Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (April 3, 1975)
Page X THE GAZETTE-TIMES, Heppner, OR., Thursday, Apr. 3, 1975 Horse sense a ERNEST V. JOINER w fly W '"111 0 A few years ago during these Ides of March a few newsmen were solving the nation's ills over a few breakers of bourbon. Clarence Hall of the Wareham, Mass., Courier had just had a round with his accountant and the income tax people, and began compiling a list of people and things he hated. He got some help from the rest of us, and before long he had a column on the subject. And didn't we all! The thing I hate most at this time of the year is Certified Public Accountants. I dislike taxi drivers, health and accident insurance policy salesmen, telephone solicitors, psychiatrists, men who wear loud pants, radio disc jockeys who talk a lot, people who use such words as "viable" and "structured," men hair stylists cowboys who wear Levis so tight they are forever in danger of emasculation if they suddenly squat. But I hate Certified Public Accountants. I dislike education instruction, tweedy college profes sors, politicians who make speeches about reducing taxes, telephone operator supervisors, head nurses, people who call other people "darling," people who begin every explanatory sentence with "Basically," surly waitresses, people who are surly to surly waitresses, men who leave their top four shirt buttons unbuttoned to expose the hair on their chests, football announcers who describe and analyze every play, American Legion conventions and people who like dogs more than they like people. But especially, I hate Certified Public Accountants. I dislike car salesmen who sell you a car and then you find out the gas tank is optional, privileges for minorities that can't be had for the majority, bigots other than myself, fence-sitting editors, people who play canasta, anything the government has anvthing to do with, hypocrites, almost bald people who swirl their hair around from the back to cover the bald spot, doctors who hum, people who wake up happy, haughty public servants, public relations men, book clubs, book salesmen, perfectionists, people who wear two-tone pointed shoes, people who wear dark glasses to disguise their shifty eves, and shifty-eyed people without dark glasses. And 1 hate Certified Public Accountants. I dislike people who ask. "How are you?" Then rush awav without giving you a chance to tell them, wedding stories where every detail of the bride's outer- and under-attire is described but you never learn the name of the groom environmentalists who write editors 1500-word letters loaded with libel and add a P.S. saying "If you have guts voull print this exactly as written and without editorial comment." small men with large fannies, large women with small fannies, jingle contests, chiropractors, tour guides and computerization. Mostly, though, I hate Certified Public Accountants. I dislike TV weather forecasters, restaurants with knotty-pine walls, bank commercials saying how friendly they "are. cucumber sandwiches, bums, liars, loudmouths, bullies, tax collectors, pimps, people who show home movies, and people who pour catsup all over their french fries. But Certified Public Accountants I hate. They are pale, skinnv wet-nosed and self-righteous. They write small neat figures Their Big Deal is balancing columns of figures. They treat you like they would a criminal. They are cold, humorless, colorless, devoid of human compassion, callous and cruel. I filed my income tax this week. This is still a great country. Here every man is presumed to be innocent, unless he just got back from a convention. There is one man in the Oregon Senate who gets respectful attention. When he rises, silence falls. All eyes are glued to his. His colleagues watch his every move. They'd damn well better. He is Jack D. Ripper of North Bend, representing the 24th District. Next to saving the environment, growing vegetables in natural manure and impeaching the president the national kick" is to force every man. woman and child to fasten seat belts. Manufacturers have been persuaded to make cars that will not start until seat belts are fastened. Billboards, magazines, television, radio, newspapers and platform speakers cry out for "buckling up" as if the national existence depends upon it. State legislatures have passed laws imposing penalties for failure to fasten seat belts including fines and forfeiture of drivers licenses. During all this furore, hubbub and clamor; all this outpouring of concern for automobile drivers who don't give a damn one way or the other about seat belts not a voice has demanded that school buses be equipped with seat belts and that children be required to use them while buses are in transit . Why? The sex discrimination suit is becoming the national kick It's the biggest thing to sweep the country since the hoola hoop. Up in Connecticut a waitress filed a sex discrimination suit against a restaurant that fired her for not shaving her legs. She said she stopped shaving her legs five vears ago when she found out men liked them that way. Customers had complained about her gorilla-like legs, but she refused to shave them because, she said, men didn t have to shave theirs! I imagine she owns the restaurant by now and has male waiters in mini-skirt uniformi-and shaved legs On another front, the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1974 prohibits mention of sex in the sale or rental of dwellings. This meant that a girl advertising for another girl to share an apartment couldn't specify a girl was wanted. All of which resulted in some pretty hilarious situations when men applied to share the apartment, were turned down because of their sex, thus violating another federal law! HUD has now "informally advised" newspapers that ads seeking roommates or persons to share apartments are exempt from the 1974 law. So, at long last, a federal agency has admitted there can be no total enforcement of many sex discrimination laws. Which we all knew from the beginning. See you in the men's room, girls! m I 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 Thur&Hav and entered IS 1 ruuiinnru vivi; - sccond-clasi matter at the post office at g Heppner. Oregon, under the act of March 3, 1879. L Second-class postage paia ai iioppner, Caravan to visit A caravan of Airstrenm trailers from the Eastern Oregon Unit will hold a rally at the Morrow County Fair grounds on April 4. 5, and 6. Approximately 20 trailers are expected according to Edgar Alliert. a local member of the group. This unit was organiz ed about one year ago and is an off -shoot of the Wallv Byam group that is a national organization. The group has a breakfast and pot luck planned during their visit. Other rallies will be held by the unit nt various times of the year. Visitors are welcomed by the travelers. NOTICE public hearing willhc held :ii the Heppner City Hall. April 7 It p m . to prepare an ,Mllicatum for t Community Itlm-li (Irani as outlined in the IIoimiiu and Community eelnpmenl Vet of 197 J. Citiens will be asked lo nri's preferences about iriiiiM' activities and lo .i'.'.ki in the selection of the -ninmiinitx 's needs, and assist the ! council in preparing ilie "rant application. Ml interested ciliens are ii'"i'i to attend this meeting Moml.iN night and participate n the (Irani Development ii.plMMlmll The mail pouch EDITOR: As a firm believer in communication; as an ordinary student of journalism, and as a community-minded citizen, 1 am herewith registering a protest and a personal apology. It seems to me that the prime purpose of a newspaper is to serve its entire community (and I do recognize it has various secondary functions, too.) This paper has in years past served its community quite well-and has pleased many former residents who continue to look to it for news of Morrow County and of old friends here All the segments of the community, the horse lovers, the officials, the schools, the ranchers, the mill people, the civic and fraternal organizations, the business enterprises and the various religious groups have shared its pages. List weeks issue woefully neglected the last of these communal segments-the church-going citizens to whom the week following Palm Sunday and climaxing in Easter is Holy Week . There was no publication of special ecclesiastical events, no listing of the das and hours of the special services arranged at the community's churches. Perhaps th editor felt land he always has reasons) that those persons interested in such matters could find out the where and when on their own. Most places on this planet there are at least three points of view concerning attendance at religious services: (I) There are those so strongand so sure of themselves that they feel no need of such guidance and inspiration; (2) Those who are Christmas and Easier Christians who like knowing where and when to go when they occasionally feel the urge to attend: V Those already mentioned who regularly ask guidance and inspiration, who constantly seek "The Way." As a more than five-year, part-time contributor to this paper I apologize to the second group especially because 1 did not push this year for the proper publication of church activities. I am sorry. JUSTINE WEATHERFORD ED NOTE: In an effort to bring the time of the Easter services to the community, every effort was made to contact either the church or (he ministers for the times and place of their worship services. All to no avail. Why didn't the ministers call to notify the paper of their Easter schedules?. ) EDITOR: Concerning your editorial of last week, this illiterate would like to know how the American Press Institute determined that 90 per cent of high school graduates never read another book in their lives. There are quite a few of them still alive, and they might decide to do the job tomorrow! CLIFFORD A. WILLIAMS. Lexington. EDITOR: Oregon Revised Statutes 118 0' reads as follows: 118 050 Pension, retirement and social security benefits exempt from taxation. There shall be exempt from taxation under the provisions of ORS 118.003 to 1 18 840 the value of all benefits not exceeding the sum of $20,000 payable to each beneficiary, other than to the estate or to the executor or administrator of the estate of a deceased person, under: (1) The National Social Security Act, (2) The National Railroad Retirement Act. iji Any pension or retirement plan established by federal or state government or any municipality or any political subdivision of the state, and (4 Any pension or retirement plan or trust established by an employer which qualifies for income tax exemptions under the' Federal Internal Revenue Code. (Amended by 19.15 C.727 No. 2: l3 c 392 No. 1 : 1967 C 485 No. D . , In other words, any widow or widower is required to pay a tax. based on how many years they are expected to live and draw any survivor's pension. Irrespective of the fact that they might die the next day or if living, pay income tax on all, or part, of the pension. An alteir.pt is being nude to rea! Una unlair provision- HB 2140 in the House Revenue Committee-seeks to do exactly that. Unfortunately, most people don't know, and some Just won't believe, that Oregon could be so backward and unjust as to lie one of only seven states in the United Slates to have such a law. What is needed to pry the repeal law out of committee is a cry from the people who are, or may be victimized by this unjust law. I urge your readers o write to their legislator and demand that the law be repealed NOW!! Oregon can't be so financially and morally bankrupt that it must exist on the paltry amounts left to support widows and orphans. VERLE W. RUSSELL, Milwaukie. EDITOR: I am sorry to see Mr. and Mrs. Joiner leave for California. It was refreshing to have an editor give me something to think about and not particularly care what I thought of the wav he accomplished it. With his two papers so far apart. I hope he can find quite a bit of time for Heppner. W W. WEATHERFORD Meeting to deadline problem As one long suffering citizen put it after looking at his shriveled bank balance on April 15: "A taxpayer is a person who doesn't have to pass a civil service exam to work for the government." Those comforted by the adage that misery loves company can take heart. Taxation was just as bad and sometimes worse in the good old days, the National Geo graphic Society says. The people of Lagash, an important city-state in ancient Sumer. overthrew their ruler 36 centuries ago for a new king who promised to reduce taxes and dismiss the tax agents. But things apparently weren't much better a thous and years later. A contempor ary cuneiform writer groused on a clay tablet: "You can have a lord, you can have a king, bul the man to fear is the tax collector." Egypt's pharaohs gathered fortunes through direct levies and tribute. After dividing land among his people, Harnesses .he Great 1 1304-1237 B C. ) set up a special tax scale based on the share each farmer received. Three thousand years later levies on land still were a sore spot. The American author, Charles Dudley Warner ob served, "The thing that is most generally raised on city land is taxes." At various times and places, taxes have been levied on almost everything that people need or desire, including salt, tea. coffee, wine, furs, cloth ing, houses-even on water and grass consumed by ani mals. Peter the Great of Russia taxed beards to promote the clean-shaven look. England's Queen Elizabeth I boosted wool production and her tax take by ordering all males to wear "a woollen cappe on Sondaies and Holy days." As cars are taxed today, so in the past were Roman chariots, coolie-drawn carts in the East, and English hackney cabs. At one time. Chinese inspec tors at "squeeze stations" spaced along the highways extracted multiple tools not only on merchant goods but on the belongings of ordinary travelers. Throughout history people have met their taxes with all kinds of payments- everyth ing from token Ixiuqucts of ruses lo a handful of pcper corns, elephants' teeth, hens, cheeses, and hams In the United States, mod ern hard losers bombard the Internal Revenue Service with things like the shirts off their backs and tape bandages which supMisedly show how much it hurts One man included a handful of buttons with his return. "You gl the shirt last year," he explained. Mark Twain was even more direct when he answered the riddle: What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? Twain's an swer: "The taxidermist lakes only vour skin." Elcctricco-op to build lines The Columbia liasin Elec tric C(MiK'iatie. Inc. announ ces that it is making an appli cation for a loan from the ltm.il Electrification Admini stration which will provide Home loan funds for the construction of approximately :'u miles ol m KV transmission hue The facilities covered by the announcement will consist of 20 miles of single pole IraiiMiiission line from the north city limits of lone in Morrow ('iiimly running gen erally west north of highway 71 to McNab and then west along the county road lo a terminus substation approxi mately one mile north of Olex in Gilliam County. The line generally follow the old 22 righl of way along the Mayor of Hardman DEAR MISTER EDITOR: The fellers at the country store Saturday night took note that Congress is taking 17 days off fer Easter to res! I up from its labors since the 11 days it took off o.-. Lincoln s birthday. Now if we could git Henry Kissinger to stay home fer a long weekend, declared Bug Hookum, the country could relax and catch its breath. . , Like they sav. went on Bug they ain't nothing certain In this life but death and taxes, but death don't go up ever time C,i"Sdmeven with April 15 coming up he felt better about taxes after this piece he saw on (he calendar fer Congress. He said il adds up to 103 days paid vacation fer the honorables this vear. but Bug allowed it's a bargin at the price. He was of a mind that members of Congress are heap cheaper o support when they're home on vacation than when they re In session or seeing the world at public expense General speaking, the fellers took the view that Bug was Irving to make the best of a bad situation, and they was divided on whutber trying to look on the bright side of .vr issue is a good Idee. Fer Instant, allowed Ed Doolittle. a bnldheadod feller might brag about gitting rid of herdanderr, but he winds up with more face to wash. These silver linings we alius look fer. said Ed, usual git us in the same bout with the feller that burned down his barn to git rid of the rats. . Clem Webster was disagreed with Ed, which is usual. Clem said he has got to the place where he looks fer good news cause bad news is so common it ain't news. Clem said a dog biting a man is bad news and a man biting a dog is good news in this turned around world where we git rebates on taxes we got to borry money lo pay and rebates on cars and everthlng rise we can't afford lo buy. Itul the good news in the car business, Clem went on, is where this voting feller from Iran come all the way back to a dealer In Oklahoma where he went to school to put in a gux eminent order fer l.ooo trucks cause a salesman at the dealer treated him nice and give him a good deal when he bought a car while he was a exchange student here Zeke Crohn got in the good news spirit. He said he had saw where thev is lo many 1975 college graduates fer to few 1975 jobs in their field of training, and the more education you got the less e hancl you got of finding work. That is happy news. Zeke allow ed, cause it proves w hat he alius said, better lo be a ignorant bum than a smart unemployed. You use to see articles about how much more lifetime income a college degree meant, but you can't have nothing coming In if you can! find work, was Zeke 's words. Sneaking of looking on the bright side. I recall the feller thai broke a mirrer over his old lady 's head. He told the judge if be was going lo have seven years of bad luck he might as well gil some benefit out of it. Yours truly. MAYOR ROY. French newsmen receive best-seller B LESTER KINSOl.VINO The. Saudi Arabian government had a special gift for each of the French newsmen who accompanied Foreign Minister Michel Jobcrt on his recent state visit to King Faisal. It is a Moslem Ik-si seller. Soo.ooo copies of which have been published during the past five years by the Islamic Press In "when Uganda's wild dictator. Maj Gen. Idi Amin ("Big Daddy" Dada discovered this book in October 1973. he promptly cabled Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. And despite the fact that the Yum Kippur War was still raging, Gen Amin requested Mrs. Meir to order Israeli generals Moshe Dasan. Yitzhak Rabin, Mordccai Hod and Haim Bar Lev "to le present when I am delivering my address to the General Assembly of the United Nations " Why did Gen. Amin want the Israeli generals present? Because he planned to deliver a two hour address on this Moslem lies! seller, entitled "The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion," ..... k Then, apparently, someone advised "Big Daduy that this hook had been exposed as a forgery more than 50 years ago, although this has not diminished the Arab appetite for Its Jew-baiting. The Protocols" purports to be the minutes of a secret meeting held in 1897 in which Jewish leaders allegedly plotted to dominate the world-mainly through economic means. The book's origins are equally fantastic: an 1864 satire on French Emperor Naoleon 111 by Maurice Joly was combined with the ravings of a Parisian anti-Semite named Druinont, plus a German novel called "Biarritz." Then, some 40 years later, the Czar's secret police in Paris dug up this material and sent it to a St . Petersburg editor who had organized a pogrom and who claimed to have obtained the secret minutes of "The World Union of Freemasons and Elders of Zion." Czar Nicholas II hud this book investigated and ordered its publication halted after his investigators reported It to be a complete fabrication. The London Times and the Frankfurter-Zeitung reached the same conclusion when it was republished in Germany just after World War I. The book had its defenders, however, one of whom wrote; "The Frankfurter-Zeitung repeats again and again that "The Protocols" are forgeries. This alone Is evidence for their authenticity, What many Jews wish to do Is herely clearly set forth. "-Adolf Hitler, In Mein Kampf. That the Protocols arc so widely distributed In Moslem countries by Moslem publishing houses with little or no protest from Moslem religious leaders-Is something of a revelation of Moslem morality, Something of an antidote to such material is provided in a new book by the Rev. Roy Eckardt, chairman of the Department of Religion at Lehigh University in Pennsylvan ia. Dr. Kckurdt in "Your People, My People" deals not only with the Protocols but also with less virulent (and therefore more persuasive) pro-Arab periodicals such as Christianity and Crisis, as well as the incredibly one sided Quaker report, Search for Peace in the Middle East. will KV route. The Olex substation will be a 5.IMKI KVA, KiKV lo 14 4 24 9 facility which will require a small enclosed area of 85 feet bv lift feel. If there are any comments on the environmental aspects of Ilie promised construction, Kiev should be submitted to I he Cooperative within Ihirly Additional information he obtained at the y v (lavs mav Cooperative office In Heppner. VOTING PRECINCTS ARE CONSOLIDATED There will be a consolidation of voting precincts for the Blue Mountain Community College budget election to be held May 6. Precincts 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are consolidated. Voting will take place In the old city library building. Ills SSISTNCE UI.AItl.E Internal Revenue Service's loll Iree telephone assistance will lie offered on Saturday, April 5 and again on Saturday, April 12 The service Is available from Bam. until I pni Further assistance will he available until 8:45 p.m. on Monday, April 14 and 15,
