JULY 20 - JULY 26, 1998
JULY 25-26, 1998
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JULY 24, 1998
When will they tell the truth?
A citizen came to the Commissioner's meeting on July 20th. He
complained of being cited under the 1991 Flow Control Ordinance. Mark Salvagio stated that
he had been cited because he burned wood from a building he tore down. Keep in mind that
Mr. Salvagio had already paid for a trailer to haul other debris to the garbage dump. The
trailer rental cost him $110 and he paid the dump $42 for the privilege to dispose of the
unburnable materials.
According to Chief Simcox who wrote the NON-TRAFFIC CITATION/SUMMONS number
PO877866-3, Salvagio was cited for failure to haul the building materials away,
not for burning them. He said this to The Bradford Era after it was pointed out
that burning was not mentioned anywhere in the Flow Control Ordinance as a prohibited act.
However, what Chief Simcox is quoted as saying and what he actually did are two different
things.
Section 20 of the Citation, notice of offense, clearly says:
"Deft. did burn municipal waste, after
being warned on 5-8-98, Demolition- (LATL) In accord with Municipal Waste Flow Control
Ordinance. 1-91."
The Bradford Era has misquoted people before and Chief Simcox deserves
the benefit of the doubt. However, burning wood, whether it is from demolition or
just a local scrap pile, is not a prohibited act under the Ordinance. Why then was Mr.
Salvagio cited? What is this really about, anyway?
The Beginning of Football Season
The veterans reported to camp last night. Today the National Football
League begins its full summer training. The first week in September is the beginning of
the regular season. Now is the time that fans begin to plot a course for their favorite
team that will take them to the Super Bowl.
I remember the glory days of the Pittsburgh Steelers. They were great
years. The Steelers changed football and introduced concepts to the management of players
and a team that are still in use today. They went to four super bowls and won all four.
They were an exciting team and they were either loved, or they were hated. Either way was
alright with them; they were the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Buffalo Bills went to four Super Bowls, too. Four super bowls and
four losses; and, four times they made excuses for those losses. Even as losers, the
Buffalo Bills were loved; and, they were forgiven by their fans. They are still loved by
their fans. That's football! That's what makes it great.
Winning and losing is a way of life with Americans. We take chances.
We gamble on ourselves. We teach our children these things and that is why we revere these
professional athletes so much. They epitomize this struggle. Man against man, testing
their individual strengths and weaknesses, attempting to overcome adversity and win a
game. Sometimes, we join in the struggle. We bet on the games. Sports gambling is
estimated to be a 60 Billion dollar a year industry. The large majority of it is illegal.
These are special human beings who play professional football. They
represent a very select group of men who have been able to achieve physical superiority.
They are larger, stronger, and faster than normal men. For the most part, they have been
groomed for their role as a professional football player since they were small boys. The
men who achieve a place on a NFL roster have seldom experienced defeat. They have always
been the best and have always won. That is what makes watching these extraordinary humans
perform so interesting. It is a test of wills between the best of the best at what they
do. That is why we love them and want to be like them so much.
Because we recognize them as being special, we sometimes overlook that they are
human, too. They have all the same needs and fears that we have. They are
larger, but really no different than us. They all believe that they will have that one
more season. They all believe that what they have will never end. When it does, it is a
bitter pill for them to swallow. While they make large amounts of money, many leave
football with little to show except some rings and trophies.
I have known several of these men. One of them, Mike Freeman, Center
on two Denver Broncos superbowl teams, came to Bradford. Many people got to meet him and
talk to him personally. They found him to be a special person, both as an athelete and as
a man. While he was special, he was still a regular man. He was someone we liked and we
called him our friend. We still call him our friend and wish him well in coaching. Class
always shows through.
Another season begins and with it the hopes begin, too. Judy Wills,
the lovely proprietress of JJ's Saloon on East Main Street in Bradford will headquarter
the Buffalo Bills rooting section in town. Of course the Gateser and I will be at the
Rainbow Inn anchoring the Pittsburgh Steelers. We will be friendly rivals until our teams
are either in the superbowl, or eliminated. It is the same every year. We are all even
now. Las Vegas odds are available and I am told our gambling District Attorney, Michele
Alfieri, has yet to set her odds on the season. We anxiously await the release of her
first sheet this year.
Players come and players go, only the fans stay the same. It is
another year and anything can happen. We are sure that it will. You can bet on it. Just
don't get caught!
JULY 23, 1998
Who knows best now?
Yesterday, actor Robert Young died. Remember him? Jim Anderson from Father
Knows Best and Marcus Welby from the series of the same name.
He was a kind of constant in my life at times. I can remember being on
the living room floor with my mother sitting on the couch and us watching this mythical
television family with two girls and a middle son named Bud. The three children all came
with their own problems. Of course, their problems did not include any modern day problems
like we have now, just the standard garden variety for the late fifties and early sixties.
Jim, the father, always had an answer and allowed the person in the imaginary crisis to
come to it on their own after he gave them fatherly guidance. That family lived a good
life.
It was the life I grew up imagining I wanted for myself. It was what I
saw when I imagined myself married with a family. It was what I believed I wanted, but it
was quite a bit different from what I had.
My life with my parents was a good one. As a child I had everything
that I needed to grow and become a man. I went to good schools. I had my clothing and
three meals a day. There was no violence in my home and as children, my brother and sister
and I were treated very well. It just wasn't the mythical life the five people I used to
watch lived. Somehow and in someway, perhaps I thought I was missing something. Perhaps I
thought I was being cheated. Was that what happened to our generation? Did we all feel the
same way? Were we searching for this perfect life that we saw every week on television?
Jim Anderson was not my dad. No one even called him dad on the
program. He was called father. What kind of name would that have been? Dad knows Best. It
just didn't have that ring to it and unfortunately, the attempts by many of us to carry
that life over into our own, just didn't have the same ring either. The differences were
obvious. Jim was a white collar worker. My dad had been a truck driver first, and then a
policeman. I could never have dated Cathy. Jim and Betty would never approve of a son of a
policeman. Our car was ten years old and we didn't belong to the country club. We were
from two different worlds, and back then, the gulf between the two was a barrier that was
seldom crossed.
Father Knows Best gave way to Marcus Welby.
The nation was in turmoil. The Vietnam War was raging. Bud probably had enlisted in the
marines and had gone to war. The kitten was probably wearing love beads and protesting.
Cathy had escaped it all. She got pregnant and was now married with two children. Old
Doctor Welby had the cure for everything. He could mend your broken bones, cure cancer,
hold your hand as you lay dying, and lend you that old fashioned home spun wisdom. The
wisdom was much the same as that of Jim Anderson, it was just more in keeping with the
times and the modern issues. Marcus Welby became our new guide post and our new mentor.
The nation was in turmoil. We trusted Jim Anderson; but we were adults
now. We had taken down the barriers that he had given us. We had turned our backs on the
values of our families. We were going to do things our way. It was good to have the
grandfatherly Doctor Welby there to be ready to pick up the pieces and give us a kind word
now and then. It actually helped.
When all else failed, wisdom would prove to be the most valuable treasure from
which we could draw. Recognizing what a mess we had made of our lives was only
the first step. Marcus Welby was there to help us make that recognition. He was also there
to guide us and help us when we fell. He would pick us up and send us in the right
direction. With each lesson he taught, it was that much more we learned. In time, Doctor
Welby retired to Arizona and we were left to fend for ourselves.
For so many years we made it on our own. We have raised our children
in the hopes that they would not repeat our mistakes. We were confident in our decisions.
Marcus saw to it that we had that confidence. Still, we always knew that he was out there
if we ever needed his help. It was comforting to know that. With the passing of Jim
Anderson, Doctor Marcus Welby, and actor Robert Young, who knows best now?
Is it me?
If it is, that is a scary thought!
JULY 22, 1998
Old Timers Stories-The Great Marshburg Explosion
Just before his death several years ago, The honorary Mayor of the Village of
Marshburg, Larry Ely, relayed a story to me that dated back to his youth.
"It was just before the war. I was seventeen or eighteen
and living with my parents down on Sugar Run. I was working in the oil fields and we used
nitroglycerine to shoot the wells. The war in Europe was really kicking up and oil was at
a premium. The Marshburg field was really producing a load of oil then and some high
rollers were really cleaning up."
Now old Larry did like his beer and his martinis. We were at the
Rainbow Inn and I was tending bar that day. Larry had "settled" his stomach with
a few beers before getting into the martinis. It was after one or two of them, he would
get to the story telling. That day he had an especially good one.
"It was a employee of American Powder Company; a man by
the name of John Gloss. He was from Irvin Mills, NY and was driving a truck loaded with
500 quarts of nitro. He was taking it ot a magazine near Clarendon over in Warren County
and had a few stops along the way. He drove the truck through downtown Smethport and up
the hill and across the flats on Route 59.
"He had to make a few deliveries along the way and had
one that amounted to two quarts in Marshburg. He took care of the first ones easy enough
and cut down 219 to Custer City and then up Route 770. It wasn't much of a road. It was an
old railroad grade that was leveled out, just wide enough for a truck or two cars. he made
that delivery and visited with a few of his buddies. They say he tasted a few swallows of
moon shine, just to steady his nerves, before going on his way."
The mention of the moon shine must have made Larry thirsty. He
finished his second martini and ordered a third. While it may seem like Larry was drinking
fast, he really wasn't. Larry didn't drink fast, he just drank a lot. Larry also talked
very slow. It might take him a minute or so to get the sentence completed. He would work
it over in his mind and actually rearrange the words. He chose every thought carefully and
then doing that, he would deliver completed product.
"I was working in the Marshburg field that day. I saw the
truck as it pulled away. It was September 19, 1941. The leaves on the trees were changing.
They weren't big trees then. The whole hill top had been cut clean. First it was the
hemlock; then later, the smaller trees by the Chemical Plants to make charcoal for the
steel mills in Buffalo. The forest was about ten years old then and just starting to come
back.
"I guess old Gloss got himself started toward
Warren." Larry laughed to himself and then explained. "Gloss was only 24 or 25.
He was old to a skinny kid like me. He doesn't seem so old now that I am this age."
He laughed again and took a sip of his drink.
"Cliff Martin and Clare Streeter were on their way to an
oil producers meeting in Oil City. They were big time oil men back then. Clare was driving
a black Ford Sedan with a straight six motor in it. It would really go and he drove it
wide open out on the road. He must have tried to pass the truck. It was down just past
where Pine Acres golf course is located now. As he did the sedan must have bumped the back
end of the truck and the truck must have hit the bumpy part on the birm of the road. It
must have knocked some nitro loose.
"Anyway, there was one hell of an explosion. Streeter's
car was blown backwards about fifty feet and the nitro truck was vaporized. There was a
crater in the road fifty feet deep and the trees were flattened down for a hundred
yards in every direction. Yep. It as one hell of a blast. It damn near blew me right
off the rig."
Larry sipped the gin. He didn't care for much Vermouth. I just sort of
waved the cap over it so some vapors hung around the rim of the glass. He picked out an
olive and munched on it. He mentioned something about it being lunch.
"The blast got everybody's attention. Ed Fitzgerald was
driving and the explosion brought his car to a stop. He was scared to death. He thought a
bomb dropped from an airplane. He just couldn't of on.
"Jim Bryner and Harry McAffee heard the explosion. They
came up on Fitzgerald, who was stopped in the middle of the road. They passed him and
drove to the place where the explosion took place. They were the first to reach it. Soon,
they were joined by the workers in the field. There was nothing there. There was just a
hole in the ground.
"Martin was dead. His body was really mangled. The car
was off the road behind the blast, blown backwards. Streeter was cut badly by the shrapnel
of the exploding truck and the glass from the windows of his own car. He lost an eye and
was lucky he wasn't killed. The windshield wiper was sticking in his eye socket and could
have just as easily gone into his brain. He lived a long time after that. He recovered and
finally died about twenty years ago in the seventies."
"What about the driver?" I asked.
"He died. They found a few pieces that they said was him.
A piece of a hand was in a tree about two hundred yard away and his shoe was up the road
sitting right in the center. Outside of that, there wasn't too much left of him. The
crater is still there. They filled it in best as they could and built the road over
it."
Larry ordered another martini and continued reminiscing.
"The war came along in December. I enlisted in the navy
and never went back to the fields as a rough neck. I did go back as a welder after the
war, but it wasn't the same. I used to watch those boys and I always missed it, just a
little. It was a good time then, just before the war. It was never the same for me
later."
Larry is gone now and so are his hours of story telling on snowy Marshburg
afternoons at the Rainbow
Inn. With him, an era went also. When the last of those men falls, it will be
as if it never happened. He is missed. So are his stories.
JULY 21, 1998
Movies in the middle of the night
We look at our society and we wonder what has happened. Think about
it. What was it really like thirty years ago? What did we have? What didn't we have? Our
parents were complaining about television and how we, as children, spent so much time
watching the tube. True? For those of us who were teenagers in the fifties and the
sixties, we know it is true. By the time the seventies came along, the tube was a foregone
conclusion and fact of life.
Back in those days you needed a huge television antenna on the roof of your
house to bring in the three local stations and an occasional UHF channel. If you
couldn't afford a rotating device, after a wind storm, you would have to re-align the
antenna to sharpen your reception. We watched Walter Chronkite and we believed everything
he told us. He was our access to the outside world.
We were in a space race with the Russians. There would be early
morning launches of satellites, live on television. Later, there were manned launches with
the whole nation coming to a stop, just to watch and pray for the safety of the astronauts
who were carrying our flag into space. They represented our national pride and we had
allot of it. We were the United States of America!
We landed on the moon. What an event! We made it all the way to the
moon, landed, and came back safely. We watched it all on television. We turned our antenna
just to sharpen the picture. We did not want to miss a single moment. We wanted to see it
all.
Cable television was only a concept. Imagine! Paying money to watch
what we were taking out of the air for free! It seemed like a pretty dumb idea to most of
us. We were sure that the fool who dreamed up that idea was destined to be selling pencils
on the nearest street corner in the not too distant future. We were buying color
televisions and were not worried about getting more than the three local network stations
and the UHF station for the B movies. Why would we need more stations than those four? Why
would I want to watch a station in Atlanta when I lived in Pittsburgh? It just made no
sense!
Back in those days, Swing Shift Theater, The Late Show, and the Late Late Show
came on after the news. Old movies were on and used car dealers tried selling you
cars. The networks ignored the dead time after the news. Everyone had gone to bed. Then
came Jack Parr and Johnny Carson. America started staying up at night. That fool with the
idea of cable television went into rural areas with poor reception and went into business
serving small towns. It worked.
Soon we had satellites orbiting the earth and they could give us television
signals. Then came Ted Turner and CNN and HBO and Cinemax and Superstations. As
the Vietnam War left the evening news our technology had developed to a state that we were
able to beam the news around the world instantly. Time zones meant nothing. Distance was
only a word, it was no longer a barrier. Life changed!
As fast as the news was reported, our values and morals turned the corner.
It must have had something to do with the information that was being disseminated to us.
Perhaps we were bombarded with so much that it became near impossible for us to evaluate
and decide what best fit our lives. As a society, we made some bad decisions. As
individuals, we felt helpless. We had the television telling us what to do next. We had
the television acting as our role model.
Suddenly, it was a twenty four hour a day operation that gave us news
up to the second. We watched wars begin, live, on television. We watched riots and
earthquakes and fires. We saw OJ Simpson drive down the freeway followed by a hundred
police cars and many of us secretly wished he would just shoot himself and get the mess
done with once and for all. We watched his trial and then listened to him say how he was
innocent. We watched. We listened. We did not believe what we were seeing and hearing. We
were hardened. We were numbed.
Was it the old story, too much too soon? Had it come on us so fast
that we did not have the opportunity to appreciate what we had? Who envisioned movies in
the middle of the night? Who was it that believed that people would shop over a
television? Why did someone believe that we needed access to over 1,000 different stations
at the same time?
I can't say for sure. I really don't know. I live through it and now just take
it for granted. It seems like it was always there. I can't remember a time when I
couldn't get up and watch something at 3 A.M. It isn't just having something to watch, it
is having a selection of things to watch. HBO, HBO2, HBO3, Cinemax, Moremax, The Movie
Channel, The Movie Channel 2, and on and on. It never stops. It is there to numb your
brain and take over your lives. It has never been like this before and they promise it
will be better tomorrow. Soon, we will never have to leave our homes. We will have utopia
in a 52 inch digitally enhanced television screen. We will have paradise in our homes.
Life will be wonderful.
In the meantime our taxes will increase and we will support more and
more of the world. Our children will be lost, have no direction, no future, no purpose in
life. If they have a problem, the television can solve it for them. The government will
tell us what to do and we will listen. Politicians will operate in secret and we will
forget about public meeting and public disclosures and the laws that guarantee Sunshine in
government. We will watch television and "Let George do it." We will watch our
movies in the middle of the night.
JULY 20, 1998
A Question of Integrity
A debate is raging in the US Senate over the appointment of Daryl Jones as
Secretary of the Air Force. Mr. Jones has been a fighter pilot in the Air Force
Reserve flying the state of the art F-16 Eagle. It appears that his integrity is being
questioned by the Republican majority because Jones' commanding officer has testified that
Jones misrepresented the manner in which he ceased flying F-16's. Big deal!
The commanding officer stated that he grounded Jones and forced him to resign
from the Reserve. Jones claims that it was a mutual agreement. He says his
proficiency was not up to standards and the CO sat him down and told him to consider what
his future was going to be. Jones says the commanding officer told him to go home and talk
it over with his wife and give him a decision the next day. Jones did ultimately resign
his commission and cease flying.
Jones, an investment banker and a lawyer, was active in the Democratic Party
while flying F-16's. He openly admits that it was difficult for him to get in the
hours he needed each month to maintain his proficiency. He quit. For whatever reason, he
quit. Now it seems that this man who has distinguished himself both professionally and
militarily is being made the target of an evil political smear. Believe me, I know what
that is about. I have been the on going target of exactly the same thing.
What difference does it make how he came to quit flying F-16's? How
many are entrusted with such a sophisticated weapon of war in the first place? He was in
the elite of flyers and how he came to stop flying does in no way diminish what he did
while he was flying. We should focus on his qualifications to be Secretary of the Air
Force, whatever they might be. Are they opposing him because he is a young black man?
Is that what this is about? Is the stuffy old guard of the Republican Party tired
of Bill Clinton's appointments of people young enough to be their children? I see this as
a bunch of bull.
I have no argument with Mr. Jones integrity as a fighter pilot. I am
proud that he served and hereby thank him. However, I do have other problems with his
integrity and I really know nothing about him. The fact that he is an investment banker
and an attorney really disturbs me! That in itself should send up the red flags, not how
he came to stop flying F-16's. Whenever I am mistaken for an attorney I immediately reply:
"I am not an attorney. I am an honest man!" The same holds true for bankers,
investment or otherwise.
Day Trips
This was really one of those weekends that is easy to remember for years to
come. The weather was absolutely perfect. The Zippo-Case Swap Meet seemed to me
to be another rousing success. Many people will point to other years and say that the
crowds were larger; but really, who needs large crowds to have a good time? The point is,
the people who did come indeed had a good and memorable time. Even at that, the size of
the crowds was nothing to sneeze at.
We spent the day on Saturday on Main Street in Bradford. Sharyn, Aunt
Rose, and I met Sharyn's parents, Winnie and George, and shopped the vendors set up for
the day. I made out okay. Man's World had a few tables on the sidewalk and I was having
shirts and sweaters held up against me and before long I was taking bags back to the car.
As for the parking controversy on Main Street, I found a place on the first try.
Starting at 12:30 there was live music in the square. Every hour or so
another group set up and entertained. Every group I heard was very good and we were
treated to a wide variety of music. Even Aunt Rose, who is a bit hard of hearing, got into
the swing of things and tapped her foot to the beat of several songs. It was a great day.
The weather cooperated and the intense humidity seemed to disappear as the winds came in
from Canada. I got to see some friends. I even saw an old enemy. She refused to speak to
me when I said hello. She is as ignorant as ever! Nothing changes.
Sunday started out just as nice as Saturday. We decided to take a
ride. This time we went west and wound up at Bemus Point on Chautauqua Lake. It was after
two and the three of us were hungry. Bemus has a variety of places to eat and drink; all
of them very good. We like the Italian Fisherman, especially the back deck that overlooks
the lake and features Dixieland music every Sunday.
It was just under an hour and a half drive. Parking was not a problem
and the food was just great. The Italian Fisherman seems to attract an older and more
sedate crowd, while the Surf Club across the street had the louder, rock music. There was
something for everyone there. Bemus Point offers shops that would interest most people
interested in just browsing. There is enough to tempt you into making that purchase that
you really don't need. For a Sunday afternoon, it was a great place to visit.
Where we live is a wonderful place. We are also surrounded by other
interesting and great places. These places offer a wide variety of things to do and not
just on weekends. There is a beach with a wonderful facility for picnics on the Allegheny
Reservoir and it is within a half an hour of most of us. That is one of our least used
resources on these hot summer days.
The point is this. We have a whole lot of things to do right here in
our own backyard. They are healthy and they are wholesome. Sharyn and I do these things
with our family as much as possible. It gives us a closeness. I am saying to try it. You
will be surprised. It doesn't take money to enjoy your loved ones. It takes your time.
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