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P«9« * NORTHWEST HERALD Section B Wednesday, July 17, IMS Opinion Every vote counts Who said only one vote in an election doesn't make a difference.? «• If you remember, last February numerous school districts held ref­ erenda on proposed tax increases. District 26 in Cary had its pro­ posal go down to defeat by a mar­ gin of one vote. A recent partial recount of the ballots showed that one of the bal­ lots had not been initialed by an election judge. It was ruled that this ballot could not be counted, thus tying the vote on the referendum. A total recount was ordered and an additional 'yes' vote was found, thus approving the tax increase. This proves the old adage that every single vote counts in an election The Civil War of colas Dick West WASHINGTON (UPI) - The commercial cola struggle between Coke and Pepsi has been likened to the War Between the States. Informed the Coca-Cola Co. of Atlanta was bringing back the original formula it abandoned three months ago, but was keeping the replacement on the market as well, a Chicago consumer advo­ cate remarked, "It's almost Ma­ chiavellian. If the South had had leadership like this, it might have won the Civil War." I suppose the negative reaction of some old Coke heads toward the new formula is reminiscent of the War of Rebellion. But that is as far as I wish to carry the analogy. „ For further comparisons, we take you now to the field headquar­ ters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, su­ preme commander of the Confed­ erate States of America forces. An orderly enters the tent, sa­ lutes and says, "Suh, here's a dis­ patch from President Jefferson Davis." Lee returns the salute, accepts the communication and reads it forthwith. "Suffering Shiloh!" he exclaims, blanching. "I'm being replaced by a soft drink executive from Georgia." We take you now to the head­ quarters tent of Gen. Stonewall Machiavelli, Southern commander at Gettysburg. "Suh, why don't we try a direct attack on the Union position through this corn field?" suggests an aide, pointing to a map. "Never," Machiavelli replies resolutely. "That might be the right way to do it, but it would be wrong. I'm following the course recommended for ground assaults at my alma mater, good ol' Car- bonation Tech." "You mean..." gasps the aide. "Yes," the general confirms. "I'm ordering a change in the col­ or of half of our army's battle dress. Whereas our boys have al­ ways gone into combat wearing gray, half of 'em will henceforth be clad in olive drab." "Bless yo' heart, Suh," says the aide, a West Point graduate. "That's nothing short of unscrupu­ lously cunning." Meanwhile, behind Union lines at Gettysburg the Yankee battle­ field commanders pass along the latest word from Washington: "Don't fire until you see the gray of their uniforms." Somewhat later, a phalanx of Southern soldiers wearing olive drab appears on the horizon. True to their orders, the Yankee rifle­ men withhold their fire. They are quickly overrun and the victorious Rebels move on to capture Balti­ more and eventually the North capital itself. At the surrender ceremony, how­ ever, Machiavelli is less than magnanimous. "I suppose you will want the men to keep their horses, general, as they will need them for spring plowing," an aide says. "Horses-smorses," scoffs Ma­ chiavelli. He calls for an old enve­ lope and scribbles a few words on the back. "No army can long endure half gray and half olive drab," he has written. Machiavelli turns his eyes east­ ward toward the Shenandoah Val­ ley and Lake Michigan. "We must march to Chicago and overthrow any last pockets of re­ sistance. Then we can all dress alike again." I'll leave it to your imagination to invent a color the cortibined American army can adopt. (Dick West is a columnist for Unit­ ed Press International) Guest Columnists The guest opinion column ap­ pearing in The Herald is prepared by writers with expertise and ex­ perience in specific areas. Their participation in our Opinion page is welcomed when their comments may give our readers new insight or perspective on local topics of current interest. Guest columns should be no longer than two pages of double-spaced, typewritten copy. Prospective writers are ask­ ed to call 815-459-4040, ext. 291, to make arrangements. AST ccw* NORTHWEST HIRALD "Laws stupefy cons­ cience, liberty develops it." John Clifford ROBERTA- SHAW Editor and Publisher LEONARD M. INGRASSIA Executive Editor STEVEN H. HUNTER Marketing Director MICHAEL E.MORSCH News Editor/Regional DENNISM. McNAMARA Editorial Page Editor RONALD L. STANLEY Circulation Director Chi^pli'ibune- and rie's in. MARKETING! ...Remember ^heNwCoke? I l l i l l * 1 S - IS 11 h Money, madness, murder SCRABBLE, Va. -- "Hey!" said my wife. She was knee-deep in grandchildren, four of whom are under the tender age of 3, and I was not being supportive. "For two days you've had your nose in that book." "Ah," I said, "but what a book!" And Shana Alexander, my old sparring partner on "60 Minutes," has indeed written a stunning, smashing, absorbing, wholly mes­ merizing book. It is called "Nut- Cracker." It is the story of a mur­ der that occurred in Utah seven years ago and of the trials that followed long after the crime. Yet she provides much more than a retelling of a news story. This is biography of the very first chop. Shana's subjects are the Brad- shaw family of Salt Lake City, a Mormon family, an industrious and outwardly conventional fam­ ily. Behind a facade of uninterest­ ing respectability was a crumbling structure. Berenice Jewett Brad- shaw was a neglected wife, Frank­ lin James Bradshaw a workaholic husband. Married in 1924, they would achieve substantial wealth; he would make millions through a chain of auto parts stores and through shrewd investments in oil. They would live a penurious life, and they would have three daughters. One of the three daughters, Frances, figures in this story as the Lady Macbeth of the drama. Born in 1938, Frances began in the cradle to establish a reputation as a demanding, imperious, tempes­ tuous child. No one could ever say no to Frances. Married in 1959, she gave birth to two sons, Larry and Marc. They were born 10 months apart in 1960. Larry would wind up for evaluation at a Pennsylvania hospital for the criminally insane; Marc would wind up in prison for murder. The principal figure is the , de­ mented Frances. She had much in James J. Kilpatrick common not only with Lady Mac­ beth, but also with Medea. As Eu­ ripides told the tale, Medea began her Career by killing her brother. She fell in with Jason. To hold his love, she tricked the daughters of- King Pelias into murdering their father. Sent into exile in Corinth, she winds up by hating Jason. In revenge for his deserting her, she poisons Jason's daughter by his new wife and completes the horror by murdering their own two sons, Frances Bradshaw, living a dis­ solute life in New York, was pos­ sessed by the same demons. She alternately babied and abused her children; she bound son Marc, to her side in a barbed-wire embrace. She commissioned the boys- to steal from their grandfather; she forged checks; she raved patheti­ cally that her sisters were conspir­ ing to disinherit her. Fearing that her father might make a will that would cut her off, she ordered Marc to murder him. The obedient boy, 17, flew from New York to Texas, where he bought a hand­ gun, thence to Salt Lake City. There he committed murder most foul. Nine years before this act of patricide, Frances had taken a s e c o n d h u s b a n d , F r e d e r i k Schreuder. She was known as the wealthy Mrs. Schreuder, benefac­ tor of the New York City Ballet,, at the time of her arrest and trial. 1 suppose the Schreuder case was big news in New York, and cer­ tainly big news ih Utah, but the story never reached the boondocks in Virginia. 1 will not spoil the suspense for equally uninforiped readers by revealing how the trial of Frances turned out. I have said it a good many times publicly, and remark it again here, that my beloved adversary of „'?60 Minutes" was out of her element, in TV. Shana is a writer. She is the best court reporter in the country, the best anywhere since Rebebca West covered the Nuremberg tri­ als. Her previous books on the Pat­ ty Hearst case and the trial of Jean Harris are classics in their field. Reader Forum Thanks To the Editor: On July 1, my wife's 89-year-old father was stranded at O'Hare air­ port due to a set of circumstances too detailed to list here. My wife and I would like to thank the Crystal Lake family who befriended him and saw him safely back to Crystal Lake. : He does not remember your name, so we would like to use this method of expressing our appreciation for your kind deed. Jim and Peggy Began Crystal Lake Airline strike TO the Editor: The United Air Lines (UAL) strike is over. Or is it? Everyone goes back to work and is happy. Are they? In that contest (like the Korena War) no one won. Only the casualties can tell the real story. Richard Fer­ ris, the head honcho of UAL, is unhappy that the pilots laid down and accepted his ultimatum to fly or drown in the pool of unemployment compensation. The flight attendants Have gone back to work without a contract. Where does that leave us poor passengers? Possibly, a bowl of lukewarm soup spilled in a very sen­ sitive area. One thing I don't understand is why the pilots and their pals in the cockpit went on strike. They certainly are not underpaid. I have aeronautic g e n i u s e s w h o l i v e i n t h e neighborhood that enjoy the good life to the fullest, and maybe they have earned it. I have always thought of the men and women that fly the "blue yonder" as special -- something like ministers of the sky who have that spirit, fortitude and vocatiorflo steer safely those magnificent alumini monsters to places of businesk pleasure and especially home. In rpy unsophisticated and simple mind, unionism has never been a part oi the "Charles Lindbergs" of the vast horizon. I never imagined them with taxi drivers that go on strike every time someone sneezes in the backseat. Most of the pilots I know are ex- military people who have had their training and expertise at the expense of the taxpayer. Many have never fought in a war, were bored with ser­ vice life, and were most anxious to get on to a better life. They certainly are good at their commercial job, but they had better do it before our great administration does to them like the air controllers/ Those poor $30,000 per-year ex-souls are now driving taxi cabs. The tips are few and far between and the horizon is clouded. Samual Sixtus Gara Cary Star Wars To the Editor: The space war or star war plan is quite useless for defense. However, soon Congress votes on funds for space or star wars, which wiirbe missiles with weapons for blowing up, and in the process releas­ ing cancerous plutonium particles in­ to the space above our atmoshere which is in itself only about five miles above us. This release of cancerous particles above us (even if it were on­ ly in the jet stream) falls just as in- discrimately on Americans as it does on anybody else. Thus it represents cancer. Also, there is no safety either in the star war plan which would involve eight phases, each as complicated as the nuclear Manhattan Project over a decade ago. Typically there is no fool-proof technology, so that even if the star war plan were 95 percent functional, the remaining 5 percent of the 20,000 nuclear bombs (like our 30,000 bombs) would still be able to bombard us, Whereby millions"of Americans would, according to predictions, be destroyed. But chiefly, the whole system of star wars or space wars can be cheaply counteracted or rendered in­ effective simply by proliferation of decoys. According to Henry Kendall o f M a s s a c h u s e t t s I n s t i t u t e o f Technology, the secret of making our star war plan useless is simply decoys, decoys, decoys. Decoys are astronomically cheaper than the star war plan. Gravel, iron filings, or millions of spurious electronic emis­ sions would make the star war plan useless. With so many cheap decors against even some 400 missiles vifajh anti-missile so-called defense, thei£ is no defense against oncoming bombs. f Likewise, if it were assumed th$t s t a r w a r s c o u l d b e a d e f e n s e , l o w f i f ­ ing cruise missiles that fly below the space war "defense" could easily retaliate and bypass the space war "defense". Further, the Soviets can easily con­ strue space war "defense" as our in­ tention to strike first and make thefr trigger happy, thus endangering ijs from our reliance on our space war plan. Since the space or star war plan is not considered useful by so marty scientific leaders, our national Co0- gressmen Paul Simon and especially Philip Crane and A^an Dixon shoUkl be contacted to "freeze" or veto ttfe ill-conceived space war "plan". •I M.Russell Crystal Lake •