internal combustion engine, were combined.
The result was an arcade-on-wheels, the brainchild of local resident
Clifford Ledford. The bus, formerly a Boiling Springs Junior Police ac
tivities bus, was repainted bright blue last month and outfitted inside
with ten, coin-operated games.
The bus is air-conditioned and can generate its own electricity to run
the games. And what if the customers tire of the ten games? “We just
drive on to a new spot,” says Ledford.
The Foothills View
B\k. Postage Paid
FRIDAY - JULY 15, 1983
BOILING SPRINGS NC
Permit No. 15 - Address Correction Requested
SINGLE COPY 15 CENTS
344t ■ T' ’
This Year’s Crop
Not The Pits
a i -?
*;? ■.. • 'i%. It Takes A Brave Cook
«■ iiV , ■ > , , • - -.. ^>4:3
To Hunt Blackberries
Compliment the cook the next
time you taste blackberry pie -a
compliment for braving a hot
sun, brambles, and an occasional
lege Farm Road with her grand
daughter, Sharon Grant. “They
weren’t out to hurt anybody.”
In spite of early reports that
indicated an almost total wipe
out of North and South
Carolina’s peach crops, surveys
have shown that there are still
numerous orchards that sustain
ed little if any damage. At these
orchards, excellent quality
peaches are now being
harvested.
“The worst damage in North
Carolina from the mid-April
freeze occurred in the Sandhill
area where the bulk of the state’s
peach crop is grown,” said an
agricultural department
spokesman. “However, even in
that area some varieties
withstood the freeze and can be
obtained on a limited basis. The
eastern Carolina orchards were
even less severely damaged.”
In Gaffney, home of the
Peachoid water ttmk, that South
Carolina town’s Peach Festival
Tractor Pull is scheduled for Fri
day, 7 p.m., at Lake Whelchel.
The pull is sponsored by the
Grassy Pond Volunteer Fire
Department.
Also planned for the Peach
Festival are a variety show at the
Gaffney Little Theater on Fri
day at 8 p.m., a two-hour parade
Saturday beginning at 10 a.m. at
the Gaffney Mall, and the finals
Saturday of the South Carolina
Miss Peach Blossom contest at
7:30 p.m.
One In Three Watches
snake. “Oh, the ones we
A (t>lack snakes) kept moving
Jonnie Tallent show
here picking berries along Col-
By mid-morning the two had
picked at least several gallons of
blackberries for future pies, cob
blers, and rolls.
Television Preachers
Mountains Look Good For Age
Quite a few residents of
Western North Carolina are
fond of saying their mountains
are not only the most beautiful
in the world, but also the oldest.
While beauty always will be in
the eyes of the beholder, the age
of the mountains is better left to '
geologists. Especially if there is
any money riding on it.
The fact is that the oldest
rocks in North Carolina’s
southern Appalachaians date
back only about a billion years,
according to Dr. Paul Fullagar, '
chairman of the geology depart
ment at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
As a result, they are not exact
ly spring chickens as rocks go,
but they are far younger than
some specimens found in Min
nesota, Greenland and Australia
that are about 4 billion years old.
Not only are the North
Carolina mountains younger,
Fullagar said, but the Ap
palachians, including the Blue
Ridge and neighboring ranges,
have appeared and disappeared
several times during the past
billion years.
“The question of how old the
mountains are depends on
whether people are talking about
the age of the rocks that make
up the mountains or the age of
the mountains themselves,” the
scientist said. “It seems some
people have trouble seeing the
distinction, either because they
haven’t thought about it or
because we geologists haven’t
made the difference clear to
them.”
Fullagar ■ specializes in
.chemical analysFs of rocks,
which infcludes dating them by
comparing trace amounts of
radioactive material they con
tain with daughter products left
over as the radioactivity
diminishes. Since radioactive
uranium decays into lead, for ex
ample, the relative amounts of
uranium and lead in a sample
can tell geologists how long it
has been since the rock formed.
Using techniques like this,
researchers have learned that as
recently as 60 million or 70
million years ago, the Ap
palachian region was probably
much flatter than it is now.
Fullagar said. Sediments in the
state’s coastal plain contain little
evidence of sand and other
debris that would have washed
down from the mountains dur
ing that time, even though
evidence of such sediment can be
found from both earlier and later
periods.
Dr. John Dennison, also a pro
fessor of geology at UNC-CH,
said he believes that three
distinct mountain ranges formed
in North Carolina and were
worn away before the Ap
palachians were created.
He estimated the birth dates
of those ghost mountains to be
about 1 billion years, 430 million
years and 260 million or 270
million years ago, respectively.
Mountains arise from tremen
dous forces generated by molten
material upwelling deep within
the Earth and by slow-moving
continents first pushing against
each other and then pulling
away. The result in certain areas
is an uplifting of land that initial
ly may be relatively flat.
“The most recent uplifting in
the East was probably 20 million
to 30 million years ago,” Den
nison said. “It was more gentle
than the earlier events.”
Over thousands of centuries,
running water, ice and swirling
winds carve away at the great
smooth mounds of earth and
rock, cutting gorges, ravines and
valleys. What is left is the moun
tains.
“A good example of moun
tains that haven’t been carved
out yet would be the wheatfields
of eastern Colorado, which are
as high as our mountains,” he
said, “but are flat as pancakes
now.”
Dennison said the Ap
palachians are wearing down.
They may rise up again, as they
have in the past, but it won’t be
soon.
Part of the Sierras in the West,
however, are “visibly growing,”
he added, “at least several inches
in the past 100 years.”
F ullagar and Dennison agreed
that statements calling the New
River the second oldest in the
world .are impossible to docu
ment and probably not true.
From Gallup Reports
Fully one-third of Americans
say they have watched religious
programs on television within
the last seven days, with approx
imately half viewing these pro
grams for more than an hour.
From a socio-economic stand
point, most likely to have viewed
religious TV broadcasts within
the last seven days are: residents
of the South (46'%), rural areas
of America (41'%),^lder persons
(those over 50 years of age), and
several of the so-call’ed
downscale or less affluent
population groups: blacks (43%),
persons in lower income
households and those with a
grade school education.
In contrast, least likely to have
watched TV broadcasts within
the last week are: easterners; big
city residents; and up-scale
groups, including the college-
educated, those in the profes
sional and business class, and
persons earning $25,000 per year
or more.
Analysis of religious TV view
ing by the various religious
breakdowns reveals that
evangicals, both in terms of
denominational preferences and
stated ideology, to be among the
most frequent viewers of
religious TV.
In both instances, about six in
10 have watched religious broad
casts on TV within the last seven
days, and half this number,
about three in 10, have watched
for more than one hour within
the last seven days.
Similarly, the highly spiritual
ly committed (60%) state they
have watched religious TV
within the last week, again with
three in 10 claiming to have wat
ched over an hour.
Other heavy viewers are those
describing their religious
ideology as “far right,” those
claiming to lead a very Christian
life, those who have listened to
religious radio within the last
seven days and those who in
dicate that religion is a very im
portant factor in their lives.
Low religious TV viewership
occurs in the following groups:
those claiming no denomination
preference (12'Vo), the
ideologically liberal, far left
those staying they lead a
very un-Christian life (11 •%), and
those who are highly religiously
uninvolved, the highly spiritual
ly uncommitted (6'%), and those
who say religion is not important
in their lives (9%).
Interestingly, Catholics are
only about half as likely to have
watched religious TV within the
last week, with 21'Vo claiming
viewership, compared to 41 •% of
Protestants.