinet)
press kits and stacks of literature about Harry
Geisinger, Thomas Irwin, Bud Herrin and many
others. Do those names sound familiar? They all
were candidates for Governor of Georgia in the
August General Primary Elections and obviously
did not do well. I even ran across a press kit from
Fletcher Thompson. You remember him; he is the
Republican who ran against Sam Nunn for the
U.S. Senate in 1972. Also going the way of the
can was a stack of Lester Maddox
stickers, 14 Bert Lance for Governor bumper
stickers and some Harold Dye campaign buttons.
But I didn’t have the heart to throw away a big
stack of “Get Tough in Washington, Send Sam
Nunn To The Senate” bumper stickers. I will use
those again in four years.
Next to get a free ticket to the city dump was 32
issues of New Yorker Magazine, 4 issues of Urban
Georgia Magazine, 14 issues of Petroleum Today,
16 issues of Nation’s Business Magazine, two 1968
telephone books, 19 Christmas cards from various
years, 143 newspapers from other towns in
Georgia and 600 pages of notes from City Council
meetings over an undetermined period of time.
In a filing cabinet, I found a worn out pair of golf
shoes, 51 golf tees and a head from a six iron golf
club. I had forgotten I even played golf. In the
same cabinet drawer I found a mysterious
looking, wrinkled, brown paper sack, bulging with
magazines and paper-back books. Upon in
spection, I found these were books purchased
from news stands in Perry several years ago
during the pornography controversy here. I wllf
given the books so I could write an intelligent
story about what the city was trying to get off the
news stands and we carried a lot of stories during
that period. I have long since forgotten which city
official gave me the books to inspect so I sent
them along to the dump where they should be in
the first place. But, I’ll tell you something; those
books and magazines from 3 or 4 years ago look
like first grade readers today compared to the
books on sale. Times do change.
It is getting more and more difficult to throw
away good stuff like I have listed here. I think I
will build a room here at The Home Journal in
which I can store all this memorabilia so that it
can be preserved for future generations.
Lewis Meeks, who is a former stock-holder in
The Home Journal and President of The Bank of
Perry, used to just shake his head in dis-belief
when he visited me in my office. When we were in
Toccoa, Ga., recently on a bus tour sponsored by
the city and chamber of commerce to look over
what that town had done to their downtown area in
an attempt to revitalize the town, Lewis and I
visited the local, weekly newspaper office. Upra
entering the editor’s office of the paper, am
seeing the way his office looked, Meeks com
mented, “All you people are just alike.”—What
does that mean?
I’ll never change, folks, so keep those cards,
letters, wine, turnips, catfish and all the other
stuff I enjoy coming, My office looks barren now
that I have thrown out about a ton of times....darn,
I wish I would have kept that stuff.... Excuse me
while I go to the dump.