The Charlotte News
Wednesday, August 26, 1942
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: More news trickles in on the front page anent the two-day Battle of the Eastern Solomons, concluded the day before.
The dedication by FDR of the new Navy Medical Center at Bethesda, Md., to occur August 31, is foretold. Henceforth, the nation’s Presidents would receive their major medical treatment there. The autopsy of President Kennedy would be conducted there on the night of November 22, 1963. We hope that it never has to be used for such grim service again.
On August 26, 1942, John F. Kennedy was undergoing a three-month training program, begun a month earlier, at the Naval Reserve Officers Training School at Northwestern University in Chicago.
In Brooklyn, two minutes before a surprise "Red Alert" blackout drill began, just as the moon entered an eclipse, gangland gunmen let go with a fusillade of machine gun bullets into one Salvatore Maggio, dry cleaner, who apparently owed to someone some protection money or loanshark interest and refused the offer he couldn’t refuse. For merely being a suit presser, one would think, would not ordinarily make one the target for a gangland slaying.
Regardless, that is not what happened in Dallas.
On the editorial page, Tom Jimison, of late local hero of the Morganton revelations, writes a letter from Winston-Salem, complains of too much war news in the features, not enough of the personal, suggests, in so many words, "We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great."
He was probably right.
He might have asked the ultimate question troubling many since, at least those who are non-poetic by nature: When do a sailor become a conception, thereby forming an id?
A farmer writes an ode to his deceased mule, Balaam. He might have, prior to the mule’s ill-fated departure, donated Balaam to serve as a crowd watcher. He might be of great assistance today in keeping an eye on those idiots who show up at presidental speeches packing assault rifles or pistols strapped to their persons.
For, sometimes, it takes one to know one. And thus Balaam, the ass, might yet provide valuable service to his country.
But let us make this point perfectly clear: we speak of Balaam, the ass, not Balaam, the evil prophet recounted in Numbers.
Speaking of which, what was that yesterday from Isaiah about grasshoppers?
Have you ever seen a grasshopper on the moon?
We did. We called ours Rover, the grasshopper.
The quote of the day, that of Sam Grant, was invoked to General Simon Bolivar Buckner at Fort Donelson, February 16, 1862, there overlooking the Cumberland River, near Clarksville, where Union ironclads clashed, beginning Valentine’s Day, with the Confederate gun emplacements on the bluff.
One of Grant’s three divisions was commanded by Brigadier General Lew Wallace.
You may take the train yourself. Don't worry though. It won't be the last one.
Anyway, he escaped out the bathroom window, carrying one of the sash weights with him. Not either General Wallace or Sam Grant. That is not of whom we speak.
The column reports that from California comes the good news that Howard Hughes has teamed with Henry Kaiser to produce those 500 colossal flying boats promised the Army and Navy for increased celerity in the complex and critically necessary process of distribution of troops and supplies to the various theaters of war around the world, a sine qua non for early victory. The editorial expresses the belief that such a team working together--we’ll call it the A-team--, the Hughes transcontinental air speed record working with the management mastery of Mr. Kaiser, would surely get the job done and pronto, in record time.
Well, we’ll keep you posted on that one.
But don’t hold your breath.
The plans laid by men, as they suggest, oft go awry, and in this case, would need considerable sprucing and re-sprucing, before the golden egg was finally laid.
Incidentally, yesterday, we discovered that Alias has a Christmas album coming out for the first time, set to hit the stores on October 13. The proceeds will be donated to the needy. That’s a good idea. We applaud Alias. We look forward to having some good Christmas music early this year.
We hope that more recording artists will follow the example of Alias in this regard.
Framed Edition
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