The Charlotte News
Wednesday, October 22, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from the Atomic Test Site in Nevada that the first detonation of a scheduled triple atomic blast lit up the predawn sky in a brilliant yellow flash this date, visible for several minutes in Las Vegas, some 90 miles away. The President had set October 31 as the last of the blasts for a yearlong moratorium on nuclear testing, provided the Soviets would continue with their moratorium begun the prior March. The Soviets had recently announced, however, that because the U.S. had continued testing, it would do so as well and thus whether the moratorium would be mutually recognized in the end remained to be seen.
In Havana, a Cuban DC-3 airliner carrying 11 passengers was reported missing this date in the rebel-infested country of eastern Cuba. José Vilaboy, manager of Compania Cubana de Aviacion, said that the plane had been flying in bad weather and may have made a forced landing. We hope that it is not the first effort at bringing to fruition the CIA's subsequently planned "Operation Northwoods", which in early 1962 included a plan to shoot down deliberately an unmanned drone aircraft, which would be reported to the press as carrying American students, to be attributed to the forces of Fidel Castro, as part of a pretextual scheme of other such incidents to warrant the overthrow of Sr. Castro. We suppose, however, that because the latter had yet to take over Cuba from El Presidente Fulgencio Batista, that would have been a bit premature, and would not have entailed a Cuban airliner in any event, at least by its design, which, when discovered, would be nixed by President Kennedy, and its agent of authorization in the military, subsequent Joint Chiefs chairman, Army General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, replaced by General Maxwell Taylor just prior to the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962, and transferred to the command of NATO in Europe. But all of that, of course, was still down the road a few miles.
In Guam, a Coast Guard plane had sighted what appeared to be a wing tip tank from a Navy photo reconnaissance plane, which had vanished in the Pacific west of Guam with four crewmen aboard.
In Algiers, French authorities this date reported two powerful thrusts into rebel territories and the encirclement in one mountain area of 400 Algerian nationalist rebels.
In Detroit, Chrysler Corp. this date reported settlement of a local labor dispute which had idled 1,000 workers at a Detroit parts plants the previous day. General Motors continued to increase the tempo of its 1959 production with six more local agreements having been reached.
In Fort Jackson, S.C., an Army sergeant, a 13-year veteran of the service and recipient of a Purple Heart, who had been convicted by a court-martial of maltreatment of recruits under his command, said: "I still think I was right. Every one of those trainees who testified was a problem child." The 30-year old master sergeant from Ogdensburg, N.Y., had been convicted by the general court-martial board on Tuesday of five of seven specific charges of assault and battery and recruit maltreatment, but had received a relatively light sentence of reduction of one grade to sergeant first class plus forfeiture of six months of pay, while having faced the maximum penalty of 4 1/2 years imprisonment, dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of all allowances and pay. He expressed hope that his next assignment would be in a combat unit. He had been found guilty of having one trainee dipped head-first into a mess hall grease trap, striking and kicking other trainees, forcing two to eat dollar bills, and requiring other recruits to hold heavy foot lockers over their heads for up to 20 minutes at a time. The board of officers and sergeants had acquitted him of kicking one recruit and forcing six others to go through a footlocker drill. He and his wife had broken into smiles when they heard the sentence. Other soldiers, apparently considering the sentence light, had crowded around to pat the sergeant on the back. He said that under the circumstances, he was relieved. His attorney, of Columbia, said, in pleading before the board for a light sentence, that the situation in the sergeant's company "was such that an almost unbearable burden was imposed upon him… His was a case of doing the right thing in maybe the wrong way." He had also pointed out that he had an excellent Army record, having received a Bronze Star in Korea, and was the father of four children. Other general courts martial were planned in maltreatment cases, one involving a sergeant from Empire, Ala., expected to begin during the current week, and the other of a first lieutenant of Bridgeton, N.J., who would go before a general court-martial on charges of neglect of duty and actions unbecoming an officer at an unspecified future date.
In Camden, S.C., some 40 Klan members had paraded through the streets of the town wearing full Klan regalia. They were just passing through, however, from Spartanburg to Dentsville to attend a rally, and decided to make a rest stop.
In Raleigh, it was reported that the State Banking Commission this date had approved the merger of the Wilmington Savings & Trust Co. with Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. of Winston-Salem. It also had given the merged bank permission to establish two branches in Wilmington. The president of the Wilmington bank said that he had heard from more than 80 percent of the bank's stockholders and that only about three opposed the merger, and that they owned less than 100 shares of stock. Archie Davis of Winston-Salem, Wachovia's chairman of the board, told the Commission that the merger had been approved by the boards of directors of both banks. Mr. Davis knows Mr. Watlington, who lives not too far away from our new residence, but lives in a considerably larger place of residence. He can, however, likely also hear the air raid siren every Saturday at noon atop the pharmacy about a block away from our abode, and we hope that if the nuclear test moratorium takes effect, he can write to the President and have them stop the revolving siren for at least a short while. It sets up an awful racket while spinning, continues to ring in the ears for several minutes afterward and causes all of the dogs in the neighborhood to howl with an unearthly suggestion of foreboding. And what if it should short-circuit one night? What if somebody in some silo somewhere in the Dakotas sets off an alert because of a flock of seagulls triggering a radar blip somewhere along the network of golf balls?
On the editorial page, "Care To Clobber This One, Mr. Pett?" indicates that Saul Pett of the Associated Press had sounded a call in a report appearing in the newspaper for "dull old people" to clobber the young intellectual, urging: "Don't let him intimidate you. Let's hit him where it hurts. I have in mind a particular kind of young intellectual. I visualize him lying around his room at college, for which his father was gauche enough to borrow the money … lying there on his bed, smug and contemptuous.
"He wears sandals, khaki pants, and a white T-shirt. His room is studied disorder. A vigil light flickering under the Picasso print. Esoteric jazz records stacked in the corner. Elsewhere books on Zen Buddhism, existentialism. On the wall, an African mask. On the floor, no chairs, just Japanese straw mats…
"He will whistle jazz tunes you never heard of, quote Kafka, Camus, Sartre, and other authors you're vague about, he will order a vodka martini as if he invented it… In every way he will make you feel drab, dull, old, old-fashioned, a creature of habit, conformity and fear…"
It finds the type so rarefied that it was unlikely he existed except in the colorful crannies of Mr. Pett's imagination, "and even in flesh and blood we can just see a hoary host of grim, over-aged philistines, waving clubs, bearing down on the willowy adolescent egghead. What slaughter."
It has in mind another kind of young "intellectual", who never laid around his room in college because he was at the library reading, not smug or contemptuous, but baffled by his stupidity, thinking that sandals were cold and grubby, but wore khaki pants and a white shirt, while not having time to study the chaotic mess in his room and wished sometimes it would go away.
"Didn't care for Picasso, thought his peace doves were for the birds. Thought Dave Brubeck prissy because he got mad when students talked while he was playing jazz. Thought Sauter-Finegan made too much noise. Studied Zen Buddhism and oriental literature but never thought it exactly beat. Thought Jean-Paul Sartre a parrot of greater minds like Kierkegaard and Dostoevski and a logic-chopper, also thought he ruined a good play by Arthur Miller about witches in Salem, and took strong issue with Sartre's mistress about women. Kept a sketch of Don Quixote on his walls and thought African masks belong in Africa on cannibals. Never saw a Japanese straw mat but did have a beat-up ottoman on the floor. Couldn't whistle jazz but could whistle a little Bach and Mozart. Liked Kafka, especially where Gregor Samsa turns into an insect, but couldn't quote him. Didn't know much about Camus. Considered vodka vile and took gin in his martini any time. With lemon peel, not olive.
"Always did dislike bores."
Mr. Pett, for the intellectually curious, had also entered on August 15 some predictions for 50 years hence. The one about the President, a former physicist, having told a press conference: "E plus M2 minus W equals NG12," which, translated meant that he was going to Saturn for the weekend, bears some attention for some of the detail anyway, especially if combined across two occupants of the Oval Office, substituting the planet for a short-lived auto nameplate, as does his statement: "The State Department said it was still hopeful of obtaining recognition from the government in Dallas." Though well off on his predictions about inflation, not so much regarding deficit spending, at least by comparison to the 1958 deficit. Then there is his Mount Rushmore prediction, wrong on one President who would become the subject of an impeachment, not so much on another, even if only thought deserving by self-promotion and unlikely of accomplishment, despite toadying affirmation by his aider and abettor in office, hopeful of inheriting Caesar's mantle, at least without causing the whole monument to crumble to dust, in a vengeful spell perhaps to be cast by the nearby monument of Crazy Horse, already begun for a decade in 1958. As to television, he was, if a bit hyperbolic, nearly spot on. He missed, however, on the fate of Howard Johnson's, which in 2008 and for several years afore, sported no flavors at all, not even strawberry, on any of its erstwhile signs then still remaining, even in Rapid City, where the Noemismatics—a totemic, self-sacrificial cult off-shooting from the Trumpistadores, coin collectors on the side, thus coining the portmanteau which borrowed from the Palintologists of Alaska who studied Hominids to dissolve any left-wing, radical delusion of descension of man, or at least most men, those who identified as good Republicans, from any but creatures in the Garden, hopeful of cashing in one day, in 2029, on the increased value of all of the discontinued, as illegal coinage, Trump-heads in circulation, from the nickel on up to the silver "peso", as the dollar had come to be called for having become of lesser value on the world market than its Mexican counterpart—have, at least by 2028, taken up residence in tents awaiting the End, down by the Puppy-Sacrifice Monument, next to the Cowboy-Hat Monument, in front of the Wrestling Monument, near the Plastic Surgeons and Tummy-Tucker Monument, all situated in the puppy-haunted quarry where no ghosts jump and play without tears and wracking pain, just as it should be in a land of plenty sold off to billionaires and corrupt Saudi princes to instill chilling fear in exchange for grafting gain.
Drew Pearson writes from Nashville that few people realized that when Nazism had first begun corroding Germany, most people had not paid much attention to it. "A bomb was tossed at a Jewish synagogue. A swastika appeared on a Jewish shop. It created little attention. Some people even snickered. But gradually the persecution grew. Protestants and Catholics at first sat on the sidelines, unworried about the prospect that they might be next." But they had been next, as the hatred and terror had spread, until neighbors suspected neighbors, fathers feared sons and a government based on terror and force had reached out to subdue neighboring nations with terror and force.
He indicates that when a bomb had gone off in front of the Jewish community center in Nashville the previous year, no one had paid much attention, as it had not injured anyone. Several Protestant ministers had called up Rabbi William Silverman to express their shock and to ask what they could do to help, the Rabbi having responded: "Have you preached about it? Have you told your people that this is wrong?" The ministers had said that they had not, and seemed to hesitate about doing so.
More bombings had followed, in Miami, Jacksonville, and Birmingham. Some were at Jewish temples and some were at black churches.
Then, on October 4, 1958, a year after the launch of the first Sputnik by Russia, the high school in Clinton, Tenn., had been blown up at the hands of an expert dynamiter, who had set three charges, each precisely timed to detonate three minutes apart.
Mr. Pearson indicates that a lot had happened in that year after Sputnik and much of it, especially the increase of hatred, had ripped holes in America's proud tradition of live-and-let-live, of loving thy neighbor as thyself.
A week later, on October 11, 1958, another terrible explosion had wrecked a synagogue in Atlanta. A few days after that, there were explosions in Peoria, Ill., in Boston, against Jehovah's Witnesses, the religious sect of the President's mother, and a report that a bomb had been planted in St. Patrick's Cathedral, the mecca of worship for New York Catholics, though no bomb had actually been discovered there.
"Taking the same pattern as that followed in Germany, fear and terror grew. Police were stationed outside of most synagogues in the South. The children of some rabbis had to be escorted to school." Most people, however, remained unafraid, as only schoolchildren and a minority religious group had suffered. But fear had begun to hit many other people in a more cowardly but highly sensitive spot, the pocketbook.
When a major manufacturer in the North had been asked to contribute building materials to help rebuild the Clinton schoolhouse, he was sympathetic, but replied that he had to do business in the South and might be boycotted. When Henry Kaiser, whose pastime was promoting Honolulu as the playground of the world, had been asked to promote more serious things by contributing a carload of Kaiser Co. cement, he ducked. When the head of the PTA in Chicago had been asked to arrange cooperation of PTA's to help the children of Clinton, she had been politely and graciously uncooperative, not wanting to get mixed up in a situation where a Tennessee school had been destroyed by hate because of fear that Southern members of her group would react.
On the other hand, the AFL building trades unions had not been afraid, with help having been offered by the bricklayers, the plumbers, and the plasterers to try to get the labor to rebuild the Clinton high school free of charge.
Nor had been the Reverend Billy Graham, having telegraphed Mr. Pearson: "Am shocked and disturbed over bombing of synagogues, churches, and schools. This type of thing is what brought Hitler to power in Germany. I am delighted you are helping to rally leaders of all walks of life to take a strong stand to discourage the wave of bombing. Will do all in my power to assist. Gladly lend my name on committee for campaign."
Other Southern leaders had been equally unafraid, including Governor Jim Coleman of Mississippi, Governor Luther Hodges of North Carolina, and Governor LeRoy Collins of Florida, the latter having said: "We can't mingle hate with disrespect for law without reaping disorder. That's what we're reaping today." Governor Coleman had said: "The South does not believe in using force and terror against children or against worshipers of any religion." Their hope was that an aroused public opinion would put an end to the day when synagogues had to be guarded by special police and children sent home from school not knowing whether their schoolhouse would be there the following morning when they returned.
The dynamiters, whether "Dynamite Bob" or others, had best beware, for the job
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further notes on the front page or editorial page of this date, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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