* ESTABLISHED JULY, 1836 j TRENA P. FOX, EDITOR * PUBLISHER MISS. ZOE YOUNG. ASSOCIATE EDITOR f THURMAN L. BROWN, SHOP MANAGER ARCHIE H. BALLEW, PHOTOGRAPHER & PRESSMAN PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY BY YANCEY PUBLISHING COMPANY SECOND CLASS POSTAGE PAID AT BURNSVILLE, N. C. THURSDAY, NOV. 30, 1967 NUMBER THIRTEEN SUBSCRIPTION RATES $3.00 PER YEAR OUT OF COUNTY $4.00 PER YEAR Scene From Top O’ The Hit! By: Jack Kelly Another Thanicsg.ving Day haa come and gone. The one just passed was the 104th successive one. You probably thought it was older than that. In one way you are right and in another, and proper one, you are wrong. True, the f rst Thanksgiving Day, allegedly, commenced in the days of our Pilgrim Fathers but they didn’t make it a yearly occurrence. Also, in those days it was only observed in Yankee New England and poss.bly in a wee bit of the South. One hundred and four year* ago, the then President, Abe Lincoln, in the mdst of our greatest War, decided that things were in real tough ihape but they possibly could get w >rse. Therefore he decided to a Proclamat on ordering a Day of Thanksgiving to the Almighty. He established the last Thursday in November as the date. L:n coln knew his power but, unlike ■cme of hit successors, he d ! d aot over-est mate it. Somehow or other, Lincoln never confused Irmself with God. His Prnc'n mat on was so worded that th« various Governors of the States could (and did) issue a s ! m lar Proclamation, and the Holiday was established Nationally. Who knows what effect this f rst proclamation had upon the great conflict? How manv peo ple paused on that day and gave thought that despite the fact they fought against each other because of viewport, they c~uld yet pause to ce’ebrate a com mon heritage: offer r. Thanksg'v ing to God Jo'ntly with the : r bro thers. Less than two years later, the War had conceded. Each and every President s:n ce Lincoln has conf'nued Proclamation. On’v one of them got out of line: Roosevelt. From the of the common man, FT>R made two H'storical mistakes. He tried to P*ok the Srnreme C n »rt and he tried to change Thanksgiving Day. People are funny. They wiu fouuw a leauer. ’iney wJI r»p up tne countryside. They w often do w.ld, wooly, crazy things, as tfiey follow their ac . copied leader. However, there !a a imit to ther docility. Leaden never gauge that limit. Leaden always try for that one nun step. That is the time that the people halt the onward rush. Of ten, they change ther leader. History refen to this action at progress. FDR waa quite a lead er. Twee the peopie rebuffed him. Yet they kept him as their leader. They also kept their Court and ther Thanksgiving Day sacrosanct. Numerous recorden of Hie tory, if not Historians, have ac counted for Rooeevelt's attempt ed change of the Turkey Day a* an attempt to help bus ness. Claimed it would have allowed an extra two weeks for people to do their Christmas shoppng. It didn't work when FDR tried it The Nation had two Thanks giving Days that year. The Fed eral cne proclaimed by the Pre sident and the proper one, de clared or proclaimed by the var ious Governors of our. States True, this year’s holiday waa not the “last” Thursday of Nov ember, but, you see, people are reasonable; apd they recognise that only a tr pk of the calendar esusexf the last of the month to faß-"6n a Thursday. Therefore, no complaint was filed *or ob jection made when President Johnson procla’med the ted as Thanksgiving Day. This fact must have appeared noteworthy to the President. He has not done too much recently that waa not subject to comp’amt. He pro bab’y kept h’s Anvers crossed until the polls came in. The year’s Holiday finds our Countrv again engaged in a C'vil War. A strange C'vil War. Not a Civil War that involves the potential overthrow of our own Form of Government, as the term impl es, but a Civil War in volving a strange country and people unheard of not too many years ago by most of us. The rightness or wrongness of our posit on in the present con flict is not to be discussed in th s article. However, since Lin coln inaugurated Thanksgiving dur ng our own Civil War, who is to say that he did not consid er the fact of a civil war more than its location as the import ant reason for a pause >n peo ple’s thinking, to give thanks to a c-mmon God, Poss'bly, a cease-f re for our Thanksgiving Dav might be as fru'tful as the contemplated pauses ftr the up coming Christmas and New Year’s Hol'days c'mtemp'ated. Shortly after th : «s Thanksgiv ing Dav, our Country’s prpu'a tion reached 200 mil ion. That is a lot of prayer potential. Pro bably the 1 out of e”ery 400 who found himself : n Viet Nam Pt this date prayed a little more sincerely than those cf us who were irrre fortunate and gather ed in family groups or other friendly assemblages for ce’e bration. Since no “pull” exists en the crowded c~nd tion of the “prayer lanes” from the var ious places of assemblage to the Heavenly Thrcne, we will never know for certain which area had the biggest “rating” fer that 24 hours. However, I feel that many of our leading Clergymen will agree that the liklihood of the normal channels being as crowded as Vet Nam Special from our boys over there was very slim indeed. Lots of Chur ches I passed did not appear too crowded. Matter of fact, I forgot to visit one myself. *• •>:• * K\'i\ out now lop hi- !•; Ihnnk End ol 101 l and |nst before winter begins. Let’s All Fight For Safer Highways I By: Cpl. A. C. Gray I have just celebrated my 20th years as a traffic officer ... I have many memories, pleasant memories of joyful occas.ons, happy outings and above all my many friends. But, I also have horrible mem ories oi terr.ble incidents ... the unpleasant duty of deliver ing death messages, the broken hemes, the weeping of mourn ers in our churches, and the means of the dying on the high ways. I remember walking among the dead along the railroad tracks, with an arm in my hand, searching among the bod es to find one with a miss’ng arm. . . an upturned face in the roadway and the rest of the body a dis tance away . . . cutting torches sparkling in the night, cuttng the twisted metal away from mangled bodies . . . playing with a two-year old girl in my heme on Sunday and seeing her in her coffin on Wednesday . . . searching the roadside after a wreck and finding the upturned face of a 17-year-old boy in the beam of my flashl'ght, his body down in the ditch . . . pulling six teenagers from the wrecked, half-submerged vehicle in the tadlwaters of Lake Lucy, four dead and two cripp’ed for life . . two small boys siting on the shoulder of the road crying, and tears streaming ofhvn their face, their father ly'ng on ore side of them dead and their mother on the other side dy'ng. I remember standing in the center of the roadway crying, the body of a little f^-ur-year-old g'rl in my arms, her golden hair flowing in the w«nd, her blood running down and drip- P ! ng off the end of mv elbows. Yes. six feet and 200 pounds of TOUGH COP crying unasham edly and I looked up to God and I praved, “Oh, Lord have mercy.” These horrible incidents, all tn’e, and many, manv others, d'd not hanoen on battlefields of lands. Tbev hnnoened vn'tWn a few mles of tfw* ci*v of Henderson . . . Here in North Carei'na. V 0,,. THE PFOPfi?!, fipv; TP** OKT,Y0 K T,Y OVER rtop tt» WP MTPPO Vh"g pf’mvttrt tv (Tight FOR SAFER HIGHWAYS' Aomsmor f£OPINON SOUTH BOSTON, VA., GAZ ETTE - VIRGINIAN: “A young person today, dissatisfed with school and anxious to get out and work for the money he wants, is heading down a dead end street if he pursues his dreams without a high school dipkma. He finds out too late that the job he longed for will be at best a dull, d rty one with little opportunity for advance ment. Or, the jobless rate of 13 per cent for school dropouts sud denly becomes very real to him as he observes that he doesn’t have the ticket he needs to get through the employers’ doors. . For many of these young people, there s still time. They can go back and finish high school. For d hers, it is too late. ... The education they get now charts the course not only for their in dividual lives but for the wel fare of our country in the com ing decades.” • O • JACKSON, MO., POST & CASH BOOK: “It’s not a pretty seme to come upon, shattered glass, twisted metal, oozing oil and gasoline, moans of pa n and the flowing of a man’s life-blood don’t give you a comfortable Work the "SMART MONEY" PUZZLE AND I WIN PRIZES | Icf PRI7F * » ixitt Brand new «!».« Dressmaker Zig Zag Sewing Machine 2nd PRIZE d ‘ scow,f »« w * r ' t ‘s me purchase of a M9.9S Dress maker sewing machine 3rd PRIZE Twenty-five Transistor Radios (S».M value) 4th PRIZE five Pinking Shears | | JUST TOTAL $75 ~ AtL WAYS —- "V DOWN—ACROSS— DIAGONALLY USE THE NUMBERS " $5-$lO-sls $35-S4O-$45 !t° °b | t9*’l|pn! No purchase required * S‘ >,er , Hurry and send soMiontoday Offer definitely limi'ed. - _____ Cooeest is simple a l l you have ■■■■"■■ ■■■—■- 1o do is work the pu-vle Fill in your name and address on the entry Lark S2A H^» W wxi ,a T r i,h py?7 ' e «' Contest, Tu !**’ 0(113 Contest ends V days from receipt. fnm ' Winners will be notified by mait, HURRY! j SEND | NAME SOLUTION TODAY. i _ o„ e , A ' ,me « I OEFINI-rF. V . ! ; I.IMITt l. ' C.UV •; • ■(, m rami y-rmr*- ■ feeling. How can dr vers be made to realize that a bit more cauticn, a bit more k'ndness, a bit more courtesy and a lot more decency would put an end to many of these scenes.” •• • • LITCHFIELD, MINN., RE VIEW: “another example of the government’s inconsistency can be n r ted at the Tennessee Val iev Hvdr-'e'ectr c plant where because of greater costs of m eraticn the government is boost in? power rates 7 to 9 per cent. , Private business feels the in crease in operation (costs) just as much as the government. One would think and expect the gov ernment to set an examnle of huld ng the line rather than hik ing it up and at the same time denying private business the same privilege.” • • ODESSA, TEXAS, AMERICAN: •- -a recent rummage for something In the back of a desk drawer turned up a letter bear ing a first class mail stamp priced at three cents. Know what the date on the slamo was, 1957.”