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VOLUME 15
NEW BERN, N. C. 28560, FRIDAY, MAY 5, 1972
NUMBER 8
■ Keeping tab on all your neigh
bors, in the golden long
ago...was really very simple,
S u got all there was to
OW...YOU heard the battles
that occurred in everybody’s
house...you monitored the
nagging wife, who made her
man a mouse.
If Junior’s ears were soundly
boxed, the slaps were loud and
clear....and when their family
dog was kicked, his yaps came
over here...A bottle ranking on
a glass you didn’t have to
see...it simply meant that good
old Bill was on another spree.
You coidd add some brand
new cuss words to your own
vocabulary....by listening to
some utterances that proved
extraordinary...And when
someone along the block had
round steak, always tou^...you
were tuned in as they beat and
banged to tender up the stuff.
But now with television, even
worse than radio...snooping on
the folks next door has reached
an all time low...'nie wildest
screams may emanate from
anv home in tqwn and friends
wiU only comment that the
volume should be down.
Guns exploding in the night
are hardly signs of
danger They don’t denote the
vitdence of a nei^ibor or a
stranger...We don’t get shakes
at screeching brakes, or sirens
oh so shrill the go^ scene on
Uaring screen is why the air
ain’t stiU.
But there is consolation in all
this constant fuss If we can’t
check m our neighbtxrs, how
can they check on us?
Yesterday was when Frank
Duffy was the M)ly New Bern-
ian, yoing or old. who owned
and piloted an airplane. Kids
admired him like a man from
Mars, attired in his aviator
clothes, complete with helmet
and goggles.
Yesterday was when the story
first circulated about Andrew
Mirphy visiting a livestock
exhibit at the State Fair in
Raleigh with his 14 or 15
children. Instead of charging
the popular Craven farmer to
see a prize bull in a tent, Qie
owner, as the storv goes,
brought the bull outsioe to see
Andrew and his offspring.
Yesterday was when Dexter
(Ole Red) Williams and his very
nice wife got mad at each other,
while motoring in the moun-
tidns of western North Carolina.
They rode for 20 miles ra more
without speaking.
Finally, Ole Red spied a mule
on the side of a mountain,
pointed and said to his better
half, "Are you kin to him?’’
Icily she put Williams in a state
of ^eat. "By marriage," she
replied.
Ole Red, one of our favorite
human beings, tells how he and
the Missus came to town in their
car one hot August day, and she
insisted on keeping all the
windows up so folks wouldn’t
know they didn’t have air
conditioning.
Yesterday was when Sperling
Thomas, an educated fellow
who never made it big, used to
stand on the corner at Middle
and Pollock, and contribute
(Continued on page 8)
HERE HE IS—For a little more than a year and a
half, folks have been saying to the editor, **Why
don't you run a picture of your own grandson in The
Mirror?" Well, you sort of hate to do it, knovdng
that no one likes to hear the other fellow blow his
own horn. What turned the tide against Gramp was
Grandma. So, this is your pictoral introduction to
Carter Haynes Willson, son of J. Carter and Jo
Carole McDaniel Willson of Alexandria, Va. Get
ting him to smile for the birdie was no problem. He
wears that same happy grin from early morning
until bedtime.