The Coral Gables Times

Thursday, July 6, 1961, page 4 (of 20)

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Coral Gables THE TIMES

A Hysterectomy By Any Other Name

There are three questions before the house this morning: 1. Reassessment should be defeated in a vote in August. We predict it will. Then we must go about an orderly reassessment, which it is imperative we have. 2. The "McLeod Amendment" should be identified for what it is. It is not an "amendment." It is a hysterectomy. Let us recognize it then as the McLeod Charter and work against it in the vote in October. At this point, McLeod's ideas probably would triumph if put to a vote because of legitimate discontent with Metro (faith without works is dead). However, there are 90 days in which to win the battle. 3. Finally — and this is most important in our opinion—Metro must act to save its own neck. There needs to be another item on that referendum ballot in October. This item also would propose an "amendment" to the Metro charter. Let it come from citizens interested in Metro who recognize its shortcomings but who are intent on preserving its form. Perhaps the outstanding lack of Metro is the absence of definitions as to what are its powers and aren't. We have heard it suggested that a Bill of Rights for Dade municipalities is needed. Well they are. For it makes no sense to put everything under Metro's skirts merely because she is a big girl. There are many areas of government best left to local government. There also is the need to recognize the distinction between city dwellers and country, or non-incorporated dwellers. Something equitable must come that will provide the services for this large body of non-incorporated citizens — between a fourth and half of the county's whole population. Not only must the services be provided them but city taxpayers must not be doubly taxed in each instance for their own municipal services plus the in-the-county duplication. Unless responsible people act in Metro's behalf — pruning it here, prodding it there and providing by their own amendment a clarification of its responsibilities and limitations — then we have no one to look to but ourselves for the chaos that will come in the future. Even if McLeod and his hysterectomy are defeated, surely there will be others who rise to plague Metro. A series of crippling referendums will ensue and all will be lost — including us poor folks who live here.

A Word From the Wise

Shortly after the fall of France in World War II there was published in a New York paper a letter written by a French workingman which read as follows: "We have lacked an idea. We came to imagine that the proper duty of man was to arrange as easy way of life, individualistic to the point of selfishness. We saw no farther than the village pump. "We looked upon the State as a universal purveyor, and we always spoke of our due, seldom our duty — and imagined that the State would prove an everlasting milch cow. "Tell this to the Americans. Warn them at the same time of the peril that may befall democracy everywhere when it forgets that Free Men have Duties as well as Rights." Need we say more?

For Summer at Beach Kids & Dogs Howling, They Left

By ELVA CHARLTON Correspondent | People who have not packed up a family with three children and dogs for a whole summer at the beach won't appreciate this. Bear in mind, we always did things the hard way. To help with expenses, we rented our city house. This meant that we had a three-way packing which started about a month before we left. My husband, always the organizer and boss, set up our system of packing. We used grocery store cartons, labeled "attic," "first," "second" and "third" trips. "Third" trip cartons always got lost. Our daughter managed to get herself packed, and stay in that untouchable place girls inhabit in their teens. Of course, on the first trip we had to take everything that was living, plus everything to keep on living until the next weekend. The car was packed with a finesse no human could equal. Naturally, I had nothing to do with it. I knew once we got started we were not going to stop for anything. Blankets, sheets, cooking utensils left us small room to sit. The lucky person who had the one place left in the back seat had to support the cartons which kept falling over on them. I never forgave my mother for not accepting my invitation to go with us, she said. "Oh, I'll be there after you get unpacked. I think I'll take the train this year." Almost there, we saw delicious Jersey fruits and vegetables for sale along the road. For this my husband stopped. We usually bought things by the basket, but the 100 lbs. of potatoes came in a paper bag. Where to put this became a matter of life and death. The mother dog and her puppies were on the floor of the back seat, and there the potatoes had to go also. It was too much to expect that the potatoes should stay in the bag or that the little brown puppies should be happy once they were out. Wedged in as we were, we just had to hope that the puppies were yelping from delight at having so many little brown balls to play with. At about this time, the two boys could not stand their cramped quarters. They matched the puppies howl for howl. My husband drove on, saying, "Why didn't you go before you left?" "We didn't have to then, we do now." I looked at my husband with vexation. "Master of all things," I thought. Once we crossed the bridge over the marshland, and I breathed the heavenly good salt air, my spirits began to revive a little. They sank once again as we pulled up in front of our cottage. It looked desolate. When I thought of the work it would take before we were settled... I had only two choices, either get out of the car or stay in it. The boys scrambled over me and were off. But weariness was forgotten. It was a summer full of excitement. We watched a panorama of events. Curtains drawn, the show began. See next week.

From the Cow: A Lesson The Rocking Chair in Society

By PHILLIPS RUSSELL Correspondent | Ye olde rockin' chair as used by President Kennedy has not only risen into the White House but into international conferences. The next step may carry it into and among the high seats of the diplomatic world. The Southern rockin' chair (the President's lady doctor has prescribed a chair turned out by the hundred in a small North Carolina plant) may prove to be an instrument of peace. It is impossible to hate the representative of a nation when you sit down with him on a breezy porch and rock with him. Breaking bread, once the symbol of peace, has not lately lived up to its reputation, for, having graduated into official banquets and dinner parties, it has become too much the symbol of boredom and insincere speeches. The president's doctor put him in a rocking chair rather than a too-stuffed seat because the rocker, while affording mild and beneficial exercise, promotes relaxation. The world has only lately begun to appreciate relaxation. It was formerly taught to revere the strenuous life and to cultivate activity in the belief that to raise a dust is a sign of success. The cattle in a field know better than that. Though surrounded by lush grass, they graze only until they have had enough. Then they lie down, chew the cud of reflection, and relax. Cattle do not need a rocking chair. But human beings, when built like the President, do. They lack an interior guide, or pay no attention when an inner voice tells them they have had enough. The man in the street has an expression to fit the person who no longer exercises judgment in the affairs of life. He says the victim is "off his rocker", showing that he, the common man, knew a thing or two even before the President had caught up with it.

Remember The Times

25 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK | A local orchestra leader reports that despite it being the "off season" it is next to impossible to find a spare piano player in the Miami area . . . June Burr, Coral Gables' ace swimming star left for Manhattan Beach, N.Y., to try out for the Olympics . . . Attorneys for A. J. Daino's construction firm have been busily buying up tax certificates on local property. The firm is reported interested in building 200 homes in Coral Gables . . . Mr. Weidmuller (Hans Wedemeyer?) will soon open Coral Gables' first florist shop. | 10 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK | The City Commission passed a resolution against certain types of door-to-door peddlers which had been creating a great deal of nuisance to residents . . . Mrs. Lucille McGahey took her den of Cub Scouts on a flight over the Southwest area courtesy of Eastern Airlines . . . Sam Weissel sold the Gables' oldest taxi service, Sam's Silver Fleet, to the Checker Cab Co . . . The new $59,000 Bird Road Bridge at Granada Blvd. is opened . . . And, the first bus is driven into the new Coral Gables Bus Terminal, now under construction, to test it for size. | ONE YEAR AGO THIS WEEK | The Gables' Barcelona Gardens Restaurant located on Ponce de Leon Blvd., has been sold to the M and M Cafeteria Chain . . . C. B. Dunham, Assistant Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami, resigned to accept th position of Dean of Students at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore . . . S. H. Compton and his 15-year-old son Hosmer, of 1101 Avenue Sorolla, took three top honors in a boating contest at Tavernier Key.

INKSPOTS