Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / May 12, 1994, edition 1 / Page 4
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Opinion Page THE BRiiNSw" ?K #Bt ACOft MawriM Swratt and Carolyn H Swrall.. ..Publishers Edward M. Sweat t Editor Lynn S. Carlson Managing Editor Suaan Usher News Editor Doug Rutter Sports Editor Eric Carlson Staff Writer Mary Potts & Peggy Earwood Office Managers Carolyn H. Sweat t Advertising Director TtmberU-y AtUma. r?*H? Gore and Linda Cheers Advertising Representatives Dorothy Brennan and Brenda Clemmons Moore ..Graphic Artists William Manning .Pressman Lonnie Sprinkle Assistant Pressman PAGE 4 -A, THURSDAY, MAY 12. 1994 Now It's Time To Say What We DO Want There's no question that Brunswick County voters took an "anvone-but" annroach to last week's board of education elec V i ? tion. The oniy incumbent who'ii be on the November ballot is Republican Yvonne Bright, provided she decides to hang in there after this year's school system budget is settled. Thurman Gause and Polly Russ were defeated in last Tuesday's primary by Bud Thorsen and Clara Carter. Both Thorsen and Carter face opposition in November. Bill Fairley's frustration with his fellow board members, and the system in general prompted him to withdraw from the race. Chairman Donna Baxter followed S"i! aft?*r a hollow anH cmhnm^ino nri mary "victory" in which the late Liston Hawes, who died too late to be taken off the ballot, garnered nearly 3.000 votes. Baxter and Fairley's withdrawals leave both the county's Democrat and Republican parties with difficult strategic and ide ological decisions to make in replacing them. In a perfect world, Baxter's replacement would have her deep commitment to Brunswick County's children, but with better public relations skills and a tougher hide. Fairley's would share his belief in high standards and finite goals for Brunswick County's ailing educa tional system, and would have the patience and tenacity to swim against the tide until the results start to show. The voters have loudly proclaimed what they don'! wan!; now it's time the both parties to decide what they DO want in the way of a choice. It's haidiy an enviable task. Our Orbits Seldom Crossed, But I'll Miss Homer Lee Johnston In all his years a! Ocean Isle Beach and ail my years in Brunswick Couniy, ! only had one conversation of any consequence with the late Homer Lee Johnston. It was an interview for an Under the Sun feature and it left an inH?!ib!c i.1!pr!Sf.!OS We didn't really know each other at the time, though it seemed I had al ways known of him. Our orbits had intersected only sporadically. When we met that afternoon at the Johnstons' Ocean Isle Beach cci tage. it was as though Homer and Eloise, who died two years ago, had been my friends for years. They were those kind of people ? s.ncere, warm, generous-hearted, unpretentious. Most of all I would describe Homer as a man of good character. When Johnston retired from Ivey's in Charlotte in the late 1960s, he and Eloise were able to begin spending more time at their beloved Ocean Isle. I was a teenager then, working summers as a waitress at The Islander Restaurant. When 1 came home to Brunswick County in 1981, I settled into the bot tom half of a cottage on Driftwood Drive, not far from the Johnstons' home. Homer had developed "my" neighborhood. It was unique in that almost all the owners (except my landlady) did not rent out their homes, but either lived permanently on the island or divided their time between homes. That them eligible for a property owners* socis! arntm I ihink ?till ikIU It self this Sand Dauhers. One of the things I felt the Johnstons wanted most of all was for Ocean Isle Beach to be both a good town in which to live as well as a great place to visit. Ihat afternoon, I was there to hear about them and their contributions to Ocean Isle Beach and how they nad seen the community change over a peri od of nearly 40 years. It was quite obvious Homer Johnston would have pre ferred talking about someone else's role, not his own. He didn't seem to be the kind of man to seek the limelight, though he graciously acknowledged recognition that came his way. 11. -w-..} .u- ?i? l i:i ? i tie laiRwu auuui UK isiomu vagvtfjr, uiuu^ii, imv a pivuu ioiiiwi v/i a ?? vorite uncle. He had every reason. He and Eloise loved Ocean Isle Beach and played a major role in making it the beautiful community it is today. They had seen some changes they thought were for the town's good, and others they didn't care for at all. When the issue was important. Homer didn't hesitate to speak up or take a stand. Sometimes he and people he liked to think of as friends had to simply agree to disagree when they came down on opposite sides of an issue. Together he and Eloise generated a powerful force for good. Homer earned the right to be called one of Ocean Isle's "founding fa thers," both for his role in the development of the island, and for his continu ing contributions to its welfare. Many of them were made from behind the scenes, though he spent three years as mayor and 18 on the town council. Asked about the worship services begun on the island 25 years ago. Homer quickly began listing the names of everyone else who helped make the piujcci o icaiiiy. With persistent questioning, he admitted providing ih? cross that marked the site of those first services and of replacing it after a damaging storm with an even larger, taller cross. He was also instrumental in wuiking with ihc Odcli to obtain use of the property, which now hosts services led by the Ocean Isle Beach Chapel. Shallotte Presbyterian s services are now held between the pubiic ac for DubcsmI? rViv l?i* <?f Ph!*t!s. the Johnstons' neighbor hood. Homer didn't hesitate to become involved in the change of location when he felt the pastor who had led those services for many years had been treated wrongly. As for his experience as mayor, Homer credited Odell Williamson with that opportunity. Williamson had been named mayor of the new town and Johnston a councilman. Soon afterward. Williamson was elected to the state House of Representatives. Homer, whose primary residence was in CawlutU, Served ihi? iuiTu ma iTUjfut. While retirement treed the Johnstons to spend more !:me on the island, their love affair with Ocean Isle Beach obviously had begun much earlier. They were property owners before Hurricane Hazel, and could recall when BEMC ran electricity to the island. Looking hack, it's not surprising that Homer Johnston remembered it was my father's crew that ran the line. He was the kind of man who cared about the little things and the little people, Homer Johnston ? and all ho stood for ? will be misfsd. For The Love Of Fo'-Co'ner Nabs ignorance was bhss. I'm refer ring, of course, to the old way of la beling packaged foods to fudge on their nutritional value. In a project which probably cost as much as ten or 1 2 military aircraft toilets, consumers now face a dead end sign on their last avenue of culi nary denial with the new Nutrition Facts label. Naturally, the first place I encoun I? red on? wss on whs! is, in my humble opinion, the most desirable meal of last resort available in the American South ? a pack of Lance Toastchee Peanut Butter Cheese crackcrs. known in the vernacular of my school days as "Fo'-Co'ner Nabs." (Only in the past year did I learn from my husband, an erstwhile Yankee, that "Nabs" Ls a bona fide trademark name for a snack cracker produced by the conglomerate RJR Nabssco. I in turn taught him uiat "Fo'-Co'ner" translates to "four cor ners" and distingushes the square or ange crackc:* fium ihe swtvi round cookies like "V^n-O- Lunch ") I have early memories of P.L. Lance's perfect little squares of crisp lightly-salted chccsc crackcrs hug ging a smudge of ury-ish peanut bui ter. I remember being lifted by adults in country stores so I could grab a pack from the big glass jar with the red metal lid. I remember buying them in Wannamaker's drug store along with a tiny Vanilla Coke Lynn Carlson spritz of soda water and a drop of vanilla extract, the total tab coming to 1 2 cents. la middle age, I continue to con sume Fo' Co'ner Nabs regularly at times when a meal simply can't be worked into the program. They are filling, tasty and easily digestible. I sometimes buy them in eight-packs at the supermarket, to be stuffed, one pack at a time, into my purse on my way out ihc door when there's no time even to toast a bagel. They're good with coffee for break I I ? o.M, tviui jwti ui iiiiw) ui ivcu iva iui lunch, and with either red or white wine for my Tuesday-night supper, which too often occurs in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. i nave in front of me a new pack age of Toastchce. On the logo side there's a starburst bearing the value price of 25 cents. On the Nutrition Facts side, here's the iow-down: serving size, one package, 39g, 6 crackers; calories, 200; total fat. 12g, 18 percent of daily value; sodi um, 260 mg; total carts. 19g. 6 per cent of daily value: fiber lg: sugars. ()g; cholesterol. Omg; protein. 7g; calories from fat, 100. I can live with that. After all, in my world, this is not snack food. I consume them instead of, not in be tween. meals. If a Lean Cuisine has 280 calorics, costs $2.19, takes 8 minutes to microwave and fills you up tor the same amouni of time.. .well, you do the math. Now, I'm ambivalent to learn, Charlotte-based Lance Inc. ? once referred to in the trade magazine Snack Food as a "Southern power house" ? is going big-time, branch ing out West to Las Vegas, shipping peanut bars to England and talking with food people in Mexico. Canada and Asia. A daily newspaper article says Lance has broken into the vending machine market (a peculiar way to put it...) in California, Washington and Oregon. It all began in 1913, when fvUudCi P.L. LofiCfc, d tUUU OTUKCl whose specialty was coffee, got stiried by a cuaionKr who failed !o claim an order of 500 pounds of peanuts Lancc, the tale goes, took them home, roasted (hem and soia them on Charlotte street comers, be ginning, with $60 capital, a compa ny which last year did $473 million worth of business and employed 5,500 people, and has never laid off a single worker. An American dream-come-true if ever there was one! TV nfx( hurrlle. lancc's current president and chief executive is quoted as saying, is developing more fat-free snacks. Fat-free cran berry and apple bars began rolling off the belts a few weeks ago; the fat-free fig cookies are outselling the regular version two-to-one. But, at least for this child of Carolina, man v tjucjiiuib icmain unanswered: ? Will trendy Californians em brace Fo'-Co'ner Nabs in their juice bars? ? What will the global repercus sions be if Seattle's young arbiters of coolncss turn their backs on bright orange crackers as a fitting accompaniment to a double cafe lal te? S !-"> fat free peanut-butter in the realm of scientific possibility? The truly loyal among us will keep out minds open, ihey said that after a while we'd acquire a taste for Nntra-Sweet soft drinks, skim milk and decaf coffee ? even to the point of preferring these products to their time-honored predecessors ? and they were right. If we could go that mile maybe, just maybe, we can learn accept the idea of Fo'-Co'ner Nabs, even fat free ones, as Everyman's Food. Bon appetit! Attacking Crime By Creating More Criminals Boy, that's some crime bill our esteemed Congrcssfolks are working on up there in Washington. Just last week they voted to make criminals out of millions of law abiding American citizens, including myself and many of you. tA f. ? nmv ntnh. profit black market commodity that will rmt million* of dollars into the hands of drug dealers, gang mem bers, international smugglers and other career criminals. They voted to guarantee that vio lent offenders will have more effi cient methods of harming us than we will have to defend ourselves against them. ti. ? ..ai.j :? a i iv j vauvu it a uait on osmuu weapons." They said it would out law the sale of 19 military-style au to-loading rifles and pistols. They said the ban was necessary to help reduce the number of violent crimes. They also said the ban would have little effect on the millions of average Americans who exercise their Constitutional tight to own guns for hunting, target shooting and home protection. They lied. And the mainstream media helped rtwm mH awav twith it lit mverave O J " " *- w of this issue consistently misrepre sented the restrictions the bill im poses on gun owners who obey laws, while downplaying evidence that the Dan will nave aimosi no ef fee! on those who dl^r?y.--? the fy.y. Newspapers and TV dutifully publicized press conferences where "fed-up" legislators posed beside ta bles covered with the alleged targets of the ban ? menacing killing ma chines like the TEC-9, Uzi and MAC-HJ machine pistols' and the rapid-tire "*4reei -sweeper" shotgun. They blindly repeated assurances that the bill would only ban "19 as sault weapons." while specifically exempting hundreds of "legitimate" sporting firearms. but the fact is. the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms esti mates that as many as 200 previous Eric Carlson ly legal guns could be classified as "assault weapons' under the biii, making hundreds of thousands of law-abiding gun collectors and sporting shooters into owners of ille gal firearms. Millions more of us will be stig matized as criminals by another (ig nored or misrepresented) aspect of the bill that bans guns with ammuni tion magazines holding more than 10 bullets. In the rare cases where this latter portion of the bill was even men tioned, the misinformation was usu ally accompanied by a photo or ref erence to the 30 or 50- round "ba nana clip" magazines protruding from a military rifle like the AK-47 or AR-15. Do any of you sharp-eyed readers out there remember a news reporter ever mentioning thai this nile would also outlaw the pistols that have be come America's most popular choice of handguns in the past decade? Wiicii ihc U.S. tffiicu fuiCcs aitu mor.t cnfcrcc!?cn! lected the 9mm autoloader as their sidearm of choice, gun manufactur ers competed for their business by improving the quality and design of these pistols. Millions of smart American con sumers noticed a good thing wnen iiicy saw i: and made the tnjsty "nine" their own choice tor recre ational shooting and home security. Unfortunately, for we value-con scious shoppers, one of the techno logical advances built into nearly all modem 9mm (and many other new) handguns is the capability of hold ing 12 to I) rounds of ammunition. We aren't talking about so-called "Saturday night specials" here. This ban outlaws hundreds of the highest quality pistols manufactured by the most reputable gunmakers in the world. So why have they done this? il is iiw nrtl ioou-ai to ? ? ward prohibiting all firearms owner ship, ot course, but they wiii teii you that ibest weapons must be banned to fight crime. Trouble is, the FBI reports that only one percent of all the homi cides committed last year involved the use of so-called "assault weapons," of which there are about 900,000 in the U.S. Knives were ????? ?l ? n 1 A. w m ?? f ?? 1 1 ?*>??*/!<?*?? MJVU IU t V/ pviwui VI ail IIIU'MVIOf while 6 percent were committed with fists and feet and S percent in volved blunt object weapons. So now all these millions of guns are banned. What does that mean? It means that no drug dealer or gang leader worthy of the name will be able to resist the instant status boost of owning a "banned" weapon. Does anyone believe they won't be able to get them? It means that local pawn shops won't buy these guns off the street, because they crn't sell them. Which means rv.?lice will no longer have a handy paper trail to help find the i owner of a banned weapon used in a crime. Nor will they have a likely place to find such weapons that have been stolen. It means that many (if not most) of those who want to buy and sell banned weapons will avoid the has sl* and nancni ucirli Iif itiilnii a) lru?i. ? ? r ~w ~ ? - - ? ly and will simply pass them on to the highest bidder. Which will make these weapons ? the ones we love to hate ? the most difficult 10 trace and the most likely to fall into the hands of crimi nals. And just who is going to en force this new law? And where ex actly are we going to put the few of fenders who are successfully prose /nrfyj for brczkin^ It? Nowadays a felon scntenccd Us 10 years in prison will be free within two years. Half of those will commit another crime during the time they should have been behind bars. So we know for sure that fewer crimes would be committed if our leaders attacked the problems in our criminal justice and prison systems to guarantee that offenders serve their sentences. Unfortunately, it takes honesty, character, statesmanship and politi cal will to do that. It"* ? lot p?icr Im isret han oiins s - o Worth Repeating... ?I Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people. ? Henry Clay ? There is in e\ ery woman 's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the hroad daylight of prosperity; but which kin dle* up. and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. ? Washington Irving B Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be under stood backward. But then one forgets the other clause? that it must be lived forward. ? Soren Kierkegaard
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
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May 12, 1994, edition 1
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