Newspapers / The News-Journal (Raeford, N.C.) / Feb. 9, 1984, edition 1 / Page 14
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The time has come to seek industries Now that the cloud of a state imposed sewer moratorium has been lifted from the Raeford treatment facility, Hoke County of ficials say they are ready to get to work on attracting industry. For the last six years under the moratorium, all new industry was banned from tying on to the city sewer, and therefore officials said little could be done to lure new firms to the county. As of last week, when the state Department of Natural Resources and Community Development (NRCD) lifted its ban, local industry hunters rejoiced and vowed that they would now get on with their assigned tasks. With a little encouragement from NRCD, city officials did a good job by first upgrading the municipal treatment plant and finally by cracking down on a local industry which was abusing the system. Had the $1 million in improvements not been made and had the House of Raeford not been forced to clean up its act, then there is little doubt that the moratorium would still be lingering, as well as the county's excuse for not expanding the industrial tax base here. Since before the sewer ban was imposed in 1977, Hoke County has maintained a token effort through the Chamber of Commerce for finding industry. With a budget of about $16,000, the Chamber has been asked to make a nationwide search for industries who want to move south and to woo the prospective employers to Hoke County. Considering the financial support, Director Earl Fowler and the Chamber have done a commendable job. However, because of the limited resources, the Chamber has been hamstrung, and this county's industrial search effort has amounted to little more than caretaking. For many southern counties, industry hunting has become a big business. In order to do it right, our competitors have found that it takes more than a token budget, and that the effort must be fulltime and aggressive. Counties that are doing it right are landing the industries. Others, who are standing still like Hoke, are falling behind and may never catch up. Because of the past indolence on the part of officials toward at tracting industry here, Hoke County now has one of the highest tax rates in the state and the lowest per capita income. ? Now that the excuse of the moratorium has been removed, the time has come for county officials to exhibit leadership and to work aggressively toward proper industrial development . We believe that members of the county commission should move quickly to establish an industrial development board, and county residents appointed to that board should be willing to devote whatever time is required to convince an industry that this is the place to settle. A fulltime professional industry hunter should be hired as a direc tor of the board, and should be given a large enough budget to operate effectively. If we are going to meet the competition, Hoke County also needs to purchase a site which can be developed as an industrial park. Counties who have been successful have found that whatever money was spent on industrial development was a wise investment and was returned with interests by future tax revenues. The recently announced expansion of Burlington and the con tinued growth of Faberge support the claim. Taxes levied on the upgraded plants will fill Hoke County coffers with additional un budgeted funds which could more than pay for a winning industrial search effort. We encourage county officials to draw against those dollars now and get on with improving the quality of life in Hoke County. America was lucky to get FDR By Cliff Blue FDR. ..Franklin D. Roosevelt was born January 30, 1883, and died April 12, 1945. Roosevelt had served as assistant secretary under Josephus Daniels and as Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt later had a "stroke" and was confined to bed for several months. Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York in 1928, and Presi dent of the United States in 1932. He was still paralyzed and was car ried in a wheel chair throughout the rest of his life. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States in November 1932. No President ever found a nation "on its knees" and in worse shape than did Roosevelt in March. 1933! THE NEW DEAL. ..Immediate ly after his first inauguration, he called a Banking Holiday and suspended the Gold Standard. In dustrial recovery program under ERA ( 1933)... Banking laws Revis ed and bank deposits insured... Federal Unemployment Relief provided (1933). ..Prohibi tion repealed 1933. ..Stock Ex change brought under Federal regulations ( 1934)... Federal Hous ing program (1934)... Reciprocal Tariff Act 1934.. .NRA and AAA declared unconstitutional ( 1 935). ..Social Security Act ( 1935).. Soldiers Act 1936. ..Re elected second term 1936. ..Re 1()J | mi? - ..ai, ?. ? People and Issues organization of Supreme Court defeated (1937)... Fair Labor Stan dards Act 1938. ..New Agricultural Adjustment Act 1938. ..Neutrality Laws 1935-37, 1930... Executive Departments Reorganized 1939-40. .. Largest peacetime Defense program set up 1939-40... Re-elected for third term (1940). .."Lend Lease Act" (1941). ..War with Axis Powers (1941). .."G.l. Bill of Rights (1944)... Re-elected Fourth Term (1944)... Discussion of Peace plans with Churchill (1945)... Died in Georgia, April 12, 1945. ..Vice President Harry Truman succeed ed to the presidency April 12, 1945. Suffice it to say that President Franklin D. Roosevelt brought about more radical changes in government than all the presidents before him. He had a reason and an opportunity to do so. He was faced with a great depression such as the people of the United States had never seen and as had never before confronted a new president, or an old one! ,T ' ?" The United States was not alone, Germany was faced with a situa tion such as was America. Hitler came to power about the same time as did Roosevelt. Mussolini in Italy had already become a dictator. America can be thankful that it was not a Hitler type that led the United States, but Roosevelt, a leader interested in democracy and the people. When the U.S. Congress refused to enlarge the U.S.* Supreme Court, in 1937, a damper was put on Roosevelt which was a wise move by Congress. Never before 1933 had the Federal government stepped in to help and lead the people as did Franklin D. Roosevelt. Grown people were working for 50? and some a dollar a day, and glad to get that. 5,000 APPLY... The National Aeronautics and Space Ad ministration (NASA) reports hav ing received 5,000 applications for 12 future jobs as shuttle crewmen. Officials expressed surprise there were so many applicants, a 30% jump. The surprise is that there aren't more. NASA is show biz. Shuttle crewmen get instant show-biz stardom, and offer us regularly such meaty comments as "Gee, this is fun!" and "Wow, what a thrill!" FEBRUARY. ..The name February derives from the Latin ^"February," meaning to purify, jand from church customs and superstitions, George Wash ington's birthday on the 22nd ... Ground Hog Day the 2nd ... Ronald Reagan, born Tampico, Il linois, Feb. 6. 1911 ... Boy Scouts Day, the 8th ... Abraham Lincoln, on the 12th in 1809. The News-Journal MSI Published F.very Tbaraday by Dickson Press, Ik., Paul Dickson. Pres. 119 W. IJwood Avenue. P.O. Bo* 550 Raeford, N.C. 1*376 Subscription Rales In Advancr In Coaaly Per Yew? S10.00 6 Months ? S5.00 Out of County Per Year? S12.00 6 Months ? $6.00 LOUIS H. FOGLEMAN, JR .PabUsber WARREN N.JOHNSTON Editor HENRY L BLUE Prod action Saperrisor MRS. PALL DICKSON Society Editor SAM C. MORRIS ( ontriba!iat Editor ANN WEBB Advertisiat Repmealativt 2nd Clan Postage at Racford, N.C. (USPS 3SS-2M) Someone dynatTM^e, BS be*! So\vxV\cyc\ to C.^rre.c\ Coo&'\V\O^S c^ ^.he J.W. Tur \ \ noVw ScYnooX . I don\ Vnowj \C V>va\.-b \he \>e<b\ <boWt\on. B>Vxt \-? Voe voa\\ \0 mote, ^earb Voe. u^>e, xY\e. S^rne One, On "the (j^ur\Wxt>e W Letters To Editor Justice is like 5 o'clock traffic Dear editor: As is well known, courts are so over-crowded with trials, appeals and re-appeals and so far behind that in many cases justice is.as slow as 5 o'clock traffic in a big city. One reason for this is that there are so many lawyers being turned out it's necessary for them to file all sorts of frivolous cases in order to have enough to go around. If car manufacturers over-produce, they stack their extra cars on vacant lots, but you can't park surplus lawyers like that. They'll get rusty if left out in the rain. So, regardless of how far-out your case is, like a kid's suing his parents because they didn't buy him a bicycle, you can always find a lawyer somewhere who'll take the case. Did you develop an in growing toenail from stepping on your car's gas pedal? Sue the com pany that made the pedal. An in grown toenail is painful and ought to be good for a couple of million. If you lose, appeal it. If that fails, appeal again. Convicts do it all the time. I therefore had to read the following twice to make sure I was reading it right: A judge has fined a lawyer S500 for making a "legal nuisance" of himself. He'd filed one of those preposterous cases. This opens up all sorts of possibilities for slowing down the filing of frivolous cases. It also opens up the possibility of lawyers filing more suits deman ding a legal definition of a frivolous suit. Probably go all the way to the Supreme Court. This is going nowhere. Let's change the subject. There's an old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But some repair men now have a new version: "If it ain't broke, go ahead and fix it anyway and send him a bill." Yours faithfully, J. A. Valentine's is hard to remember By Warren Johnston Valentine's Day is not one of the most memorable holidays of the year. Unless I forget to get my flowers, I usually can't remember a week later what 1 did to celebrate Valentine's Day. However, there was one February 14 which will be hard to forget. It was a couple of years ago at Pawleys Island. A group of us were sitting around in a neighborhood filling sta tion bar trying to come up with something to do to celebrate Valen tine's. Fred Compton had suggested painting red hearts on the highway in front of the place, but nobody liked that idea, especially Harold Blevins, the local highway maintenance engineer. Finally somebody suggested a party. Everybody thought that would be grand, except for Fred who was now leaning towards pruning pine trees into the shape of cupids. If we had known then that the party would go awry, and that state law enforcement agents would swoop in, we might have gone along with the landscaping project. Fred is still a little bitter. The word went out that there was a party down at Doc's. Before long, people began arriving with food, crepe paper and other items, and the service station began looking like a swanky ballroom. In South Carolina, and particularly in the Lowcountry, service station watering holes are fading vestiges of the neighborhood com munity centers, much the way pubs are in Great Britain. When the crackdown on drunk drivers first started in 1978, someone in the South Carolina Legislature made the mistake of sug gesting that the gasoline beer parlors be closed. Half the state rose up in arms. The Puppy Papers There hadn't been such a public outcry since the Yankees refused to move out of Ft. Sumter in 1861. "Why, is there nothing sacred?" one opposing legislator asked on the floor of the South Carolina Senate. Although the question of closing the establishments has not come up lately in the Legislature, much of South Carolina is beginning to creep into the 20th Century, and the neighborhood service station bar is starting to lose its place of prominence. There are still a few around. They do a pretty good business when the weather gets "too hot." When the sun turns white and the reflection off the pavement around the pumps is so bright that it leaves a searing impression like a flash bulb before your eyes, that's when a good crowd will gather. It was that sort of day in February, and we had a fine turnout for the Valentine's party. Not much was going on at first. There were a few kids running around, but the adults were being quiet, just waiting for things to get rolling. ' "Man, it's too darn hot," Laurie said, munching on a barbecue pork rind. doesn't even seem like Valentine's. We'd be better off calling this a Fourth of July party." Laurie was a Democrat, and he blamed the heat on the Republicans. Doc was a Republican, and he was sure the unseasonal weather was tied to the Roosevelt years, "Well, if ya'll hadn't screwed up the environment by doing all those public works projects back in the '30's, it wouldn't be this hot in February/' Doc said. ? . After a while, the party picked up. Laurie stopped complaining about the heat. He even switched from his usual beverage of mint gin to cherry gin and soda to commemorate the holiday. Everything was going well, which should have alerted us because nothing ever goes the way it's planned at Doc's. "Tracks of My Tears" had come on the juke box when the law lurched in. "You're all under arrest," the SLED agent said, acting as if he had busted a speakeasy during the Prohibition days. "What are we charged with?" Fred asked. He was beginning to get in the spirit of things and thought this was just another of Doc's jokes. "Drinking cherry gin in a beer parlor," the agent said, gleefully holding up Laurie's bottle. In order to have a private party in a public bar in South Carolina, a notice must be posted on the door. Doc had forgotten. We convinced the agent that we would go home quietly. He decided not to arrest us. Besides, he couldn't figure out how to get all 30 of us in the back seat of his Volkswagen anyway. In other communities the party might not have made a ripple, but in Pawleys Island in the winter, it was a big deal. For weeks, when we thought it was forgotten, somebody woul" drag it back up again. "Hey, I heard you almost got arrested the other nignt," somebody would say. Even today, and particularly during those occasional hot spells that crop up in February, somebody will mention the Valentine's night Doc's got raided. That Valentine's was the only night in the history of the station that everybody had to go home at 8 p.m.
The News-Journal (Raeford, N.C.)
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Feb. 9, 1984, edition 1
14
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