y Page 4A-KINGS MOUNTAIN HERALD-Wednesday, September 28, 1988 Opinions Saluting Our Hero There are many people in our community who do courageous and caring acts for others, but who don’t seek any recognition for their deeds. They quietly go about their business, receiving satisfac- ion of knowing that they are making things a little tter. Kenneth “Kenny” Falls, 31, did make things better several weeks ago for a Bessemer City family. He saved a life by pulling a man from a burning house, moments before the roof collaps- ed. Kenny was on his way to work at Duke Power early Sunday morning, Sept. 4, when he saw Mrs. Danny Maney in distress. ‘...I just saw the burning house and heard a woman screaming that her husband was inside. I'm glad I was in the right place at the right time and could help,” he said. Kenny, who was on call in the Bessemer City area, stopped his Duke Power truck, and ran to the house. He couldnt get in the first try because of the flames. His second effort brought 35-year-old Danny Maney out of the blaze, just as the roof caved in. Maney, a construc- tion worker, was overcome by smoke and couldn’t ge out the door. After an ambulance and fire truck arrived, Ken- ny left for work. ‘‘We wanted to find him and thank him for what he did for us,” said Mrs. Maney. ‘“...He could have been killed.” Who is this local hero? Kenny is a native of Kings Mountain, and is the son of Otis and Delores Falls. A 1975 KMHS graduate, Kenny was a catcher on the school’s baseball team and a linebacker on the football squad. He is a member of the Demolays and was active in Boy Scout Troop 91 at St. Matthews Lutheran Church. He worked at his father’s ser- vice station as a youth and attended Western Carolina. This year he coached the Little League all star team and also teaches Sunday School at First Bop! Church. He is married to Denise Hord Falls and they have three children. It was an act of heroism. And Kenny Falls, like many in our community, went on his way, seeking no recognition. The Herald is proud to salute Ken- LyFalls and all the others among us who reach out 0 help. Letter Policy We ask that you follow these guidelines and deadlines when submitting letters: Keep the letters brief and to the point. Type and double-space them, if possible, but sign them in ink and include your full name, ad- dress and telephone number for verification. The Herald reserves the right to edit the letters for spelling, good taste, libel, or any other reason, and reserves the right to refuse the letters for any reason. All letters must be mailed to Letter to the Editor, P.O. Box 769, Kings Mountain, N.C. 28086. Under no circumstances will hand- delivered letters be published. Community Calendar THURSDAY: ; 12:00 - Kings Mountain Rotary Club at Holiday nn. 6:45 p.m. - Kings Mountain Kiwanis Club at Country Club. SATURDAY: 8:00 p.m. - Kings Mountain Little Theatre is presenting ‘“‘Sample of the Season,” informal evening of ‘gossamer’ delight at Park Grace Theatre. 8:00 p.m. - Cleveland County Arts Council and Gardner Webb College are co-sponsoring a per- formance of ‘Macbeth’ by the North Carolina Shakespere Festival in Dover Theatre on the campus of Gardner Webb College in Boiling Spr- ings. Advance sale tickets are available locally at McGinnis Department Store and Kings Moun- tain High School at $6 for adults and $4 for senior citizens and students. 7:00 p.m. - Grover Town Board in Council Chambers at Grover City Hall. 7:30 p.m. - Kings Mountain Board of Education in the Administration Building on Parker Street. TUESDAY: 12:00 noon - Kings Mountain Personnel Association at Holiday Inn. ; 7:00 p.m. - Kings Mountain Little Theatre at Park Grace Theatre. ; All members and prospective members are urged to attend. : For items in the Community Calendar call 739-7496 by Tuesday 5 p.m. ©1988 Greene Newspapers, Inc. All rights reserved. All property rights for the entire contents of this publication shall ‘be property of Greene Newspapers, Inc. No part may be reproduced without prior consent. Established 1889 Published Wednesday at East King Street at Canterbury Road, Kings Mountain, North Carolina 28086 by Greene Newspapers, Inc. Gary M. Greene Publisher Gary Stewart Editor Darrell Austin Elizabeth Stewart Advertising Director News Editor Sarah Griffin Randall Barber Bookkeeper Pressroom Superintendent Jeff gree Vassar Yr. 6 Months IniCounty.ic ci. on vi J A RARE $14.50 $7.25 Out-Of-County. .......... 001 Hire sh ei Rs $15.55 $7.8 Student Rates (9 Mos.) 0 i $11.00 (All prices include 5 percent sales tax.) "TL gon Know aL he answers I dont Sven pion’ 2] dhe estons.” Looking Both Ways (Ed. Note: Rusty Gates has insisted for months that the watermelon is the one perfect thing on earth- except for himself, of course. We told him that there is a big difference between him and a melon: a watermelon has a heart.) Down at Fred’s Fun House a few days ago I ran into Phil Ogeny who was looking over a stack of watermelons. It was obvious that he would want the very bottom one, of course. He operates on the theory that the owner of the produce stand puts the best ones on the bottom to save them for himself. I always looked at it the other way: the owner knows people will think the best ones are on the bottom, so he puts them on the top. It really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference which one you buy. Even a melon’s mother couldn’t tell one from the other in a stack, and as long as they have a different color on the inside from that on the out- side I love them all. After a few minutes of thumping and tickling the melons, Phil finally picked the one hardest to get, complained about the price, and carried his treasure to the car. “You know,” he said later as we were eating the melon, ‘they just don’t taste as good as the ones we used to steal.” I knew what he was thinking. Years ago there was a farmer just outside town who had a huge watermelon patch across the railroad tracks from his house. Phil and a few others in our gang used to hide in the woods and wait for a train to come. Then they’d run into the patch, grab a big melon or two, and carry them to the creek and dump them in and watch them float away. A mile or so downstream a couple others in the gang would be waiting in the woods to pull the melons from the creek and wait for us to whack them open and eat them. It was the perfect crime. The farmer couldn’t cross the tracks because of the train; after the train had passed we’d be gone in one direction and the melons in another and he couldn’t catch either of us. We figured in a few weeks we’d corner the melon market while the rest of the world went to seed. But one day the farmer either talked with somebody or he got down to some serious think- ing. He also invested a few dimes for bottles of castor oil and a few minutes in punching tiny holes in watermelons and pouring the castor oil through a funnel and into the tiny holes where the medicine mixed pretty well with watermelon juice. A few days later the gang made another raid, and later, during the eating, no one seemed to mind that the melons had a slightly different taste to them. The next day was Sunday, and we were all naturally required to attend services. Well, you know what castor oil does for the digestive system? It did it again, and there was a whole rowful of boys who had a distinctly uncom- fortable look on their faces and a whole new posture every time the clock ticked. When the preacher finally finished the sermon, he told the congregation that he’d like everybody to leave but our row. When the church was empty-- except for us and a few parents and the man who - owned the watermelon patch, the preacher stood there in front of us and told us--about thirty trillion different ways-- that it was wrong to steal watermelons, cars, money,--he went on to name nearly everything in the Sears, Roebuck Catalog-- while we got squirmier and squirmier. Finally he said anybody who wanted to confess to anything could do so and leave and take his medicine--Ugh!-- later. Well, we confessed to stealing everything from watermelons to the Lost Chord and the Lost Continent and the Lost Colony. When he finally let us go there was a mad dash for home and the Reading Room that set eleven new Olympic records. But that was the last sitting we did for a while-after parents administered the old board of education. The only nice memory of the episode was that later that day the preacher and the farmer had a watermelon cutting and they managed to get a couple that were still dosed up. And that night we had the shortest sermon in the history of the church. Silent Cal Coolidge once went to church and when his wife asked what the sermon was about, he said, ¢‘Sin.”” When she asked what the minister fod to say about it, he replied, ‘He was against i £4 On the night of the watermelon-cutting, Silent Cal made the preacher seem like a real windbag. SIDEWALK SURVEY OUR VIEW | | Cartoonitorial By J. Day Your Right To Say It The Notch Tssue To The Editor: Your article on the “notch babies” (Kings Mountain Herald, Wednesday, Sept. 21) is a political diatribe that begins with a falsehood and degenerates into a blanket attack on a valid posi- tion taken by such stalwart defenders of senior citizens as Florida Congressman Claude Pepper, the American Association of Retired persons and the National Senior Citizens Council. First the lie: Democratic candidate Jack Rhyne is allowed to repeat his charge that Congressman Cass Ballenger voted to ‘appropriate $20,000 to every Japanese ancestor of folks who were inter- red at the beginning of World War I1.”’ (The quote is from Jack Rhyne.) The Congressional Record will prove that just the opposite is true. Congressman Ballenger voted against the payments to Japanese-Americans and issued a statement at the time of his vote explain- ing his position. When called to account for this misrepresentation of the record, Mr. Rhyne has generally treated this as a matter of little impor- tance. He thus makes it clear that he will not let facts stand in the way of a good political argu- ment. Second, there is certainly no political mileage to be- gained from Congressman Ballenger’s posi- tion. Indeed, if he wished to take the politically safe position, he would join with those who have agreed to sponsor ‘notch’ legislation, thus removing this as an issue of the present campaign. This would be a particularly safe position, since the bills before the Congress aimed at addressing -the ‘notch’ issue are not likely to come to a vote. Many of those who have agreed to co-sponsor this legislation have done so with the certain knowledge that they will never be forced to dea with this question. : Unlike those who have caved in to the pressure from the ‘“‘notch babies,’’ Congressman Ballenger has chosen to deal honestly with these voters. He has gone a step farther by signing a discharge position that would force a vote on the floor of the house that would, to use his words, “settle this issue for all time.” While some 200 congressmen are listed as spon- sars and co-sponsors of “notch” legislation, only 23 have signed the discharge petition. This is the best evidence available of the integrity of those who have pretended to take a stand on the ‘‘notch’ question. The fact that some ‘notch babies” are also veterans of World War II is raised by Jack Rhyne and others as sheer demagoguery. It is possible to argue that if the Social Security trust fund is depleted to meet the demands of the ‘notch babies’ it would also jeopardize future benefits of those who retire in later years, who would also in- clude the equally patriotic and loyal American servicemen who served in the Vietnam War. The argument is irrelevant in both cases. There is no question that the ‘notch babies” receive Social Security benefits under a formula that is different from those who retired earlier, due to a double-indexing mistake that sent the trust fund to the edge of bankruptcy in the early Seventies. Congress corrected this mistake, thus creating a seeming inequity. But it is also true that today’s ‘notch babies” are receiving benefits that are higher than those to which future retirees will be entitled. If there is discrimination in the current pian, it plainly af- fects those currently in the work force to a greater extent than the ‘notch babies.” What has stirred this issue to a fever’s pitch is the pamphleteering of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security, which has used this issue to raise more than $40 million from senior citizens by scare tactics and outright misrepresentation of facts. Your article is correct in stating that Con- gressman Harold Ford’s ‘notch’ bill is a compa- nion to one introduced in the Senate by Terry San- ford. However, it is possible that Mr. Ford will not be around to see his bill enacted since he is cur- rently under federal indictment for mail fraud, bank fraud and embezzlement. Considering his willingness to play upon the emotions of senior citizens in the interest of political gain, those may be the lesser of his crimes. The person, who obviously is willing to tell “notch babies’ the truth, which they don’t want to hear, is Congressman Ballenger. His honesty may not increase his popularity, but it certainly has won my wholehearted respect. Albert P. Hamner DR. BOB McRAE What the candidates said Sunday won’t do a lot in helping voters make a choice. I'd say it’s a tossup, too. But I thought it was good ex- posure for us to observe the candidates one-on- GARY WHITAKER, Sunday’s debate was a tossup and nothing new really came out of it as far as issues are con- cerned. My mind was made up before I heard the debates and neither candidate said anything one. to change my mind. ding, Enjoyed it. LARRY HAMRICK, Sunday night’s Presidential debate was supposed to be a key factor in the big undecided vote for President this year. Do you think Vice- President George Bush and Governor Michael Dukakis said enough about the issues and will what they said sway your vote in November? JIM SCRUGGS, Nothing new on issues came out of the debates. As far as who emerged the winner in the first debate, I would predict a tie. They threw barbs back and forth with each other. My choice was made before I heard the debate. The debate was in- teresting but No, it didn’t change my mind. From a debating view- point, I'd say they were neutral. It was astoun- though, neither tried to influence the women and minority vote. Good exposure. that | i : i re ————————— A ————— rr —— A in