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The Acton Free Press Wednesday October 1970 A TRUE SIGN OF FALL Burled In a mountain of fallen leaves two local lads Paul Hansen left and Marcel Fryters right can hardly be seen as Jeff Patterson prepares to dump another armful on them Staff Photo Women are in a terrible fret these days poor dears The fashion designers have once again thrown them Into a dither with their decree from the halls of the mighty that skirts wore going down In length that la For a change there Is a good deal of resentment among the gals Many are declaring belligerently that theyre going to stick with the mini These rebels run all the way from middleaged who would look better In a potato sack to teeny- tappers who look great In anything or almost nothing which some of them favor But Ill lay long odds that If the designers so choose there wont be a mini skirt to be seen within a year What docs grieve me Is that women are such utter sheep when It comes to style They do everything but jump through hoops when the designers crack the whip When it comes to equal rights war the stupidity of men and other questions of vital importance women will fight like tigresses for what they believe They stand united I am a great respecter of women In general They arc far more reasonable than men when you try to reason with them They are tender and compassionate except when they are belting their kids or tonguelashing the old man for some minor Irritant And they are practical to the point of being ruthless except when It comes to clothes smiley At this juncture all their good qualities By out the window They become tie silly Indecisive disunited creatures that they have pretended to be for centuries Why can t they be themselves If I a woman and had long tapering beautiful legs and a flat chest I would wear a mini skirt and be damned to him who first cried Hold enough And if I were short and pudgy with a big chest Id be strongly inclined to wear a max Mother Hubbard hinting at all sorts of mysteries lurking behind the cloth If I bad bony knees but wellturned ankles I d wear a In short the skirt is quicker than the eye It should draw attention away from the less prepossessing aspects no woman Is plain ugly to the more attractive features Now I m not just speaking as a man who Is ignorant of these things or unlnvolved In them My wife and daughter have been fighting the battle of the hemline for four years Mom I cant wear that It practically hanging around my knees This meant that It was barely covering her pelvis All right Kim I U turn it up one more inch and thats that I Just returned from a vacation trip south of the border arriving home just in time for the proclamation of the emergency act I came home full of ideas about the difference In living in the United States today with that in Canada But events of the past few days have knocked all my theories Into a cocked hat I found the States from both above and below the MasonDuion line full of contrast but not very different from our own way of living in the true north strong and free I stood on the battlefield of Gettysburg and pondered whether differences between Canadians of different cultures would ever get so disruptive that we would have to go to war with each other to settle them And yet after a sojourn in the Southern United stales in Virginia and North and South Carolina it is easy to that the war between the Statesthe socalled civil war- Is still being fought The battlefield is dif ferent They no longer Ore at each other with guns but theres a decided difference between the north and the south And thats Just not Dixie There la a Dixie and a very pleasant Never have I found such courteous friendly people They have a charm of their own which imitates no other culture I ve run across before And that includes both black and white We were warned that we would find a lot of turmoil in the south but we met only friendliness extreme courtesy and a helpful attitude wherever we went There was poverty tumbledown shacks in which Canadians would never live housing people In the tobacco and cotton fields They chewed tobacco trained bounds hunted fished and lived something like it is portrayed in the movies but we found a proud people who bore no resem blance to the hulks of humanity we were supposed to see Wed heard rumors about the moon- shining in the south and were a little sur prised to find cut it is true Every so often an announcement on the car radio or TV screen featuring the voice of Andy Griffiths would implore not to drink bootleg liquor It is unclean said the voice and drinkers would fall heir to toe many ills generated in automobile radiators by un sanitary hands Oh Mom 1 11 look like a freak out of the thirties Why don you forget the whole thing and go listen to your Guy records I think the old lady had the last word She took the shortest dress she could find turned It up four inches and sent it off the Kim at college It looked more like a blouse than a dress Even the kid hod to admit the only way it could be worn In public was over long pants That another thing they fight over long pants When Kim means long she means trailing in the mud snow or what ever However my wife Is quite happy about the change She went rummaging through her wardrobe the other night and discovered a whole pile of things that are almost brand new and just the right length She d never got around to throwing them out when the mini came In Enough of that What does please me these days Is the dash flair and elan of men For two centuries they had been scorned by women for wearing drab blues browns and greys Lately they re as colorful as jungle Just the other day a friend of mine whom I thought a confirmed bachelor was married He was clad in an Edwardian Jacket with lace collar and fringes of lace peeping out at the cuffs The Jacket was decorated with autumnal flowers of all shades How about that Presumably he also wore trousers which were not described Probably green velvet Well I have to buy a new suit this week first in four years I haven quite decided whether It will be maroon with a mustard stripe or offmushroom with purple checks But it will probably turn out to be grey I don know if you ever eaten hominy its or pork brains but they are an everyday item on the menu in the southern states along with hush puppies and turnip tops and other greens Personally my taste runs to Canadian foods but samples of the southern style cooking especially chicken were mouth watering and scrumptious And while Canada was putting up with alternate spells of rain and cold the weather in the southern part of the eastern was sunny with the often reaching into the high SO s Weather like this creates a certain degree of lassitude which no doubt accounts for the easy manner people from the south adopt It is easy to fall into that pattern of living When my wife and I turned our noses back to the Northern U S with a drive along the Skyline Drive in Virginia I was almost constantly yawning But we had one more taste of southern hospitality before this visit was over As we pulled up at the barrier to pay the toll for driving the 116 miles of high altitude the Ranger in charge glanced at us looked at our plates car and said You folks from Canada Yes sir we admitted proudly Well go right on in no charge and have a good time you hear he said More about that drive later A delicate fabric Freedom Is a delicate fabric that requires In Its weave threads of responsibility co operation and trust Last weeks proclamation of the Wartime Measures Act In effect declaring a breakdown In the trust among the citizens of the country revoked civil liberties seldom enumerated and generally taken fo- granted It was a sad reflecton on the handling of that delicate fabric of freedom We dont deny the necessity of the action We only grieve that It should be necessary For many months those who have preached anarchy and even treason In the country have been granted a full measure of freedom a measure we have found expired our patience on several occasions In threats In destruction in mob violence we have seen fhe outgrowth of the efforts of those who cherished the freedom of the land only for their own purposes and generally without thought for the freedom of others This delicate fabric of freedom which we have seen handled so roughly was bound to be torn It has and we are all the losers emotionally and In the eyes of the world The tears In the fabric as Is often the case were by a dissident and terrorist bent minority Their kidnapping of two officials provided the drama against which their manifestos and outrageous demands could gain more public attention than If they had outright control of all the news media In Canada Indeed for days the case has commanded headline attention throughout the country and beyond And those who are behind the terrorist activities are clever They are clever at twisting words and misusing phrases They are quick to refer to political prisoners which carries favourable connotations In a free land The prisoners they sought to have released were those guilty of terrorist activities and destruction not political activities In this sphere the news media have a responsibility not to purvey the twisted language But there Is challenge and responsibility In this situation that exceeds that of the news media and puts new opportunity on the doorstep of the Individual Canadian As the current kidnapping clarifies and drops the headlines It will leave a new background against which the tears In that delicate fabric of freedom must be repaired The danger Is that governments en Horse trading talk Something has gone out of life with the decline in the practice of trading horses There Is no Interest In trading automobiles and very little skill Involved beyond the skill of the man who khows what an engine should sound like and what tires have done In the way of mileage Contrast this with the stories told by such as Hector Charlesworth who If he was not an expert In horse trading had a large and vicarious knowledge of It One of the stories he told which might even be true was of a man who started out for the county fair In a smart one horse rig on a bright fall day He was In the habit of doing a lot of trading In the course of a fair day since trading was facilitated by the local bars on the grounds and on the way to and from the fair Having started out In the morning he did various trades before noon and various other trades In the afternoon and first of all he got rid of a very smart horse that was blind In one eye since not many people who looked at the horse detected the blindness A trader from away back the Ontario farmer stopped to get a little final nourishment for the Inner man in the last half way house between the fair and his own stable There In the half way house he met someone willing to trade without too much inquiry because Editorial notes In this changing world commented a university dean of medicine to a recent conference of doctors in Winnipeg old deans never die they just lose their faculties One of the problems faced by everyone is to keep alert mentally young and Interested In their obs Mental old age could have a serious effect on Income or with family relationships Here are some of the symptoms to beware of listed In Building Supply Dealer business magazine Postponing dealing with a problem with the hope that In time It will work itself out Trying to think up things that are wrong with new Ideas couraged by an angry citizenry will over react In the field of civil liberties We all have a way of getting emotionally over wrought and urging a tightening of the restrictive screws If that should happen the damage to this fabric of freedom will have suffered more damage than the could possibly have wrought We as Individuals regard freedom as a responsibility not a right as a trust not a bequest as a privilege not a birthright The current events may have served a necessary if distressing need Perhaps we have been shocked from our apathy and unseated from our throne of self righteousness What has happened in our country Is akin to that we have read of In banana republics We are ferent only as our Individual at become the public attitude The rips In our fabric of freedom need attention not during the headline days of drama but daily as we take a more active Interest in those who would threaten Its continuance The danger will be In our over reaction Freedom Is a delicate fabric that requires In Its weave the threads of responsibility un derstanding co operation and trust Let us set about the restoration It was Impossible by that time of the evening to see the other animal and equipment The trading went on literally sight unseen A trade was made and even tually the man left the bar went out and took his new horse and buggy and drove home He had had a very successful day making no less than seven trades But when he got home to his own stable and lit a lantern he discovered in the strange horse the very one that he had started out with In the mor nlng This story may not have been true but It ought to have been true The Printed Word 3 Pushing of new approaches with the answer We tried that once before and it didnt work Waiting for somebody else to try something first Sitting on all problems to give everything further study Answering problems with descriptions of past experience using such phrases as this is the way we always do It years ago years ago 75 years ago Taken from the issue of the Free Press Thursday October 19 Fifty years continuous residence in Acton reached a high point last Sunday when Mr and Mrs William were at home to over 100 friends who called to congratulate them on their golden wedding anniversary Initial steps have been taken towards setting up a community night school and a meeting was held at Milton last Thursday Something very new was presented at the Thankoffering meeting of the W MS of the United church A tape recorder was used by Rev E A to address the group and his talk concerning missionaries in Korea was heard very clearly Jack Mainprize has left his Job with a firm of consulting engineers and returned to the University of Toronto as a demonstrator and to take graduate courses Special services marked the an niversary last Sunday of Knox Presbyterian church In the evening other churches with drew their services to participate On Monday over gathered at the church for a turkey supper On the program were the Hillsburg quartette Mrs Kromar Sheila Paul Crawford Douglas Donald Graham and Jo McPhall A Halloween party will be held at the arena for youngsters AtthcRoxy Tea for Two with Doris Day and Gordon MacRae Square Dance with Vera Vague Taken from the issue of the Free Press Thursday October 1920 The Citizens Memorial Monument will be unveiled on Armistice Day The filling in and terracing will be completed In a few days but the planting of flowers and shrubs will be deferred until spring R Gregory of the New Wonderland is certainly enterprising In bringing that beautiful story of to Acton This film Is starred by Mary Pickford and is very highly spoken of The philosophy of real gladness winning through the story is helpful and enjoyable Wonderland will have full houses Friday night Two new postage stamps will be issued by the Post Office one for and one for IS cents Since our registration fee has climbed to cents the combined rate has Increased The cent stamp will be withdrawn from circulation Licenses for trapping may be secured at the Free Press office A technical school Is proposed In con nection with Guelph Collegiate October hiding In the woods and there wed better leave her or Mr Frost has whispered round that she has scarlet fever The plan adopted by many of our citizens on Halloween of giving the boys and girls apples candles or cookies and wishing them a real good time seems to have overcome much of the senseless molestation of other years Try it on Saturday night and make the children Taken from the issue of the Press Thursday OctcberlO The by law to purchase a steam Are engine and apparatus to provide for the construction of water tanks and to authorize issue of debentures in the amount of f or the purpose of paying for same was voted on by the property owners Saturday The result was as an ticipated and is very gratifying to all in terested in Acton progress The vote was very quietly taken There was no effort to coerce or unduly influence voters either for or against the by law At the close of polls at five clock the result was 80 in favor 33 against Messrs and Co have let the contract for a fine new brick house for the manager of their sole leather tannery Mr J A McGrail It will be built on the site of theoIdhouseonMainSt and will cost in the neighborhood of The colonial style will be followed and it will be two stories Among the prize winners at fair were several from Acton and vicinity William for roadsters A Wahtte for livestock Jeans and Warden for poultry J Warren for pumpkins maple syrup crayon drawing oats and crock of butter J A Gordon livestock and Miss Gordon for hop yeast bread Maple syrup patch combined wool and beads oil painting on satin plaid flannel plain flannel second In tufted quilt plaid flannel plain flannel second In tufted quilt applique work toilet mat oil painting