Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 1975)
Page 2, THE GAZETTE-TIMES, Heppner, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 30, 1975 Horse sense ERNEST V. JOINER Sen. Mark Hatfield has suggested that Americans embark upon a year-long period of fasting to save food and money to send to starving people abroad. He also suggests that we eat one less hamburger a week, thus making feed grains available to starving nations. The obvious observation is that the fasting and the hamburger-a-week saving be sent to starving Americans at home first and starving people in other nations second. A nation that won't take care of its own hungry first isn't worth its salt. Sen. Hatfield is among those who believe that if we give up eating beef we can conserve grain that can be shipped abroad to the hungry. Being from Oregon, a beef-producing state, the senator should know that beef cattle subsist almost entirely on rough, fibrous materials like grass and grain fodder which man can't eat. Very little food grains (wheat and rice) are ever fed to cattle. The grains cattle are fed in feedlots before marketing consist of field corn, grain sorghum, barley and oats all in little use as human food. A better suggestion, perhaps, would be for the U S to furnish agricultural specialists to teach the people of starving nations how to raise the kind of food to which they arc accustomed. Just giving food away solves little, as past experience has shown. Unless we are prepared to accept the hungry of the world on a permanent basis, as non-producing members of our family, we had better come up with a better idea than giving away food to hungry nations unless it is coupled with a program to make them self-sufficient in food production. Secret negotiations are under way to unionize employees in the Morrow County sheriff's office and road department. Workers will then have two bosses, the county and an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. But they will be getting higher wanes, more fringe benefits, better retirement, shorter hours and more holidays all of which will be paid for by Morrow County taxpayers. I am sorry to see this happen. I have never understood why a man will accept a job. knowing in the beginning the pay and working conditions, then begin bringing pressure for higher pay and better working conditions than he voluntarily accepted. Nobody forced him to take the job. If the pay was inadequate or working conditions intolerable, he could refuse the job. But once he accepted the job a contract was established, and I think he has an obligation to refrain from calling in outside pressure to change the game rules. A man who can't abide his job should quit and find employment more to his pleasure. But all is not lost to Morrow County taxpayers. Every employee who signed for unionization will be made an "instant journeyman." His membership automatically makes him a "competent worker." which is what unions guarantee to the employer. Therefore, the county has a right to expect journeyman quality work from each employee. For example, if a blade operator goes to work smoothing out a section of a road it had better turn out smooth and even, and not resemble a run-over washboard. If it doesn't measure up to journeyman standards, the employee is in trouble and the union isn't likely to help him. If the union should balk at furnishing journeyman performance by its members, the county can still contract the work to outside firms that will. If county employees think unionization is all roses they haven't done their home work. 0 Spy report : Sheriff John Mollahan has been a prime mover in selling sheriff and road department employees on joining a union. He experienced his first disenchantment (to be followed by others at an organizational meeting last week when union organizers said the sheriff will have to give up his tax collecting duties and transfer them to the treasurer which means one of his office workers may be looking for another job . . . Union officials ordered the county to pay workers a half-day's pay while they were attending a union organizing meeting and the county paid it . . . Greg Sweeney. 12. asked to be excused from physical education class at the grammar school last week because, he explained to Dean Naffziger. he had an infected toe. Instead. Greg was ordered to do 20 laps around the athletic Held. As a result, Greg has missed a week of school while he's at home recovering from a case of blood poisoning in the aforementioned toe . . . Odds around town are that endless meetings, endless oratory and endless debate by county officials will result in the loss of the two Pendleton doctors who would like to practice here . . . About five years ago Orville Cutsforth gave 6-plus acres of land at Cutsforth Park to the county, and found out the other day he's been paying taxes annually on the land he gave away! Well, if the environmentalists aren't making fools of themselves the fluoride nuts are. Recently, the Amax Pacific corporation was denied permission to build an aluminum plant at Warrenton because state environmentalists insisted that Amax certify a zero fluoride emission at the proposed plant, an impossibility. Never mind that sea water contains 1.2 parts fluorine per million. Never mind that the Columbia River has 0.2 parts per million. Forget that the cities of Astoria and Warrenton require its drinking water contain 1.0 parts per million of fluorine, or that if Amax emitted its fluoride into Young's Bay it would only raise the fluoride content of that body by 0.0007 parts (thus insuring our fish healthiest teeth in the world). Now the same people who opposed the 1.0 part per million fluoride Amax planned to discharge into the sea. have a bill in legislature (again) to force every city and town put at least 1.0 parts per million fluoride into all drinking water for tooth decay prevention! Why is 1.0 fluoride added to sea water so bad and 1.0 parts fluoride in the drinking water so good? According to Sen. Ken Jernstedt, the legislature is expecting another 2.000 bills to be introduced before the end of this session at Salem. So it looks like a replay of the last session where hundreds of ill-considered bills became law, and for which we are all paying the penalty. People who demand "a law" against anything they don't like should consider the cost. Every law passed costs taxpayers a lot of money, and it almost always results in the loss of some of our liberties. Most laws demand the hiring of additional personnel, to be paid with tax money. New bureaus and commissions need offices and equipment, with a budget for expenses all paid for out of taxes. New laws mean a greater load on the courts, already jammed to the point where a accused is denied his constitutional right to a speedy trial. Add to all this misery and expense the fact that a law, once on the books, is almost impossible to remove. Heppner still has a law against bouncing a ball on Main Street, you know! And look what happened the other day in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. For the past 100 years it has been illegal to ride around the city of Ocean Grove on Sunday, or to buy a newspaper. Last month a Superior Court judge struck down the ban as being "overly broad exercises of police powers." One astute Oregon legislator remarked the other day that the number of laws being considered is ridiculous. "Let's face it." he said, "there just isn't that much wrong with Oregon!" Give that man a cigar. Economists are people who can spot a recession the minute it's over and whose plan to stimulate the building industry is to add two new wings to the poor house. A Little Help At The Wheel Bank's deposits are up First National Bank of Oregon reported record high enrnings for the year 1974, despite only a modest gain in the fourth quarter, reported Robert F. Wallace, president of the statewide financial institution. Loan totals at the end of the year were $1,441,689,000, up Stf.im.onn. or 3 2 per cent, from the $1,396,656,000 report ed on Dec. 31, 1973. Deposits at year-end totaled $.m.444.ooo compared with $2.2:lo,74:t.oi)0 reported at the close of business in 1973. a decline of $52,299,000 or 2.3 per mil . The Heppner branch report ed deposits of $9,852,338 and loans of $8,956,796 as of Dec. 31. Comparable totals for the hram-h a year ago were Si.22n.S5n in deposits and S7.475.IWH) In loans. quoteunquote "The GA (General Assemb ly of the United Nations) has made it crystal clear that far from representing a hope for pence it is in fact an obstacle to it "-Sen. Peter Dominick. RColo. The mail pouch KDITOR: It's high time the state stops forcing independent voters to wear ridiculous party labels, refusing them a choice in so-called "partisan"offices in primary elections. This heavy handed practice artificially inflates party registration roles. While serving as a voter registrar I discovered far more independents than the records show, but their desire to vote for all offices in primaries forced them to be captive to the partisan political cliques. The supreme court has ruled that every man is entitled to a vote and the First Ammendment states that we the people have the right to assemble ind petition the government for a redress of grievances. This vicious and arbitrary restriction on independence violates the spirit if not indeed the letter of these legal decisions. Slate Senator Charles Hanlon is working hard to correct this si million, and I urge all the public and legislative support we can muster on his behalf. JOHN D. LUKER. Hillsboro. EDITOR: I am pleased to know that Morrow County plans to become involved in the bicentennial. I am a member of the newly formed Morrow County Historical Society and am very anxious to see what this group will be doing to preserve the history and historical sites of what is. to me. the greatest county in Oregon. There are many ways to go. and Vern Casebeer and I (who arc vice-presidents of the Genealogical Forum of Portland, Ore.. Inc.) are hoping that the society will put out a bulletin or booklet -type publication that will bring forth much needed material from Morrow County. So many of the old records are in the court house in Pendleton, as this was once Umatilla County. Mr. Casebeer is a cousin of Alvi Casebeer of Heppner. deceased. I am also chairman of the Morrow County records for our forum. I'm wondering if you people know that you already have a valuable historian in your midst? Rachel Harnett has for the past six years been busy typing historical records from the court house, and has on her own tramped through every cemetery in your area copying records for preservation. Some such as the one on the Raymond French ranch. I have been told, had been actually destroyed. Here was a record of almost an entire family that was wiped out by the dread diptheria. This was almost the only record that existed, lost except through the efforts of Rachel. The new society could prevent this type of thing from happening in the future. A child's grave is covered with a garage, the daughter of Johnnie Elder, who homesteaded on Hinton Creek. There was no trace of it. so there was no fault on the builder's part. Only a marker near the graves of the Dee and Lizzie Cox children on the side of the hill where the home once stood. Three small children buried at the foot of Freezout Ridge, the children of Jim Long. Only a few of us know the exact location, and then only because as small children we made it our task to decorate those graves each summer for 8 years. I'm sure there are others, like the three-year-old girl killed by Indians and buried at the first bridge up Hinton Creek where a house now stands. Perhaps readers can inform us of others. I am at the moment in the process of typing a 199-page thesis on Johnnie Redington, a scout who helped track Chief Joseph's Nez Perce Indians through Montana. Getting to chapter 4, we find Redington had tired of war and came to Heppner. This thesis is much too long to give much detail, but there are many quotes from the Heppner Gazette. The first Gazette came off the press March 30, 1883. Started by a Mr. Stine, he after a few issues sold the paper to J. Redington. Redington was backed by the local merchants to the tune of $600, to be paid back without interest. I have a list of the men who put up the money and the amount raised. J. Redington was not the most popular editor of the Gazette. He wrote it like he saw it, and if what he saw wasn't suitable for his cherished paper he printed on a small leaflet-type paper which he gave away. This he called the "Heppner Gizzard Junior," which was "ground out whenever the mulepower press feels like it." Twice there were attempts to start another paper called the Times. Pulling no punches, J. Redington soon squelched their efforts. The last time Redington went too far in his printed remarks and was soundly thrashed by members of the Times. He could dish it out, but his pride at least could not take it, and so on May 16, 1901, after a blistering attack on his assailant, he folded his paper and closed its doors. No sooner had the ink dried on the last edition than he sold it to Fred Warnock, and he went up to Tacoma to start a newspaper. The young printer who worked under Redington was none other than Garfield Crawford, and the Crawfords were publishers of the paper until a few years ago. I also have in my possession 24 pages from the scrapbook of Henry Warren, who at one time owned a drug store in Heppner and lone and at one lime the store in Hardman. But more about him later His son. H. C. Warren of Lake Grove, has given me permission to share these with the people of Heppner. They are copied from the original news articles of the I 'til flood, and written at that time. I am enclosing one with this letter. I am nut with my tape recorder talking to former Morrow folmly residents, and I hope the society up there will do the same Maybe they even know of people I could contact here. When interviewing old timers, ask questions but mainly just listen and he interested. If he gets off the track, repeat some to get him back to it. but heaven forbid you should ever correct him Errors can be ironed out later, but this Is how he remembers it and how it was told to him or her. And to him this i the gospel. They will say they remember nothing, but talk a (vim nothing for a while and they will start remembering things and they're not afraid of a tape recorder Don't mention it; just set it down and start. Sow . before I use up all Mr. Joiner's space for Horse Sense I will close with one last thought. I hope Mike Sweeney will use the records Rachel Harnett has worked for so long to obtain I wish you all the best of luck with your bicentennial committee. Mv records are available if they will be of any help. FRANCES COX GRIFFIN. Beaverton. .lorotforiun. on grozong fees The Secretaries of Agricul tureand Interior have ordered a moratorium on a scheduled increase in grazing fees in recognition of the difficult economic and drought condi tions facing the livestock industry throughout the West ern Stales. Interior Secretary Rogers C. R. Morton and Agriculture Secretary Earl L. Butz said that holding the fees at the l74 level does not change the grazing fee program objective of gradually raising the fees to fair market value by 1980. The moratorium means that grazing fees will remain at $1 per animal unil month (AUM) on National Resource lands administered by Interior's Bureau of Land Management, except in western Oregon where they will remain at $1.14 per AUM, On National Forest Lands administered by Agriculture's Forest Service the rale is $1.11 per AUM. An AUM is the equivalent of the grazing of a mature cow for one month. ' Grazing revenues from BLM's national resource lands in Oregon and Washing ton total nearly one million dollars annually. If the moratorium had not been imposed, the grazing fee would have been raised to $1 51 on BLM lands and to $1 no on Forest Service lands. When the program of annual raises to maintain compara bility between private and public lands was started in 1't, grazing fees were 44 cents for lands managed by Interior and an average of 51 cents on Agriculture-managed lands. About 25.000 operators now hold permits for grazing approximately 9 million head of cattle and sheep for a total of about 19 million Annual Unil Months on lands admini stered by the two agencies. The permits specify the loca tion, duration, and number of livestock for each) permit holder. EKSTKOM RECOVERY IS "ENCOURAGING" John Ekstrom, lone, is slightly improved in a Port land hospital, but is still in a coma. He has been removed from the intensive care unit and is in a private room. Although he opens his eyes at times, and appears to be responding, doctors are encouraged but they say his recovery could be a long process. THE GAZETTE-TIMES MORROW COUNTY'S NEWSPAPER Box 337, Heppner, Ore. 97836 Subscription rate : $6 per year in Oregon, $7 elsewhere Ernest V. Joiner, Publisher Published every Thursday and entered as a; second-class matter at the post office at Heppner, Oregon, under the act of March 3, 1879. Second-class postage paid at Heppner, Oregon. Mayor of Hardman DEAR MISTER EDITOR: The fellers had wimmen on Iheir mind Saturday night during the session at the country store, Actual, they were more interested in wimmen clothes after Bug llookum tossed out the notion that as goes the hemline so goes the country. They was full agreed thai if we got to have a second sex we can't beat the one we got, but there was some strong discussion on what they wear has got to do with how we fare. Rug said he has lived his three score and 10, and he has seen the cycles In the economy go from out of sight up to out of sight down, and he has noticed that the hemlines toiler pritty closl, Back when we had the gownless evening strap, Bug said, everything was booming. When the hemline and the neckline met. the economy was hitting all the high notes, allowed Bug. and when the Great Depression stopped the country cold in her tracks, the skirts were sweeping the top of the shoes. Practical speaking, declared Bug. this is a bad time fer a hemline economist. He said he had saw a ad in the paper recent about sales of wimmen clothes, and they was offering skirt lengths from "mid-thigh to calf." What's a hemline predicter to do with that. Bug wanted to know. Nowdays, a woman wears ever length of skirt she's got, but usual she'll put on a pair of britches, and Bug said he ain't figgered out where the pantsuit fils in his crystal ball. Actual, said Zcke Grubb, pants is causing other problems. Me said he recalled when school teachers were worried that the next thing in skirt lengths would be a wider belt, but now he saw this piece where school officials are coming out strong ngin these bell bottom jeans that drag In the dirt. Pants with the wide cuffs is bringing mud and gravel in the classroom and making a mess of the carpet. The schools are hoping the girls will rut off their pant legs or even git back in mini-skirts. Zeke said he could understand the problem, but worrying nhmit dirty carpet in schoolhouses is a new angle in the only country in the world where folks watch their $wio color TV to learn the price of bread went up agin. If we can carpet our schools. Zeke said, we can't be all bad. Gitting back to the wimmen. Ed Doollttle recalled that when gals got caught in a wind a few yean back they'd grab fer Iheir skirl. Now. he said, they alius grab fer their hats, and he wondered if that registered anything on Zeke'i Kale of economic ups and downs Ed said it s a wonder to him why men watch ever move wimmen make, and then we pick out a wife by light we can't see how to eat by. General speaking. Mister Editor. I think folks in this rnnnlry just try to git some reasoning behind their worrying. I saw where some Guvernment economist said Americans were worrying unduly, and then a hole panel of experts studied how much worrying Is duly. Yours truly. MAYOR HOY. Church is landlord for oil lobby By LESTER KIN'SOLVING NEW YORK "That's none of the public's business!" growled Warren Day. newly appointed executive director of News and Information for the National Council of Churches iNCO. What evoked this angry outburst from Mr. Day was this column's inquiry as to exactly how much money the NCC is taking in as landlord-of all things-part of the oil lobby. The Washington Post had Just published two installments of page one features on the oil lobby. Both of these extensive articles cited an organization called "Americans For Middle East Understanding. Incorporated" (AMEU). As the address of AMEU. The Post listed 47S Riverside Drive in Manhattan, without mentioning the fact that this Is the address of the Inlerchurch Center, the headquarters of the National Council of Churches. The Post did. however, report a number of things about AMEU which rents space from the NCC-thal would not ordinarily be regarded as very ecclesiastical (under which category the NCC is tax exempt): In vm. AMEU's Income totaled $89,757-of which $86,300 was "contributed" by the Arabian American Oil Co. tARAMCO), which produces 90 per cent of Saudi Arabia ' oil . Since 1968. AMEU has received more than two-thirds of its income from ARAMCO and from Mobile Oil, By way of gratitude. AMEU has sent to its mailing list (40,000) an offer of "free subscriptions to Aramco World," a magazine for which AMEU maintains there is "No better source of Middle East information." AMEU has also circulated mass mailings to service stations, truckers, college professors and university presidents, bringing to their attention such information as "Congress is under Zionist control." AMEU's executive director, Methodist minister John Sutton, is quite matter-of -fact about the oily content of almost all of his organization's financing: "We think we never get enough financing from companies that do business in the Middle East." By striking contrast, the Rev. Mr. Sutton, whose AMEU was described by The Post as a "tax exempt, charitable organization," is not nearly so open regarding what he pays in rent for office space to the NCC. For when asked by this column just how much his organization pays to the NCC, the Rev. Mr. Sutton refused to reveal this amount, except to say: "It's a lot more than $200 a month." This $200 figure was the "rough estimate" of the NCC Assistant Treasurer Edward Leonard. Mr. Leonard was contacted after NCC Treasurer Carl Tiller, of the Baptist World Alliance, explained that his treasurer's post is "largely honorary," and referred the question to Leonard. Leonard in turn referred the matter to a Roberta Berringer, who handles such leases. But after repeated inquiries, in which this lady was not available for comment, her office informed us that they had been ordered to refer any such inquiry to Information director Day, who provided the information that "This is none of the public's business!" This statement Is admittedly something of an improve ment over the public relations attitude of another New Yorker, who said, "The public be damned." But then again, railroad magnate William Vanderbilt was not tax exempt, nor did any local churches throughout the nation support him through their collection plates. Tax exemption alone, not to mention Its national solicitation of funds, makes the NCC's income the public's business. Moreover, the growing need for tax revenue, plus the proliferation of organizations claiming tax exemption has necessitated constant vigilance on the part of the Exempt Organizations Branch of IRS, which Is now aware of the NCC's oily income.
