The Foothills View
Editor’s View
High Schools
And War
Billy Graham returned home to North Carolina
after eight days in Viet-Nam, where he had
declared the war there “complicated, confusing,
and frustrated.” In the Senate, majority leader
Mike Mansfield called for a “major reevaluation”
of the Great Society following criticism of Presi
dent Lyndon Johnson’s “guns and butter.”
Closer to home. Fiber Industries announced
openings for new jobs in production, coffee was
advertised in the Shelby Daily Star for 69 cents a
pound, and three pounds of ground beef sold for
$1.59.
The month was December, 1966. Not just prices
have changed in the 16 years since then. War —
particularly nuclear — is no longer something that
happens to someone else in Southeast Asia. We
were reminded of that grim fact Friday when the
products of those 16 years were sitting across a
table from us at Cleveland County Technical Col
lege.
Eleven students, all born in 1966, were com
peting for the James P. Porter Presidential
Classroom Scholarships for a week’s study of
government at Washington, D.C. by Burns and
.Crest High School students. Three of us — two
radio station owners and a newspaper editor —
were to quiz their knowledge and opinions of
history and current events. We found considerable
diversity, but on one question all 11 young men and
women gave the same answer:
We will be in a nuclear war within five years.
What made these 11 — all born in a year when
nuclear warfare seemed so unlikely — come to
such a unanimously hopeless conclusion? The
reasons were as diverse as the four males and
seven females who made up the group; only one,
however, of the 11 gave religious beliefs for expec
ting apocalypse — “My mama told me the first
time the world was destoryed, it was by water, and
the next time it will be by fire.” The other ten held
more homey reasons for our mass destruction,
ranging from accidents to Soviet treachery.
Expectation of nuclear war does not mean a ma
jority of our 16-year olds favor a freeze of nuclear
weapons or deployment, however. Ten of the 11 —
including the young woman above who expects
war as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy — declared
themselves in favor of continued production of
nuclear weapons “to keep us free. ’ ’
Only one objected. “Free for what?” he asked.
“To burn to death when the bombs dropped?”
What a long way from the jaunty world of the
60s, when it seemed we could have both small wars
and large prosperity.
But the fact that the world is so different a place
in the last 16 years also means that those who have
grown up in it may possess different and better
alternatives to the world’s problems. We were
cheered by the young woman who shyly explained
her preference for reading Civil War history
“because it shows me how people could suffer and
still go on.” ^ , ,,, ^ „
Please turn to War, pg. 6
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Good Neighbors Make
Good Fences
“Fantastic” was Dan
Moore’s reaction when
he returned home from
Cleveland Memorial
Hospital Dec. 9 and saw
this addition to his
fence.
Over 50 of Moore’s
neighbors and co
workers had signed a
welcome-home bed-
sheet and hung it over
his pasture fence.
Moore, athletic director
at Gardner-Webb Col- they are pleased with
lege and former prin- his recovery, but cau-
cipal at Shelby High tioned well-wishers to
School, suffered a heart wait several weeks
attack Nov. 22.
Moore’s doctors said before visiting.
Cable After
County
A Shelby cable televi
sion manager has an
nounced his company
“smack in the middle”
of an expansion into
Cleveland County
following a progress
report to town officials
at Boiling Springs and a
letter Tuesday from the
mayor of Grover asking
about the service.
Ed Palumbo,
manager of Vision
Cable of Shelby, said
that his company is
hanging wire now for
cable television in the
Patterson Springs area,
and plans to began wir
ing for Boiling Springs
to receive cable by
April, 1983.
Vision Cable current
ly holds non-exclusive
franchises to provide
pay television to three
other Cleveland County
towns: Polkville,
Lawndale, and Fallston.
Boiling Springs town
council approved a fran
chise for Vision Cable in
June, 1982.
Granting franchises
for pay television has
become particularly at
tractive to smaller town
governments as a way
to raise money. Under
the franchise Vision
Cable signed with Boil
ing Springs and the
three other
municipalities, the
towns receive 3 percent
of the company’s basic
subscriptions and pay-
service revenues.
Promise of the Crepe Myrtles
(Editor’s note: from
time to time the View
will share with its
readers from among the
1000 family histories col
lected in The Heritage
of Cleveland Coimty,
published recently by
the Cleveland County
Historical Association.
Below are excerpts
from the life of the late
Joe Chauncey
Washburn (1880-1973),
written by his daughter,
Mrs. Dorothy Washburn
Edwards of Boiling Spr
ings i
Joe Chauncey
Washburn had little for
mal education, but he
made good use of that he
did have. He and his
wife (Estilla ‘Tillie’
McSwain) were regular
students of the Bible and
studied with their
children. He especially
stressed the use of the
dictionery for studying
school
Bean Came On
Mayflower Gone
It’s a colonial organization, asked
ancestor with modern- readers of the View who
‘Mr. Joe,’ as he was
affectionately called,
lived a disciplined life
and early became a
tither. Some weeks
before his 21st birthday
as he placed his usual
penny in the offering
plate on a Sunday morn
ing, the picture of a
nickle flashed in his
mind, the nickle he had
recently been spending
to buy a pack of cigaret
tes each week. From
that point on he resolved
that as of his 21st birth
day he would never
smoke again, and that if
he could afford a nickle
a week for that which
did him no good, he
could surely afford to
double that amount to
the Lord each week. For
the rest of his life he
faithfully gave the tithe
and gave up smoking.
He was often referred
to as the man with
“nine” lives due to
several accidents that
occurred in which he
miraculously escaped
or survived:
a chimney fell on him;
during the repair of a
bridge he was literally
buried alive;
he was run over by a
wagon;
poison used in a house
for treating sweet
potatoes rendered him
unconscious;
When there was
disagreement or strife
among his neighbors, he
was often called upon by
them to render his opi
nion and they usually
followed his judgement.
He felt most things
could be settled out of
court.
Several years before
Mr. Joe’s death, he ex
pressed a desire to “go
when the crepe myrtles
were in bloom,” but
“not this year.” His
wish was granted in
1973. He died on August
7, and the crepe
myrtles, which he had
set out along the road
way leading to the
church, were in bloom.
day descendents. Its may have seeds of this
pedigree is impeccable, pole variety to contact
having been reputed to this newspaper. The
have arrived at this bean is among several
country on
Mayflower.
the
ship vegetables the organiza
tion is trying to save
from extinction.
It’s not a person but a Seed companies tend
bean, a brown-and-to drop old varieties in
white s p 0 t t e dfavor of hybrids,,
“heirloom” variety that thereby endangering
gardeners now fear has the older species,
been bred out of ex- Any reader who may
istence, but was last have the spotted pole
seen in the Carolinas. bean seeds are asked to
Maynard Philbeck, a write the Foothills
Shelby member of the View, PO Box 982, Boil-
national Seed Savers ing Springs, NC, 28017.
his car stalled on a
railroad track with a
train coming.
A Carrousel
With A Lamb
A Kiss Is Still A Kiss
— Even Under Bird's Lime
Mistletoe is as much a
part of Christmas as holly
and personal jolly. People
kiss under it and sing about
it, and over the centuries it
has been' endowed with
major symbolic im
portance.
The plant is interesting,
though, in its own right.
Our native mistletoe
(Phoradendron
serotinum) is also called
bird lime, all heal and
Devil’s fuge. Its range is
from New Jersey to
Florida.
During three seasons of
the year, mistletoe is in
hiding. But when the
deciduous trees shed, one
can spot the large clumps
of the mistletoe’s
evergreen leaves in tall
shrubs and high trees.
Small wonder that
primitive peoples thought
the plant mysterious, for it
had no connection with the
soil.
Mistletoe is in fact a
partial parasite and uses
apple, cottonwood, oak,
hazel, ash, persimmon-62
trees in all-as hosts. It is
capable of making and
photosynthesizing its own
food, but is dependent on
trees for its water and
minerals.
Sometimes one mistletoe
parasitizes another
mistletoe plant, and or
rare occasions this
hyperparasitism reaches
even a third plant.
There are female and
male mistletoes. The
female has the watery
white berries, which are
about the size of white
currants and are known to
be poisonous to humans.
Inside each berry is a
single heart-shaped seed.
The berries remain on the
plant for months until
visiting bird arrives and,
while trying to eat one of
the berries, is baffled by
the sticky substance on the
seed. The bird attempts to
get rid of the seed stuck to
its beak by scraping the
berry against a tree. In the
process, the seed adheres
to the trunk and eventually
germinates.
With its roots sunk into
the vascular system of the
tree, the plant often
reaches three feet in
diameter after seven or
eight years.
Through the centuries,
mistletoe was considered
by many people to promote
fertility and to have
protective powers against
lightning and witches. At
the start of the festival of
Saturn on Dec. 17, the
Romans hung their
mistletoe up and let their
moral and sexual
restraints down. That may
account for our use of
mistletoe at Christ
mastime, although the loss
of restraint under a sprig
of the plant tends to be less
drastic today.
Mistletoe usually grows
at the top of trees where
only the most foolhardy
would climb and risk life
and limb to get a Christ
mas decoration. One
solution is to use a rifle to
shoot the plant off the part
of the tree in which it
harooted.
But the simplest and
least hazardous answer to
the problem is to buy some
sprigs of mistletoe from
your local florist.
Mary Lamb, daughter of the Crest Senior Band
— Mrs. Dorothy W. Ed- qj jjj. jy[i.g Robert each year.
Lamb of Boiling She is very active in
T*i • Springs, participated in the Boiling Springs
L^Ollt/lCS activities for the Baptist Church where
Carrousel Parade at she serves as president
Ari(i P^T’j’V Youth Council, a
Mary’s honors include member of the singing
National Quill and ensemble “Reflections”
The Cleveland County Jcroll, second runner-up and the instrumental
chapter of Retired n the Miss Cleveland woodwind ensemble.
School Personnel held;;;ounty Junior Miss, Acteens, and Youth
its Christmas meeting geta Club member. Choir. She has also been
Dec. 7 and discussed editor of the Pegasus a part of two summer
legislative conerns for [the school’s literary mission trips to New
consideration by the tpagazine). Her club York and Chimney
membership. memberships include Rock.
Members of the science, French, Future Mary plans to attend
chapters legislativepg^chers of America Gardner-Webb College
committee, Dwight A. (serving as president), and major in religious
Gostne^ Martha Lon- she has been a member education,
don, Johnnie Mae Ware,
C.C. Padgett, Josephine
Ware and Myers Ham- The Inside VIEW
bright urged chapter
members to contact
legislative members on
the chapter’s concerns.
Billy Graham pg.2
Christmas too much of a hassle?
Christmas com- “^aham provides the answer.
^^we‘’i;ardLt“„'d ,^0 ,
ConstanceEvansled the
group in Singing. «.aciauvca
Myers Hambright, Boiling Springs News.. .pg.5
president, commended
the m e m bersfor P. O. box 9S2 Boning springs. N. C. 2801?
distributing gifts to rfst ^irp«.°age'“rPeZ'!'/"
home residents. -
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