The Oneonta Star from Oneonta, New York • Page 4

Star Editorials Judges differ from state to state Housing shortage Dmg mL -B- plagues Oneonta Oneonta is in dire need of housing. This has been painfully aware to native Oneontans and those who have located in this community. Now the need is spelled out in statistics by the 1970 census. in brief terms the census pointed out that Oneonta needs housing units. This is why it is welcome news to learn that the construction on the long-delayed Wilber Park apartments ivill resume soon.

Work on the 16 building complex was stalled in May of 1970. Since then there has been talk of new developers but nothing concrete materialized. Earlier Marine Midland Bank of Troy announced that it would continue the construction. Hopefully, an estimated 15 to 20 housing units will be completed within very soon. When the present phase of construction is completed, Oneonta should have an additional 50 housing units: These additional units will do much to solve the bousing needs in Oneonta.

Not only will it offer housing to newcomers but some old-time residents indicate when the project is completed, they plan to sell their homes 'and move in. In this way, the real estate market will open more than it is in the present time. Another bit of good news is that banks are lowering their interest rates. This should result in more construction of homes in the two-county area. Letters to the editor 'Bigwigs' should pay for their own homes marre ty con us i on Editor, The Star: I agree with John E.

Loeffler of Portlandville In The Star. We also wish there were more men of the calibre of Edwyn E. Mason who well-being ol the state and country at heart. And I hope everybody saw where our good Ed Mason is sponsoring a bill to ban building educator's homes. I never dreamed there even WAS such a situation and it "burns me up" to think of our tax money being used to provide homes lor "bigwigs" who already have good salaries and can afford to pay taxes better than we, who have to work for what we get.

I hope Ed Mason does not worry over the "Concerned" writer who said he should worry over the unemployed. The Unemployed get unemployment checks. I am in business for myself, and, I get no unemployment check if I do not sell my product. 'I get nothing and they even take away my Social Security if I have made more than $1680 (far less than welfare recipients are getting) previous year. "Unemployed" had better go into business'for himself and find out what it is like.

Still, I'd rather be in business for myself for all that but I do think the small business-person should get a few breaks in taxes and lowered prices. "Unemployed" might better worry over high prices and stop buying anything but necessities that might keep prices down: Business Woman He needles you again By HAROLD COFFIN On the moon, as on earth, the greatest golf hazards are in getting to and. from the course. Because your life is in their hands, we've compiled this list of motorists' hand signals and their true meanings. Left arm extended.

Female motorist: she's indicating a point of scenic interest. Male: he's pointing to a "crazy woman driver." Arm up diagonally. Man: flipping ashes from i cigarette. Woman: she's going to change her mind and turn left. When a guy puts his arm down i a a he's demonstrating his ability to drive with one hand.

Gal: she's flipping ashes from a cigarette. Lack of any signal by a man indicates he's about to make a right, left or U-turn. the same, plus possibility she'll stop or back up. It's easier for a citizen to criticize the way- the government juggles its budget than it is to balance his own. An "expansionary" 'budget is not really new.

Housewives and Democrats used it long before President Nixon thought of it. This also is called a "full employment" budget because Administration officials a fully employed trying to rationalize it. Lack of cash is not the major concern of federal i a planners. What worries them is that they may run out of red ink. Confucius a "Politician who juggles budget 1971 is apt to catch it in 1972." Otsego and Delaware's Independent Newspaper 102 Chestnut Oneonta, N.Y.

13820. Dial 432-1000 Member, Tht Associated Prut, Ntw York Tlmn Otloway. Nlwi Slrvici, Tht Audit Buriou of Circulation! DONALD J. CLIFFORD. and Gcnsrol Monoger, FRANCIS A.

PERRETTA, Editor! JOHN D. DoBIASE, Monogir.g Editor: JOHN LOUGH, County Editor; WILLIAM GATES, City Editor; ROBERT WARNER, Slott Editor) ANNA E. Family Pogi Editor; ROBERT E. WHITTEMORE, Spsrli Editor; RICHARD M. DUNCOVICH, Rtloil Manager; JOHN E.

O'ROURKE Closiificd Adverlilmg Manager; DOUGLAS F. FISH, Circulation Monojer; OTIS H. CICIO, Comptroller; WILLIAM D. YOUNG, Senior Compoilng Room Forcmon; MARVIN A. YOUNG, Night Compoiing Room Foreman; LYLE GARRISON, Prcttroom Foreman.

The Oneonta Star published by The Oneonto Star Division of Ottowoy Nowlpopsrl, James H. Oltaway, Chairman of the Board; James H. Oltoway, President, Elton P. Hall, ViM-Presidenti Dooold J. Clifford, Vicc-Presidcnt and Treasurer.

NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Ollaway Advertising Sales Box im, Campbell Hall, N.Y. 10916 Aria Code 9.U.2W-5I84 Subscription rates: Single copy price, 15c; 75c weekly by carrier delivered to your home. By mail in all areas: three months, six months, one year, $30. (Mail subscriptions not accepted in established carrier delivery areas). Second Class Postage Paid at Oneonta, N.Y, March 16, 1971 WSffiaM I.

DfekfaM, Jr. -Editorial Unearth MINNESOTA'S Court recently upheld the conviction at an IS-year-old hippie for having in the lining of his jacket traces of marijuana so minute they could not be chemically tested but hid to be identi- i i scopicaBy. In Washington, D.C., a few days later, a judge freed a heroin addict on the ground that he was "a sick mar" and not a criminal. Whit these two court cases illustrate is the random, chaotic state of the liw regarding drug abuse. Paradoxically, the users of "hard," addictive drugs like heroin are getting a more sympathetic hearing from some judges than are the users of non-addictive marijuana.

Not since Prohibition has enforcement of the criminal law been more subject to confusion and partiality. EVEN MORE OMINOUS are indications that heroin traffic is nourishing in certain big cities unler the umbrella of police protection. Because i addicts provide a reliable and continuing source of income once they are hooked, it has been in the interests of dealers and crooked police to dry up the supply of pot. Writing in the newsletter of The Public Information Center, Kamen charges: "Detroit police officers are making enormous profits on the sale of heroin in the Motor City's ghetto." He also alleges that one Detroit physician who keeps some 750 junkies off heroin through methadone maintenance became a special object of harassment. The physician, Dr.

F. Wayne Hollinger, told Kamen: "I must be hurting the dope dealers more than I figured. When you estimate the average junkie spends in the area of $100 a day for stuff and m-'tiply that by 750 addicts, you get a big'chunk of cash the hoodlums aren't getting any more." THE MINNESOTA CASE is one of the mot startling in the history drug prosecutions. The state's Supreme Court on Feb. 5 upheld the conviction if Robert Siirila by a 4-3 vote -reversing its 1970 ruling that an unusable amount of marijuana was not enough for a conviction.

"It is inconceivable to me," Associate Justice James Otis said in dissect, "that the legislature intended 20 years imprisonment for possessing an unusable amount of marijuana (one two thousand eight hundredth of an ounce) which could neither be sold, consumed or in any other way post a threat to society." Minneapolis police had to vacuum Siirila's jacket to get microscopic amount of marijuana. The youth spent two years behind ban on the charge and now at age 20 is out on parole. tin the District of Columbia decision, Superior Court Judge. Tim C. Murphy freed a 35-year- old heroin addict charged with narcotics possession.

The judge called on Congress to "provide treatment for such pioplt instead of using criminal law to send them to jail." His ruling on drug addicts came five years after a similar decision in the District regarding alcoholics. Despite a certain amount of i hysteria the use of drugs, some states acd jurisdictions are beginning differentiate between offenders who merely use drugs and the pushers who sell it. The sheer caseload has forced courts to give suspended sentences to notrafficking addicts who agree to undergo treatment. But for drug users unfortunate enough to be caught in places where the laws are tough and the courts unremitting, an, experiment with even the mildest weed may mean a trip to the penitentiary. Oneonta past and present Nature was good lo us By Ed Moon 'You can't suit 'em alP The Irish most of all Who knocks Irish? By Jim Bishop The Irish are depicted as a sturdy, handsome, i religious clan who believe in ghosts and elves and sip whiskey in the late hours and tell tall tales of other Irishmen's ignorance.

That's the trouble -they are. They are beset by fierce loyalities and unremitting venom. They laugh and weep as though they owned all the emotions between. Earthy poets My father was born in Jersey City, but I could listen to him tell stories all evening long because he knew how to tell one, carefully painting the background first, then the people, and finally the drama or the comedy. He was a policeman, not a writer.

His father came out of Enniscorthy, in Wexford, and shoveled coal at an oil refinery, wearing a red undershirt summer and i Bishop came from Farranferris in the city of Cork. All of us are Irish, not merely on St. Patrick's Day when a green tie covers a lot ol cultural neglect, but we are super-Irish, which, in a 'free means that we spend time criticizing our own. We make fun of them, too, but there's a hidden pride in that. My father told me about the Irish cop who saw a big cut glass bowl of grapefruit in a restaurant window.

A lieutenant," he said, "look at the size of them oranges. I bet it wouldn't take many of them to make a dozen." This is not less ridiculous than when I asked my daughter Karen how many of her classmates will graduate with her this year. "Most of them," she said. In October 1963, I spent a little time with President John F. Kennedy and he showed me the scrapbook he kept of his trip to Ireland- At Enniscorthy, the mayor had built a wooden grandstand with its back against the river.

The President was "Why didn't you build the grandstand on the other side of the square?" he laid toftly. "Some of those people might fall into the river. 'Aw, the mayor said in disgust. "What the hell do you think I got those two men out there is a boat for?" Some Irish stories are untrue. Like the.

one: "How many Irishmen does it take to change an electric bulb?" "Six. One to hold the bulb and five to turn the ladder." It's libelous. The Irish are at their finest at a proper wake. Their rosary, their responses to the litanies are so fervent that they burst eardrums in heaven. Then they will drink, and reminisce, and repair to the kitchen to hack at a big ham, and toss off straight whiskey to ward off fearful thoughts of the hereafter and the punishment awaiting all of us.

Some have been known to do such magnificent warding of that they carry the casket and tilt it against a wall to make room for a concertina" and an Irish reel. They have a racial disinclination to remember names. In conversation, you will hear a lot about "the big fella," "the little fella," "the old man" and if it is a personage of consequence, he's called "himself." A term of disparagement Is "that wan." "The likes of him will never have a day's luck." Or, for a dead enemy: "He nivver did a lick of work tiie best day of his life, God forgive me and the Lord have mercy on his soul." The Kennedys were not the truest Irish of Boston. The McCqrmacks were. McCormack, whose brother became a great speaker of the House, tended to the needs of the immigrant Irish as though he was the father of them all.

He ran a speakeasy in which the only drink was 25 cents gin and ginger ale. When the federal agents began to splinter his front door with axes, Knocko spread his palms on ihe bar and said: "Gentlemen, last call." Dan Parker used to tell the story ot some Irishmen in County Clare who worked the peat bogs. Once a week they'd take a'day off and lounge on a village common. They would elect one of their m'en to go into town on a double assignment: buy a small cask of whiskey and find out what day it was. The whiskey sparked their imaginations; the knowledge of what day it was provided a safe topic of conversation.

One day a smart one said: "I know what day 'tis. It's a Choosday." The game was spoiled. Gloom hit the men. Another Irishman brightened. "Tell him to get the whiskey and find out what time 'tis." Everybody brightened.

The man left. The men waited. An hour later he was back with the whiskey on his shoulder. "A divvil of a time I had," he said. "The only clock was on the railroad station.

It's up on a tower --Jwo of them, mind ye. One said it was twenty after two. The other said a quarter of three. I called the stationmaster out and asked him what the hell good the clocks are if they tell different time. "Bedad, he collared me proper.

He said what the hell good would it do to have two clocks if they both told the same time." side Lighter With Gene Brown "We'll let the kids in on a secret: Only about 1 in 100 members of The Establishment is sure he is established," NOT GOOD ENOUGH The report card that the fond parent a disconsolately digesting bore the i comment, "I'm afraid he is doing his best." SAMPLES OF STUFF PASSING FOR HUMOR Now that women have been liberated, who will take care of the men and children? "This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks." It was of Acadia that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote but it could just as well have been of the valley of the Susquehanna, for when the white man first saw these vales and hills they were covered with a forest the like of which can be found nowhere on earth today. Branch to branch the trees marched, from horizon to horizon, their ranks cut only by the river and its tributaries and by the few clearings where the redskin had his borne and raised his meagre crops. Trees there were of every kind, both evergreen and deciduous that grow in a temperate clime pine and hemlock, oak, maple and cherry, chestnut, beech and linden, as well as butternut and basswood, and mountain ash. There were shrubs in great variety; wild plum and crab apple, buckthorn and the shads.

In the shady dells grew the wood lily, the orchid and the lady slippe as 11 as the scarlet alluvials, protected by the warrior nettle. The stream banks were red in season with the water pink, or cardinal, while in the marshes were patches golden cowslip. The forests teemei with game and the waters fish. There were great herds of deer, preyed upon by roving bands of timber wolves. Along the ridges panther, the catamount, or wildcat.

Smaller- animals such as the fox, racoon, otter, marten and the mink abounded. In the narrow valleys the beaver built his dams. In the marshlands were duck and geese and amid the brush dwelt grouse and wild turkeys. At tjmes the skies were darkened by vast flights of passenger pigons, which once existed by the millions but today can be found nowhere in the world. The smaller streams were filled with brook and salmon trout while each year the shad passenger pigeons, which ran up the river.

In the lakes were bass and pickerel. So it was when the first settler came into the valley but so it was not long to remain. Man had to conquer the wilderness or perish and, paradoxically, the wilderness helped him to do it. Unlike the settlers of the West, whose Conestoga wagons carried much that they needed and whose homesteads were ready for the plow, those who came first into our region had only such goods as could be carried in a pack or in saddlebags and their farm -lands had to be cleared of timber, foot by laborious foot. While he was building his rude home and clearing a few acres for the first planting, the pioneer was forced to live off the land.

About everything he needed in the way of food, clothing and shelter, came from the forests. Gradually the trees were cut down. Some'of the wood was used and some rafted down the river but much of ft was burned where it had stood. The larger wild life disappeared, leaving only the small animals we have today. The game birds were shot out of the skies and as the streams were dammed or became -polluted with sawdust, most of the fish vanished.

Today we have our busy city, our quiet villages and tin smiling country-side, created for our use by a breed of tough and self-reliant men and women, who, despite their toil and their hardships, lived full and happy lives. Around With Ed Moon There Is plenty of fat in Rocky's budget but the Assembly Ways and Means committee chooses to use its knife on sinew and muscle. A proposal has been made to abolish the Division of Veterans Affairs, an efficient, low budget organization which has given immense service for 25 years to veterans of four wars. To do away with it now, when 80,000 New Yorkers are expected be discharged from the service this year, seems to us to be the height of stupidity. The very best of wishes for Mrs.

Mabel Mitchell of Colliers- vilte who will be 90 years old on the 20th If we wrote a daily column we would have scored a scoop on the news that the Holiday Inn will be located on the former Marvin Simonson property on South Side but we don't and so we Good old wishes for a good old friend, Jake Galinn, who will be 88 on the About six years ago the Heart Association received a legacy to establish a clinic at Cooperstown. When the office was moved to Utica the record of this gift was lost. If any reader knows the name of the donor and the size of the legacy, or has any other information concerning i please phone us at 432-1187. Every good wish for Anthony (Mandolin Tony) Bagnardi who will become a year older on the 22nd. How about those Oneonta Yellowjackets a Hartwick Warriors! We feel that the Yellowjackets can go all the way and give Oneonta a sectional championship.

going will be pretty rough from now on for the Warriors but the point is that no other Hartwick basketball team ever got so far up the championship ladder. Tomorrow is St, Patrick's Day and we wish the top o'the marnin' and all the rest of the day to you nice people. Do you suppose the little men will spend tonight replacing the orange juice in the containers with green creme de menthe? Virginia, a raving beauty is a gal who placed second in a beauty contest. Wilmer and Esther Breseo have come up from Down Under and are back in town, all of which means that they have been to Australia and New Zealand and other spots between here and there Harold de- Craw tells us that the has booked the Frazier-Muhaminad Ali fight for late in March. We figure that the Oneonta Theatre wUl be packed for that one.

Nice for nice Dee and Margaret Bullard, who' observe a wedding anniversary on the 23rd hava now written over 1100 columns without missing a deadline. That means nearly 11 years without a vacation or without a break for illness. We just don't know how have done it. Can we make 1200? We just don't know but we'll give it a try. Virginia, any Kiwanian will bi glad to sell you a ticket for Saturday, April 5, when the Builders will flip their pancakes.

You can eat enough to give you fits for only a buck and a couple of bits ($1.25 to those who don't know how much two bits is). Part of 1892 Oneonta Herald editorial: "If electricians give us sunshine at night, they will have bestowed upon mortals a god-like gift. We want, however, something they have tried to give and failed -a practical electric motor to lessen the bar- dens of the Ktioiv your legislators Sen. Jacob Javits, United Slates Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510.

Sen. James Buckley, United States Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510. If you live Otsego County your state representatives are Sen. Dslwin Niles, Assemblyman Donald J.

Mitchell, State Capitol, Albany, N.Y. 12224. If you live in Delaware County, your state representatives are Sen. Warren Anderson and Assemblyman Edwyn E. Mason, State Capitol, Albany, N.Y.

12224. Your congressman Is Rep. Hamilton Fish House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. 20515. the small society LOT Of P60PLE RAY'S 3-16.