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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.
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Editor, P.O. Box 769, Kings Mountain, N.C.
28086. Under no circumstances will hand-
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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
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