* • . » Page 2, West Craven Highlights, May 26,19^3 Requiem For A Royal By JONATHAN PHILLIPS Mega-Columnist Ironic is the word for it. I sit now at the keyboard of an IBM Displaywriter office computer system, equipped with Textpack Six. It is, at least if you believe IBM, perhaps the most sophisticated word processing/office computer system of its type. This machine is used by day at the Center for Coastal and Environmental Studies to produce reports on everything from the breeding habits of Tilefish to mathematical equations for describing shorelines. This machine is used by night and weekend for CCES employees (one, at least) to write letters and newspaper columns. This fancy, expensive machine (this is where the irony comes in) is now being used to write a semi-sentimental column precipitated by a news item that the “old-fashioned” manual typewriter is truly on its way out. A news item this week reported that the last manual typewriter to be made in America “clanked” off the Smith-Corona assembly line. Obviously, this is not the beginning and the end. That came long ago. We are getting pretty doggone close to the end of the end. So, even as I pound away at the green-screen contraption that helped bring about the demise of the manual typewriter, I give a salute to every Royal, Remingfton, and Smith-Corona that ever spit out a Vanceboro Town Council story, term paper for English Comp, or thanrk-you note to Aunt Jesebel. I used to be in Vanceboro and hear Shirley Bryan say, jokingly, that all I was good for was pounding a typewriter. Seeing as how I was getting out of full-time journalism, I guess neither of us realized how right he really was. My new jobs have seemingly required about as much time at computer keyboards as the old ones did at typewriters. So when you get right down to it. I’ve made a living at the keyboard just about since I’ve made a living at all. And I’ve seen some great machines in my day. There is that Royal portable my parents gave me for Christmas seven or eight years ago. It is a small, light, manual that can go anywhere. Now, after so many hours at the Displaywriter it feels like you need hammers to work its stubborn keys. But that little monster served me well covering high school basketball games all over Central N.C. for the Raleigh Times, and in many other cases where there were no IBM’s to sneak in and use. For pure dependability and functional utility (not to mention certain mechanical aesthetic qualities that are missing from word processors) it is hard to top the massive black-bodied Remingtons and Royals that were put out maybe 30 years ago. A little oil here and there and these beauties could go on forever. I had one at the Washington Daily News, where the computers have since taken over, and at the Highlights, even though toward the end of my. regular work there I grudgingly began using the computer typesetter at times. I’ll bet dollars to Dunkin Donuts both those rigs could still beat a deadline. Many Roads By LELA BARROW In the span of life everyone has to make a decision. Sometimes it is very hard to choose which road to follow. In olden times there were not so many roads, but there were many paths that could easily lead you in the wrong direction. Today there are many roads with numbers telling you where they lead to. Thoroughfares across the country North-South-East-West. But to get to a certain place you have to choose the right road. I had to make the decision once which was extremely hard; whether to marry or stay with my mother. My father died-my mother’s sister who was twelve years older than mother, and an invalid, had come to live with us; a cousin was also living with us. I was in love with Ed Barrow and I was twenty-five years old. I had to decide which road was best for all of us. I chose the right road to marriage, home and happiness. My aunt died the next year and mother lived with her girls-the last twenty-five months she was with Ed and me, and she loved him as her son. We should be very sure of all decisions we make. Especially to choose the right road in our spiritual lives, the wrong road leads to destruction, unhappiness and death. The right, road leads to happiness and to God and Life. The Book of Ruth tells us of the famine in Judah that caused Elimelech and his wife, Naomi, to emigrate to Moab with their two sons, who married Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah. At the end of ten years the father and sons had died ^ and the three women were left widows. Naomi decided to return to her home, Bethlehem, and to her people.She and Ruth and Orpah went forth on the journey to return to Judah. On the way, we mightsay “at the turning of the road”, Naomi said to them, "Go, return to your mother’s house, the Lord deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead and with me.” She kissed them and they wept; saying we will return with thee to thy people. Naomi said; “Turn again, my daughters, go your way-I am old”. This was where the turning point in the road came to mean so much to two lovely women. The decision Orpah made was to go back to her people, and to her gods. A broken tie of friendship and a person unheard of since the parting. Ruth said to Naomi, “Entreat me not to leave thee, thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God. Nothing but death shall part thee and me.” Boaz, a man of wealth and a kinsman of Elimebeth purchased Naomi’s land and-married Ruth. She had a son named Obed; who was the father of Jesse, the father of David, the king a lineal descendant of Jesus. Ruth made the right decision and has been a loyal, noted person through the years. Read the book-Ruth. Let us keep our minds free from envy, hatred and malice that we may have love, peace and joy. Then perfect love and friendship reigns throughout eternity. * * « If »> -Not...that. I._.compIam about video. display. One Day Title Service To For a $25 Fee RALEIGH—Effective July 1,1983, a twenty- five dollar fee will be charged to motorists and dealers wanting one-day title service, the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s (NCDOT’s) Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has announced. The 1983 General Assembly authorized the twenty-five dollar fee to accommodate motorists and dealers wanting instant title service. The five-dollar fee charged for regular title processing will remain the same. “The one-day title service is in response to requests by dealers and motorists for instant title processing,” said DMV Commissioner R.W. Wilkins Jr. The normal turnaround time for terminals and computer outposts. This littlelBM even has a button I can press and it will automatically check my entire story for spelling errors. And it was at a terminal in the Y.H. Kim Social Science lab at East Carolina where a certain graduate student captured my heart as I tried to explain multiple regressions that she was pretending not to know. But it is not all wine and roses in the age of the silicon chip. My royal portable could never send three months of effort into electronic oblivion, as an anonymous operator at the ECU computing center once did. And the Highlights’ sturdy Remington could never “burp” a story off a floppy disk and into computer never-never land 10 minutes before deadline, as a VDT at the New River Valley" Bureau of the Roanoke Times once did, exposing me to the unrivalled wrath of a city editor. So for a man who lives (admittedly in abject poverty) by the keyboard there will always be a soft spot for the manual typewriter. And for those times where the power is off or there’s not an outlet in sight or the software is going haywire* there is always the Royal portable, waiting patiently in the corner with its sledgehamiTier keys,.. Become Effective July 1 regular title processing is two weeks if the application is in order. If problems arise and the application has to be returned to the motorists or dealers, then it takes longer than two weeks to process the title,” he continued. Present plans are to operate the one-day title service at the Raleigh office on 1100 New Bern Avenue and later expand to the Charlotte offices at 3206 Freedom Drive in the Freedom Mall and at 6058 East Independence Boulevard. For more information on the one-day title service, motorists should contact Gonzalie Rivers at (919) 733-7462 or write Vehicle Services, DMV, 1100 New Bern Avenue, Raleigh, N.C. 27697. ^'1' HIGHLIGHTS Craven County’s Family Weekly Newspaper R.L. Cannon, Jr. Sharon Buck ^*****' Hodges •Publisher Production Business Manager Christine Hill Carrl* L«e McVicker Office Manager Tranaportar ^Circulation Mike Hodges Circulation John McLawhorn Sports P.O. Box 404, Main Street, Across from the Post Office Vanceboro, North Caroiina 28586 Phone: (919) 244-0780, (919) 244-0508 PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY Second Class Postage Paid at Vanceboro, N.C. (Permit entered March 1,1978) SUBSCRIPTION PRICES Single Copy 2OS 1 Year Subscripdon $6.24 2 Years Subscription $10.40 3 Years Subscription .! $14.58 (USPS 41.2-110) (Payable in advance. Subscribers desiring their Highlights terminated at expiration should notify us of this intention, otherwise we will consider it their wish to continue to receive the paper and they wili be charged for it.) “'•■'-’wraerr,