Newspapers / The Pilot (Southern Pines, … / Aug. 22, 1957, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page TWO THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 1957 ILOT Southern Pines North Carolina "In taking over The Pilot no changes are contemplated. We will try to keep this a good paper. We will try to make a little money for ail concerned. Wherever there seems to ^ an occasion to use our influence for the public good we will try to do it. And we will treat everybody alike.”—James Boyd, May 23, 1941. ■ ^ Klan Being By-Passed By History We do not predict a rosy future for the Ku Klux Klan m the Sandhills nor in North Carolina. Like electric cars, men’s knickerbockers, hand-wound phonographs ' and wood-fired cookstoves, the Klan is a product with a dim- ini.shing market. It is being by-passed by his tory. ■ . I'he Sandhills showed last week that its people are not significantly interested in what the Klan has to offer. Its meeting and cross- burning session appeared to attract mainly curious persons who wanted to see what a KKK meeting looks like. They’ve seen, it now —like a scene from a 30-year-old movie— and most of them very likely will not go back again. (What the Klan needs is a public re lations expert to tip them off that if they really want to go respectable they should dis card the trappings of the Klan’s days of law lessness and terror: the absurd robes and the burning cross which is the central symbol of the old and wholly discredited Klan. Of course, without the robes and cross, a Klan meeting isn’t much of a show, and a crowd might never be corralled on the merits of the Klan’s message alone.) Now that the Klan dare not in North Car olina make its one-time fascinating offer of personal lawlessness and personal violence to frustrated hot-heads, it can offer only the comforting notion of White Supremacy, over laid with coatings of religion and patriotism. Of such was the message delivered at lapt week’s meeting and the contents of a four- page ‘‘magazine” distributed on that occa sion. But how, then, can we call the Klan a prod uct with a diminishing market? For the sim ple reason that there are other and, for most people, more appealing outlets for their thoughts and feelings on these subjects. Most people in the Sandhills and in North Carolina have their churches for their religious life and their veterans’ organizations or their pri vate convictions for their patriotism. They do not need Klan guidance there. And the field of racial relations is no longer a wilder- nes.s of personal prejudices and opinions. Dur ing the past decade the courts have been charting a path that, however offensive it may be to some persons, must point at least the direction in which we are traveling. There are also new state laws, such as the Pupil Assignment Act and the Pearsall Plan that are designed to provide legal and order ly solutions to racial problems in the realm of education. The emphatic rejection of the Klan’s offer of membership by Senators Ervin and Scott shows which way the wind is blowing in North Carolina. Between them, these two men sum up in their personal characters many different shades of Tarheel opinion and, one might say, levels of culture, from Scott’s ‘‘branch head boys” to Ervin’s seat On the State Sunreme Court. That both should reject the Klan is a tribute not only to them, but to the state they represent. ‘‘The last thing we need in North Carolina now is the Ku Klux Klan,” said Senator Scott. We agree. Perspective On Foreign Doctors Affair An interesting viewpoint on the matter pf ■ foreign doctors holding state jobs in North Carolina is the realization that this problem is shared by other states, notably Kentucky where, according to the Louisville Cpiirier-. •Journal, there are in four mental hospitals*: 25 foreign (bom and trained oversea^) doctors-, at work as against 20 who were trained to America. One mental hospital in Kentucky has only one American doctor in a staff of eight. TTie information from Kentucky is that foreign doctors there have been and are every bit as essential as they have proven to be in ■North Carolina and, as in Tarheelia, are cred,- ited with much of the success of the state hospitals sysftem in recent years. According to the Louisville newspaper, Kentucky has discharged a hig];ier rate of patients than smy other state in the past two years. An’d the Courier-Journal says the for eign doctors are due at least a part of the credit. ‘‘It would seem,” that newspaper adds, ‘‘that American taxpayers would be grateful to these practitioners from other lands, who sert’e at low salaries we are willing to pay. . . Pray God Kentucky never shows itself either so ungrateful or so improvident!” So indeed are we grateful—at least, that proved to be the case in North Carolina where ' an outcry on the part of both state hospitals officials and the public resulted in rescinding of a ruling by the State Board of Medical Ex aminers that the foreign doctors would have to go after July of next year. The testimony from Kentucky rounds out Jfhe foreign doctors affair and adds perspec tive. And we think approximately the same reaction would have been registered on the part of the public eind the press in any other state. No matter how provincial, selfish or intol erant Americans may be painted or may at times appear, there is in us a fundamental respect for v.rork done, for help given and for fair dealing. This quality is what made itself so amply evident when it appeared the for eign doctors in North Carolina were to be given a raw deal. All The News—Not Just Good News The Pilot has made a point for some time of explaining to its readers now and then why newspapers—and this newspaper in particu lar—take certain attitudes or handle news in certain ways. We do not dispute our readers’ right to judge us, nor do we contend that we make no mistakes in reporting or commenting on the news. But unless readers are aware of the principles that guide the publishing of a newspaper, it may be easy for them to assume that what appears in the paper is arbitrary, capricious or not in the public interest. A criticism frequently made of small town newspapers is that there should be no place in these publications for news that will .“hurt” the town—a blanket term that appears to cover publication of anything unpleasant or discreditable about the community, no matter how true the facts are. This attitude is especially felt in a resort community such as Southern Pines which is naturally trying to put its best foot forward and appear attractive to the public eye. The small town of Aspen, Colo., is a resort .community whose weekly newspaper was told by local critics that it had printed stories it shouldn’t. The reply made by the Aspen Times to these criticisms eloquently sums up the principles that guide conscientious editors eveiywhere in handling local news. It is just as true in Southern Pines as in Colorado: courts, “And we can not believe that Aspen businessmen would like it otherwise. For a free press is essential to political free dom* and conversely, governments which do not allow freedom can not permit a free press. Today in over half of the world: in Russia, in China, in Egypt, in Hun gary, wherever dictatorships rtile, the press is muzzled. In such places only good news—news favorable to those in com mand—is printed, and no editorial criti cism is allowed. “We hope that is not what . . . (is) wanted here.” Running a newspaper in the light of the great her itage noted by the Aspen paper does not exempt an editor, of course, from exer cising the balance, taste and restraint that common sense and common decency call for. And it is' true, too, that responsible editors would always rather print something “good” ,than something “bad” about their home towns. It is, after all* the residents of a community who make the “good” and “bad” news. Clean Up Next Week ■‘The primary function of any news-. paper is to report news, not just good news but all news. But because no one likes to have his faults made public, much news is distasteful to some of those who read it. If a paper attempted to print only stories pleasing to all, the contents would be limited to innocuous accounts of all births and weddings. “. . . (The Times) is a small, insignificant publication in an out-of-the-way comer of the nation, but because it is a news paper it has a great heritage to maintato; a heritage as old as the countrjr” itself, a“ heritage' Of free and indefiendent reporting, an important heritage protected by the First Amendment of the Cloh^it.ution and _j recognized by countless decisions of the ‘‘I’m Sorry—-But Most Of You Men Just Don’t Measure Up” Grains of Sand ri>: . f/lRE55- TOP tT^VPL.O/VlA7/^i ' • POSTS * w/ ^«ses l4I]i i Jj Solution From Spain Morality is so simple if the mind and conscience are not in volved. Witness a report from A GRAINS’ good'- friend, Wallace Irwin, who writes from Vermont: “In the ever-delicate question of birth control there are many wise opinions, but one I have came out of Spain, the land- of raw meat. I read about it in a - i book I found Smorig the thous ands in my Vermont bedroom. The book is nine years old, but it’s not yet ancient history. ^ “A high ranking Fascist in , ^ Madrid said to the author: ‘When our government built a modem sewage system they ruined the country. And how? It is well known that foul drainage brings on epidemics like dysentery, ty phoid fever, etcetera. These scourges mow down thousands of • children annually, little shavers who would join the radical party, ^ if allowed to grow up. Our Kind * of People needn’t fear any plague brought on by bad drainage. We live in sanitary quarters. But the Slave Race should be controlled in the natural way—through dis ease.’ “These sentiments come from , Spain, which invented the Inqui sition in somewhat the same Christian spirit. At a bull fight, a Madrid lady said with a ben- evolent smile, ‘You Americans are too sentimental about the pain of the bulls. They cannot A Seacocist Morning In Maine suffer. They are not Christians.’ “So that’s all fixed.” By KATHARINE BOYD If you wake up early in the morhing on the shore of French man’s bay, the first sound you generally hear is the heron clear ing his throat. It’s THE heron. The same one. Or that is what the bird books would indicate. They say each one has his own closely patrolled stretch of shore line—and all the mussels and snails and tiny .fish and crabs that live in its rock pools belong to him. That is, as far as other herons are concern ed. Gulls are no respecters of heron property or anybody else’s and will leave their deep water fishing to invade other territory whenever they have a mind. The herons tolerate them, perhaps be cause they are mostly scaven gers, but if another heron ap pears, the war is on. We’ve never seen such a battle or even heard it and we have an idea that here in Maine, with its three thousand miles Of shore line, there is more than enough beach to go around. mg into a firm beat as she leaves the harbor and rounds the point. First the lobster pots along the farther shore of Dram Island, and then the whole tough work ing life of her moves close. The motor shuts off. Through the sudden silence the splash of her wake striking the rocks below is loud. There is the muffled rub of the heavy water-logged hawser on the gunwale and then, in a great sluicing of water, the trap comes up, festooned with kelp. There is the dull soimd of wood on wood as it thumps hollow on the deck, followed by the series of splashes as the crabs and simi lar varmints, and lobsters over or under the limit, are thrown back. The engine turns over slowly to move the boat a few yards far ther on, where the emptied and rebaited lobsterpot is thrown back in with a resounding splash, all det for tomorrow’s unwary hardshells. Grace and Beauty like a crowd of insane cats out on the reef, but now they have fol lowed the boat and, as she starts back around the point, a quartet of the sleek birds has settled on the barnacled rock^ where the heron had his stand. They don’t seem to be doing much. They teet er about, lifting their legs in a finicky way, ouching here and ‘ there over the sharp edges. One of them has chosen a high rock and poses motionless, rigid as one of those decoys his carefully painted plumage so resembles. He stands, looking out across the water, so still you can hardly be lieve he is a real bird and what’s more, a member of that tribe that is heavy and strong to beat against the fury of a wild north easter, to fight and strike a way to a place on the crowded, storm- beaten, slippery ledges where the hard-bitten, hard-biting herring gulls roost. Expressive Ted Garner, an employee of the famous Sanitary FishAiarket seafood restaurant at Morehead City, was asked by Pilot News Editor Vance Derby last week- ^ end how business was on the coast in the wintet. “Right smart dull,” was the answer. Vance is relating the conversation to show how words not normally used together can he combined for a refreshing and expressive effect. Barrel of Trouble According to the Manchester || Guardian News Service, a strik ing lesson in keeping the upper lip stiff is given in the weekly bulletin of the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors which prints the following letter from a bricklayer in Barbados to the firm for which he worked: On Wide Wings THE heron would confirm that impression. His solitary throat- clearings and croaks in the morning sound as lonely and un disturbed as the sight of him to the evenings, sailing slowly by on his wide wings, his long legs held stiffly in the same flat tra jectory, a Japanese print against the sunset sky. If you get up as the dawn is stealing pearly across the sky, you can sometimes catch a close look at him. And then he looks soli tary indeed. There he stands on the lowest rock close to the water, long head hunched back into his shoulders, the spring of his neck coiled for the sudden lightning thrust. Incredibly still he waits, expectant, the old fish erman intent on one final cast before he calls it a day. Beside, him, the little silver waves flutter with the first breath of air. Or is it a school of xiny fish, flashing their tails in heedless exhuberance? The stil etto strikes—sharp, hard. There is a wild groping and teetering with balancing wings a-flutter; then up it comes, to shine, a sil ver sliver in the sun, before it vanishes. But actually, you sel dom see the heron. . The first sound from the hooded house, the first sign of traffic On the bay, and he is gone. The boat moves on and you trace its course from buoy to brightly bobbing buoy, the empty bottles—that are used to hold each buoy up in line over the submerged trap—^flashing in the early sun. The engine grows fainter as she heads across to Bean Island’s soft grassy sheep meadow in its ring of dark trees and the farther ledges. And now, looking out, you can se'e the Linda’s high white bow turn back toward the harbor mouth. Cutting steadily across the water, the sturdy boat has the grace and beauty of something designed as the best possible an swer to a problem of man’s live lihood. One niore stop. As the motor shuts off and she rocks gently to the motion of the water and the easy movements of the man working intently, skillfully on her deck, she seems to float in space, mirrored in the quiet sea, the living center of a perfect circle of sky and water and dark g^'een, fir-pointed land. The Linda’s long tour has aroused the gulls. You have been aware of their raucous hooting, In Perfect Pose Nobody’s appearance so belies his character as that of the gpll. Wliether he is standing, a digni fied silhouette, head and neck as snowy white against the blue water as a starched dress shirt, pale grey back and wings as smooth, as sleek as the sides of a newly painted sloop, there on his noble rock; or whether he is flying across the water, with oc casional lifting beats of his strong, long, curved wings, his symmetry of pose is sheer per fection. And then, he opens his yellow beak and YAAHS, like a nasty urchin, at the next gull in line. The Public Speaking Or perhaps he will abandon the nobility of his sentinel pose on shore and decide to go swim ming. No dashing fish-hawk’s plunge follows this decision, no jet-plane dive into the sea. The gull simply walks down the rock with his finicky, sore-foOted gait; keeps on walking till he is water borne. Then, smugly, he turns on an invisible silent motor located somewhere underneath and, without flicker of tail or change ox expression to his hard, beady eye, he proceeds. Not very fast, not with any particular purpose —just proceeds. He is now a mechanical bird and you hope he hasn’t lost the key. The Pilot nptes with approval Mayor Blue’s proclamation of the week, August 26-31, as “clean-up week” in Southern Pines. The town council has previously gone on .record as approving of and cooperating with this summer’s state-wide effort for cleanli ness along the highways and in public parks and has asked the people of Southern Pines to extend this effort to thejr Own private property. * This, community is fortunate in being ba sically well laid out and haying an abundance of natural beauty—trees along the streets and ah aboye-average number of well plant ed and weir cahed-for yards. Pride in the ap- phSrahee of Sohtflhrn Pines is nothing new, iitit it heeds to be, jfefrfeshed and renewed now and thenr''' ..... week* is.q .good t^e for eqch resident to do his part. Coming to life That sound of traffic is the sign of another Maine day com ing to life. The green light through the firs turns to gbld and the lapping of the water grows louder as the little breeze freshens. A branch starts to tap against the log walls. A red squirrel hits the roof with a thump and patters on across to jump* with, a thrashing crash into the trees. He sounds as big as a bear. And then you hear it; the faint throb of a motor. One of the lobstermen is out early. Probably Billy Bunker who has a day job at times and then has to haul, his traps before he goes to work. You picture him on his “Linda B” at her mooring, getting the cranky, fogged-up old engine go ing for his daily roimd. You fol low her course as she leaves the anchorage, the faint throb tum- Parkway Signs Should Give Town’s Full Name To The Editor: It is splendid »that the new thiuw:ay is to be officially called the Southern Pines Parkway. Southern Pines has so much beauty in its longleafed pines, with homes set back among them. That abbreviated “So. Pines” at the intersections on the thru way certainly gives a dull idea of our town! As the town has a descriptive name with only three letters less than that of our good neighbor, Rockingham, I feel these signs, ALL OF THEM, should have the FULL name. Southern Pines. 'There is only one Southern Pines in the world. Even the state does not have to be added to a,cable from abroad. As a resort town, let us treas ure every letter and not lose six of them! ■_ ' • RUTH DORIS SWETT Southern Pines Gulls Don't Stay The gulls aren’t anything like the heron for shyness but, though there’s a law against shooting them and nobody really cares a thmg about them, they don’t stay around long after the fra grance of bacon and coffee from the kitchen has started to rouse oat the household. The opening of the big door onto the deck- porch, to take a sailor’s look at the day’s prospects, is the sign for the gulls to heave themselves up out of the water, leaving a trail of drops on the calm surfeae of the bay, as they beat their wings upwards to wheel in line and glide on to their outer roost ing place. ■ They leave behind a memory of clearcut grace, curving through the sky, and a couple of ^ last faint hoots; Nike Apteros ' thumbing her nose at th6 dull folks on shore. (Mrs. Boyd, editor of The Pilot, is vacationing in Maine.) “Respected sir: “When I got to the building, 1 found that the hurricane had * knocked some bricks off the top. So I rigged up a beam with a pulley at the top of the building and hoisted up a couple of bar rels full of bricks. Y^en I had fixed the building, there was a lot of bricks left over. I hoisted the barrel back up again and se- cured the line at the bottom, aijd then went up and filled the bar rel with extra bricks. Then I Al went to the bottom and cast off the line. Unfortunately, the bar rel Of bricks was heavier than I was, and, before I knew what was happening, the barrel start ed down, jerking me off the ground. I decided to hang on and halfway Up I met the barrel com ing down and received a severe blow on the shoulder. “I then continued to the top, ^ banging my head against the ^ beam and getting my fingers jammed in the pulley. V^en the barrel hit the ground it bursted its bottom, allowing all the bricks to spill out. I was now- heavier than the barrel and so started down again at high speed. “Halfway down, I met the bar rel coming up and received se vere injuries to my shins. When I hit the ground I landed on the bricks, getting several painful cuts from the sharp edges. “At this point I must have lost, my presence of mind, because I. let go the line. The barrel then came down, giving me.,another heavy blow on the head and put ting me in hospital. I respectfully request sick leave.” The PILOT # Published Every Thursday by THE PILOT, Incorporated Southern Pines, North Carolina 1941—JAMES BOYD—1944 Katharine Boyd Editor C. Benedict Associate Editor Vance Derby News Editor Dan S. Ray Gen. Mgr. C. G. Council Advertising ^ Mary Scott Newton Business * Bessie Cameron Smith Society Composing Room Locharny McLea*, Dixie B. Ray. Michael Valen, Jasper Swearingen Thomas Mattocks. . Subscription Rates: One Tear $4. 6 mos, $2: 3 moa. $1 Entered at the Postdffice at South ern Pine?, N. C., as second class mail ma^r ^ ^ Member National Editorial Assn, and N. C. Press Assn.
The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.)
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Aug. 22, 1957, edition 1
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