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The Acton Free Press Wednesday March B When the ice man cometh Smiley Staff Photos Its only a matter of time In the past generation Joe Nobody you and I have suffered from every conceivable type of strike that the warped little human mind can conceive You name it from dockwallopers to doctors from technicians to teachers everybody seems to have had a whack at trying to strangle a few more bucks or privileges out of the Innocent Thats you and I I m getting pretty sour about the whole nonsense Somehow I cant fathom either the economics or the ethics of man who Is worth an hour and is getting demanding that he be paid DO and another In fringe benefits Strikes are annoying frustrating and usually pointless in these days The worker gets raise and It takes him two years to get bock to where he was financially The employer merely raises his prices or taxes The rest of us get It In two painful places the neck and the pocketbook But thats all common knowledge and beside the point One of these fine days the most potent work force In the country Is going to realize what a powerful weapon Is the strike and hit the picket line When It does we 11 look back with nostalgia and longing to the good old days when a strike merely meant you couldnt take that trip or there was a shortage of sanitary napkins or some similar calamity was thrust upon us That will be the housewives of the country Inflamed by Womens Lib dull husbands and rotten kids walk out the doors demanding more money better working conditions and vast fringe benefits That will be a day that will make the present vast tieups due to strikes look like That will be a day that might signal the end of civilization as we know it I m not kidding and Im definitely not exaggerating If the housewives of this nation withdrew such elementary Items as cooking and cleaning sex and sewing from our lives the whole foundationof our society would collapse Not immediately of course For perhaps two days husbands would chortle She soon come around She knows when she has a good thing And kids would roar with laughter Is your old lady on this strike kick too Its a riot But she wont last She needs us After a week the comments would change tone Husbands What the hell Is wrong with that crazy woman Ive given her the best years my life And Kids lwk if she doesnt come back she sin for trouble I haven had a decent meal or a clean pair of socks for days And Dad Is getting nasty Wants me to do the dishes and garbage like that There a lot of ink being thrown in the direction of winter sports these days It seems almost all my acquaintances are either confirmed dedicated skiers qualified curlers free skaters hockey nuts or have an affinity for fishing through the ice And it has left me out in the cold with only one weekly night for curling to beat the winter rap Thats because my free time and everyone else falls to coincide As a result I devised my own sport to keep in the swim I call it rubber swapping It a game almost all the men who wear toe rubbers can play There are no dues The players are competitive Rules are simple Rewards can be great or puny all according to powers of recognition Any house meeting place or public assembly where people ordinarily doff overshoes and leave them in disorderly array for latecomers to trip over makes an excellent playing field I admit to long being an overshoe hater where vigorous beck breaking exercise Is required to pull the long ones over shoes Whenever snow conditions suit I discard boots and opt for a pair of light easily alippetNato toe rubbers Now with winter in its death throes albeit mighty hearty throes I working on my fourth pair of rubbers without having to shell out a The current set arc leak proof have heel hugging backs and match almost perfectly They were acquired after trying on two remaining pairs following a meeting of the parka board and recreation committee else got away with my third set which they probably never realized leaked loosely and had the faint aroma of manure clinging to them The were acquired following a township council meeting where a delegation piled boots and rubbers at the door and dared everyone to When it came my turn to exit there were only two pair of rubbers left and only one pair fit I discovered later they were mismatches one manufactured in Hong Kong and the other in some other exotic eastern location such as Taiwair But my current pair are as Canadian as maple syrup although It is apparent previous owners favored their left foot because the tread on the right one Is almost gone Parks and recreation chairman Hugh Patterson rejected them in favor of the pair I despaired of ever keeping glued to my size nine He got a perfect fit and blithely went home humming the ditty ffrtt Editorial Page Just one more impediment Fears that a second major inter national airport would be located in Nassagaweya township were allayed Thursday when federal Transport Minister Don and provincial Treasurer Darcy McKeough announced the site would be In Pickering and Markham townships north and east of Toronto This site was recommended by the Central Ontario Regional Development Council in a study of the regional effect of the Torontocentred region plan The airport location decision Is critical and the CORDCS recognition of the thrust to development created by the location has resulted in the assumption that this location must be east of the new proposed Highway brief ruled out a western site because it would negate the effort to stimulate easterly development in the area Obviously the Ontario government paid much more than Up service to the eastern location and agreed with the CORDC that if a decision was to be based on the most good with the least harm it would have to go east of Toronto and follow the concept of the Toronto Centred Region We ve got to concur with the decision although admittedly having an airport in this neck of the woods would have been an exciting and new experience and probably lifestyle However if the two governments have decided the location should be in this area there would probably have been more opposition than the eastern site will encounter At the same time as the airport decision was made the first major obstacle to sound planning of the town and area was removed If we could only expect a decision on regional govern ment in and Peel on the heels of the airport decision It would remove all the inertia impediments and frustration that has afflicted municipal leaders over the past three years How about it Mr Thank you keep reading We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge all the kind expressions of congratulations that came our way in the wake of The Tree Presss success in the annual Weekly Newspaper Better Newspaper Awards At the same time we would like to point out as we have when other awards came this way that a news paper is only as successful as the people who to it a formidable list that runs from ad vertisers correspondents columnists printing staff dealers etc to the editorial and advertising staff Pre siding over the whole business of course are the publishers determined this area will have a prize winning newspaper There is lots of midnight oil going into the makings of a successful news paper Sometimes the hours are long and dreary the weeks devoid of significant news and so on But it all seems worthwhile when efforts are recognized with some sort of award especially when you are pitted against people who suffer the same frustrations face the same problems and meet Iho same kind of situations Nevertheless we realize there are lots of areas where we could improve our weekly presentation and it will continue to be our resolve to improve as much as our allow Thank for your interest and keep reading It is the home that counts In two weeks the innocent bystanders would be on their knees And the garbage would be up to their knees Husbands Listen kid You go out and tell your mother that I give her eight no ten dollars a month to blow on herself Skys the limit Kids listen Dad this is all your fault We need that woman even if she is only our mother All our buttons are off and the sink full of dishes and the dishes are full of In a month the hospitals and the mental Institutions would be overflowing The take- home chicken joints and the delicatessens would be booming but the supermarkets would be heading for bankruptcy Family axemurders would be so common they even rate two inches on Page 38 There only one thing that will prevent this catastrophe As we all know house wives are extreme Individualists They can t even agree on the texture of toilet paper How could they agree on such delicate matters as fringe benefits Some would want forty cents to sew on a button others would settle for a quarter And if they did form a union It would take them twelve years to draw up the constitution and everyone would want to be president So relax you neglectful husbands and demanding kids We re probably safe But give the whole Idea a long deep thought The St Marys Journal Argus comments that much hue and cry is raised over housing standards these days but in the writers opinion gleaned from a lifebme of observance the type of housing Is secondary to the type of people who occupy the houses There are perhaps regretfully just as many social tramps living in houses as in and less homes the Journal Argus says We appear to have lost sight of the vital fact that it is the home which counts not the house The fear that appears to haunt some people that they might be close to a housing development with masses of people including a swarm of youngsters is almost comical Anyone Editorial notes I remember my first encounter with paper panties I was on holiday with my wife and her mother in Malta Our holiday house was near a swamp and the mosquitoes were like wolves in the night attacking any skin that was left uncovered Short of suffocating under the sheets there was little else we could do but cut holes in the middle of the panties place the legholes over our ears and wear them as mosquito masks They were but a writeoff as panties Fashion writer Antony KingDeacon in BBC Womans Hour who has visited Britain or the continent will vouch that row housing has been a way of life In a given block there could be several hundred people and they are a pleasant type of neighborhood Small front lawns arc well kept larger back yards something to behold If residents suffered from this type of environment there was no Indication of it on their faces which as a rule were considerably more cheery than some you can see every day here We agree with the editorials point A house is just a house and so long as that house is neat and tidy and there is a generous sprinkling of love and concern dominating life in the Interior it is a home Where do all the rubbers go That protect me from the When will they ever learn Mine improve at every turn Obviously he started the snow season off with a pair of stepin that would soon require a tradein and is now ahead of the game Like all competitive games rubber swapping has its spoil sports They are the people who identify their own rubbers and boots with name tags red paint or some easily recognized symbol They can step In amongst piles of footwear and unerringly pick out their own pair even when there are two dozen similar pairs pded In a lobby No size eight on one foot and eight on the other for them No adventure No sense of being cheated when they get a leaky halftorn replacement They go through the winter wearing the same old pair of rubbers or overshoes without a thought for die poor unfortunate who needs a change which psychologists tell us is of ten as good as a rest When their tread wears down they dutifully go out and purchase a new pair It no doubt is good for the economy but takes ConlinuttJ on Page 20 years ago Taken from the Issucot the Free Press Thursday March 13 Mac was elected president 250 Junior Farmers in county He has been active In Junior farmer work Instead of on high school to serve the Acton and Georgetown schools separate high schools will be built in the two towns it was decided at a meeting of the North high school board Record interest and attendance was reported at the annual meeting of the Woodworking has about fans under Tom Ware and Buhner and has about 15 under Mrs Holmes Plaster moulding is also popular General attendance at all gym classes was good and swimming classes at Guelph average about boys and girls each week Nursery school attendance and interest was reported to be at a high pitch The Phalanx club is being organized and the badminton club Is planning several tournaments Plans for a SoFd course are progressing High school news by Carolyn last Friday high school students Jane Elliott Chris Lamb Mcrllyn Mcllor Paul Bill Coon and John were taken by Jim Dills to visit Institute David turned the third literary program over to Rod Force A group of boys Imitated Jones orchestra Don Richard Mason Jack Davidson Dave McVey and Rod Force Bill Coon as Phil Harris visited and sang There were various impersonations of teachers Francis modelled some ladles hats Shack some Arabian beach wear and Joe Jany showed the girls what they looked like in a tunic Acton Minor Sports club decided Paul Lawson will be the recipient of the Kentner award for the Most Valuable Player 50 years ago Taken from the bine of the Free Press March The combined election expenses of the three candidates who contested county In the last federal election totalled 86 Anderson MP Milton Conservative Fisher Burlington I 25 John Ford Trafalgar Township Progressive The shareholders of the Dominion Hotel at have sold the property to Mr and Mrs Wilson Gardiner who have rented it for a number of years and made a success of the business works of the Toronto Lime Company at Dolly Vardcn are working all through the winter now producing lime The Methodist Sunday School orchestra spent a very enjoyable time Tuesday at the home of their former Sunday school teacher Miss M Z Bennett Officers elected were leader Mr Amos Mason assistant leader Mr J Hill secretary treasurer Mr J C Matthews librarian Mr R Splelvogel teacher Mr Frank Kennedy Much credit was given to Mr Hill who has been the leader for so many years The orchestra now numbers 10 Instruments On Monday of last week at Glen Williams name given aged shot himself with a J8 calibre revolver Death was THE ACTON FREE PRESS PHONE Business and Editorial Office Mvugtr Instantaneous The unfortunate young man who had been married six months ago was work and had been 111 for three wt It is said that excessive smoking had considerably to do with the young mans action Mr Albert superintendent of the AntiSaloon League of the state of Vermont was one of the speakers at the big prohibition convention in Massey Hall Albert is evidently Just as enthusiastic as when he lived in Acton25earsago 75 years ago Taken from the Issue of the Free Press Thursday March IB 1897 Mr Alex C Campbell writes where there was a goidrush at the time does not impress me much I cannot see much for the snow Expenses are high lam charged a week in advance for a room the furniture of which consists of a washstand and one chair Board cost a week at the lowest and meals cents each in ad vane An average of people come to town dally It is said that people are here now and an Influx of 15000 more may belookedforinthesprlng What they will do beats me Every hole In the ground Is not a mine The exodus to the Northwest from this area continues Last week Messrs Philip Kalcy James MacDougall Donald and Alexander McGregor and Alexander Waldie Jr left and on Tuesday Mr J Prairie Still others are to follow The county council met on Tuesday The principal business was the presentation of the auditors and the public schoo inspectors reports The PostmasterGeneral proposes to commemorate Her Majestys diamond jubilee with the Issue of a new threecent postage stamp Stamp collectors will be early on the alert Wm Garvfai of dropped dead while working In the bum on Monday He had buried all of his family but two from consumption A sleighing party from Acton and vicinity about 29 in number pat moat enjoyable time at the home of Mr and Mr George Leslie In Erin township bat Thursday evening They bad a merry time Tea was served In good style at which all partook liberally oysters being part of the delicacies