Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / July 12, 1962, edition 1 / Page 2
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J»U/OW' fiscal '62 Xiii • I r ail ; Jl • tH4* ' ll y^fr?! jail - jl in ; F Sr.^=- ^flilfelh^ 45> PIever Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man ■.. . — And He May Be Wrong Belated Petitioning For more than 20 years Kinston has been needing a larger post office to replace the 45 year-old establishment now. serving that purpose, but now that Kinston seems near to getting this improved facility a handfull of its citizens seem determined to throw a monkey-wrench in the works. The circulation of a petition in the past month, to which a reported hundred or more citizens have signed their names in opposi tion to the location of this new post office on the. 200 block of East Caswell Street seems to be a warmed over mess of sour grapes. People who tried to get the post office lo cated on different sites than the Caswell Street site are apparently the moving forces behind the belated petitioning. Of course, they have every right — legal and moral — to petition to their heart’s content, but the period that passed between the first wide publicity of a new Kinston post office and the final selection of a site was certainly long enough to have permit ted any and all reasonable efforts of this kind. :e public buildings serving as an | the addition of a post office fcr strength to the position it is ■bsolute certainty that a broadL S base of the Kinston business take place — and for that wat Each citizen is entitled to his own opin ion — selfless or selfish, as to the best possible site for a post office, but after these opinions have been sifted, sorted, aired and then sifted and sorted again; logic seems to indicate that it is time to get the public shoulder to the wheel of progress and to get things moving of a more constructive nature than opposing petitions. For good or bad the Lenoir County Court House and the Kinston City Hall are located in the same general vicinity as the Caswell Street site selected foif the post office. It is not likely that any of us alive today will live long enough to See either of thesp very solid facilities moved to a different erally are people who have a vested inter ested in such an extension and are not in cluded among those whose thinking is gear ed to the long-range best interest, of the entire business community. It is irrefutable that a business district serves best when it is more nearly square, than if it is permitted or encouraged to be come an elongated rectangle. No one will argue that a business district four blocks by five blocks square is not pre ferable to a business district that is two blocks wide and 10 blocks long. Each would include 20 blocks, but the parking, the ship ping circulation and the service trades that are necessary to a well balanced shopping area are far better in the four-by-five than in the two-by-ten type business district. The location of the post office at the corner of Caswell and Independent streets would, in a period of a very few years ex tend the Kinston business district from its present two-block width to a four-block width, and with the widening and improve ment of East Street as a major traffic artery it is likely that the southern base of the business district would in all likelihocxj be come five blocks wide in a short time. Not only will this enhance property val ues in this area; but it will also accomplish a great deal of urban renewal that is badly needed in this area by private funds rather than tax funds, and that is a worthwhile by product of this trend. True, the location of a post office north or west of the prksent business district would enhance values in those directions, but the values already place on property south of Vernon Avenue are unrealistically high, and they are not likely to decrease even if the post office is built at Rivermont. The long range best interests of Kinston as a whole concur completely with the post office department decision to locate the new post office at Caswell and Independent and it is likely that this decision will stand. do not w t as of man. But taking the long view, and reviewing on.ralVfl riviliant historv of man and of man and ' iphies that one may not the so-called civilized watering it with any of 1 dominate in the world 1 like it, but one is foolish to disregard the fact that nearly every road sign points in that direction. Government began as the family unit in the dark caves'where our ancestors hovered and grunted.— enjoying absolute independ ence from the tyrannies of government, but suffering the total tyranny of fear that hung just beyond the flickering light of "those lodgings. Fear in every one of its ugly faces was the constant, companion of the inde pendent man in the jungles of the past, as it still is today for,those who exist without the‘ tyranny of government in the jungles left on the globe. Government progressed to the tribal or clan level, where the strong protected, but dominated the.weak; and frequently de serted the weak when they passed produc tivity as tenders of the fires, tillers of the fields or bearers of children. , For a very large part of man’s little known history this tribal system! was the govern ment; and it was an absolute tyranny in exchange for the few protections that it of fered. Then the early state developed, ana man was introduced to that greatest of all tyran nies; that of taxation. Then states became nations and nations became super-nations. And what has man left of his freedom ? Obviously, man has more of his freedoms left-in one state of tyranny than in another. Id America, with which we are’ most per sonally and constantly concerned, we have left a few of the basic freedoms, but a ma jority of the concepts of absolute independ ence have been exchanged for the coins of tyranny. The state has police powers over each of us, in exchange for which we sacrificed the absolute right to defend ourselves and our property against domestic invasion. And in addition to submitting to the police powers of our government we assumed the cost of supporting {he police force. Certainly, from the taxation point of view it was far cheaper when each citizen slept with a pistol under his pillow, worked with a gun strapped to his thigh and served as his own one-man police force; but who among us would swap the present system for the more ancient? Americans retain the freedom to renounce and denounce all of these incursions of gov ernment into their absolute freedom, but no individual has either the moral or legal right to accept or even demand the benefits of such a society without being required to help pay the costs of those benefits. One can become a hermit in the wilderness of our cities or our great out-of-doors, liv ing on scraps and independence but no one has the right to expect a- full share in every aspect of modern society without paying the bills, 6r at the very least being liable for such debts as, this Way of life entail And foremost among the payments is the surrender of some of those freedoms that are precious, and perhaps vital, but liberties that seem less vital than the materialistic dividends of the world we Jive in at this day and date in history. ■ JONES JOURNAL * • JACK RIDER, Publisher • - Published Every Thursday by The Lenoir County News Company, Inc-. 403 West Vernon Ave., Kinston, N. C., Phone JA 3 2375. Entered as Second Class Matter May 5, 1949, at the Post Office at Trenton. North Carolina, tinder the Act of March 3, 1879. Zone — $3X0 Per Year. Payable in Advance, at Trenton, N. C. my read column. And the eerie coincidentalner ing the last is the subject of Being in the news business, when I go on vacation I really forget fHe news — no radio, no papers, no TV; So I was given a peculiar shock Monday when. Jean Booth mentioned to me that? William Faulkner had died last Friday. You see it was last Friday that I was read ing "The Rievers”, Faulkher’s last published novel. I had read some of Faulkner's short stories before but. had never set myself to the difficult task of reading any of his nov els. But “The Rievers’ ’is a short book, and the dust jacket said it would take its place as one of the funniest books in American literature. So I read it.' And I enjoyed it, in spite of the unwieldy sentence structure that was the latter day hallmark of. Faulk ner. I don’t rate it with the best of Mark Twain, either as humor or a grab at the past that is gone forever, and never can re turn. Faulkner called “The Rievers” a “rem inescense" and it obviously is that. But the chronology is a little forced, and the exag gerations are too heavy for acceptance by me without giving to the author more than than his fair share of artistic license. But as an exercise in nostalgia: The. com ing of the first car to his “Missippi” home town and the resulting escapades that in volve. “Lucius Priest”, eleven,: and grand son of. the car’s owner, Boon Hoggenbeck, 255, and chauffeur to grandpa and Ned Mc Alish, 40, and about to be deposed coach man to grandpa!, make for several hours of amusement and reflection. I found it difficult to believe that even the most reckless 1908 chauffeur would take the 11 year-old grandson of his boss to a Memphis cat house for a weekend, while ma and pa and grandpa and grandma had gone by train to a funeral down in the bayou country. But. once you get over that difficult hurdle the story moves along well and with many chuckles and a few belly laughs. Whether this is Faulkner’s last novel is not known by me, but it does seem to me. that it would be a fitting epitaph to a man of his character and ability that,his last work would be a 300-page return to the rutty, muddy roads of 1908, the livery stable shennanigans, race track trickery and small boy confusions that exist in any age, and no matter what the mode of transportation may be. Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for litera ture. He made fantastic amounts of\money as a writer and is generally placed atop the writers of this generation in the United States. He certainly was a better writer than Sinclair Lewis, and carried himself somewhat better as an individual, too. Hem ingway could write as well, but he used the world for his canvas, while Faulkner very largely stuck to “Missippi” for his sources of inspiration. For those of you who do enjoy reading, and particularly the men who knqiw' some thing about war; my first Faulkner rec ommendation is “Turnabout”, to me the finest short story by any author. I read it at least once a year, and enjoy it as much on each re - reading as on the first, and strangely enough it is written in the most’ absolutely fluid style, and bears little resem blance, if any, to “The Rievers"
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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July 12, 1962, edition 1
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