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About Sandy post. (Sandy, Oregon) 1938-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 23, 1982)
The S^ndy Post Editorial & Opinion Von Braschler Publisher Caroline DuH. Office Manager Don Dillon Editor Scott Newton News Editor SANDY, OREGON THURSDAY. DECEMBER 23, 1982 R< .¿block to collar drunks Cheers for the state and county police! We speak not of the cheers found in a bottle, but the good feel ing in your heart from helping another person. State troopers and county deputies expect to deter many drunk drivers this holiday season by scaring them off the road with unscheduled road block checks. State police are beefing up night p a tr o ls and p u ttin g e v e ry available trooper on the road in the c o o p e ra tiv e e ffo rt w ith Clackamas and Multnomah coun ties. T he y’ll put up appropriate flares and signs to flag tra ffic over in a line to check drivers for licenses and sobriety. After work ing one spot a couple of hours, they’ll move to another spot, with no particular pattern. State police locally are more concerned than ever with danger strips like Highway 26 between Boring and Rhododendron, new station commander Lt. David Quillan reports. New statistics show secondary highways pro duce more wrecks than freeways, so th a t’s where emphasis has been shifted. State police have assigned 13 troopers to work the road block program here. Some 10 percent of all 1,937 county drunk driving arrests in 1981 involved under-age drinkers, while nearly 40 percent involved drivers 25-39 years of age. Sandy Police Department alone arrested 56 drunk drivers last year. Clackam as County S h e riff’s Department crim e analysis sug gests at least 9 percent of all atalities or serious auto accidents p rim a rily are due to alcohol. The county’s also quick to note that num ber m ay be low , since deputies often are hesitant to at- tritu te alcohol as prim a ry cause of road accidents, for fear of prov ing it in court. Also, the count’s based on analysis of 445 random serious accidents county wide. If you want to dodge trouble on the road this yuletide, the county also has pin-pointed ’«hen serious accidents occur he ■•?. The worst single hour tim e turns out to be 8 to 9 p.m., while the worst day is Saturday. Most common weather condition for serious accidents here, however, happens to be clear and dry. Surprisingly, some 58 percent of serious accidents here occur during daylight hours So maybe there’s no way around trouble. H o p e fu lly, the road block c h e c k s th is y u le tid e m a y discourage drivers from one last glass of party cheer or even at tempting to get behind the wheel. A crackdown by troopers in force here in 1979 certainly slowed drunk drivers. Troopers in force then dogged drivers who pulled out of bars and handed out 23 D U II citations the f ir s t week d u rin g the 1979 crackdown. The number of drunk driving citations slowed to just on** per day toward the end of that campaign. T heir new roadblock check campaign should capture atten tion of all party-goers here this holiday season. D rive drunk here, and they’ll pull you over for a ticket—no m atter how well you think you fake it. (VB) Make your home yuletide safe 5. Old light strings with cracks Christmas can be a warm time of year with the fam ily cuddled in and frays should be replaced side with the tree, lights and a 6. Unplug tree lights when gone fire. Be careful things don’t get or sleeping too warm, however, with tinder- 7. Be sure extention cords out box trees, dangerous light fixures doors are designed for outdoor and runaway fire. use The local fire d istrict and elec 8 Look fo r U n d e rw rite rs ’ tric company list the following Laboratory (U L ) seal of safety guidelines for a safe and sane holi approval. day season: 9 Let a irtigh t stoves burn free 1. Keep that tree dry with water with screen (not door) periodical in base. ly to burn off chimney buildup. 2. Candles should’t burn unat 10. Beware when burning wrap tended or on a combustible base ping paper, because light paper F ire Chief Bob Rathke recalls burns hot and fast past fire here, due to unwatched 11. Radiant heat in wood stoves candles 3. M iniature lights are best, w ill dry tree faster than before. because they throw o ff less Unfortunately, too, people locally seem to be putting uptrees earlier dangerous heat. 4 D on’t put cords under each year, officials note Throw carpets, since wear could lead to out tree when needles begin to drop. overheating The Post gratefully acknowledges essays and w ritten opinions from readers to appear on this page separate from the unbiased news reports on other pages of this newspaper Your opinions generally w ill be printed as letters to the editor, while ours generally w ill appear as editorials Occasionally, we are able to print guest editorials We attempt to print all signed letters of good taste, legible form and reasonable length Our deadline is noon on Tuesdays L IF E S A V E R Letter to the editor: AuCoin explains Congress pay vote I'm damned mad at the way my vote in opposition to the Congressrmal pay raise has been distorted and misrepresented by the news wire services and others I am w riting so your readers can clearly understand what happened and why in the House of Representatives By law. all members ol Congress would have been given a *17.300 pay in crease, if the House had taken no action As a member of Congress op posed to any pay increase. I had opportunities on two consecutive votes to strike a blow at the size of the in crease and then try to kill the whole kit and katxxidle On the first vote the choice was between *17.300 or *0,000 I voted to lower the raise to the lower figure, limiting the damage i f —God fo rb id —the a t tempt to kill the raise failed entirely The second vote was on the question of killing the pay raise or leaving it at the *9.000 level I voted to kill it, just as I've voted against every pay raise since I ’ve been in Con gress. Unfortunately, that attempt failed on a tie vote of 208-20« T hat's the chronology and my strategy on the votes If the wire services can't understand that, then they belong in a strait- jacket More im portant, the issue isn't over yet, and I ' l l co n tin u e to w ork against a pay raise for members of Congress at this time, when so many of my constituents are out of w o rk , ru n n in g out ol unem ploym ent benefits, and with so many others living in fear of losing their jobs. Les AuCoin Member of Congress Personally speaking Christmas magic ‘metered’ Sometimes Christm as gifts take strange forms The unex peeled gift, like a wild rose on a trail, glows with a ra re beauty So it is with people who surprise us with such unsolicited gifts of love Perhaps they give from love overflowing, while the rest of us give what's expected from an in ner emptiness I got a taste of the difference a few years ago at Christmas My w ife and I w ere try in g to scrounge up enough nickles and d im e s to buy e a c h o th e r something special It wasn't easy We were broke, just starting out in the city Also, we wanted the gifts to be uniquely heartwarm ing We scrimped and saved until it hurt She had this deep dark secret about what she was getting me. saying only that it was precious one-of-a-kind and something I'd keep forever To earn money for this g ift. this very pregnant lady took a job babysitting for a roughneck kid on the other side of town She'd walk through the city streets in the dark and cold to catch an 4 JO a m bus Exhausted, she's return home again in the dark trying not to slip on the icy sidewalk in her pregnant condi Hon I wasn t even that lucky in fin ding a job I'd walk the streets in a second-hand raincoat and silly spaghetti tic. trying to pawn off poor resume carbon copies at ad agencies, pr firm s or any newspaper that might hire me M y only references were limited schooling and a desire by VON BRASCHLER Somewhere along the street my shoes gave out. and my desire became hunger I settled on a minimum wage job greasing cars in an all night gas station mid night to eight That didn't give me much sleep when I came home to cram for afternoon classes and breakfast chat with my bride We were almost too much in love to where it hurt. T h e s ta tio n w as a r io t, though—literally a riot It was a wild integrated neighborhood where almost anything happen ed My graveyard partner actual ly rented out the tire loft or women's John for professional girls to use a few minutes or lo nger depending on number of customers What thev did in there. I didn't want to know B u tt had an idea Then one n ig h t close to Christmas a black dude and a white neighbor fought over our last bottle of 30-weight bulk oil on the pump island The debate end ed when one customers smashed the quart ja r over the head of the other Putting up with all these antics in fun city. I still couldn't save up enough nickles and dimes to buy m y young w ife so m e th in g wonderful our first Christmas together So we ate maccaroni and cheese almost every dinner and simple coffee cake from a jiffy m ix e v e ry b r e a k fa s t to economize Our average twice- weekly sacks from the super m arket then totaled only *4 in m accaro n i and coffee cake mixes Because I bought coffee, she gave up milk Probably not sm art for a pregnant lady, but what did I know about that? Toward the final countdown of days before Christmas, a small m iracle happened to me It was a small thing with no explanation, except it happened at Christmas Because it saved me nickles and dimes enough for a gift I wanted almost more than anytfiing. I didn t question the source I chalked it up to Christmas magic T h e p a rk in g m e te r th a t devoured my nickles and dimes in front of the downtown hotel strangely stopped expiring In fact, it never ran out Now that's no small change, if you're broke and dropping H O each month down those meters just to have a plaee to park Every tim e I'd run outside in the cold to plug the meter, there was plenty of tim e remaining It almost looked as though some kind person was plugging the meter for me, watching it all day long that Christmas week So on Christmas eve I beamed to tell my young wife that I had waited at the late minute to get her some very special gifts up the street I ran through the crowds of last-minute shoppers to beat closing time downtown R e ally, it w asn't much I brought back to her in a bag Only I was proud, because the act of giving her something had grown so important to me So I gave her a pair of nylons that lasted a month or so. a bottle of cologne that lasted until summer, some candy she liked and a copy of the Sunday paper—because she liked it, and we usually had to swipe it and read fast before our neighbor got up My wife, however, produced a lovely white gold wedding ring for me I almost cried Later when we stuffed our dried fir tree into the hotel's alley dumpster, the ring slipped off my finger I had held it only two hours altogether Then she almost cried, and later got a bit angry at my carelessness in wearing an unsiz ed ring that was too large while throwing out trash in the dark She was right, of course Only I was so proud and happy I couldn't take it off that night The real magic of the night, however, came from the phan tom do-gooder who plugged our parking meter out front I know It was Christmas magic, because the next day the red flag started popping up every four hours on expiration without mercy.
