No, sir. Elizabeth does not have a bridge over the Little
Kanawha River. Work may start on one soon, but there isn’t any now. If you
question that state-ment, talk to Ray Kearns, who, with another man, Friday
night, mistook Jake Huffman’s ferry boat for a bridge and plunged his Whippet
roadster under 20 feet of Little Kanawha water.
Driving through a thick fog, Kearns thought the ferry boat was a
bridge and crashed through a heavy guard chain on the river end of the boat into
the river. Virgil Snider, night ferryman, hauled the two occupants of the car
onto the boat after they had extricated themselves from the submerged car.
We have been traveling up and down the Little Kanawha River for
a good many years, but we never did run up against anything that would make a
ferry boat look like a bridge. Pink elephants walking upside down on the ceiling
of Thornton Hotel bedrooms, turkey-hunts in the snow up Chestnut Run, but ferry
boats for bridges? Never.
An interesting thought arises when
labor bosses like Walter Reutner, president of
C.I.O.’s United Automobile Workers, complain that
automatic ma-chinery displaces workers and causes
unemployment.
The federal government is also going in for much automatic
machinery, such as computers, IBM
machinery, etc. Without a doubt, machines are more likely to increase the
efficiency of the average government worker--dealing mostly with figures,
services, cards, records, etc.--than they are in dealing with the manufacture of
such things as automobiles.
Even so, our government employee totals continue
to rise. In a speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Edward Martin said that one out
of every eight persons employed in the U.S. today is on a public payroll. He
warned that this was one of the things that could destroy America.
Immediately after President Eisenhower was elected, he did
succeed in reducing the number of federal employees. A great outcry was raised,
and it became more and more difficult to reduce the number of federal employees.
It seems that the administration surrendered, and the growth process has
continued, off and on, since.
Grantsville’s town council has decided it is time to get tough
with people who ignore traffic tickets. At its regular monthly meeting, council
voted to send out warrants for habitual scofflaws.
The new get-tough policy goes into effect immediately. Here’s
how it works: If someone receives a police ticket for illegal parking, they have
a certain amount of time in which to respond. If they ignore the ticket, they’ll
receive a second ticket in the mail. Again, they have a certain amount of time
in which to respond. If they disregard that second grace period, then a warrant
is issued.
Once the miscreant is apprehended, he or she will be hauled up
before Mayor Joe Virden, who promises that, without exception, the guilty party
will be required to pay the full cost of the parking violation, plus fines and
costs. If someone has been cavalier enough to accumulate say, 10 traffic
tickets, the mayor said the guilty party will pay full fines and costs on each
and every ticket.