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Column
By Ben
Munro
The Madison County Journal
September 15, 1999
Keep your keys in hand
My simple advice to the rest of the world: before you
step out of your car and lock the door, make darn sure you have
your keys in your hand. It will make your life a lot easier.
With that said, it shouldn't be hard to figure out what my delimma
was on Friday night at West Hall as I was supposed to be covering
the action on the field in the match up between the Raiders and
the Spartans.
Friday had already presented itself with a rocky start - bombing
a test, getting back a bad paper. The evening would just see
my stupidity reach a climax as some hasty and forgetful actions
on my part left my keys locked away in my Honda Civic.
Various explitives raced through my mind as I stared at those
keys through the window of my car, contemplating how I was going
to get out of this jam with the game already started.
I calmed myself down and realized that they have people at these
games that help out in these sort of situations. I could get
this fixed in a good15 minutes. No prob.
Boy was I wrong.
"No we can't help," an officer told me. "The sherriff
took away our tools because the department got sued for scratching
a car one time that had the keys locked in it."
Legal problems. "Just my luck," I thought to myself
as my simple, careless action of closing and locking my door
grew more serious as the night wore on.
Several more attempts were returned with the same response: "No
tools," "Don't know how to do it," "So and
so could do it but he's not here."
And as the problem escalated, I felt increasingly dumber for
causing such an ordeal which was keeping me from doing what I
had driven an hour to do - cover a football game.
Finally, an assistant principal told me that he had some tools
that could open my car. He just had to find them. You guessed
it, after a 20-minute search of the front office, we never found
them.
It was finally time to call for outside help so I called a wrecker
who could supposedly be there in 10 minutes.
I went to the front of the school and waitd and waited and waited.
Nothing. Fifteen minutes passed, 20 minutes passed, 30 minutes
passed and so on as I stood by myself while the second half action
roared in the back ground.
I had not taken a note all night long. What I though I could
fix in 15 minutes time was taking all night.
So finally I gave up and called another locksmith who said he
could be there in 10 minutes. I was going to be happy if the
simply showed up.
And just as I walked out, a blue wrecker truck (the original
locksmith) pulled up suddenly.
"Hey did you call about keys in a locked car?" a guy
shouted.
"Yeah, I did (about an hour ago!)," I said.
Well, this was finally about to be over, or was it?
When the guys got to my car, they didn't even have a flashlight.
"Uh, we think the flashlight rolled outta' our truck,"
said the locksmith's assistant, who seemed like he had one too
many Budweisers.
So the guy whips out his lighter to try to give the locksmith
light to see by - this was going to take forever. Finally, after
15 minutes of this, the locksmith gave up and announced that
he was leaving for a minute to go and buy a flashlight. The game
was over by this point.
continued on the following page
So I was left to sit there and talk with the seemingly intoxicated
assistant who was telling me how great he thought his boss was
and how he went around and helped out people along side of the
road free of charge.
The generosity speech prompted me to ask, "Uh...how much
will this cost me?"
"40 bucks," he responded. "You can't beat his
prices."
The way the night was going, a discount wasn't going to happen.
So finally the locksmith returned and went to work again for
another 20 minutes at my car door. After getting nowhere he scratched
his head and started to pull down the window just enough to slide
a coat hanger down into the car and unlock the door. That took
all of 30 seconds.
But the ordeal was over as I forked over $40 and sped away into
the night. I had missed the whole game and came away with my
wallet a lot lighter. All because I didn't stop to think about
what i was doing.
Oh well, I guess you can call it just one of those lessons in
life.
Ben Munro is a reporter for The Madison County
Journal.
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Column
Frank
Gillespie
The Madison County Journal
September 15, 1999
 Frankly Speaking
- Affirmative action:
device to maintain slavery
Two news stories have come out of Atlanta
in past weeks that are strongly inter-connected.
Mayor Bill Campbell and his supporters have issued dire threats
against the Southern Legal Foundation which has filed a lawsuit
asking that the city's Affirmative Action program be eliminated.
Approximately half of Atlanta's third grade students may not
be allowed to advance to the fourth grade because they cannot
read.
How can these events be connected? In my opinion, affirmative
action is one of the devices used to maintain modern slavery.
If you want to keep a people enslaved, you simply keep them ignorant
and dependent. Campbell and his friends don't want the Atlanta's
black community to become literate. They might just read enough
to start thinking for themselves.
The liberal politician thinks that the average person is not
capable of taking care of himself.
It is the role of government to run their lives for them. As
long as people are dependent on government, their political power
remains strong. That is the goal of Affirmative Action.
"Why bother with all that hard study," they suggest
to black children. "We will use Affirmative Action to see
that you have a good job, even if you can't qualify for it."
Of course, these poor kids will never benefit from the city's
affirmative action programs as they now exist. All the advantages
go to a handful of rich black friends of the city's political
leaders. The only role the poor blacks of Atlanta serve is to
justify the continuation of this rip off of the American taxpayers.
The early civil rights leaders were very successful. Any person
of any color can achieve anything they wish in America if they
are willing to make the effort. There are a large number of black
Americans with high paying jobs and serious responsibilities
who contribute greatly to our national economy and culture. Most
achieved their positions by hard work, not affirmative action!
If Mayor Campbell and other so called black leaders are truly
concerned for their children's future, they would be using their
time, money and efforts to teach their children to read.
Better yet, they should be teaching the parents how to teach
their children to read. Most of their parents read no better
than their third grade students.
If these kids are taught to read and motivated to achieve in
school. They will become knowledgeable, achieving adults. But
then they would not need those liberal social programs. Mayor
Campbell, the NAACP and other liberal black "leaders"
would have to find another, hopefully more productive, method
of building their power.
The best "affirmative action" the leaders of Atlanta
can take is to teach their children to read and think for themselves.
With a good education, and one must be able to read to achieve
a good education, all Atlantians will have an opportunity to
succeed without liberal government giveaway programs.
Frank Gillispie is founder of The Madison County Journal.
Letter
The Madison County Journal
September 15, 1999
Says some are trying to deceive voters
Dear editor:
As a Bible-believing Christian, I quote the Bible quite often.
I apologize if it sounds as though I am judging other people.
The bible says we are not to judge others. In other words, we
cannot judge anyone to go to Heaven or to Hell. If you will read
my letters carefully, you will notice that I am not judging anyone,
not saying anyone in particular is going to Hell. I do not know
where any particular person is going. That is not my job.
In 1 Corinthians 2:15, we are told the spiritual judgeth all
things. Notice the word, things. The Christians are to judge
things. That is what I have been doing. Politics are dirty in
Madison County. Things.
Some people want the voters to be stupid. We are expected to
believe Louie Clark and/or his supporters killed those cows in
order to scare off the opposition, when in fact, the cows were
not killed; not even stolen. And now we are expected to be stupid
and support the acts of revenge by recalling the commissioners.
Things. Those are the kinds of things I judge.
It is interesting to me that I have received a number of comments
lately from people who support the things I have mentioned in
my letters to the editor. Not all of them came from Christians.
Don't you find that interesting? You don't have to be a Christian
to have good morals and to be able to see that politics are dirty
in Madison County.
1 Timothy 4:1-2: "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that
in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith, giving
heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies
in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron."
It is obvious to most Bible-believing Christians (those who read
the Bible) that we are living in the latter times. The second
coming of Christ seems to be near. That is one reason why I encourage
people to get right with God while they still have time. One
of the signs is the way people seem so willing to give heed to
seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. And people whose conscience
is so seared that they think nothing is wrong with the lies which
they speak in hypocrisy. Politics are dirty in Madison County.
Revenge. Hatred.
Beware. We will all go to a judgment.
Have a good day. Hope to see you in Heaven.
Sincerely,
George Boutwell
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