Bennington Banner from Bennington, Vermont • Page 6

Observer 4 Bennington Banner. Wednesday. OciuImt 13. lTh Will the real The Bennington Banner Jimmy Carter ishi'd i'mtj dii '('i')i Mimhn mid holiday by Ibv IIANNKlf I'l HIJSHIM. (il It I' OH ATI ON Vi't Main Sired.

Vermont (11)21)1 By RUSSELL BAKER N.Y. Times Newi Service Editorials Isn't anyone listening? cr Letter Odyssey of the white robin Truman. I made the Harry Truman scene off the back of a train and darn near wrecked the campaign." THAT MUST HAVE led to a top4evd strategy conference uf all the Jimmy CarterB. It appears from recent campaign developments that there was a decision to send Mister Regular Guy back to Georgia to join Mister Nice Guy at the fish pond, and to send you, Mister Tough Guy, into the battle carrying the standard of the Jimmy Carters. "My answer to that question is that Ford has not told the truth about where his lunch money comes from, is too dim to know the Red Army is in Pnland, and has to ask Henry Kissinger's permission to use the White House." DO YOU MAKE these harsh attacks without consulting Mister Nice Guy for Christian guidance? He is, after all, the Jimmy Carter who won the nomination.

And how do you, Mister Nice Guy, feel about being retired from the contest? Mister Nice Guy? Where are vou? He was here just a moment ago. Where has he gone? Isn't there any more Mister Nice Guy? "We can get him back any time he's convenient." WHICH OF YOU gentlemen will occupy the White House if Jimmy Carters are elected? Anybody want to answer that? No? But you're smiling. Such mystaious smiles! You know something but are not saying. Could it be? Yes, yes! You saw it here first, ladies and gentlemen! Not in a Barbara Walters interview! There is a fourth Jimmy Carter in the wings. His identity? Destined to remain a secret unless America sends Jimmy Carters to the White House.

After winning the nomination, you went to Georgia to play softball and fish, but you don't seem to have taken much part in the campaign since then. What happened, sir? "Could I answer that, old buddy?" Certainly, but first, please introduce yourself. "MY NAME is Jimmy Carter and I'm Mister Regular Guy. After we get the nomination, it looked like old Nice Guy there had done his job. He'd made a lot of beds in the guest rooms of folks in a lot of towns, and it looked like people of the raffish sort, who never get around to malting the beds, might feel he was a little too prim and unctuous for their taste." So it was time for Mister Regular Guy to carry the ball? "Hiere are a lot of voters in this country who don't get their beds made from one day to the next, There was no point In surrendering the unmadebed bloc to the Republicans without a fight." SO YOU ARE the Jimmy Carter who undertook to charm Norman Mailer and the Playboy reader with raffish, regular guy jargon.

How did you feel about this, Mister Nice Guy? "All Jimmy Carters are Americans, and Americans are good people, and I love them all." That is a very touching statement of human tolerance, sir, but I suspect our audience is wondering why it did not see Mister Regular Guy in either of Ihe television debates. Any explanation for that, Mister Regular Guy? "The Hills were lolling me. The colorful talk bombed on Gallup, Harris and Roper. Who is the greatest regular guy president of all time'' Harry NEWYORK. LADIES and gentlemen, our guests today are Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidates for president, I cannot help but observe, Mr.

Carter, that there are three of you. Would you please introduce yourselves to the audience? "I am Mister Nice Guy. My name is Jimmy Carter and I'm runnin' for president. Americans are good people and I'll never tie to them. I love you all.

Amen." If I remember correctly, Mister Nice Guy, you are the Jimmy Carter who won the Democratic nomination over the opposition of such men as Henry Jackson, Morris Udall, Jerry Brown and Frank Church. What was the secret of your victory, sir? "It's time for Ford to quit hiding in the Rose Garden and start telling the American people the truth for a change, to start telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." MY QUESTION was addressed to MISTER Nice Guy, sir, but since you have interrupted, perhaps you will introduce yourself. "My name is Jimmy Carter and I am Mister Tough You certainly sound tough. I take it that you do not share Mister Nice Guy's love for all Americans, or at least that you do not let his Christian forbearance stop you from attacking at least one American the president as dishonest? "As well asa boob who knows nothing about arms limitation except the expiration date of the present treaty." IF I CAN go back to my question to Mister Nice Guy "You are a good person, and will never deceive you." Thank you. Mister Nice Guy.

One hopes that the spending constraints imposed on the presidential candidates by the new federal campaign financing legislation have not forced a cancellation of the New York Times subscriptions at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or in Plains, Ga. For the news that was fit to print the other day gave dramatic evidence of one of the nation's most severe, chronic problems one that the two presidential candidates have all but avoided during their campaign follies. The juxtaposition of front page stories, perhaps coincidentally, told the story. In the upper right hand corner, the Times reported that the Beame administration was preparing another $500 million in hudget cuts in a city where spending reductions have already curtailed drastically municipal services. Adjoining that news was a story that the number of high school dropouts from the city's schools was increasing rapidly.

And, across the page, was news that in East Rutherford. N.J. more than 74,000 fans had turned out for the opening game in the Giants Stadium, the new home field of the professional football team known with quaint nostalgia as the New York Giants. Those stories symbolized nicely the nation's continuing urban crisis, a crisis prei'tpilaled by the maldistribution of the nation's population that has left the cities crowded with tax users while the suburbs have become the haven of taxpayers who can afford the luxury of professional football tickets and automobiles ioget to the games. Yet, while the plight of the nation's cities is by now a sad and familiar tale, it has hardly been addressed by Ford and Carter.

Do they intend to federalize welfare, and if so, when? What specifically do they intend to do to counter the 40 per cent unemployment rate among the nation's urban teen agers? Would they favor lowering the minimum wage for teenagers? How would they arrest the decline in the nation's urban housing stock? Do they favor the imposition of mandatory sentences for federal crimes as a means of deterring the violence in the nation's cities? What, if any, steps are they willing to take to force the nation's suburbs either through taxes or through an acceptance of more of the nation's poor to participate in the solution of urban problems? What incentives are they willing to offer urban employers to remain in the cities? So far, no answers from the candidates. The news that would really be fit to print would be the detailing of a comprehensive urban policy for the years ahead. But evidently that's too much to hope for. people reported a strange white bird was living near the college gate. The albino was still around near the end of August time she began to think about her southern journey for winter.

Should the white mbin return in 1977 let us all raise a cheer. It could be a record. However, chances ot return are greatly diminished. Age is a negative factor. Added to the normal hazards age is her spectacular difference from other robins.

This makes her more vulnerable to destruction. The curious might want to inspect her more dnsely. In North Bennington, 1 have heard youngsters say: "Let's shoot her and have her stuffed!" A robin's life under normal conditions is not an easy one, beset by many enemies, including man. Being different, as our white robin is, can make it tough. Should she come back, let's protect her and be grateful for her presence.

HENRY CHRISTMAN Tn thf RrtlWr af The BillJTIf The white robin returned to North Bennington in the spring of 1976 and lived a normal life during her northern stay. This equals the apparent Teeord for the return of an albino robin to the same nesting area for three consecutive years. tSee Banner, July 24, 18751. The white robin was reported on lawns on Tleasant Street an April 14, 1976. William Luc zynski photographed her as he had in 1975.

Mrs. Vera Hedding first reported the albino on Pleasant Street on April 20, 1974. The robin returned on April 13, 1975. This year the white robin changed habitat slightly, moving up hill from Pleasant Street to nest in the area of the Bennington College northern gate not far from the homes nf Elizabeth Dwyer and Fred Welling. She was observed far more frequently in this area than down hill on lawns and gardens along E'leasant Street.

Early in the spring several Another credibility gap North Bennington. What Does a Museum Say? When 'Yankee Doodle' came to town and stayed almost wholly a song of expected triumph of the British. While the British were yet in Boston, after the arrival uf Washington at Cambridge in 1775, some poet among them wrote what became at the time the standard 14 verse piece in derision of the New England It Is said also to have been sung in Holland hy reapers as a sort of chorus at harvest time. a THE SONG'S first appearance on this side of the Atlantic was apparently instigated hy a Dr. Shackburg, a surgeon in the British army, a old English dictionaries as "a sorry, trifling fellow" and the term was applied to Cromwell in that sense.

A "macaroni" was a knot on which the feather was fastened. LONG BEFORE our revolution, the air was known' in THE STORY of "Yankee Doodle" and its antecedents is told both by Lossing and in the text of a paper read in New Haven, May 29, 1893, hy Samuel E. Barney before the Gen. David Humphreys Branch, Connecticut Society, By CHARLES G. BENNETT IN THIS Bicentennial year, a recent question asked of the Genealogical Library was; What songs of the Revolution have survived down to the present day? The answer was found to be essentially only one song, the million to the budget, with which the legislature will have to wrestle next year.

That's about the amount that the most optimistic prognosticaters suggest as the increase in state revenues in the year ahead. Add to tfiis dismal projection the inflation seated increases that will be in the budgets of every other state department, more aid to education, an unavoidable increase in welfare costs to the state, a few other little items like the need for more money for the University of Vermont and the state colleges, and you have a very large gap between income and outgo in the state's fiscal picture. These are some of the facts, unpleasant as they may be, that we'd like to see candidates for state office addressing honestly, instead of with silly promises of "no new taxes" and "ctiLs in spending." They may be appealing to the voters, but they have little basis in reality, as we are all going lu learn when they face them next winter in Montpelier. A story in Tuesday's Banner about a proposed 1G per cent pay raise for stale employes in Vermont contained a statement, which if reported correctly, must surely raise a few eyebrows. The proposed pay hike was approved this week by the State Employes Compensation Review Board.

According to their reported study, state employes, with an average weekly salary of $186 lag behind those in the private sector, who are said to average $216 per week. Exactly how that iigure of $216 in the private sector was determined we have no way of knowing, unless they tossed in the salaries of some high salaried professional people, but $216 per week is considerably beyond even the "average" for the factory worker, clerical workers and others who make up the bulk of the work force in Vermont. The proposed pay hikes for state employes will add more than $10 people. This was the version that began: Father and I went down 'o camp Along with Captain Gooding And there we see the men and boys As thick as hasty pudding. The Yankee's return from camp There are more verses and parodies of verses to "Yankee Doodle" than you could count in boy: of macaroni.

Following a re a few of them. Ed. In the bug And then the feathers on his hat. They looked so tarn fin a. I wanted poefeiiy to get To give to my Jemima.

The troopers too would gallop up, And fire right into our faces; It scur'd me almost half to death. To see them run such rams. I see another snarl of men A digging graves, they me. So tarnal long, so tarnal deep. They leaded they should hold me.

It scar'd me so, I hooh'd it oil Nor stop'd as I remember Nor turn'd about till got home. Lock'd up if: mother's chamber. Father and I went down to camp, with Captain Good ins, And there we see (he men and boys As thick as hasty pudding. Chorus Yankee. Doodie, keep it up.

Yankee Doodle, dandy, Mind the musicand tfie step, Ami with the girls be handy. Arcd there we sec a thousand men, As rich as 'Squire. David; And ivhat they wasted every day 1 wish il could be saved. And there was Captain Washington Upon a slapping stallion. A givifig orders iohis men guess (here was million.

PARODIES of the popular melody sprang up all over. Some of these, too, derided the colonials. An example: Yankee Doodle took a sav With a patriot's devotion To trim the tree of liberty According to his notion. He set himself upon a limb Just like some other noodle He cut between the tree and him And down came Yankee. Doodle.

Yankee Doodle broke bit neck And every bone aboul him And then the tree of liberty Did very well without him. pupular and melodious "Yankee Doodle." Many songs actually sprang out of the Revolution, these frequently inspired by events or personalities of the war. One such lyric, "The Snng of the Ver monters 1779," was considered to reflect admirably the spirit of the people of this area. But only "Yankee Doodle" whose origins and predeecssor songs came out uf England a century or more before the American Revolution has successfully straddled the two centuries from the struggle uf the early American colonies down to the present day. with popularity undiminished, ONE OF THE proudest uses of the tune, from the Colonial point of view, eame on October 17.

1777 just Iwo months and one day after the Battle of Bennington during ceremonies incident to the surrender of the British Gen. John Burgoyne to the American Gen, Horatio Gates at Saratoga. As Benson J. Lossing tells it in his "Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution," near the conclusion of the surrender ceremunies: "The American army was drawn up on parallel lines on each side uf the rond, extending nearly a mile. Between these victorious troops the British army, with light infantry in front and escorted by a company of light dragoons, preceded by two mounted officers bearing the American Flag, marched tn the lively tune of 'Yankee One cm only imagine the thoughts of the vanquished "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne, with disappointed hopes and foiled ambition, as he listened tn the victors' rendition nf the sprightly melody which had its antecedents many years previously in his own homeland and which first came over to the American colonics as a parody written in derision of the natives! THE COLONIALS, far from smarting under the derision of "Yankee Doodle," picked it up, played it and marched to it.

They wrote their own parodies. First, their marching was to the laughter of the British soldiers. But later, as the tide of war and revolution turned to favor the colonies, the British began to retreat before the old tunc, or marched to it as prisoners nf war. By that time as at the surrender of Burgoyne Saratoga "Yankee Doodle" probably sounded leu and less amusing to the English. "He laughs best who laughs lnt" Sons of the American Revolution.

The basic melody of "Yankee Doodle" antedates (he American Revolution by at least one. and one quarter centuries. A snng, composed in derision of Oliver Cromwell, by a loyal poet, began with: Yankee Doodle came to town Riding on a pony With feather in hi hat Upon a macaroni. A "doodle" is defined in the New England as "Lydia Fisher's Jig." Some of its words were: Lucy Locket lost her pocket f.ydin Fisher found it Not a bit of money in it Only binding nround it. There appears to be some reason, too, for htlieving the eld air In have originated long before the days of Oliver Cromwell among the mountains of the Pyrenees, and to have been known In the south nf France as an old vintage song, good musician and something of a wag.

When the Colonial soldiers were assembling at Albany in 1755 to join the British troops in an expedition against the trench posts at Niagara and Frontcnac, Dr. Shackburg was so amused by their antiquated equipment, appearance and music thai he rewrote the words ot 'he old Cromwell deriding song and promoted the resulting ditty as the thing in English martial music In the early yesrs llevoluhrai, Yankee Doodle was.