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-- 4, Terrace Bay-Schreiver News, Wednesday, August 28, 1985 Terrace Bay The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by: : Laurentian Publishing Co. Ltd., Box 579; Terrace Bay, sic POT 2Wo. schreiber Telephone: (807) 825-3747. y GENERAL/ADVERTISING MANAGER ................. Vivian Ludington EDITOR ............. See ee eS ee David Carswell = OPNGE 3. S.C ae Gayle Fournier Gg i PRODUCTION MANAGER...................--.-00 eee eee Mary Melo _ ae ear Editorial In praise of Local Heroes By David Carswell They say bad news comes in threes. In recent years that has come to mean: radio, television and newspapers. Turn on the evening news and what do you hear? Plane crashes, crime, war and the whole gamut of "hard news." Pick up major daily newspapers and you are faced with the same grim realities. Why we have such a morbid fascination with bad news will probably remain a mystery, but don't you think it is time we started recognizing the everyday events that are the "real" news in our world. Sure, "sex, violence and disaster" sell newspapers or commercial time, but what about the "mundane", normal things. that make life what it is? Aren't they just as much news as the sensationalized disasters of the daily news? Why does the media seem to believe that "news" is just a short form for "bad news"? It's about time "'good news" got equal time, and this is as good a place to start as any. A few years back Peter Trueman, of Global Television, decided to close his news broadcast with a bit of "real" life, the normal things that people take-for granted. His first broadcast went something like this: "*Today 150 planes landed safely at Toronto International Airport... but that too is reality." From that day forward those last eight words became Trueman's trademark. In the ensuing years his "thoughts" got a little longer, they often dealt with more topical subjects, but they always dealt with that side of life that we all seem to forget is there. Our modern world moves along at a very fast pace, but every once in a while we need to be reminded to, as the old song says, "stop and smell the roses". The roses in our society are the nameless individuals that give up their free time for that com- munity organization, the ten-year-old boy who hit the home run in the ninth inning in the local little league, the policeman who helped the little girl find her. way home. In short, all of the people who make life in our everyday world, tick. No fanfares, 0 "special reports", no "eye-catching" creations of some promotional agent, just the local heroes whose only recognition is that momentary feeling that they have done something "good." These are the real heroes! These are the people that deserve the recognition and respect of the community, and these are the people we at the News want to hear about. If you know of someone who deserves to be a "local hero" let us know. We want everyone . to see the people that are responsible for making the community what it is, whether 'they be a volunteer who has given that something extra, or just the kid down the street that's not news, who helped you to cut the grass. Let's hear for the "local heroes", let's stop and sine the roses in our community, the ones that we all take for granted. To quote Peter, "That's not news, but that too.. I don't know how you grew up, but I grew up scared. Scared of The Bomb. Scared of subversives. Scared of Commies under the bed -- mostly scared of one awesome, implacably evil force: The Russians. Russia was the Darth Vader of na- tions. Russia was peopled, we were told, by a race of oversized, unemo- tional, indefatigable androids named Ivan whose only dream in life was to put their hob-nailed boots on Democracy's neck. High level people told us this. There was a senator from Wisconsin who threw North America into hysteria simply by waving a sheaf of papers over his head and telling reporters it contained the names of several hundred Communist agents on the U.S. Government payroll. Richard Nixon routinely destroyed the careers and reputations of people who stood between him and election by branding them as "Reds". Back then, kids didn't dream of Commodore 64's. They wanted a bomb shelter in the backyard. We . is reality!"' Did You Know From 1886 to 1903, the bunkhouse donated by C.P.R. was used as the Schreiber Public School. were all scared..And the source of the fear was the image we had of Russia, Russia the Invincible. Russia the Fearless. Against which you couldn't possibly have too many tanks or guns or planes or aircraft carriers. "Better Dead Than Red" was a phrase that got bandied about a lot: The frightening thing was not so much that we would mouth a phrase like that, but that we implicitly believ- ed we were going to have to choose between death and the yoke of Com- munism very soon. A lot of folks have lived with that psychic sword over their heads for the past twenty or thirty years. Not that much has changed. Presi- dent Reagan still does his best to whip up Anti-Red hysteria. The press still keeps us apprised of who has more nuclear' submarines, ICBMs, bazookas and combat boots. A few years.ago I said the hell with it. A guy can stand in the middle of the street in Dodge City at high noon with his hand poised over his six-gun for just so long, right? A subversive Red under the bed thought crept into my brainpan. What if the Russians weren't indomitable after all? What if they were just a bunch of average, maladroit screw- ups like you and me? It might even be better than that. Russia, after all, is a country which, despite having millions of acres of the best farmland on the planet, has to buy Manitoba grain to feed its own people. It's a country where people buy jeans -- jeans, for crying out loud -- on the black market. Then, last week there was the mystifying story of the four Soviet soldiers who lost their tank. It happened in Czechoslovakia last fall, during a massive war games operation among troops of the War- saw Pact. When the manoeuvres were over, one Soviet tank and its crew were missing and unaccounted for. After an extensive search, Soviet military police came across the four men in the middle of a forest. They were in a weakened state, dazed and incoherent. They had no idea what had happened to their tank. A landlocked Bermuda Triangle perhaps? Sinister American agents using deadly drugs or some kind of chemical warfare to capture Russian military equipment? Not quite. Some days later a Czechoslavakian metal-recycling firm reported purchasing a large volume of unusually high-quality scrap metal. Even more curious, the vendor was a local tavern owner. In- vestigators visited the pub, prowled around and discovered the reamed- out hull of a Russian tank in a barn out back. Confronted, the pub owner asserted indignantly that the tank was bought and paid for. Bought from whom? From four Soviet soldiers. For how much? For 24 bottles of vodka -- with some herring and four jars of pickles thrown in "as gesture of comradeship."' : Turns out the four-man crew got lost in the fog during the war games. Eventually they blundered into a small Bohemian town, parked their tank out behind the pub and-went in- side for a wee nip of something to take the chill out of their bones. Actually, not so 'wee'. They pool- ed their money and came up with enough for one bottle of vodka. Later, they pooled a couple of tools and the crew leader's gold wedding ring and bought three more. One thing led to another and before the bender was over, the Russians had worked their way through another 24 bottles of vodka plus the aforemen- tioned herring and pickles. And the Russian Armed Forces were short one tank. All I can say is, any enemy force that trades its weaponry for a night on the town can't be all bad. Or all that invincible. Maybe if we really wanted to turn the Cold War around, we'd get off the Star Wars bandwagon and sink some of those billions into distilleries and herring nets.