Newspapers / The New Bern Mirror … / April 15, 1960, edition 1 / Page 1
Part of The New Bern Mirror (New Bern, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
A newspaperman never knows what he is going to get into, when he covers an automobile accident It’s a grim case of pot luck, and taking it in stride as best you can To the morbidly curious a seri ous crash, with bloodshed involv ed, is a show to flock to and stare at. After 30 years of reporting, our chief emotional reaction is depres sion over the needless tragedy of such events. You get that way when you’ve helped to load corpses beyond your numbering, and witnessed with dis concerting regularity the agony of pain on mutilated faces that reflect the bewilderment of a shocked and befuddled mind. Accident victims behave pecul iarly at times in the hospital’s emergency room. For some reason many of them beg for water that can’t be given them until the full extent of their injuries is deter mined. Some are omniously quiet, al though obviously conscious. They gaze at the ceiling almost impas sively, apparently unexcited by the lacerations and the broken bones. Others, usually hurt less, talk in cessantly about their own good for tune in escaping so lightly, never bothering to glance at the hapless friend or relative on the stretcher next to them. -Some are downright cocky, in what appears to be a rather ridicu lous effort to show just how tough they are. They’re the type who want to get up and walk around, and get in the way of the doctor and -the nurses. Always the collision has occur red because somebody was at fault, Maybe it was one driver, or maybe both. Accidents don’t just happen, even though any highway patrol man can tell you that this is the sort of reasoning he listens to time and time again. Speed is the great killer—speed and drinking. Drunks have a habit of ending up in emergency rooms fairly often. Not quite as often, however, as the sober motorist who is maimed because somebody else got under a steering wheel and drove a deadly weapon while in- > toxicated. ^n atomic bomb has wider scope than a fast moving car, but that’s scant consolation if the latter slaughters you, or crip ples you for life. We rather think that a lot of adults lack the perception and the capacity to appreciate terror that an eight-month-old baby displayed at the hospital here just the other day. The infant’s fright' and hyster ia, from that moment on, became imbedded in our memories of ac cidents past and present. On this occasion, we helped un load the victims and get theitl into the emergency room. There were five in all, not counting the baby who was crying not from pain, but in sheer horror. Her mother had a head iaceratibn. At first we devoted our atten tion to a man on one of the tables who wasn’t too badly hurt. He had a gash in his head, but he could move his arms and legs, and had no difficulty in breathing. “I’m just sleepy,” he told us as matter of factly as you’d ever expect to hear such a statement. A few minutes later, since ev erybody else was pretty busy, we ended up baby sitting in the near by laboratory with the wailing child. A nurse had checked the lit tle girl, and found no injuries. The blood on her yellow rompers was n’t her own, but someone else’s— probably her mother’s. Perhaps you’re skeptical over the possibility of an eight-month-old infant’s ability to comprehend that something terrible had happened in which she was directly involv ed. You’re skeptical because you didn’t see the unbelievable terror- (Continued en Bock Poflo) The .NEW BERN PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE HEART OP EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA 5^ Per Copy VOLUMNE 3 NEW BERN, N. C., FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 1960 NUMBER 3 COASTAL SPRINGTIME—A pretty girl with a perky hat, and dogwood in bloom. That’s an ideal April combination. The young lady, posing like a professional, is one of our New Bern High school students, Frances McSoyley, who is best known for her baton twirling.—Photo by Billy Ben ners. Good Friday Finds Gardens Sprouting in New Bern Yards It’s with us agalin—garden plant ing time—and everywhere you look in New Bern and Craven county you’ll see folks going about the happy if somewhat tiring business of getting something to grow and do well. Spring onions, too hardy to be intimidated by cold weather, are already thriving in most plots, and amateur farmers here, there and everywhere haive been setting out their pole beans, butter beans, squash and cucumbers for several days. All gardeners have a great deal in common, including cut-worms and weeds. Yet, each has his or her own particular notion as to when a thing should be planted, and how it is to be cultivated. A lot of individuals swear by the almanac, and wouldn’t think of sticking a seed in the ground un less the moon^nd stars are just right. In this category are many seasoned and successful farmers, who could never be shaken from their conviction that the man who ignores his ailmanac is headed for certain disaster and a mighty mis erable crop. And of course you’ll find plenty of people who insist that Good Fri day is the time to plant, and none other. This despite the fact that Good Friday isn’t a fixed date on the calendar from year to year, but comes in March as well as April. To such persons, a belief in Good Friday as an ideal sowing time must have religious significance of a sort. Seldom, you’ll find, does a neigh bor pitch in and help with the plowing and tending of your gar den, but he’ll never short change I one else’s business, and when it i Advice doesn’t end with telling you on free advice. All of us mor- comes to gardening, just about ev- you when to plant, how to distri- tals seem to have the universal erybody is guilty in varying de- bute the fertilizer, and the depth failing of trying to tend to some-' grees. A MEDIEVAL BERNE STREET I a seed should be stuck in the earth. The suggestions become prolific at the precise moment that your tomato plants start looking anemic, and the bugs are devouring your beans. Everybody has his own spe cial prescription, and the chances I are none of them compares with what the man at the feed store says should be done. That’s one of the nice things, however, about gardening. Each one of us fancies himself as having the knowledge of an agricultural Solomon. If our garden turns out well, we hasten to take all the credit. If it withers and flops, we blame it on the weather. Never, until you try to raise a garden, will you discover how ma ny children there are in New Bern. And, for some strange and devilish reason, they immediately turn your cherished acrenige into a race track, warpath and playground as soon as the first brave shoots of green break through the earth. Judging by anguished complaints from other gardeners around town, who suffer from kid trouble too, it simply can’t be that all the brats within a 30-mile radius have pick ed out your particular garden to destroy. You’ve just got a 90 per cent infestation of jumping juv eniles. If you have gqpd luck, which isn’t very likely, everything you’ve planted will reach maturity at ex actly the same time. You’ll have more vegetables than you can eat. Besides, you’ll learn with no small (Continued on Back Pago)
The New Bern Mirror (New Bern, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
April 15, 1960, edition 1
1
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75