The Charlotte News

Friday, July 11, 1958

ONE PLUS FOURTEEN EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that counsel for House subcommittee investigators looking into the Adams-Goldfine matter, had this date accused Bernard Goldfine of contempt of Congress after he refused to answer 23 questions about his financial affairs. The questions had been specially designed to prepare the way for a possible contempt action. Counsel for the subcommittee Robert Lishman, checking Mr. Goldfine's dealings with White House chief of staff Sherman Adams and the latter's attempts to gain favor for Mr. Goldfine from Federal agencies, charged that the latter was in contempt. The charge was not immediately acted upon, but subcommittee chairman Representative Oren Harris of Arkansas had taken steps toward citing Mr. Goldfine for not answering the questions which the subcommittee members deemed pertinent to their inquiry, designed to establish whether remedial legislation was necessary regarding Federal agencies. Mr. Goldfine had been asked particularly about financial matters in connection with his East Boston Co., a holding firm, and its subsidiary, the Boston Port Development Co., Mr. Goldfine indicating repeatedly that those matters had nothing to do with the House probe of regulatory agencies. Mr. Lishman said that he had refused to answer enough pertinent questions to establish in his judgment that the witness was in contempt, preventing the subcommittee from performing the responsibilities of remedial legislation to take care of the public interest. Mr. Goldfine had refused to answer questions concerning $305,684 in notes and accounts due to the Boston Port Development Co.

Gangster Tony Accardo refused this date to tell the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct of unions and management whether he had directed the slaying of mobster underlings and rivals who had incurred his wrath, repeatedly pleading the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. The Committee, in this series of hearings, was investigating infiltration by the underworld into the Chicago restaurant trade.

The U.S. was considering 20 to 40 million dollars in emergency aid to Lebanon where rebels were threatening the pro-Western Government of President Camille Chamoun.

In Panama, it was reported that university students, who had openly opposed President Ernesto de la Guardia, Jr., had asked for a meeting with the President's brother, Milton Eisenhower, during a four-day visit which would begin the following day.

In Massena, N.Y., the President had stopped at the village this date to inspect the American portion of the billion-dollar St. Lawrence Seaway and power project.

In Nashville, it was reported that the Tennessee Senate, in a special impeachment session this date, had convicted a judge of Chattanooga on one of 22 charges, which meant that he would be removed from office. The vote had been 24 to 7, two votes more than the required two-thirds for conviction.

At Atchison, Kans., a storm with hurricane force winds had hit the northeastern section of the state early this date causing heavy damage at Atchison and Topeka, killing three persons.

In Regina, N.M., a State police flying squad this date had wounded and captured a bearded recluse who the previous day had slain two children. The 47-year old man, described as a "paranoid" who had once spent six months in an Idaho mental hospital, had been captured by six State police officers led by a sergeant, who had closed in on the hermit's camp at dawn. Through a bullhorn, the sergeant had shouted to the man to come out and throw down his gun. He had emerged in the road with his hands up, but with the rifle still with him. The officer again directed him to throw down the gun and fired a warning shot into the embankment, and when he did not comply, one of the officers had shot him in the foot—the correct way for properly trained law enforcement personnel to behave rather than shooting the man in the head or chest, likely to be fatal, as the first option which would inevitably occur in many jurisdictions today from the flying goon squads deployed with improper hair-trigger mentalities, given to "law and order" to the absurdest degree possible, the fascist degree. Regina was a tiny hamlet in the mountains about 100 air miles north of Albuquerque. About 100 men had surrounded the camp where the man the previous night had shot and wounded one of the posse members. The previous day, the man had shot and killed two children, ages 13 and 12, on the streets of Cuba, N.M., and had wounded the mother of one of the children. The heavily armed posse had been headed by the State police chief and included the local district attorney, game department officers, Indian police and about a dozen deputies from two counties. The bald, bearded man grinned as he chatted calmly with the four sweating officers who carried him down the mountainside after wounding him. He asked, "What were all you fellers doing out there?" to which one officer had responded that they were looking for him, prompting the man to say that he did not know what was going on, that he wondered what they were doing out there. One officer asked him how it felt to be shot and he said that it hurt, to which the officer said, "Well, there's two people that don't hurt anymore." The man had left his cabin at about noon the previous day and driven to the mountain town of Cuba, a farming village of less than 500 people, about 75 mile miles northwest of Albuquerque. Driving up to the front of a grocery store, he stopped and leveled his deer rifle across the car window. The grocery store clerk said that he thought that the man was just bringing his rifle in to pawn it, and then he had opened fire and the clerk had run out, seeing the little girl laying on the ground, whereupon the man had shot a little boy and driven away as if he were not in too much of a hurry. Those hunting guns, always necessary in the modern age for individual protection from the spacemen of Roswell. Just ask some of the Republican loony birds populating the House in 2025.

Near Hannibal, Mo., home of Samuel Clemens, seven persons, four of whom were children, had been killed this date in a collision of a car and a tractor-trailer truck in a driving rainstorm. Six of the victims had been pinned in the car, almost cut in half by the impact, with two of those pinned being women and three being children. The fourth child, about five, had been thrown from the car. All had been killed instantly except a girl about 14, dying while rescuers were attempting to extricate her from the wreckage. The tractor-trailer driver, 26, had escaped injury. Authorities said that the latter had told them that the car had gone out of control as it approached his truck on U.S. Highway 36, five miles west of the town.

In Asheville, it was reported that one man had been killed and two others injured in a freak accident at the American Cardboard Corp. plant this date, one man having been electrocuted when the current from a high tension line had jumped about a foot to a crane boom and from the crane to where the man was standing on wet ground about four feet away.

In Raleigh, police officers had arrested a youth suspected of being the nervous gunman who had earlier in the morning held up the Farmer's Market branch of a bank. The officers said that the boy, 17, was from Centerville, Va., and had in his possession a wad of money stuffed in his pocket when he was taken into custody in a wooded area about half a mile from the bank. He was described as dark-skinned, handsome and with black hair—obviously Elvis home on leave—, and was caught after the officers had surrounded a wooded area near the bank and pressed a search with bloodhounds in a helicopter. The officers immediately had taken him to the bank to see if employees could identify him as the bandit who had staged the hold-up earlier in the morning and taken $352, with stalling tactics of the bank manager apparently preventing him from getting a larger haul. The manager said that the boy had pulled out a big black pistol and said, "This is a holdup," that he was young looking and he had initially thought he might be joking and so stalled around for a bit, until he repeated that it was a hold-up and to give him all of the bank's money. The manager had suggested that they visit the vault, still stalling as he knew there was nothing back there. After finding the vault empty, the manager and the robber had returned to the counter where the boy told him to give him what he had there, at which point the manager told him to come and get it, the robber indicating that he should give him the money he had and place it on top of the counter, the manager telling him to pick it up himself, at which point the boy took the money from the counter and crammed it into his pockets. He said that apparently the robber was on foot and had fled along the edge of a nearby creek and disappeared into a patch of woods. The bank was located on Raleigh's northern outskirts. The manager had described the boy as looking about 17 or 18, about 5 feet, 9 inches tall, of medium build, wearing blue jeans and a red checked shirt, with black hair "some of it coming down in his face", dark skin and dark eyes, appearing to be sunburned. Elvis, even if a little shorter than usual, was, trying, you know, to promote again "Jailhouse Rock" to show his empathy for his saddened fans without much on which to survive while he was in the service. It'll all come out in the wash at the trial, and they'll find him not guilty, though perhaps a little AWOL, to be forgiven by the Army to avoid any bad publicity for the service. You know that they drafted him just to take him out of circulation at the height of his popularity, when he could have been champion of the world, to stop the rioting down there at cellblock No. 9?

In Los Angeles, the American Federation of Musicians this date had lost its jurisdiction in the major motion picture studios to the newly formed Musicians Guild of America.

In London, it was reported that singer Paul Robeson had received a hero's welcome in Britain this date on his first visit out of the U.S. after eight years without an American passport.

At Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Air Force continued this date a last resort search of the Atlantic for a top-secret nose cone which had carried a white mouse 6,000 miles through space, but chances of recovery appeared slim.

Julian Scheer of The News reports again from Cape Canaveral on the launch he had witnessed two nights earlier of the Thor-Able missile hybrid, carrying Wickie the mouse, one small step for mice and potentially a giant leap for men. "A light breeze made the green, scrubby undergrowth dance, and the sun still hung half-mast in the sky. Just eight miles away at Cocoa Beach, three youngsters splashed in the muddy surf of the Atlantic Ocean, while up the beach a five-year-old gaped as his father showed him how to fly an old-fashioned box kite." He says that from the observation post at 2,000 yards from the Douglas Aircraft launching pad, fieldglasses had picked up men scrambling over the scaffold-like gantry which supported the missile during pre-flight preparations for the first real test of an ICBM, with the missile aimed at a spot 6,300 miles down range in the South Atlantic, significant because the Thor alone had traveled 2,500 miles, the cruise missile Snark had traveled the full range of the date's test but at 600 or so miles per hour and within the earth's atmosphere, animals had gone into space straight up and parachuted down but never tested under such intense heat and speed, upwards of 15,000 mph, and while re-entry of a nose cone was a reality with the Thor, never at that speed, distance or altitude, 600 miles, or with any living thing on board. Thus it was a test of distance, medical knowledge of life in space travel and of propulsion, a combination which would probably launch the first missile aimed at the moon the following month. The countdown had begun but was abruptly halted as something had not checked out. The public address system told the story that the countdown was "holding", and until it had begun again, which he recounts step-by-step until launch at 9:35 p.m., a strange silence had prevailed over the area and crickets sang a weird song in the darkness, just before the moment of liftoff. "And liftoff. We have liftoff of America's first man in suborbital space on this beautiful May morning in 1961…" Sorry, we get ahead of ourselves, reflecting back to the trailer classroom that day. In any event, scientists meanwhile on the West Coast had reported the potential problem for high-altitude manned spaceflight posed by the Van Allen radiation belts.

Mr. Scheer, as we have previously noted, would subsequently become NASA's public relations man during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo manned space programs. They must have liked his written reports.

John Kilgo of The News reports that Police Chief Frank Littlejohn had asked this date that four more subpoenas be issued for suspended police Capt. Lloyd Henkel's Civil Service Commission hearing on July 14 to determine whether he should be permanently fired.

In Charlotte, it is reported that children in the city were probably feeling discriminated against because children in the county could purchase ice cream on the streets and they could not, as the courts had ruled during the week. A local ice cream man had been arrested for selling ice cream to a boy in the city on the street, was found guilty and fined $25 plus costs. He said that he knew that he could not sell ice cream in the city from his trucks unless an order had been placed for it in advance, not the situation in the county where it was legal. He said he had four trucks working in the county with regular routes followed every day. The previous day, their business had dropped off by about 80 percent in the wake of the court ruling, as the children had told his drivers that they could not buy ice cream from their trucks on the street because it was against the law, though not so in the county. The owner said that he received telephone calls from city people asking why he did not come around, explaining that he could not do so without specific orders from people in the city. He said that in the county, they had little groups of children on each street who gathered and waited for the truck. He said that he hoped that the people in the county would realize that they were not breaking the law when their children bought ice cream from the trucks. Those children in the city should migrate to Winston-Salem, where it is perfectly legal to sell from the ice cream trucks in the city, though we will not know of that for about another month and a half. Where we are still, they do not have ice cream trucks, at least not where we live out a ways from town, forcing us to cross the heavily traveled road, always accompanied by someone else, to purchase from the vending machines across the way that which is necessary to stay, you know, like cool, daddy-o, on a hot summer's day, while we take refuge in our tree, in which no one is, only out, as we watch the wheels roll by with the clouds extending out to the big sky.

On the editorial page, "A Sequence of Ten-Second Opinions" indicates that Noel Coward had once been prompted to observe that at such a time as the present hot days of July, only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the noonday sun, that William Shakespeare had said, "This is very midsummer madness!" It thus decides that it should not run the risk of raising the humidity with editorial thoughts, lengthily expressed, as there were times when brevity was a blessing and levity a relief, thus provides a sequence of "ten-second editorials", refusing to get cosmic about anything this date. "Come on in and shop around."