Tuesday, Augusf 16, 1966

Why Not A New Main Post Office?

In its quest for new postal senice, Greenville hould not overlook the need for a new and modern postal facility to replace its main post office in the heart of the city.

In recent v.eeks it has been announced that efforts arc underway for a subsidiary postal facility in the western section of the city. Just yesterday it was announced that bids are being taken for a contract station in the Pitt Plaza section. This latter etation will not oe a post office in the sense that mail will be distributed from it, but rather a place where letters and packages may be mailed and

State Forester Tells A Story

By WILUAM A. SHIRES

SPSPENSE - The report of the State Forestry division on forest fire control during the first six months of 1966 reads like the gripping, sus-pcnseful plot of a thrilling novel.

Assistant state forester P. W. Tillman has penned it in narrative form., leading the reader from drought in December, heavy snow anu ice in January and February and a rainfall deficiency of nearly 10 inches to the black Fri-^y afternoon of April 1, 1966.

This was the aiternoon that much of North Carolina's valuable woodlands seemed to explode in fire.

WILLIAM

SHIRES

Beginning on that black Friday afternoon, more than 1,200 fwest fires occu red across the state of North Carolina within a month and burned more than 85.000 acres, causmg many thousands of dollars damage. Most of this happened in a period of just four critical days.

CONDITIONS - A total of 424 forest fires burning 3,-217 acres occured in the winter months of January and February, but Tillman writes that the really severe and critical situation developed during a dry and windy March.

Woods conditions started drying out -in March, he aid, with deficient rainfall and the heavy demand by trees and lesser vegetation in the budding out and greening up processes of Spring.

During ,this month, forest fires burned 2,000 and 3,500 acres in Onslow and Pamlico counties alone and a total of 1,470 fires burned over 21^74 acres in March.

But this was a relatively mall loss in comparison with the conflagrations of early April and their accompanying drama.

OUTBREAK - This situation developed on fairly short notice. On March 30, the Southeastern Forest Fire Laboratory at Macon, Ga., telephoned a warning of approaching critically unfavorable fire weather conditions, Tillman ays.

Word of the impending danger was sent immediately to/ all field offices and the state forester cancelled all burning permits and prohibited all use of fire in or near the woods.

Forest fire warnings were broadcast by radio stations with all radio reports. But tinder dry conditions were upon the state and, as Tillman reports, fires continued to break out and were increasingly difficult to supress.

By the morning of April 1, severe fire weather was rapidly approaching. By one oclock in the afternoon winds \ -re gusting to 30 - 35 miles per hour. The air was clear and dry and, for forest fires, explosive.

REPORT In words of Tillmans graphic report, by early afternoon numerous fires were occuring and travelers and rural residents know that unusual fire conditions existed.

They saw and smelled the smoke that darkened highways and rural roads. Highway patrol and police cars, with blinking blue lights, set up roadblocks and helped handle traffic in areas of ooor visibilityroads shrouded in smoke from blazing forests.

And then . says Tillman, fire behavior became erratic and severe. State forest rangers and their crews were severely taxed in controlling fires and stopping new ones.

The critical fire condi-tins predicted earlier were indeed arriving, Tillman writes.

FIRES - On the black friday afternoon of April 1, a fire south of the town of Pinebluff ran five miles due east and burned 2.945 acres. One began near Suggs Mill Pond in Bladen County and roared at terrific speed toward the little town of Ammon and threatened all the homes and buildings in Its path.

The Bladen County fire raged uncontrolled for more than 10 miles.

Complicating firefighting efforts, Tillman says, was the most difficult weather, a cold dry front, which hit this fire about 7 p.m.

It changed direction and accelerated rapidly with sheets of flame going 150 feet high as the pines seemed to explode.

It threw fire brands, burning limbs and sparks 1,00 feet and more ahead of it, Tillman says. It raged for three days, finally brought under control on the night of April 4 after burning over 28,500 (Continued On Page 5)

stamps and other postal services purchased.

Greenville, of course, can bnefit by these additional postal facilities and the increased service they may offer its citizens. These proposed improvements, however, are relatively minor items when one considers how greatly service to all Greenville postal patrons might be improved by a large, modern facility in the heart of the city.

While it is turning ita attention to postal ser-vice and postal facilities, Greenville should give priority to a new,aefficient main postal office building in the heart \>i the city.

The present main post office was constructed in 1913. During the period since its construction, it has undergone an occasional face-lifting, but essentially it is the same facility that was constructed 53 years ago. ,The one addition made to the building added only 400 to 500 square feet of working space.

During the more than half century since the ymain post office was built the volume of mail handled by it has multiplied many times and the postal receipts in Greenville have increased some 20*fold.

In considering its need for postal facilities, Greenville must not make the mistake of dissipating its efforts on small, scattered, limited service facilities and in the process neglect its need for a new basic facility that will bring improved postal sendee to the city and the surrounding area by its post office.

Feking Soundec. ?othetic Note

The Doily Reflector

INCORPORATED

DAVID JULIAN WHICHARD, Chairman Of The ooard

Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday Established 1882 JOHN S. WHICHARD-DAVID J. WHICHARD

Publishers

Entered at Post Ollice, Greenville, N. C. as second class mall matter

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By MAIL, Payable In Advanco

Greenville Post Oiiice, Pitt County, Robersonville, Tanceboro, Washington and Chocowlnity.

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North Carolina (other than listed above)

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By JAMES MARLOW WASHINGTON (AP) -The Red Chinese wrote a fairy tale over the weekend.

No group in history ever faced a more gruesome, gigantic or frustrating task than the Chinese Reds when they took over their country in 1949 and had to rush it and 700 million people out of anitiquity in a hurry.

They have made tremendous progress, led by men like Mao Tze-tung, who for years were fanatic in their zeal to do what they finally had a chance to do.

Now they are old but still fanatic, for this was the only way of life they knew and it is too late for change. This has been the history of others, like Stalin.

Others in C!hina realized rigidity is the condition of a corpse and change a condition of li'e: that in time through the revolutionary process political parties change to adjust like bananas, crocodiles and people.

They have seen Communist parties around the world change as in Yugoslavia and the Soveit Union surrendering dogma to necessities and ideology to reality, but the critics of Maos regime were purged.

E^rly this Month the Chinese Communist partys Central Committee met for 12 days and then issued a communiciue which sounded in part like something from another world.

The fairy tale was in the euphoria about economic, agri-culturial successes. No doubt Red (Jhina was moving forward. But you would never guess it had any set backs, made any mistakes. It had to

Strength For Today

By EARL L. DOUGLASS COST OF ACHIEVEMENT There is a passage in one of Brahms sonatas which has called for the universal praise. It appears to have sprung spontaneously from the rare genius of this great musician. But the biographer of Brahms says that Brahms worked sixteen years over these few bars of music until he perfected them.

A great singer stands before an audience and everyone

marvels at the ease with which he performs. This case came as the result of countless hows of hard discipline. The orator moves multitudes with his eloquence, and although once in a while a spontaneous genius jumps to his feel and utter.s a masterpiece, most great speakers attain their power by years of hard work. We think of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as being hurriedly written a few hours before it wa.s delivered. But there was a way in which Abraham Lincoln had been preparing that address since he was a very young man. The reason why the world has come to regard it'as a masterpeice is because the whole ef Lincolns personality suddenly became vocal. What Lincoln expressed in that speech were not certain ideas; he expres-sed himself.

Nothing in life vvorlli doing is done easily. No one works harder than the genius. There is nothing cheap about this order God has created, and in which He has put us to live. All achievement carries a prica mark.

have had them, with its vast problems. It simply did not admit them.

There was one thing you would guess: it is being caic-ful about trying a second great leap forward. It tried a great leap in 1958 under Maos prodding, a radical collectivization of farm and factory that turned into a great disaster.

This weekends communique did not promise a great leap. It may have hinted at one.

The bitter break with the Soviet Union looks deeper than ever. The communique not only accused the Soviets of betraying communism and safeguarding capitalism but even of trying to restore capitalism.

Yet, there was a pathetic sense of loneliness and reaction about the communique for more reasons than one:

Red China set itself up as the leader of the world Communist movement, knowing as it did so, that one by one other countries, Communist or non - Communist, are beginning to look on her dubiously or breaking away.

2. The whole communique, while its purpose may be to assure internal discipline, is a groveling, cringing, deification of a man, Mao, which makes an obscentity of all other intellects in China because, compared with his, all other look like trash.

In effect the Chinese people are being taken down the most reactionary of all roads. Instead of being urged to seek new values, insights and understandings they are being told the answers are all in and that in all history only three men have had them; Mao, Marx, and Lenin.

Opinions in Brief

It is almost impossible to get a man off the beach or out of the water because of a developing case of sunburn; but put him in his own backyard with the lawn mower and he will advise all within earshot that a half hour in the sun at a time is enough. Gastonia (N.C.) Gazette.

he "(ioiitaiiiimMit * of Cliiiia

By HAL BOYLE

Trusts Cemetery Lots

NEW YORK AP)- Kaye Stevens, red-haired bombshell of the night clubs, had an earlier career as probably the nation s most successful teenage cemetery plot salesman.

I got used to money at a very early age, remarked

the young singing comedienne. I was just turning 7 when I won $7.50 in an amateur contestand I gave it all to the church.

When she was 14 her father, a Cleveland, Ohio, mechanic, died, and she had to go

Other Editors Saying Makes Drivers Unsafe

We think a deduction, at least in part, for parents financing their childrens higher education would pay off in taxes on the higher incomes the young people would command when they enter the world of business.St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times.

(The National Underwriters)

The following consists of excerpts from an article in the July issue of Nations Business entitled Rockabye, hot rods, to the federal lullaby, and written by Alden H. Sypher. He is the former editor and publisher of nations Business:

Congress and state legislators are being armed by politicians and other indisputably expert at getting public attention. But their qualifications as to be diaphanous.

So while legislators take aim at the automobile they hit the driver by mistake, am possibly the passengers. Their training has not been the best.

Many states will follow the federal pattern in attempting to legislate safety into autobiles. All such laws would cost you money and, more important, some may have a greater cost in dignity, liberty and even personal safety.

The more widespread a feeling of security is based on pseudo safety built into automobiles by law, the more dangerous automobiles could become, For the major causes of accidents will not have been touched, and false security could lead to more of them.

Since drivers are the usual cause of accidents, the well-strapped - in menace surrounded by padding and federally sponsored belief that he, personally could not be seriously hurt, the more danger

ous he would become to others. Particularly with a few drinks under his safety belt.

This nation should reduce drastically the toll of traffic, and it can. Eliminating the causes of accidents, which are well known, might be more rewarding work than the present political crusade to make cars more comfortable in crashes. It also would save many more lives.

There is overwhelming evidence that about half our fatal crashes are initiated at least in party by the prior use of alcohol. So Dr. William Haddon Jr. of the New York Department of Health told the spring safety symposium of the National Academy of Engineers,

At the same Washington session a doctor, statistician, psychologist, engineer, and a lawyer all agreed there is growing evidence that aggressive, pathological drinkers were involved in a great percentage of traffic deaths last years.

Which makes the current crusade for safety, aimed almost entirely at the automobile, look something like a campaign to correct the work of a drunken carpenter by redesigning the hammer.

Why is the targt the automobile, which seldom causes accidents, instead of the driver who does?

Automobiles cant vote.

Aggressive, p a t h o 1 o gical diunks can.

to work in earnest. Kaye, a self-taught singer who also plays bass drums and the guitar, soon was making $150 a week.

But the girl is a hard worker. On graduating at 16 from high school she wanted io find something to occupy her days. She answered an ad requiring an ability to meet people.

The job was selling ceme-tary plots, and I loved it,' said Kaye. I wore a black dress and black-rimmed glasses and made myself up to look a mature 22.

I made a minimum of $500 a week. Whatever you do, be good at itthat's my motto.

It lasted a year and a half. Then I quit it for a job singing in Buffalo at $125 a week. That doesnt seem like good business, but it was what I wanted to do. Besides, we had sold all the lots in that cemetery, and Id have had to find another one.

UAL

BOYLE

There followed several years in which she toured the country with a lounge trio and had a brief fling at the movies.

Miss Stevens got her big break when she responded to an urgent call to replace ailing Debbie Reynolds in a Las Vegas spot. She chartered a small plane and flew through a storm to fill the engagement.

The trip was so hurried that her hairdresser was still coming out her long red hair when the spotlight came on and Kaye broke out with the (Continued On Page 5)

Hoping; For A '' Cause:

By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

Copyright, 1966, King Fealufei Syndicate, Inc. ^

They keep saying that local issues* have been tht determining factors in son> of the recent Democratic upsets in the primaries. But when a local issue* recoil in fairly quick succession against three incumbent U.S. Senators who were runn i .i g with the Lyndon Johnson brand on them, it is perhaps inevitable that the defeats in the eyes of skeptics on Captiol Hill, should be attributed more to the LBJ* common denominator ele m e n t then to purely local troubles.

Capitol Hill critics of Hohn-son began to put two and two together, as they see it, when Senator Ross Bass of Tennessee lost out in the Democratic Senatorial primary to Governor Frank G. Clement. Bass, as was noted some time ago in this column, was in bad with a number of his constituents because he had voted in the Senate for repeal of 14 (b), the section of the Taft-Hart-ley Act which permits Tennessee. among other states, to retain its own right-lo-work law. While Lyndon Johnson was never particularly fervent about repeal of 14(b), the effort to legislate univers a 1 compulsory unionism was still rated as an Administrat i o n measure by a crucial number of Tennesseeans. What seems to complete the picture in the Tennessee situation is that Clement had gone around the State telling the people that Bass was a rubber stamp for LBJ.

In the Tennessee gubernatorial primary Buford Ellington. who managed to beat a Kennedy man. began h i s campaign by offering himself as the friend of the President, but he quickly changed his tune when this seemed to be getting him little yardage. It could be that Ellington won solely because his opponent, John J. Hooker Jr., ran with the Bobby Kennedy label on him. Bobljy and Lyndon are about equally popular, in Tennessee.

The licking taken by Ross Bass in the Tennessee primary caused a quick reassessment of the July defeat of incumbent Senator A. Wi 11 i s Robert son by William B. Spong Jr. in (he Virginia primary polls. Everyone had been saying that Roberts o n lost because of his age and the fact that the bankers were for him. But now it is being whispered that Robertson missed out by a hair (he lost by a mere 611 votes) because he had the LBJ brand on him as chairman of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee.

Robertson had gone along, with the fiscal and monetary policies of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Fowler, his fellow Virginian, and these policies, as it has seemed to the anti-LBJ element on the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, have obstructed the flow of capital in America without doing a good compensating job of either paying for the Vietnamese War or stemming the snowballing inflation. Whether it is significant or not. young Harry Byrd, who was runnng for the other Virginia SenL>jrial seat, did not seek out any While House blessing. Byrd

won.

No Uniform State Credit

ows

The flood of new postage stamps now brings us a five-center with a laughing clowns face. Ostensibly the stamp commemorates the circus as an institution, but some of us can't help wondering if that clown is laughing because lie's comparing the postmark with the day of delivery.Augusta (Ga.) Chroa-iclr.

The

BLOOdMOME

is cmini

By ELMER R0E8SNER

There wont be uniform state laws regulating consumer credit in the foreseeable future. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws split so violently on the proposal at their meeting in Montreal a few days ago that no agreement seems possible.

One group, headed by Leslie V. Dix, executive secretary of President Johns o ns Consumer Advisory Council, said a proposed draft did not go far enough. Spokesmen for the lending companies protested that it went top far.

The sharpest*^dispute was over a propo.sal requiring lenders to give borrowers a statement showing the interest rale in simple, annual terms. There was also a sharp dispute over a proposed limit on interest to 18 per cent a year. The consumer spokesmen said the

limit was too high: the lenders spokesmen said it was too low.

HOLDER IN DUE CORSE *

There was still another disagreement over a provision to eliminate the holder in due course defense in disputed indebtedness. If the seller of an article sells his instalment contract to a finance company and the consumer defaults, the company can sue as the holder in due course even if the article proves to be defective. The finance companies naturally want to keep this defense.

This failure U) reach ai agreement on fi stap(lprd law - wliich wa.s not unexpected will probably leg^ eventually to federal control of the field. A truth in lending bill is now pending in Congress, but passage is not expected this year.

However, there is still an

other solution. That is to teach school children how to calcluate prerentages. It might also be a good idea to teach them how to read. Both subjects seem quite neglected today.

ELiMER

R0E6SNER

If all children were taught peryetfiges, when they grow up ^od arf ^fered a $120 television set for $20 down and $10 a month for 12 munth.s, they could figure they were being asked to pay about 40 per cent in annual inter e s t charges.

EVEN MORE COMPLICATED

DEALS

In fact with more than just a brief exposure to percentage. when they were offered a $199 used car for $59 down, plus $5 for credit investigation, plus $9.95 for life insurance to cover the indebtedness, and for 12 monthly pay* mcnts of $14.90, they could figure the interest rale to a half percentage point.

And if the salesman said that the payments were only $3 and change a week, they could reckon how much that change would be over a year. (I figure $37.70.)

And if ('hildren were taught to repd, they could untied stand wliat the fine print on contracts really meant.

And there could be a brief course on comparison sho^-ping. But all that seems tot) much to expect and so Congress will some day take ovjr control of consumer credit.

/