Muncie Evening Press from Muncie, Indiana • Page 4

MUNCIE EVENING PRESS, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1953 PACE FOUR In the Press of Things Only Eight More Driving Days Until Christmas Just Grab the Bear by the Tail rn lin ftr hlRl BJld 1 Ilic to -w mm By EVAN OWENS THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT SUSIE, the lady bear at Heekin Park, may present 1 he city with a cub the middle of next month has revived the story of how Ed Quirk used to handle MUNCIE EVENING PRESS Established ia IMS Published Weekday Evenings in Muncie, Ind. MUNCIE NEWSPAPERS, INC. Willard C. Worcester, Publisher Walter A. Letzler, Gen.

Mgr. "Where the Spirit of the Lord Is, There Is Liberty." II Cor. 3-17 That's the nature of women not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not. Miguel de Cervantes. bears when he was on the Police Department.

In the last few days the story has been told and retold sd often that you can almost see old Ed slogging across the snow at McCul-loch Park, his great shoulders swinging in the rhythmic motion of a man who belongs to the Great Outdoors. "They won't have to send for the key and cpen the was just young and foolish enough, to climbing," Les said. I got about half wav up the bear jumped to the ground and i almost fell out of the tree. I looked down at all those people and there wasn't a soul tnera anvmore. Just Mrs.

Hill and the bear. Mrs. Hill waved her hand toward the house and ordered that bear in, and he went ambling Ofl to his cage as meek as you please." "Yeah?" said Ollie "Well, that bear-ought to be glad Ed Quirk wasn't there, if he knows what's good for him. Charlies Jones, he used to tell about that over and over and over." ED QUIRK WAS A POWERFUL man, but somehow his muscles seemed unimpressive when they were out on a bear assignment. Grab a bear by the tail and throw him into his cage? Listen to that man talk! The time the big bear at McCulloch got loose and this must have been 30 years ago- Quirk and John Guffigan were sent out to capture him.

They tramped about the park look- ing for old Mr. Bruin, and according to the story that has been handed down Ed could hardly wait to get his hands on him. There had been an unusually heavy snow1 that year. It had drifted high' in the bear cage and finally the bear just walked out over the top. this being before they wired the roof.

GUFF AN DED LOOKED ALL over the park, and all the while Ed (according to the story they like, to tell at police headquarters) was mumbling about what a rough time that bear was going to have when they caught up with him. "They won't have to send for the key," he said. "I'll grab that bear by the tail and throw him over the top. I'll grab him by the tail and He stopped in the middle of the sentence, for there was old Bruin looking at them around a big elm tree. "Run, Guff! Run!" Ed was saying as he went past Guffigan.

"That son-of-a-gun'll bite!" wvi MJJmW' cV Letters To The Editor 50 and 25 Years Ago Editor welcomes letters, especially brief expressions on general subjects. The name and address of the sender must be given, but names will not be used if the writer so requests. Anonymous contributions will not be used. door to his-cage," Ed is saying, in this mental picture that has been, passed down through the years. "I'll grab that bear by ihe tail throw him over." THE ASSIGNMENT TO GO OUT and capture a bear isn't as rare around here as one "might think.

fact, that's one of the draw- backs of being a policeman, for people stem to think that any time a bear starts wandering town it's up to the police to take him into The taxpayers look on from the nearest windows. "Never will forget that time me and Harry Brown and Sam Goodpaster went out to cap- ture a bear.at Willard and Elm Sts." Les Corn recalled, during one of those nostalgic sessions. "I went right up the tree after him." THE INCIDENT LES was talking about happened maybe 25 years ago. Ed Fields was on the desk when the call came in. He listened, then he took the receiver away and looked in it, then he put it back to his ear again.

"What did you say was up a tree?" he said. THAT TIME IT WAS A little Canadian black bear, one of two that lived at the Hill Trucking Company. When the officers arrived there were quite a few people standing around looking up in a tree. The Hoosier Farm Wife Says Gives Them Something THE SCHOOL BUS DRIVER WATTEVG, smiling, while the first-graders and their two teachers filed into the Browns 125-year-old stone house. Little red coats, green coats, purple coats, plaid coats, blue sweaters, brown jackets, black all 47 children were smiles and excitement because this was little Johna-than's house and it was decorated for Christmas.

They could see the tree through the wind-dow, beautiful in shining lights, white stars and long ropes of gold beads around it. Even before they went inside some of the little boys had discovered what they thought was litUe Jonathan's honey tree in the yard. "Who is little Johnathan, for goodness sake? That's all Jan talks about," exclaimed one of the mothers meeting Miss Leota down town. The teacher explained that little Johna- than is the pioneer boy (who wanted to be big) in Miriam Mason's book which she and Mrs. Bayns had just finished reading to the- first grade; that the Browns' old house in this com-.

munity was actually the inspiration for the house in the book, and that Mrs. Brown, whose grandson Garret is in the first grade, had invited all the first-graders to a Christmas party. The bus driver brought them that Friday afternoon. IN THE LHTNO ROOM the children took off the'r coats andat down on the floor, on the d's red rug. They saw the big gold snowflakes on the black walls, the candles that little chimes, they admired the 300-year-old gun that hung under the mantel (and later heard" it They: were thrilled while Mrs.

Brown showed them the longhandled waffle iron, the three-legged black kettle in which pioneers cooked over the fireplace. The teachers were thrilled because the children were good and were happy and getting a fine climpse of authentic pioneer heme. Mrs. Brown was thrilled because, as she stood in front of the fireplace talking to the children, she could look down into hright eyes and hap- py faces and smiling mouths und there was hardly a front tooth to be seen. SHE TOLD THEM ABOUT the hear that was shot for meat and hung all winter from Beautiful to Remember the chestnut rafters in the cellar; how the pioneer housewife had set bread to rise in the 28-inch-deep window sills and once baked pies and put them to cool there and friendly Indians came past, injuring nobody, but stole and ate the pies.

Indians," whispered a little girl, and the children shivered with delight.) She told about the outside stairway which had been the only way for the 10 little boys and girls of the house's history to go from the warm downstairs up to the bedrooms, even on snowy nights. She told them the stone for the house was hauled by oxen from the hills around. "What's'oxen?" one child whispered to another, and was told, "It's a kind of a cow." The children kept reminding Mrs. Brown of little Johnathan's various adventures. After a while she said, "Now you ask me some questions if you want to." THEY WANTED TO! In that atmosphere of happy excitement many held up their hands, several had forgot what they wanted to ask, just from pure pleasure.

But one little boy asked the question he had been holding back with difficulty all along, "Where IS little Johnathan?" One little girl asked when the house was built. They asked about the Captain's boat, and Mrs. Brown called their attention to the creek near her house. They told about the Captain's wedding and were happy to learn about an early pioneer wedding in the house and about the wedding of Garret's mother Kitty, in the house also. They saw the pioneer bonnets the one for daytime and the one worn at night.

THEY SAW Tine TRUNDLE BED and other pioneer furnishings upstairs. One little boy's question was a sudden happy outburst, "I ilke this house. I like this Christmas tree, too." They sang their school songs. They received little boxes of candy from under the Christmas tree. thanked Mrs.

Brown sweetly, gave her the gifts they had made for her at school door and table greeneries and went home happy as the Christmas, angel shining on the Christmas tree in little Johnathan's old, old, lovelv house. MRS. R.F.D. one should. And more people die there than anywhere else.

Why, less than three moons have waxed and waned since I actually asked a sweet young thing of 49, "Wilt thou?" and she wilted. At this age, you know that whatever she is ever going to be, she is already now. Only those of our "fuller youth" can make that statement. Of course, we ain't like that younger fellow who said to his sweetie, "I bet you wouldn't marry me." She not only called his bet, but raised him five. A fellow's widow-shopping days may be about over at 58 or so, but he can still look, even if through bifocals.

And we've picked up enough wisdom along the way to know that when we meet St. Peter at the head of the golden stairs and he asks us if we'd feel at home there, we could answer "yes." But after all we've been through here among the younger hell-raisin' teeners, we'd feel more at home in. the basement. Mark my word, you'll be 58 before you know it, if you should live so long. Arid you'll resent being pointed out as "elderly." Hm-m-m! Fifty Nmer Spare Us Something Debunking our schoolday lore seems to be the fashion.

The scientists have thrown the Piltdown Man, who we had been led to believe was the "missing link" between the apes and our own forebears, upon the ash heap of scoffery. Now they are shrinking the Colossus of Rhodes. Back in the eighth grade, we could name the seven wonders of the antique world, and he one of them. He was" made of solid bronze, we learned, and was so big that ships sailed under his legs as he bestrode the ancient harbor of Rhodes. Even today, anything that is super-super is "colossal." But a British natural, scientist had to go poking through some ancient inscriptions to find, he says, that the statue was in fact 120 feet high and the harbor 600 feet wide.

That, of course, would make history's most famous straddle an anatomic impossibility. Furthermore, the research indicates the Clossus was not cast in one piece of solid bronze, as the stories but made of thin bronze sheets and very, very hollow inside. The next thing they'll be telling us is that the Sphinx is papier mache and the Pyramids are prefab plywood. And that Niagara Falls have no more foundation in fact than the Three Golden Apples of the Hesperides. McAuliffe Had the Word for It An-American mother flew to Tokyo in the hope of persuading her war prisoner son to return home.

He is one of 22 pitiful Americans who currently imagine they are Communists. But the mother has been informed that she cannot talk to her son. This is forbidden by one of the crazy "ground rules" which have governed the Korean mess almost from its beginning. Many Americans will recall with a sense of outrage that under the same "ground rules" Communist brutali-tarians were permitted to harangue and threaten Chinese and North Korean prisoners by the hour. They even were given a list of the prisoners' names and addresses.

This enabled them to be specific in, their threats and subsequent retaliations "against innocent relatives of the prisoners. But no an American mother cannot, as she expressed it, "present my son with a picture of the America he grew up in and of his religious training." That would be against the "rules." And we must abide by the "rules" in dealing with barbarians who recognize no civilized rules but live by the code of Satan. As Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe said at Bastogne nine years ago this month, "Nuts." Make It 200 Bushels It was no accident that J.

Herbert Roadruck won this year's Indiana 5-acre corn-growing contest with an average of 198 bushels to the acre. He has won this-title twice before on his farm near Brookston. His 1953 yield is only a half bushel under his all-time high mark, set in 1951. The 5-acre contest, started by a Winchester trust company over 40 years ago and later taken over by Purdue University, is not a stunt. It demonstrates what can be done through intensive farming.

Time was when a farmer who produced 75 bushels to the acre was proud of his achievement. When the 100-bushel figure was reached, gold medals were awarded. With better seed corn, more knowledge of fertilizer and modern techniques in planting and cultivation, the extraordinary high yields of recent years have been made possible. The target now is 200 bushels to the acre. Some Hoosier farmer will win more than passing fame when he hits that mark.

Thursday, at Millville The destiny of nations, in peace and war, has been profoundly affected because, in an Eastern Indiana hamlet, a man named Wilbur Wright was born. He and his brother, Orville, made come to pass the: dream of the ages. They gave humans the gift of flight. This week, on the 50th anniversary of their portentous achievement at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Americans are paying them public tribute. For Wilbur, the Hoosier born at Millville and schooled at Richmond and for Orville, the Ohioan, it was a matter of putting a motor and an aileron control system on a box kite.

The world took it from there. The 50 years from the Jenny to the jet have been milestones of spectacular advance. Time and distance have been compacted. And the era of wings is still only at its threshold. All Indiana is proud because one of the Wright brothers was one of its own.

whole state joins with little Millville in paying honor to his illustrious memory. Ridiculous but True Nation-wide publicity is being given to the findings of Indiana State Police Sgt. Elmer C. Paul that 72 per cent of the 970 persons killed in Indiana rural highway accidents last year might have been saved had they not been thrown against interior surfaces or projections. Another 15 per cent were classed as "questionable," leaving only 13 per cent listed as "nonsurvivable." This has led to recommendations that both drivers and front-seat passengers wear safety belts, such as are used in airplanes.

These might be supplemented with crash helmets, padded suits, special "safety appliances for the neck and other contrivances to' lessen shock. Is there an alternative to all these elaborate precautions Why, sure. Prudent operation of a car helps to take it out of the hazardous class and restores motoring to the safety that prevailed years ago. Otherwise, it may be that a motorist should get decked out like a space cadet when he prepares to drive a few miles on the open road. Maximum Security Due Gouzenko Though it never comes easily to an American senator to have to obey publicity rules fixed by somebody else especially foreigners Sen.

Jenner has prudently accepted Canada's stiff terras governing an interview with Igor Gouzenko, former Russian code clerk now on Canadian soil. No other course, but the strictest secrecy could have protected Gouzenko and hi3 family, who live in moral peril since he turned against his country and broke a Russian spy ring operating in Canada, the United States and Britain. Let us hope that nothing occurs at any stage of this ticklish business which will do even the slightest harm to the safety of a man who already has given so much, to the free world. IN DEFENSE OF FDR To The Editor: This is my first time to write, but I feel compelled to add my 2 cents worth. It seems that 6ur present administration must have run out of something to slur the Democrats about when they had to go back and bring up something about a man who has been dead several years.

No doubt Harry Truman made a good many mistakes, but who of us hasn't? And it doesn't cut one quite so deeply for them to find fault with him as he is still living and, I think, a bright enough man to give them back as good as they send. But what makes my blood boil Is to hear them slur Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was such a great friend to the poor people, of whom I happen to be one. No doubt I'll get a hot answer to this, but that will be O.K. Just remember, we are all in the hands of of a just God, and when death comes our friends can't go farther than the side of our bed with us if we are lucky enough to have a deathbed.

So many these days don't have. They are stricken along the highways, in the field, snop and office. So let's think seriously about our souls' welfare. Reader. Tins IS IT To The Editor "Elderly Pedestrian Badly Hurt When Struck by 2 Cars." Headline.

If anything ever called for a 'letter to the editor," this is it. I see by your paper of Dec. 12 that a 58-year-old man was called "elderly." Why, man alive! You've got the great bulk of your readers down right mad. I know from persdnal experience that we ain't anything of the. kind.

Walt till our whiskers get down to here before you speak of us as "elderly." One thing I can say that I couldn't say 50 years ago is that I can whip anyone twice my age. 1 can also put up more hay than even a 3-year-old. We who are 53 or 60-ish may not exactly be in the age supposed to sow wild oats, but we're not old enough yet to grow sage. And for one, can snap my fingers in the undertaker's face, though I'm beginning to realize that if we want people come to our funeral, we've got to start going to theirs pretty soon. And what of it if we find more news of our friends and enemies in the obituary column than anywhere else? If more of us seem to be dying it's because we probably stay abed longer, as any DECEMBER 18, 1903 Owing to the shortage of the general fund of Muncie, the city council Monday night voted to arrange to borrow $5,000 for 60 days, to be used in meeting current ex- penses.

Mrs. Genevieve Clark Wilson, noted soprano, will be a soloist when "The Messiah" is presented by the Muncie Music Festival Association in Wysor's Grand Opera House Jan. 12. Muncie folks are reading that Gen. Danniel E.

Sickles, is annoyed over the use of his name in the Andrew P. Carter injunction proceedings. The Carters are strug- gling for possession of their only child. Mrs. Carter got a divorce from her husband in South Dakota.

Mr. Carter says she is a frivolous woman and smokes cigarets. He named Gen. Sickles as one of her most intimate friends. Girls of the Baptist Church will play basketball.

Promoting a team are Misses Lois Jackson, Mabel II- lingsworth, Clara Kierstead and Agnes Poland. How much is a good, healthy man worth on the hoof, whole-limbed and sound as a dollar? Manager McGraw has bulled the market and offered $20,000 each for Honus Wagner, shortstop, and Thomas Leach, third baseman, two champions of the National League, Pittsburgh team, last season. DECE3IBER 16, 1928 Additional doctors were called into consultation today making a medical staff or 10 in an attempt to prolong the" life of King George. Pledges of the Zeta Alpha Pi Club entertained the members at a Christmas party Thursday evening at the Prentice Town Club, and bridge was later played at the home of Miss Thelma White of E. Ma'n St.

Those attending were Miss Dorothy Dwyer, Miss Vida Ann Petro, Miss Wilma Williams, Miss Madge Richman, Miss Glenda Dakin. Verna Jeffries, Miss Bright Lind-sey. Miss Irv'm, Miss Thelma White, Mrs. Harold Morrison, Mrs. Albert Cunningham and Mrs, John Readle.

Miss Helen Hottinger, Miss Irene Pickell and Francis Shockley attended a theater performance in Indianapolis last night. "The Ice Pick Murder Trial" will begin next Thursday in Delaware Circuit Court. The annual Christmas dinner of the Delaware Blackford County Medical Society will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the ballroom of the Roberts Hotel: The committee in charge includes Dr. C.

L. Bock, Dr. Ed Davis and Dr. E. T.

Cure. John Ralph Voris, association general secretary of the Near East Relief; Zadi, Armenian orphan girl, and Mrs. R. Gannaway, wife of an American physician of the near East, will appear as speakers for the coming, annual Golden Rule dinner the Masonic Temple. Bearing Down On the News By ARTHUR "BUGS" BAER Secret practice.

Notice that once again we are supposed to share our top atomic secrets with our allies. If I was curator of the zoo I wouldn't tell em ator Today and Tomorrow end was front on a ferry- which Brownell and McCarthy By WALTER LIPPMANN boat. I got into a lot of grief ness about 20 years ago by saying something about the good neighbor policy. 1 said the only good neighbor was a vacant lot. Now, they proved the dangerous spots of the world are the vacant places.

And thai the only good neighbor is an overcrowded boarding house. Nevertheloose, I still claim we should clam up on our secrets. I would tell 'em nothing. And charge 'emfull rates. It was England that okayed the scientists who came over here and stole everything.

They didn't take the kitchen stove. But they robbed the oven. The best scientist in England was a Commie spyster. Once he got into Canada it was as easy as breaking a yolk. Side Glances By Galbraith One Man's Opinion; division of 'his party.

For he cannot hope to unite the party by converting the isolationists to his views. They have genuine and deep con-. victions. They may be wrong, but they have a reputable case, and they cannot be talked out of their views. The best that the President can do is to obtain their assent, to induce them to let him lead.

This he can do, however, only if it is always manifest that the Eisenhower following is intact that in the country and in the Congress he is so strong that he can carry his measures even against the opposition of the isolationist right wing. Then if his power is unquestioned, magnaminity and tolerance will not be appeasement and BEAREVG THIS IN MIND, we can, I think, see why Brownell's speech precipitated a political convulsion among the Republicans. Brownell used partisanship of a kind that threatens to make bipartisanship on the great issues impossible. It has threatened to cut away from Eisenhower an indispensible part of his support. Without the Democrats and the Independents who like Ike and are bipartisan in foreign affairs, the President would be left with only an uncertain minority of regular Republicans benind him.

Brownell, intending to hurt the Democrats, uncovered the right flank of the Eisenhower Suddenly it: appeared that Eisenhower, who is strong In his party only when he is stronger than his party, had been separated by Brownell's extreme partisanship from the Eisenhower bipartisan constituency. At that moment he was open and vulnerable to McCarthy's offensive, which is a formidable effort to seize control of the powers of the President, and to reverse the foreign policy of the United States, A measure of how vulnerable Eisenhower had suddenly become can be had by noting that the Republican leader of the Senate. Mr. Knowland, gave his public support not to the President, whose 'leadership was challenged, but to McCarthy. WHY WAS THE Brownell speech so damaging to Eisenhower's political position? Because Brownell had carried partisanship beyond the point of no return: He had aggravated a party contest into party warfare.

He did that when he drew upon the secret files of the FBI. He is the steward there in a solemn trust. Those files have never before been used as a stockpile of political ammunition in partisan politics. The use of this outlawed ammunition opened up the threatening prospect that the Eisenhower administration would attempt to win elections and to keep itself in power by drawing its own selected material from the FBI files; that it would use that material to argue that the Democrats as such cannot be trusted on the issue of loyalty. Men do not, men cannot, and men wiU not collaborate when the political contest of the party is envenomed to the point where it becomes a war of political extermination.

How can men of differing views and parties work together for national ends under the President's leadership if they must wonder whether his Attorney General might be planning to pick a bullet from the secret files and to shoot them in the back? -d PERHAPS BECAUSE I WAS AWAY from Washington when it all began, it seemed to me in reading the record that the biggest puzzle was why Mr. -Brownell's attack on ex-President Truman turned so swiftlv into Sen. McCarthy's attack on President Eisenhower. Only 18 days elapsed between Brownell's speech in Chicago and McCarthy's broadcast. In that short, time, by a chain reaction, a Republican attack on the Democrats had become a quarrel within the Republican party.

In lss than three weeks after Brownell had charged the Democrats with being soft towards Communist spies, McCarthy was charging Eisenhower with being soft about trade with Communist China. LOOKING FOR A SOLUTION to the mystery, we may begin by remembering that Eisenhower was nominated against the opposition of the isolationist right wing of "party. Before he was nominated and during the election his political strength, which is very in a constituency which cuts acrdss the old party lines. Eisenhower was not a regular Republican. He was a national figure around whom there rallied Republicans, Independents, disaffected Democrats.

They were a varied lot. But they had one great and binding conviction in common. They wished in age of peril to maintain and to continue a national and policy of alliances, within NATO and the United Nation's. Eisenhower could not have been nominated without the backing of this broad constituency. And he is not able to govern without its supports This was proved in the last Congress.

to Congressional Quarterly there were 83 roll calls on Eisenhower proposals." Of these" 58 could not have been won by the Administration without Democratic support. In the House 20 out of the 31 Eisenhower victories vhave been impossible without Democratic "support. In the Senate 33 roll calls out of 42 were won by Eisenhower because he had: Democi atic-support. The. fact is that the Republican party has only the thinnest kind of nominal majority in Congress, and on the great issues of foreign policy this majority is deeply and sharply divided within itself.

FOR A GENERATION THE Republican has been divided within itself on the paramount issues of isolationism and unilater-aMsm vs. alliances and reciprocity. For at least 20 years the isolationist wing has never been strong enough to nominate and elect its own candidate for President. When at long last a Republican was elected president, he was a man who did not belong to the isolationist right wing. He was in fact a man who had great' and decisive political strength outside the isolaf'pnist right wing.

For that reason cannot be a successful president unless he keeps the political support which, won him the nomination. If he lets the isolationists take control of his administration, he must inevitably alienate an indispensible part of his own political strength. His problem Is how ta govern In spite of the a fis acsf-JuS T. W. f.

V. PA on yfwr Copt. 1S53 fry lirci. h. By WALTER KIERNAN Our help to backward nations Is beginning to back upson the backward nations In the Sudan the price of a wife has leaped from eight to 15 spears in a few month's time.

Hundreds of young Sudanese caught up in this wave of inflation are in there pounding on the boss' door demanding a shorter work week and spears. Time was when a good Sudanese wife went for a low as four spears but the has been getting that there are more where those came from. Today no Sudanese girl in her right mind would ask a fellow home for dinner unless she has already learned that he can carve the pot roast with at least 10 blades and has prospects. Not only has this a bearish result in matrimony but it means an increase in armaments. The only good thing about the whole deal is that in a bad mar riage deal the bridegroom gets his spears back But he to sharpen them himsell for the HXt try.

"About another year and I'll have you out of that high chair doing these dishes.