The Express from Lock Haven, Pennsylvania • Page 4

Friday, September 30, 1961 Our Opinion. coming Political activity is speeding up the Autumn winds blow and Election Day draws The candidates are out campaigning and the echoes ot their efforts are resounding political arguments and disputations among the voters. The candidates and the issues are often more important than the party, especially In local contests for public office. It may not matter much, to the public, whether a Republican or a Democrat sits in a Court House, a city, borough or township office. It can matter quite a lot, however, whether the man who holds such an office is intelligent, honest, and public-spirited and knows what his duties are and how to perform them.

It would make more sense, in many ways if the voters did some of the campaigning in a pre-election period like this. They should campaign on their own behalf, by seeking out the candidates and asking them what they know about the job they seek, and how they intend to improve its performance if they get elected. The voters can also check up on the way incumbent office holders are doing their job. A voter who wants to make up his mind on which county commissioner candidates to support, for instance, can think over the duties he knows are performed by these three men who head our county government. Suppose he fastens on the operation of the county home as an important issue; it could be important to almost any voter, as a potential future resident of such an institution, as well as a taxpayer who supports it.

Such a voter could go to visit the homo and see for himself how it looks and how it seems to be run. He does not need to know any of the residents, in order to check up on some vital aspects of the operation of the institution. If he merely asks three or four people how long they have to wait for an attendant after they ring the emergency bell, he can gather some useful information. Similar slight investigations on the part of many voters could reveal pertinent facts about office holders, candidates, and their attitudes toward public responsibility. A little "campaigning" of this type on the part of a large number of voters would accomplish more than all the candidates' hand-shaking and doorbell-ringing in assuring good service from future office-holders.

Trees on Our Sfreefs One of the small projects which we should inaugurate promptly, is that of maintaining the shade trees on our streets, replacing those which must be removed, and placing others where they would be desirable and attractive. Most of the trees on our streets are old; some go back to the early years of the community. They have been here longer than the eldest resident. They were planted when the streets were laid nut and when the first homes were built. Some have been sacrificed as a penalty of street and highway work; others have been felled to make way for other improvements, and some have had to go because of disease.

This process, unfortunately, has been erratic, undirected and sporadic. We have had, at least one time in the past, a Shade Tree Commission, but it never had a real grant of authority from City Council, to do what such a commission should do. The objective of a Shade Tree Commis' sion is to keep shade trees growing where tjjey enhance the city's beauty. It gives permission for removal of trees when necessary and sees to it that replacements are made wherever they are desirable. Such a branch of the municipal government would be useful, we think, to protect the heritage of sturdy trees which have made ths community appealing and attractive.

Bombed Birmingham Negro Bapfisfs Have Much to Forgive Gov. Wallace By DREW PEARSON Copyright, 1963 by tht Bell Syndicate, Inc. WASHINGTON Three contrasting pictures arc before as I write this column. is the recollection of a handsome young man with an almost boyish face. Smoking a long black cigar, sitting in my living room and telling me of his plans as governor of Alabama.

The second is the mental picture of litle girls in white dresses, neatly ironed, pigtails tied in ribbons, going to Sunday School in Birmingham. The third is the final picture of those same little girls, dresses crumpled, bodies bloody, one with her head blown off, being carried away on stretchers. It was the Lord's Day in Birmingham, supposed to be a day of peace. And it was Children's Day the 16th Street Baptist Church. The theme was forgiveness the story of how Joseph forgave his brothers when they were jealous of him and him into bondage.

The people of that church havt a lot to forgive now, especially the fathers and mothers of those little girls in crumpled white dresses. Rev. John Cross, their pastor, took the lead in urging forgiveness when he a megaphone minutes after the bombing and shouted an anguished appeal: "Please go home! The Lord our shepherd. shaH not want." Yes, they have a lot to forgive at the 16th Street Baptist Church broken bodies of their children, the broken church, the broken stained glass they had saved so long to buy. How many collections those windows had required! And how many times the mothers of those little girls had washed them and dressed them and sent them off to Sunday School to learn patience and forgiveness! Now their crumpled bodies lay mute on bloodstained sheets; and the dusty plaster, the splintered pews, the ripped up flooring, the tattered prayerbooks, the pieces of glass shattered glass bore silent testimony that there was much on the other side to forgive.

One stained glass window remained Christ leading a group of children. His face was blown out Symbolic of the fact that the spirit of Christ has been blown out of many of Birmingham today. Serene Gov. Wallace Gov. George Wallace, the man who leads the state of Alabama, sat in my living room last winter, handsome, confident, puffing his cigar.

He'd been governor of Alabama about three months and expected no problems. He had been the friend of the he said, had served on llie board of directors at Tuske- gce, atended meetings with the Rockefellers in New York, smoked their one dollar cigars, but refused to follow their ideas on the race problem. That problem, as tar as the schools were concerned, was to permit no integration. "What are you going to do about the University of Alabama?" I asked, knowing that integration was due shortly. "Are you going to let it become another University of Mississippi?" "We not going to retract one he said.

"I don't what the other states do. I have announced that I would draw a line in the dust, and I shall stand in the door to block the entry of federal troops or federal marshals or anyone else. They will have to arrest me before they integrate the University of Alabama." "But you have been a judge," I said, "and you know the importance of respecting the authority of the courts. If you set an example of opposition, you undermine the courts and give a cue to everyone who believes in violence." "I'm against violence," repeated the governor, puffing his cigar, "But I'm also against integration." 1 remembered the bombings of the past the twisted lockers, the torn testboks at the Clinton High School in Tennessee, which so many people had worked so hard to build; the gaping holes in the floor, the battered classrooms at Osage, West Virgnia; the sodden prayerbooks and masses of debris at the temple in Atlanta. These were the scars of violence sure to follow when men at the top gave signals of encouragement to the hate mongers below.

"But you are the highest executive in Alabama," I said in a last plea to a man I had known long before he was elected. "The pattern you set of opposition will be a hunting license for violence to all the rabble-rousers and the white citizens councils and all the Kluxers in Alabama." My plea fell on deaf ears. The governor insisted he would stand in the door and draw a line in the dust to the very end. The Governor of Alabama must suffer sleepless nights this weeknights haunted by the specter of those four litle girls who were sent to study forgiveness on the Lord's Day and were carried out of Sunday School on stretchers. Rewards or Reconstruction Gov.

Wallace has offered $5,000 of the state's money as a reward to catch those guilty of this, the 21st bombing in Birmingham. His offer is like locking the stable door on violence after the spirit of violence has galloped through the streets of Birmingham. Instead, I suggested he go to that shattered church and kneel before that lone stained glass window with the headless Christ and beg what Rev. John Cross asked his flock to Furthermore, let the governor lead a drive to rebuild the 16th Street Baptist Church. The chances are glim, I know, that he will do this.

So 1 suggest that every church in the nation, regardless of its denomination, regardless of whether it is white or Negro, to take up a collection to rebuild and repair the church in Birmingham wrecked by the hate- mongers. Let this church, when rebuilt, be a monument to forgiveness and tolerance and better understanding in a city which needs sorely to heal its wounds. Here and Looking Bock Grows Pleasant on Long Road By HAL BOYLE NEW YORK farther you travel in life the less you look forward to where you're going, and the more you like to stop and look back down the road you came along. This Is the pause that refreshes, the pause when the present fades and memory takes over. You may be bodily old, but you're still young in heart if you can remember when Every little girl with golden hair and a dimple took tap dancing lessons in hopes she'd become another Shirley Temple.

The world waited to see if Houdini, trapped at last in a box he couldn't escape from, would be able to send a message from the grave. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford reigned as king and queen of Hollywood and lived in a palace called Pickfair. Sage military leaders were sure that if a second world war came the Germans would try to win it at the start with a massive poison gas attack. You had to button wives up the back Instead of zipping when a man bought a suit it had two pairs of pants as well as a vest. Men seldom made passes at girls who wore glasses until some genius did the lassies a favor by inventing contact lenses.

One of the greatest joys hi autumn was to go chestnut hunting in the woods. Then a great blight came that killed off all the chestnut treees. On summer evenings a man could sit on his front porch with his shirt off and his stockinged feet on the railing and still not lose his standing in the community. Any fellow was thought to have a cushy job if he worked only half a day on Saturdays. The only people who got pensions were the widows of Civil War veterans and those who'd been on a government or railroad payroll.

The local grocery store kept both peanut butter and lard in large tins, and sold them to you in small wooden trays wrapped in tissue paper. You could drop a quarter in the church collection plate on Sunday and feel at peace with God. If a politician couldn't stand up in the back of a wagon and hold a small town crowd spellbound for two hours, he had a poor chance of being elected! How's Your I. World Today Dim Vision of Disarming By JAMB8 MARLOW Associated Press News Analyst WASHINGTON (AP) This country has spent over tSOO billion on defense since the war but year after year the outcome of disarmament talks with Russia could be predicted by a child: Nothing. President Kennedy, who had watched those fruitless and expensive years go by, finally Mid on Jan.

11, 1982: "This nation has the will and the faith to make a supreme effort to break the logjam on disarmament and nuclear tests, and we will persist until we prevail, until the rule of law has replaced the ever dangerous use of force." Premier Khrushchev followed this up Feb. 7, 1982, with a letter to Kennedy and British Prime Minister Macmillan, proposing Old Picture Album DAILY DEMOCRAT office, located on an upper floor of a building on E. Mail below Grove, on the south side of the street, was auamtt by a sturdy crew, something like yean ago. At left ts Ira Harvey, editor and publisher. Back ef him ii O.

T. Morris. Others at the rear are George W. Role and Dan Grower, John and maybe Jamci Noble, and D. McNaul.

At right If VI Oberheim, with Charles E. Oberheim next, and young Ben Emery, who went from here to Philadelphia eventually to become the proprietor of a Urge printing establishment. Fourth from tbe right is Clarence CrUtman, wearing one of the drooping mustache adornments which seemed to be trademark of the printer's trade in those days. The old presi, it left, is still extant, now in the plant ol the Clark Printing Manufacturing Cs. that the heads of 19 nations have a summit meeting to start off the 1962 disarmament talks.

Kennedy and Macmillan turned him down. Kennedy didn't close out the idea of such a summit altogether. He just said he didn't think it worthwhile until there had been some progress in disarmament talks on a lower level. So there was no summit meeting but representatives of 17 would take no part on and off during the year at Geneva to discuss disarmament. And the result was the same as in all the years before.

A ban on nuclear tests would be the sensible first point in any agreement on disarmament but the United States and Russia gagged on how to much accord. So everything broke down on that. While the two nations might be able to agree on banning tests in the atmosphere, outer space and under water, since they had instruments to check cheating in those regions, they got stuck on how to ban underground tests. For this the United States wanted an inspection system. The Russians said inspection was spy- Ing.

Even early in 1963 Kennedy was doubtful there could be any agreement on a test ban. Yet by midsummer of 1963 agreement was reached. It was done by compromise. All tests would be banned except underground. This was the most Important single agreement between the United States and Russia since the war.

Ttw Kennedy administration considered it a possible first step toward even broader settlements. But there is a point here which may have real significance for the future if there is ever to be agreement on disarmament: The nuclear test-ban agreement was achieved in a British-American-Russian meeting in Moscow, not at the Geneva conference of III nations. Then Thursday in the United Nations in New York, one day before Kennedy was to address the organization, Soviet Foreign Miniter Andrei A. Gromyko repeated the 1982 Khrushchev proposal which Kennedy had rejected. He an 18-nation summit meeting before next June 30 to discuss disarmament.

It might seem now Kennedy would be more responsive to the idea of a summit on disarmament than he was early in 1968 when he said that before there was a summit there had to be progress. The test ban since then was progress. But, while the ban can be considered a big advance in American-Soviet relations, what has happened in this country over that agreement chills any hopo for a general disarmament agreement for a long time. It revealed a deep, perhaps in some people a pathological, sus-. picion of Russian intentions.

The President had to fight for weeks in an eflrrt to get Senate approval of the test ban, although now approval seems sure. Being sure the Russians don't cheat on a test ban is simple compared with the anti-cheating problems involved in disarmament. Debate in this country over disarmament svould probably be the fiercest and most tortured in history. This is ironic since the United States has protested to the world for years it wants disarmament. Nor is thei-e any certainty the Russians want it.

Talking about it can be cheap and easy propaganda. Your I. Q. Answer! Below are the answers to the quis questions printed os tbis 1. Oysters.

2. Tass. 3. Uncle Tom's Cabin. 4.

5. Fve cents. 6. Horseshoes. 7.

False. 8. False. 9. Gamaliel.

10. One-third. ROW TO SCORE: Bated 1M question (10 with a daily average an fellows: or 16 correct answers rates yea as Memory Genius; 7 or Very Superior; or Excellent; 4, Good. Tbe correct answers are printed elsewhere) ea this page. 1.

What shell fish is commonly believed to be fit for human consumption only in months containing the letter 2. What is the official Russian news agency called? 3. Harriet Beecher famous as the author of what book? 4. What was the one word that Poe's raven repeated? 5. If a pen and ink cost sixty cents, and the pen cost fifty cents more than the ink, what did tht ink cost? 6.

What game is sometimes called "barnyard 7. Elephants drink through their trunks; true or false? 8. A contagious disease is the same as an infectious disease; true or false? G. Harding was President of the U.S.; for what did the initial G. stand? 10.

Does the Pacific Ocean cover about one-forth, one-third, or one- half of the earth's surface? Shore Lines By Joseph Cox "Bellfefonte well represented at the bicycle races in Williamsport on Wednesday." With the most important athletic event in the West Branch Valley taking place mean the football game between the high school teams of Jersey Shore and Lock seemed a good idea to seek out a story of the most important event of the same kind in the last century. We found a copy of the Centre Democrat for exactly 68 years ago today, but the only sporting news it carried wai the brief note above. Bicycle races, six-day ones, can be exciting, although not so much 10 as football games. used to go to the races in the velodromes in the big cities. We thought then that the first part of the word for those indoor tracks had something to do with wheels, but it does not.

It comes from the Latin velox, meaning swift, as in velocity. A velocipede means something swift with the foot a kicker of points after touchdown, who is helpful to have-but a light vehicle. It was applied especially, says Noah Webster, to early forms of bicycle and tricycle, and later to a form of railroad handcar. Around here girding the iron horse is regarded as having the same importance as horsing around on the gridiron. Railroad news of great interest to all of our part of the West Branch Valley was carried in the Centre County paper for Sept.

20, 1894, which told about the bikes. "A big step was taken in the work of pushing construction of the new Beech Creek trunk line from Pittsburgh to the east. Fifty-five deeds of right of way were filed in the Indiana County courts and the work of construction will now be pushed. "The new system will an aggressive competitor of the Pennsylvania. It will be formed of branch roads, the whole making a great system.

"The right of -way deeds were filed by the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Railroad, which will run across the Indiana County, connecting Mahaffey with Punxsutawney, and passing through Little Mahoning, Cush Creek and Slack Lick. "This is rich coal and lumber territory, now almost inaccessible, and the road will be an important feeder to the trunk line. "The completion of this enterprise will be of importance to Beliefonte, as it will give up an opening to the West, over another system via C.R.R. of which connects with the Beech Creek lines at Mill Hall." Mill Hall was busy making bricks for Pennsylvania Railroad stations, for Renovo school houses and for several fine buildings in Altoona and State College. "The freight car builders in the railroad shops at Renovo were ordered on 13 hours per day last week on account of the great demand for cars for the road." Also busy was the Elk Tannery at Ridgway.

"The attendance at Penna. State College is larger than ever this year. It is said that the freshmen class numbers over one hundred." How was the football team? "Francis Spear left for the Grange Picnic on Saturday. got stuck on a bouncing country girl and it is doubtful when he will get back." Where Francis went sounds like a combined camp- meeting and county fair. Rain fell on 250 tents sheltering persons from all over who had come to spend the week.

"A number of samples of patent wire fence attracted attention. Fakers, peanut vendors, boarding houses and all the catch-penny devices were on hand early." It must have been interesting to see the boarding houses on hand early. The rain kept falling for several days while people stayed in their tents, it was cold and wet in town "The steam heat plant will be put into operation on the 1st of October. It will be quite comfortable now, as many offices are damp and unhealthy." A central plant that supplied steam to residences for heating purposes once operated in Williamsport. A big objection to it was that the main pipe under Fourth Street melted the snow and spoiled sleighing.

"On Sunday morning the weather was threatening but in the afternoon people began to come in large numbers," said the grange story. "The services in th auditorium were well attended." See weekend Church Page in this paper. They'll Do It Every Time By Jimmy Hatlo yA-AS--I MUST SHOW YOU PICTURES OP MY HERE'S (3RENADINEN OUR NEW HERE'S KUMQUAT STANDING BY OUR NEW FISHTAIL CONVERTIBLE- FUNNY-AMPHIBIA'S KIOS ARE ALWAYS LEANING AGAINST SOMETHING DOO6V WHEN THEY HAVE THEIR TINTYPES TAKEN WONDER IF SHE HAS ANY) POJBESOPkUMQUAT WHEN THE COPS FOUHO HIS HUBCAP I KNEW HER WMEM THE ONLY POOL SHE HAD TO WORRY ABOUT WAS THE WATER IN THE CELLAR I'D LlkETOSEEA PHOTOSTAT OF THE LOAN THEY TOOK OUT TO FLOAT W4DIN6POOL APPRECIATING THE GAL RXLWHOHASTODISPUV HER WORLDLV 6G09S HXTLOHfTTO CATW 554BROWWOOD Rn. SS. COHASSET.MAS I.