With The Men In Service Harry E. King-, chief aviation machinist's mate, USN, son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. King of Preeland, is participating in “Operation Springboard,” the an nual Atlantic Fleet Winter Train ing Exercise in the Caribbean Sea, with Patrol Squadron 5. The squadron will conduct all flying and ground operations necessary to perform efficiently under simulated battle conditions. Springboard is designed to main tain units in a state of readiness by stressing individuals and crew basic training. Army Specialist Third Class James I. Parker, 22, son of Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Parker, Freeland, recently was graduated from the 23d Infantry Regiment Non-Com missioned Officer School at Fort Richardson, Alaska. A truck driv er in Company B of the 813tn Engineer Heavy Construction Bat talion, he received instruction in leadership of units, map reading and other military subjects. Spe cialist Parker entered the Army in May 1955 and arrived in Alaska the following October. He was graduated from Waccamaw High School in Ashe in 1950. SCHOOL DAZE By MARY ZU.I.AH BENNETT Valentine Greetings! This is the month of hearts and love; and it finds Waccamaw Beta Club mem bers looking forward to the Valen tine Party to be held in the gym, February 14. Each member is al lowed to invite one person. Crown ing of the King and Queen of Hearts will be the highlight of the evening. We journeyed over to Southport for a ball game Friday night. We surely did enjoy it. The games were very interesting. Our girls won by 25 points. The boys lost to Southport by 6 points. SEEN AND HEARD AROUND; Miss Odom chaperoning the teams on the bus Friday night . . . Mr. Ludlum taking Miss Page out to dine •. . . Larry flashing his re port cards. Good grades, huh? . . . Kenwood changing typewriter ribbons . . . Miss Galloway, back ing up the teams, as usual . . . Seniors practicing the play . . . Mildred, Lulu and yours truly hunting lost pocketbooks . . . Katie Smith with a pony tail . . . Hilda, Pheobe, Kitty and Laura with “Tootsie Pops” . . . Wardy, Willia Bell, and Joe Long playing “Pick Sticks” . . . Juniors prac ticing their play. DID YOU KNOW THAT? Mr. Long has not missed a ball game this year? Johnny on the spot huh? . . . The tournament will be at Waccamaw this year? We extend a hearty welcome to all visitors . . . We have a new elec tric score board? . . . Virginia and Ruby Jean missed a good ball game Friday night? See Ya Around! FARM ECONOMY IS Continued From Page One more dairy herds in the Wilming ton milkshed, and a 50 percent increase in production from herds already here.” Then he noted, “We have the land and the know-how, all we need is the financing to do it.” Lefler also commented on the $25 millions in eggs imported into the state each year, “We certain ly ought to be able to get a part ,of that.” Bill Hooks, Columbus County farmer and banker, said, “There is nothing wrong in farmers plugging for industries. The idea that agricultural areas don’t want industry because of competition is wrong, farmers are competing with industry every day every time they buy a car, a piece of machinery or a major appliance.” In the hog marketing problem, and most of the comment applied to the beef cattle market picture, too, these factors came out: Markets in the area are not paying premium for top grade animals, the lard hog price pre vails. Part of the reason, as ven tured by members of the com mittee, reluctance of the market operators to admit to customers others are selling for more. And, another, and possibly the greater reason, laid type hogs hold predominance over meat type hogs in this area. Price Boosts Premium Inability to get premium prices, consistently if at all, was also called a detriment to encourage ment of beef production. But con sistent market offering of prem ium prices is believed a good in ducement to get graue up. For the egg production picture, the committee heard M. Edmund Aycock, Raleigh banker and member of the Capitol Develop ment association, describe the area marketing plans of Capitol and Northwest. In both of these area develop ment associations a brand name carton is used for producers in the association who’ll conform to certain rules that assure product standards. And farm financing—the abili ty to get money to get into new farm enterprises—will get close attention from a special sub-com mittee. It was described as a bottleneck which will have to be overccme. Wyche, speaking for the bank 1 ers, gave this explanation regard | ing bank participation in long range farm financing, Diversification Pitfall ‘‘Eighty to 90 percent of the money we (banks) have to lend is checking accounts balances, there is no assurance we can re tain it, and we cannot, we feel, engage in long term loans when we have the obligation to pay a customer his money on demand.” Leroy Simmons, Duplin farmer from Albertson, and Columbus county's Ralph W. Spivey, Tabor City area farmer, agreed that diversification can be a financial pitfall for the small farmer. “Competition is getting so keen that a farmer has to specialize in a main cash crop. He can’t afford the machinery and equip ment it takes to diversity into a number of crops,” said Simmons. “What our farmers need to do is get into something they can do, then do it the best they can,” he added. “Specialization is a must.” Spivey carried it a point fur ther, “The efficient family type farm will make the most money and is the best financial risk. We’ve got to get our family type farms, which have been in to bacco, into something they can do. “Diversification is all right, if it can be done with what the family type farm has. It’s like a logging trucker asked to diversi fy and haul lumber. He can do that without much if any change. But it is different if he’s asked to haul dirt.” Durwood Bagget, New Hanover county agent, brought out the need to help farmers incomes by filling dead time between crops with income producing activities. The meeting recognized the need for special study of the vegetable situation, but time forced it to be deferred to another meeting. Can Lose Out Hooks in his comment on farm ers supporting industry drives said “We need industries that will pay good scales, not the type that just barely clear the wage hour law.” He noted that 75-80 percent of Columbus' income is from tobac co, and that it is produced on only 14 percent of the cropland. And he said, “We’ve been sitting down here too long now, well satisfied ! with a nice income, and we’re j about to realize too late we can lose it. “Filters have and are having their effect on th.e market. Look at the burley market as an indi cator. It has been unhealthy so far. They (the manufacturers) may increase the burley blend in cigarettes to give them a kick through the filters. If they do, that means less flue-cured.” Wilbur Earp from Brunswick recognized a general ailment in the area, lack of balanced farm ing. In the past this has been in part described as farmers’ un willingness to produce for their own tables, as well as dependency on a solitary, one-season crop. Need Financing Comments on the egg and milk market underlined that although they may offer new vistas, it’ll take money to get into them. Flocks in the 10,000s were men tioned as an operational basis, and $17,000 a helper in establish ing a dairy. Aycock, speaking from Capi tol’s experience said, “A lot can be done for market ing if the association will give the market operators backing on buying on grade. If the price is paid, the farmers will learn how to produce to get the price. “Egg associations in the moun tains and Piedmont are now maintaining uniform quality, uni form packaging in an effort to capture the area market. It’s working.” On Committee Among those attending were: Lefler; Haywood Page, Bur gaw; Earp; Abner Knowles, Brunswick county agent; J. M. Jenkins, Castle Hayne horticul turist; Baggett; R. H. Tate, Wil mington banker; Simmons; Vern on Reynolds, Kenansville county agent; Eugene Whaley, Elizabeth town, assistant county agent; Hooks, Spivey; Bill McCleney, Whiteville feed dealer; Clyde R. Jordan, Elizabethtown banker; Aycock, Wyche, Chaffin; Maurice Emmert, Wilmington; Donald Halsey, Jacksonville, county agent; Jake T- Harper, Jackson ville, Soil Conservation Service; R. L. Thompson, Wrightsville Beach. ROVING REPORTER Continued From Page One gone a complete transformation. Years ago most of the corplands were worn-out fields in a very poor state of fertility. The use of legumes was practically unknown. Now you see the reverse of that as practically all crop lands are in a high state of fertility. Meeting former Tax Collector M. D. Anderson on the street here Monday he stopped to re mark on the wonderful prospects for tobacco plants in the lower part of the county. The plants are not only abundant, they are I healthy and thriving. At the rate i that they have been growing un j der the stimulus of warm, moist j weather, they will be ready for ] transplanting to the open fields | before the growers will be ready , for them. Mr. Anderson lives at , Grissettown and comment was j made in this paper recently about the numerous tobacco beds in I that section and Longwood, Ash j and Freeland communities. | We appreciate the officers and j their families who live here, but ! we are doubly appreciative of Lt. . Col. William Murphy, the exeeu ! tive officer. At Sunny Point. Each j Monday Lt. Col. Murphy makes it ; a regular point to stop and see | us and tell us anything in con I nection with the installation that j may be of general interest. We have grown to know that we can always depend on him. I-ncident ly, a lot of the ladies of the j Woman’s Club, since their tour of j the installation last week, have stopped us to tell us what a nice set of families we have living in Southport. S. Bunn Frink and a group of Sunny Point officers, Lt. Col. Besser, Major Schwartz, Major Doyle, Major Bellows and Lt. Col. Murphy, got in on what they describe as mighty fine eating Saturday morning. They pooled their resources and bought 125! pounds of red snapper. Afterwai they made some sort of an er 6 years when his time is out. Subscriptions to this paper for as than a year are usually few very far between. One year is hat most folks ask for, some nding 3 one dollar bills for two ■ars as that is the easiest for piling if a check is not avail ile. This past week a bit of an ception to the general rule hap nded. Rev. Odell Blanton of ipply, preacher and business an, insisted in paying for 4 ars. He won’t have to worry out it for some time ahead. In tently, from January 4 to Feb. an even two hundred and two bscribers were added to oui ailing list. Last week two boats frorr ■ean City, Md., and one frorr lUthport were fishing some 4C les off Southport for red snap pers. At this time of the year al most any kind of weather can come up in short order and with out much notice. However, ttyose boats have radios and can either receive or send. They get a pret ty good idea from the reports what the weather is going to be and their own good sense tells them the rest that they need to know. They had been out two days this trip when we thought to ask when they were coming in. j They were fishing and doing well. They did not know when they would quit and come in with their catch. As a matter of fact, they did not plan to quit and did not quite until they got tips of approaching weather. Captain Charles W. Blades the Ocean City, Maryland, sport and commercial fisherman has done a wonderful thing in exploiting the red snapper fishing off Southport. He told us Sunday that we would see a lot of boats operating out of Southport in the future. Captain Blades thinks that a lot of local j boats will take up snapper fishing, as well as those from other states. One thing he is convinced of is that the fishing will pan out. The fish will be there the year round and Southport will be the ideal shipping point. He pointed out that the fishing grounds are 32 miles nearer to Southport than they are to Morehead City and on a round—trip difference of 64 miles that is a lot of time anc cost saving for the boatmen. Installing' soir.s $240 worth of "eels and an additional sum in a < fathoter, Captain Walter Lewis is proving his versatility as a fish- j srman, the first local man to pick I up after Captain Charles W. j Blades of Ocean City. If the shrimping proves as poor when the local trawlers return from Florida this spring as it was last summer, it is reasonable to be lieve that a lot of them will out fit themselves with rigs and fathometers and join in the snap per fishing. The big boats owned locally are of an ideal type for the work now starting; up here. Incidently, the snappers are very popular as a food fish. It may take a long time to flood the mar kets. Along the coast of Brunswick county, at points usually several hundred feet back of the high tide points and mostly along the in tracoastal waterway, there are many small and extremely fertile patches of land. Truck crops and gardens are wonderfully produc tive on such lands. At Holden Beach recently, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Grady gave us some radishes that a Raleigh man was growing not far from the waterway bridge. Mr. Grady stated that the Ra leigh man, whose name we have forgotten, has rented several acres of land near the bridge and is using the area to grow truck crops. Many forms of truck crops can easily be grown on such lands, even in winter. With service men it is a matter if going where they are ordered, i condition that they always ac ;ept because it i9 orders from righer ups. A few mighty good non have left Southport since 3unny Point was first activated, but always other good men have come to take their place. One family that the town is to lose in March is that of Major and Mrs. Herman Schwartz. His leav ing Southport with Mrs. Schwartz will be generally regretted by all Southport folks who know him and by the rest of the personnel at Sunny Point. The couple have been here since the installation was first activated and have made friends wherever they met people. They will regret to leave South port the same way that folks here will regret to have them go. It is a matter of no choice. Warren D. Hewett, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Hewett of South port, has been living at Palatka, Fla., with his family for several years. He is doing well down there but has not lost his interest in his old home town and comes to see his folks every few months. He was back last week and we thought to ask him if he had lost the idea of returning to Southport. “No”, he said, “I have had that in mind all of the time, and being a regular reader of the State Port Pilot the idea gets stronger every week that I read and note what a live community 1 Southport is coming to be.” BLACK'S BLAClf* BLACKS BLACK'S BLACK'S Customers TO PURCHASE BRAHD-NEW• FIRST-QUALITY* TUBED OR TUBELESS OF USED TIRES I NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY !! 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