The Charlotte News

Monday, October 27, 1941

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Mister Hill, to be distinguished from Lister Hill, we find from the page today, told a Fish story, and, consequently, was indicted for perjury--the vagarious, precarious gibbet's Gordian knot by which one is left twisting slowly, slowly in the wind in vouching for another, especially one who enjoys Congressional immunity, and doesn't dight his franking privilege more than to afford Nazis its seisin.

Major Henderson, in his letter to the editor this day, does not like the way an Associated Press piece in The News had apparently suggested that the "Red" forces, involved in the Carolina maneuvers of late, had not been sufficiently effective in their assault on the "Blue" forces, fording the Catawba river via a pontoon bridge and taking hundreds of men and vehicles against determined resistance, while pushing the enemy back 27 miles in three days.

Regardless of the truth or falsity of the charge, as it would soon become moot anyway, we are glad that they had the discretion not to label the two competing armies the "Blue" and the "Gray". They instead foresaw the future of American politics. Whether the line resides at the Catawba, however, we would have to pause to consider after analysis of the results to come.

Well, whether you intend to vote next week for the "Blue", the "Red", or the "Others" ticket, vote. It costs nothing, and it is the only way legally you can do anything about it all, other than run for office yourself. And that, of course, costs plenty in this day and age. So vote. It is must cheaper than living in a third world country.

The Clapper piece regards the successful maneuvering by the port of Boston for transfer to itself of the bulk of the shipping trade on the Atlantic, managing to strip away commerce from New York, and the resulting confusion in the report coming out of it, leading to the initial belief that all aid to Russia would be shipped by way of the Atlantic, presumably to Archangel, the implication being that the Administration was appeasing Japan by the elimination of the Pacific route for aid delivered via Vladivostok. All of it turned out to be simply the result of a semi-occluded report, meant only to convey news of the Atlantic trade route's change of embarkation point.

Both oceans continued to be stirred.

"Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man."

Incidentally, we had a trailer behind our little blue roadster that cold night in Bismarck. The drive train took it okay, but the flimsy rear bumper, attached only to the body, there being no sub-frame to which to attach it, and otherwise not being sufficiently of strength to withstand for long such a thing, didn't care for it at all. We seem to recall that being the reason we had stopped the engine on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere: to check its stability, as it continually wished to loose itself from the body and hurtle off tangentially upon its merry way down the road, the safety chains wrapped 'round the transaxle mounts--one of which, at one point, though not this particular night, comprised of a pair of bolts with a rubber tortion buffer, qua a fifty dollar bill, zounds, wrapping them, being itself one of four supporting the entire transaxle and engine load, and not being engineered for extraneous rearward pull upon one of its mounting axes, broke in the process and nearly dumped the entire train sparking onto the macadam--being the only saving grace a time or two. But having stopped as precaution against undue gyring and gimbling wy the wabe, the engine stalled there in the icy Bismarck climes, (or perhaps the result of our having deliberately disengaged it for the nonce in order to avoid consumption of fumes, as thus the enraged did of poor Fleance, unhealthy to the breathing apparatus by which we sustain life), and then the starter refused to pop its solenoid into the hole out of the bell-housing and engage the teeth of the flywheel, thus, in the normal course of revolution, causing the engine to turn, in strife, transmitting spark to each cylinder head in its rotation, 1-4-3-2, that relayed by the battery through the coil to the distributor, igniting then the flow of gas, covened at just the right instant by the electronic data processor, and bango. But it was not to be that night. In Bismarck, into which we had chanced to stray, we would our spark had flattered light, failing that, we could with rance lay down to stay, upon this sleighed sea's flurried slight, a penman's cant gone all aglay into driven, dreary peascod's trenchant, fitchant play in flight, not to be but a wight's Tant's array, viz., dark's affray should from in this closed pight away.

Trailers, says Senator Soaper, are like rock 'n' roll. And, back in November 1975, we proved the prognostic axiom true.

We still have that bumper, though. It rests just ten feet the other side of a wall from where we sit--as a reminder of Bismarck, among other things.

Later, we got a red roadster, too. Its bumpers, however, remained without blemish, as we never traveled with them very far; nay, not even so far as to cross on a pontoon bridge the vast miles and miles of the Catawba.

Well, you see, we're not under oath here, fortunately.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links-Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i>--</i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.