You can't help but wonder why there is such a thing as The Community Chest when the drive doesn t cover all fund raising organizations.
I would hesitate to suggest that the Chest be banned, closed, booted out of business or secured for the duration, but we all must feel a little pocketpicked at the end of each calendar year.
Who s to say that the fund raising organizations are not worthy?
The Chest has the Boy and Girl Scouts, Salvation Army, USO and Red Cross, to name a few. And then there are the separate drives of the March of Dimes, which gave us the Salk and Sabin vaccines so we don't have to worry about our children being crippled for life, and the Cancer and Heart drives and the Retarded Children s Association drives.
All are worthy. But so are the homes for children, those places all over the state that send you seals in the mail and ask for your donation.
Our family gives close interest and support to many organizations. Our eldest daughter is in Girl Scouts and the youngest is about to enter that worthwhile organization. I was in Boy Scouts and know the value of that organization.
We ve witnessed the good of the Retarded Children s group and progress that organization has made in teaching children.
These are only a few thoughts. But they still boil down to one cold hard fact: money, and everyone wants just a little bit of it.
They unload hogs at the Omaha stockyards in large numbers and handle them in an amazing and baffling system.
Oscar Adams, Peru trucker, took 21 head of hogs to Omaha the other night. Oscar is Citizens Band operator KGH 4218, base and mobile. We talk now and then, and when he invited me to ride along on the trip to the stockyards, I took him up on it.
The yard is designed to move livestock in large numbers and move them quickly. Oscar backed his green bandit'' to the unloading pen, shooed the hogs into the pen, wrote down a few things on a piece of paper, left the paper with someone in authority and drove off.
The trucker next to Oscar was not so lucky. He overloaded and as a result one 300-pound Chester White suffocated.
Oscar hauls just about everything in the Peru area, including a couple of pool tables that he sez are mighty heavy items to shift about.
In his spare time, whenever that is, he drives a school bus at Peru, a job he has held for a total of 11 years.
We enjoyed the University students. They revealed a bit of energy we all seem to lack at times.
Out at the city dump
Visitors at my Sunday office include City Commissioner Robert L. McKissick.