The News resord
SERVING THE PEOPLE OF MADISON COUNTY
SINC
MADISON
COUNTY LIBRARY
GENERAL DELIVERY
MARSHAIL NC
28753
82nd Year No. 24
PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE COUNTY SEAT AT MARSHALL, N.C.
WtUMcauM t , jui
ie
.5' Per Cory
River Crossing, 1916
THREE MEN, a team of mules and a load of
lumber cross the French Broad River by
ferry after flood of 1916 washed out the
bridge above Redrnon. Everette Barnette
presented The News Record with photo from
the collection of Mrs. Bill Roberts.
House Approves v
T ax Package
The North Carolina House gave its ap
proval Friday to a package of tax and fee in
creases totalling $242 million. The tax package
is due for consideration in the State Senate later
this week.
The House wasted no time in approving the
package of tax increases. On Thursday, the
House finance committee approved the
package by a vote of 34-11.
The House version of the tax package will
increase taxes on alcohol sales, the sales tax on
automobiles, boats and aircraft, and twin
trailer trucks. It also creates a new $40 per
machine tax on video games, increases the fee
charged for license plates, title transfers, ABC
licenses and court costs in both District and
Superior Court.
Also increased are tuition fees at state
operated community colleges and fees charged
by a variety of state agencies. The tax package
also imposes sales taxes on rentals for periods
of less than 90 days, repeals a $200 interest ex
clusion to taxpayers, reduces discounts given to
merchants for collecting sales taxes and ac
celerates tax payment schedules for insurance
companies, employers withholding income
taxes and corporations with a tax liability of
$5,000 or more.
Under provisions of the tax package, small
businesses would have their minimum tax
liability increased from $10 to $25 and more le
nient depreciation schedules for business pro
perties would be rescinded.
The maximum sales tax on the sale of
autos, boats and aircraft will increase from the
present $120 ceiling to $300. Estimates are that
the higher ceiling will generate an additional
$62.3 million in the 1983-84 fiscal year.
The tax on beer sales will be increased
from the present five cents to 5*6 cents per
12-ounce can. Liquor will increase from 22 M*
percent of the retail price to 24-3/8 percent and
wine from 24 cents per liter to 26 cents. The
tax on liquor for resale as mixed drinks will in
crease from $10 per gallon to $15.
ABC license fees will be raised from $250 to
$500 for renewals and from $500 to $750 for in
itial licenses. Increases in beverage taxes and
license fees is expected to raise $12.6 million in
( Continued on Page 5)
Nancy Anderson: Mars Hill's Compleat (hardener
NANCY ANDERSON
By PAULINE B. CHEEK
"With disipline getting so bad and this new
system of education, I decided I was too old to
adapt. I enjoyed it while 1 was teaching, but I
haven't missed it." Thus Nancy Anderson
describes her retirement in 1971 from elemen
tary school teaching.
In gardening, however, she is by no means
unable to adapt to the most up-to-date methods.
"It all started with 'Organic Gardening
Magazine'," she says of her garden plot's func
tioning almost like a terrarium, with moisture
and matter in a continuous stately' recycling.
Constant enrichment of the soil through corn
posting, mulching, and crop rotation, compa
nion planting, rejection of commercial fer
tilizers and sprays, tha saving of seed, froin
year to year, experimentation with food drying
and recipes ? these are some of the principals
that have become a way of life for her and her
sister, Gladys.
The land on which the ladies live is part of the
Anderson tract that two generations ago ex
tended from the base of Bailey Mountain in
Mars Hill to Highway 19-23 and included the
well-known Cuss in' Knob, where a wagonload
of lumber would tax the strength of as many as
six miles.
"I wouldn't take anything for thera," Nancy
says of her two-wheeled cart and the shredder
which she uses for conposting, A visitor to her
backyard can see why. The barn contains one
stall of cattle manure, one of shredded leaves,
one of shredded stalks of tobacco, sunflower,
okra. Outside in separate piles are sawdust,
rich dirt, tree prunings, and decaying vegtable
matter ? kitchen scraps, grass clippings, and
herbs such as feverfew, catnip, comfrey, and
nasturtium. From these compost ingredients,
Nancy hauls mulch according to the needs of
each plant.
(Continued on Page U)
Speaker Enjoys ' The Best Job In The State '
By RICK SLUDER
News And Observer
Staff Writer
Lis ton Ramsey asks little of life: a TV foot
ball game on a fall afternoon, a car that doesn't
buckle under a lot of hard miles and a speaker's
chair in the N.C. House of Representatives to
call his own.
"Look at this one here," he says, lifting and
relishing a red, white and blue cap bearing the
word "Boss" across the front. He replaces it
atop the hat rack in his Legislative Building of
fice and chuckles. "I forget who gave me that."
It is, for Liston Bryan Ramsey, an unusual
ly loquacious burst. Known as a man who
speaks softly and bluntly when he speaks at all,
Ramsey, a product of the Madison County
mountains, lives up to the quiet, direct
stereotype linked to life in the hills.
At 64 and in his fourth decade of elected of
fice, he says he has attained his life's goal ?
"the speakership," he calls It again and again
? and he would be perfectly happy to live out
his days as boss of the N.C. House.
He assumed the post in 1981, in his 10th
the legislative branch of government. This (the
Legislature) is the only tax-levying authority
we have on a statewide basis. The General
Assembly prepares the state budget...
"I just have the best job in the state."
His most satisfying accomplishment in
public life?
"Becoming speaker in '81." A pause. "Se
cond best, becoming speaker in '83."
His greatest challenge?
"Getting re-elected speaker, I guess."
And so it goes with Liston Ramsey and
"Mr. Speaker" ? two in one, one in the same,
each defined by the other. He hopes it never
ends and plans not to let it in 1985, though no
North Carolina speaker has ever served more
than two terms.
"I will be seeking the speakership position
a third term," Ramsey says. "I have to get re
elected back home every two years like every
other representative ...But if I'm re-elected
back home, I expect to be the speaker in '85.
And I expect to get re-elected back home."
If he indeed makes history in the
Legislature by again assuming the House
podium in 1965, few of his acquaintances will be
surprised. They've come to expect success
While Ramsey's position of power in the
tby
; say his
and frankness. "Liston is a tnan who, you know
where he's coming from," says Rep. Harold J.
Brubaker, R-Randolph, House minority leader.
"You know what ground he stands on, and you
understand the rules going in."
And even his pals back in the mountains
say there was something about the young
Liston Ramsey growing up in Marshall ? in
telligence, earnestness, something ? that told
you he was not to be trifled with.
Minuard Sexton of Weaverville in Bun
combe County, a former classmate of Ramsey
at Marshall High School, remembers a bright
youth who took his schooling seriously.
"At the end of his junior year, he was se
cond highest in the class," Sexton says, "and
we were ushers together (at the graduation
ceremony for the class of '35). He took it real
seriously, but he took all his jobs seriously. If he
thought it was worth doing, he put his whole self
in it.
"There was no foolishness about him ...I
never knew of him being into a thing."
His approach to politics ? the high school
variety ? reflected that. The year after that
commencement, Ramsey's eye was on the
presidency of the senior class, and one of his ad
visers was Zeno Ponder, who remained his ally
the partisan fights that later J
of Iocs' politics from
REP. LISTON RAMSEY
boys would vote for him," Ponder recalls, "so
we had to get some girls to vote for him, too. We
talked to them," and together, they won the
I votes of two female classmates.
Ramsey won the election.
That no-nOnsense styl? continued to
develop at Mar* Hill <
business for two
: It
can look (at a bill
exercise in
>k (at a biU
?e in futility,
tune