Newspapers / The Duplin Times (Warsaw, … / Feb. 28, 1935, edition 1 / Page 2
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-If i II ,., iiin , jiH... .iky "! j Mi' 1 v. u ?-. i , . .11 W '111.. k.1 TEACHERS ON WHEELS' AHa first county agricultural 1 I extension agent I ever knew ' ,5 J. -ri can tea him yet, as ha ; ' , cornea gingerly picking his . way serosa corn stubble on my fa ther's farm to ask Ernie, of all peo ple, if tie needs any acmce. i sea him as plainly as If It were yesteiy jday about thirty, bine stilt, white wash tie, the general air of that If be only had a blackboard and some real scholars he : could ? explain : everything. Tana gingerly he went vol way among , na for years al ways homesick for his blackboard, always seeming gently to brash the : chalk dust from bis hands as he poke,- '. . ' Another, quite another sort. In California, the breadth of a conti nent away; red-headed, healthily Ig norant, Immense and trig In the put ' tees and sombrero of a forest rang er. Patting a geared tip flivver at forty over ratted roads. Boiling It : :t sack on its wheels when It upsets. ) These two are my extremes; all the others fall somewhere between. ' One, now gray, who worked before - there was a Smith-Lever law, when there were only about twenty agents in - ah - America Instead: of some twenty hundred. He tells how, in 191 he was called upon at one noose to assist at a Dirtn ana at the next to sharpen a scythe.. - An other of that earlv dav: he took : orders for fertilizer, pocketed the ' commission,- and' when confronted with the. Impropriety coolly .said that It was the most practical' pro " gram he could think of to improve the son fertility, of the county. The only downright shiftless and faith less one I eve knew, loUIns around who we courtuoniw politicians ana cussing farmers as ''knockers." ' - One who: in a bad-roads county walks twenty miles many .a winter day to keep his project committees going. ' - A timid, credulous one. (These are rare.) He gratefully be lieves , ' everything ,'-he .-, hears and reads hat women who smoke can't nave babies, that Germany will bes dry in two months, that the crap ebootlng son of a focal pastor real ly gave Us coat to a shivering man he met on the street Of these three things he-. solemnly, assures tne In five minutes' riding. But a . good agent ; his people respect - his sincerity and trust him..- ! ;," ': i: "Characters" f Tbs b' er-halfV hack who In the first two minutes, yon met htm had to know bow old' you- were whether yon were mar ried and- why not The one who was always showing you his depu ty sheriff's badge -t apd hunting moonshiners by moonlight. The one who lit matches' in his coupe' and -waved them around his head while delving,' to show- you bow air-tight be bad everything. .- The one who told me, "God must love extension enpervlsors ; be made so many of them." The one who at a colling demonstration, was confronted with evidence that one of a bunch of his cull hens at a neighboring farm had actually laid an egg. He said: '- ' "Well, folks, they stabbed Julius Caesar, and tbey made old Socrates drink 'the hemlock, and they burned Joan of Arc at the stake, 1 guess We all make mistakes 5 v5; H; ; An agent who. never makes a di rect suggestion j another who makes nothing else, always in the tone of orders; both somehow, successful. The best agent in a big state who, i " ice he's nt working at it-now, I m name, John Hervey. ITe hadn't the slightest sense of " nor; a crusader seldom has. e, I remember as he was driving r i to talk on books In a remote ';i of his county -Waslilng-c iiify, Ohio we trailed, per II fe-. ..ii B,v,,,h .v.., Wm , force, -on the narrow dirt roads of that semi-mountainous region, la boring truck. Some ribald soul had erased a letter on the track's back side to give ,a "Service" caption thereupon displayed,"" gorgeously vulgar and on the whole more troth' ful meaning. I never worked hard er at anything than. I. did to ex plain to John Hervey why I thought It was funny. Finally; "I see," he said; - then , added - reproachfully, "The very Idea of a men with your gifts! . . ., To John, everybody had '"gifts." They tell this story: A badly dis couraged club youngster trudged down from the hills of Washington county .and . bitterly :. demanded : "What's the use 1 - What can ever grow; anyway; that's any goodV-on that blame old hill of ours" ' "You can," said John. , - " , I think that Is One, and I Imagine he said it Anyone who knows John Hervey can easily picture him say ing it rugged, Intense, self-forget ful, the entire six feet ' of v him thrust 'forward-from an Inadequate old desk chair; his eges a clear gray, worriedly ." squinted tinder those sharply bulging brows; his voice low and urgent Butt "No, I never -eeold have put It that pat" said John, anxious ly, the last time I drove out over his 'county with blm. Tve always bad 1 trouble expressing myself. That's slways been one of my han dicaps. All r could, get : of college was two years, the special course at State.' ,! know what I want to say all right but most of the time I Just have to, flounder around un til: people begin to ' see what I'm after and can work the thing out for themselves. But that's What Ti have wanted to have said.. That's always been my. foundation. Idea , of the county agent's Job ; to build up the opcomlng crowd; to help, pep- pie, especially young people, grow. "My father had a lot of gifts I could use. 'Wonderful personality. Wonderful' Way of greeting people, , telling Jokes ' and so on. A .. quiet man but he'd have' made the. best county agent yon ever saw.. I still get some of my best ideas from' the things he did for me. He gave me responsibility, as Soon as I could walk. Always consulted me, never tried to overshlne me. He was more like an older brother to me than a father. ' " ' v '' . "1 was the only boy.: When I was eighteen a fast Pennsylvania flyer hit his wagon, ; Before I could reach him he was gone. The hardest thinj 1 -ever had to do In my life was to go tip to the house and tell my motherTsi'H!''. John had a ten-year fight of it single-handed on that farm, but be built up herd of purebred Jerseys,, and a retail milk trade, and: ,"By 1915 I had- things ' coming pretty good. ":, My neighbors were all ship ping milk to Pittsburgh- They got Into a blgl row with the Pittsburgh dealers.' ,:'-. rf;:fv ';?:;' ?K A I 1 had my of q trade. The Pitts burgh price watf nothing to me. At first I .couldn't see , where it,, was any of my business. But all along my milk roots 1 kept thinking about It and I finally decided to go to the meeting., J. i ' , , '- 1 got there ten or maybe fifteen minutes -wlatev ' They ' . were stIU wrangling about who was to preside Somebody sang out, "Here's Hervey I He's neutral.' They made me chair man. v'-.o -' ' -,' -' 1 ''In eighteen months we had Pitts burgh's milk supply cut way. down. The papers there were calling os haby killers and , the city people were n'l up In arms. We had to t '"ly. down there right BKV7 t 1 ' e them see our side of .,-rs have c' . .on, too. l;--i -t fa . -i...y r ) i tuj . go. I E. a ten a s of hay, dov s f and dldnt get 1 i for thirty days, not un I l : . a v i over. "When the v - . e all n y help was drafted. I i 1 y herd and took a tempore y J i in war-time organizer fpr t'a i .n 1. iroau, "The war ended and tltey offered me this Job here. I took It but I surely waa afraid of itl'V : He had been five years in Wash ington county when, an amateur extension specialist, I began riding day coaches over all Ohio. I found no .Ohio extension worker who did not by that time agree that he waa the best county agent in the state. Here are some of the things that at the end of ten years, he had done: .-'-: Induced the dairymen r of the whole county to pull together on one breed of dairy and another of beef cattle, and made the county known as a Jersey center. v ; Transformed poultry methods and brought considerably :: more egg money to the small hill farms. V Set going throughout ' those . hlQ townships, without" the help of a county home demonstration agent- through volunteer i local leaders, trained by a visiting specialist from the college only practical and thor oughgoing modern knowledge on clothing . construction, child care, nutrition, first aid and. care of the Without the help of a county club agent be had 'run bis annual 4-H club enrollment .("Junior extension") up to 800. , In one year 93 "gradu ates" from his dobs enrolled for the four-year course In agriculture at the State university. Boys who bad passed through his clubs, then through the university,,, were now back in the county - as homebred leaders. One was president of the county Jersey association; another, president of the , strongest local farmers' club; A third was teach-, tag vocational agriculture In the high school, A fourth was presi dent of the winter farmers' Insti tutes, another Hervey Innovation, propelled entirely by local talent music, readings, talks, and all; ' ' ' The county had a club camp, the ground and shacks donated or paid for entirely by , resident farmers. The people who built It called It Camp Hervlda, to honor John Her vey and his wife, Ida. Two hun dred children had a blanket-and-campnre vacation there for a week each summer, and after that farm wives came in and camped for a week together, as gay as flappers la their bloomers, ibraids and blouses. That week there' were for them no hands' to : cook for, no babies to mlhaV;.;l''f,a The hundreds ; of people : who backed the work, and Joined in It Idolized Hervey. 1 "He's the great, est thing that ever happened to this county.? They ' ran his salary up above $400 a year. ' fTn afraid of that" said John, the last time t was. in his county. "The ones who never come out of, the hills, and never want to, are raising Cain. And then there's some pretty pow erful ones, too, commissioners and so on, I dont Jibe with at all" ' :'. Three people were waiting to see him In his office In the courthouse at Marietta when I got there that morning, and a fourth had . blm on the telephone. An organization prob-, lem. The . Ladles: Aid . of .. some church wanted a dress-making and home-made millinery club fot girls. The local leader of dob work had doubts. If this church got the club, mightn't the Baptists, across "the road, - hold their - daughters Out! John,, grasping the' telephone with the same ; strong- bluntness "with which he used , to grasp plow handles, .settled.tha'tiiH):'?;'5, ) A worn old man' with fine eyes next claimed him, drawing him into a '. corner, whispering long and huskily. ; "Some personal trouble," John told me afterwards. He lis tened patiently and carefully, saying little, occasionally shaking his head dolefully. ' The ,,; old , gentleman seemed immensely relieved, almost cheerful, when he departed. As he came to .the door, he saldf y.kJiifi.?. "That was a good hen demonstra tion, you give, up there at the Pyarses'i we liked that" i - ' V When was thatr asked John. The old man figured. "In JulyJt was. two years .aga"-.. .!:,..-';; I tell this only to show bow long the old man had remembered that lesson, given out of doors, before a small group of hill people in. a nenyard, by an. authorised instruc tor of the. State university.: More than that: by a real teacher. It sounds funny, but I have been out with Hervey on those poultry cull ing 'demonstrations; ' I have seen blm back In those hills, with a lousy old hen on his arm, set people's minds aglow, make their eyes ahine with desire to - know more, to be more. :, The rest of the office visi tors disposed by, we got into the car to answer some calla We saw a man who wanted to know bow. to go about gassing rats, and a boy whose father wanted to take him out of high school, and a lady Who wanted to get some help in rearranging her kitchen, i At eight In the evening, I asked, "Do you go this gait all the time?" rretty mucn. . in nine weeks there last fall I got in Just four evenings at home. A county agent's wife has a lot to put np wllh. know nsy luck there. ', I've p ot a gn; t on' I co a be In'e f r i.. , i.-.. uiways 1 .i.er-clap. . women's v : wonderful I o's Just one l e." ' uit farmer, a' tween pride i ' club In the c . tounty seat wai.r- talk on the po t marketing; anl, 0 but to think of a In front of all 1 bankers. . . , foot on a bub of : ed to him a solid '.': here, here's your p. . . " And so over; the same old getting late. .The I so was I when the young' farm , after a last doleful squirm, Ann: Fiild he'd do it John Jumped into t e car, triumphant As we drove c I said: "John, you couldn't have ' kept that bird from r leaking with a bat tery of arttllury 1" . , . "ifaybe you're right" said John, Worriedly, then brightened; "But he did heed somebody- to , help him worry. It all t. kes time,. Tm ' sur prised sometimes at the speed, we do make. I had that fellow. for in stance, in.my first calf club, back In 1920,; ten years ago. Now. he's coming to the front It's on him and maybe twenty- others like him that I'm counting mainly when I look ahead to what we're going to have in this county, ten, fifteen, fifty years ttom'aom.';4'PiA.-. But those people who were, whis pering to commissioners,' and so on, and writing letters tor the papers, were on his mind. "They pay taxes. too," i he .said, "I wonder if a pwk gram has got to be. geared to the people who don't .want, to come along.". : -,A vZy&.j ' Maybe that's l.VAjywy they: got blm; His backers in the county were willing to raise his entire sal ary personally, bnt John said that a county agent who had failed to get ' the half-salary appropriation which customarily is voted by the. county commissioners r would Just stir up hard feeling by staying. He went into commercial work, vy; Ontof the moving pictures of Its memories the mind,. makes images. My .mind has been building the pic ture of a county agent who is not any one of , them hut all of them all, that Is, of the same hundreds I have known, worked with, and gone forth with as a reporter among the farms of most, of, the- states. Call him Average,' this composite AmeN lean county agent : Bearing thirty, lately married ; strong, bronzed and something of : a . roughneck. - He looks and thinks more like a forest ranger than toe executive secretary that the 'organization spirit of American agriculture all but made of him. He Is laconic, ironic, ear nest puzzled. - i , - Half prepared, . If that for bta job; Smith-Hughes teachers of high school ' agriculture get two years' special, training, hut few agricul tural colleges have even a man des ignated to- . advise : students on courses In preparation 'for: the far tougher, teaching'' a county agent has to- doi -'He decides to take a whirl at this county agent business, dances bis head off senior week, says so-long to the boys at the fra ternity house, ' takes bis diploma, marries the girl, works two weeks or a month under an older agent and then Is thrust Into one of the lesser . agricultural : counties to learn to swln by , swimming. Often he starts, headlong, trying to do everything people ask ef him. He may solicit members , for the farm bureau, or keep books for the co-operative creamery, or wear out good tires following the no-longer favored "farm : advisor" idea : of county agentlng the Idea that the : agent Is there as a sort of farm doctor, to give free service. to in dividuals. 1' ' ' Bat midway In "his second year be begins to feel firm ground un der him. - He realizes that the only way to help people is to' get them to help themselves. . He sees that bis Job Is to teach few, and to have these few organized to. dem onstrate to the others. And he finds that somehow, v he has got a hold on many of these key people, these "leaders." Then he .begins to make headway and often gets a1 bettor offer and goes to another Job. ' . There are 2,100. of him In Amer ica, assisted by half as many wortf en, borne demonstration agents and by 800 club agents. That' nrultlJ plies blm In my mind. I see him go ing out on horseback in Texas' coun ties so vast that he takes tentage and stays Oat four days or a week. I see' him In New England town meetings, big and trig In his Sun day blue, laboriously getting oyer the Idea, that democracy Is more a matter of, works than of politics." Running potato demonstrations on Massachusetts fields with corner drug, stores. Jumping into Illinois ditches to, see if tile Is properly Joined, Showing Arkansas farmers how to get at the gist of market reports. Stumbling and blushing a little as he Introduces a dress-form specialist to Florida farm wives. Playing handball, with the boys at a, county club camp In' Oregon. I am not a bit ashamed that for t number Of years 1 took the gov ernment's money, os one of the l.KMJ "subject .matter-specialists" who help get him t' e facta and I t- k hhti up. ffs. Western New- tT n. it I pecteJ i it's all with o and so o . Ho? fellow I v ;:; It was a : twenty-fiv fear. A 1 of llarlt , ed him to i slblllties of gosh I he'd . getting np those lawyt- John set I . the car, .and t hour:. . "Now, , lo(. ii chance to dev on, over an 1 ground. It vi air was cold i .UE STOu. Ty Famous Peoph Cvpyrlcht br Publl Ldlr, IM. . WNUStrrlo. - . By LIVING BERLIN , Famous Composer. fSWZ the person who suffers V from Insomnia knows the rav ages and terrors of the still night hours before the dawn of day. Through the night' lilting tunes and haunting melodies come to Irv ing Berlin, the famous composer; but sleep eludes him. - : "Once , during a hot summer night" Mr. Berlin related, "I was staying at a small Broadway hotel during the production of one of my first musical .comedies. - ' ) " ;' ; "Tired out from the work of re- nearsai, i coma nave rauen into a light sleep,- but. I was disturbed by the snoring of the man in the next room. I paced the floor. : The snor ing grew louder and weirder,'; It Was . uncanny. At four o'clock It stopped, and I fell asleep for a few minutes, only to be awakened again by the regularity of the harsh notes. I slept, by fits and starts. . "At six o'clock I remember I was wsft'.'i.;'.-;'vtj."'-'..v.-:!f! -'rv M ;i "Frantically, I walked Into the halL j The snoring man's door was open. I poshed Aside the ventilat ing screen. ' An empty white-rock bottle caught my eye., I picked It up and, with one blow, brought it down with revenge upon the man's head.' ; It .shattered Into hundreds Of pieces; ; Blood trickled down the man's face, This was horrible. : v "The next thing I knew a band waa grasping my arm. I could feel it but could not see It . Was it the dead man's ghost? ' I tried' hard to visualize it was it the hand of a spirit detective? " j - 1 1 Treached up to push the hand away. 7,-:.'A . p-'-:mA ; " Wake up. roared ' bellboy, who was tugging at my arm. Xon left a. call for seven o'clock.: Hope you had a nice night's sleep,' he add ed, Jauntily. "The man. in the next room : i has : complained m that he dreamed fie heard the noise of some 'one walking back and forth, back and. forth, all night Hope you dldnt hear anything queerA" . ' ' -e " ' ' ..'5, By JOAN CRAWFORD Motion Picture Aetresa, - ,! qINCB childhood, I have been O afraid of darkness.. It is a fear which embodies' nothing - defl- te; bat complete darkness terrl- me. Consequently, I always leave a dim light burning in the dressing room which opens from my. bedroom," said Joan Crawford. . "A short time ago I bad an am as-' lng experience. One night at eleven o'clock this lamp flickered fitfully,' almost going out completely and then burning again, I paid little at' tention to it thinking something was wrong with the current- When the same thing happened the next night at the same hours, eleven and twelve, I called in. an electrician to test the wiring at the house, and of. the ; lamp, . , Nothing wrong . was found.-.V-i.:-;'.;.:'- :i ; "sS; j. -y?J4-; ,"On the third ' night we stayed home Just to watch the lights... We turned them on all over the house, at eleven o'clock, bnt that In the dressing room behaved in the same peculiar fashion. -1 did not want to go out to dance -or sing. On the fourth night I moved from my rooni to, one of the guest rooms, but be cause of my silly fear of the dark, which I know psychologists, would say I should have overcome in my childhood, I left a light burning in the .hall : outside my room. At eleven o'clock' that light-, began to. flicker and a few minutes before' twelve, it went out entirely,' : We were completely mystified. . ..V,'. :s "The inext morning I received a wire, from New York telling me that one of my oldest friends, a woman Who had been very kind to me in the early -days of my career, had died at midnight the night before. "The telegram stated that four nights before my friend had been" taken to the hospital, for an emer gency operation, that she had-been operated on approximately' at eleven O'clock, and that she had hovered between life and death during the period when I had Rouble with my dressing room 'lamp.' ', - , . i "My lights went back td their usual steady behavior . after that fourth night -. I can't explain it Perhaps there was. something de fective in the current perhaps not" X-Ray TttU Steal Caatlngs Hidden cracks In the 'Interior ot heavy steel castings are detected by a powerful X-ray machine mount ed on wheels. The equipment takes pictures through four Inches of steel. Gun carriages, armor plate and other forms of steel construc tion of the United States navy are subjected to the penetrating rajs of the machine, which operates at 220,000 volts. Popular Mechanics Magazine. , . - , ' ; V - U. S. fluIJa Larg a Araa With the srqulrlng of 8,(3,033 sens In the Tem" slii-y l y tVie f -'.'x-nti'-" t t - ' ?ff t .. ! I1U According to Dr. Frits fctvlcky. olat associate of Dr. Robert A. ' im, discoverer of cosmic, ray. -. e prophecy, that "the eartu i . t -it with fervent heat" is r ,-ii!;;ic and Is the destined en-1 cf our whole solar system. None of us now present need feel alarmed about it, as it may not occur for many .millions of years, possibly bil lions. But once In a thousand years some sun to us only a point of light In the sky has suddenly blazed up and then gradually disappeared. This is believed to be the result of an explosion, releasing the interior heat, estimated In our own sun to be an intensity of 80,00(5,000 degrees In the case of our sun that would mean the instant conversion of all the planets and all upon them. If any, Into gas and the disappearance of our .entire solar system. ' ,' That ;ls what 'happened to sach suns and solar systems, if they had any, which thus ended their careers during -the past eons of time. 1 Such exploding suns are known as supernovas, en ordinary nOva, being a new star, not new 'In fact bat hew to our vision. Doctor .Zwlcky says that astronomers are In expects tloc of such a phenomenon , occurring near the Virgo universe by 1837, and are keenly on the watch for It It Is a tentative theory, that cosmlcjays are created or -released by.explodluK sans and It this phenomenon actually occurs on time' much more about that ray may be learned,' ' . Of course, the year In which we ob served It Would not be the date of the actual explosion, since for us to see it now would require that H hap pened; many thousands of years ago, so long does It tike for light to reach . the earth from such mathematical distances. ..The mere discussion of such. an event and mention, of the great lapse Ufa In the U. S. A. . And. now comes a .Hollywood gal asking tor's divorce because her hus band acted like an ape. : If. Judges begin to grant divorces to women on such flimsy grievances, no married man will be safe.-rCleyeland Press. Oldest SIder Greets Snow Queen fieorge ''Pop'N Rice, slxty-seven-year-old ski enthusiast, who Is a landmark at Mt,Balnler. Washington; and will always fee found at the big mountain when there Is activity. Miss Jean j McDonald of Tacoma has been chosen as "Queen" of winter sports carnival from that city They met at the foot of Balnler, where Olympic trials will soon set under way. ' .'. .'...,,, . As J. Letlle Kincald ' Pru,,. . '. :'..' : - - t'i,w ...I . , "..,.mr. . '3 ...ft 4 La - of time and the- 1 distance from us of t- tion, gives us a better i ronrlnn of the EfanJ I posed of innumerable i overwhelming and so 1 (he superlmmensity of ci cause ua to hesitate In t. strlctlve S definition of t of it all-St Louis Glol 'A Lav Ev;.-, ( Mother CI KllOW and O Never Give Your G" I Unknown Remedy n Ashing Your Doctor I According to any doctor you ask, the only safe way if V per .to pve vmir rhilri a remedy j you don!t know a'.l about, wilhout asking him first. . When it comes to "milk cf magnesia," that you know every where, for over 60 years, doctors have said "PHILLIPS' Milk of Magnesia for your child." So ifowyj aay Phillips, when , yon buy. , And, for your 'own peace of mind,, see, that your child gets 'this; the fittest men know. Yaueuiaabt others by rehnlns refusing t for tiia I lofMag- L to aenpt a auDKituia genuine rcimps mils noia. ugum in uh interatt of yourael and your children itofyouraeU Xrlv ur children " X In the in- f t of tha 1 1 i Infneral. :: ana l tereit public rillLLlP o J a 1 '
The Duplin Times (Warsaw, N.C.)
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Feb. 28, 1935, edition 1
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