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TERRACE BAY/SCHREIBER NEWS Wednesday, May 24, 1989 == Editorial Page The Terrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Wednesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT-2W0 Tel.: 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit.0867. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Assn. and the Canadian Community Newspaper Assn. General Managet.......Paul Marcon Editor....................... David Chmara Admin. Asst...........Gayle Fournier Production Asst....Carmen Dinner Editorial Asst......... Connie Sodaro eee ENS AE oT town). Single copies 40 cents. Subscription rates: $15 per year / $25 two years (local) and $21 per year (out of 2 RIALS Monster Truck Show a monstrous waste of time It was billed as the Monster Truck Show. Travelling to towns along the North Shore, it hit Marathon Tucsday, May 16. "Finally," I thought, "I'll get to sce the show I've been waiting for. Exciting, car crushing action. The sound of 600 h.p. engines roaring and revving away and cars being crushed to mere picces of their former selves." Was I in for a shock, as were many other people who attended the event. Myself, Paul and Carmen thought we'd be smart and get to the arena early enough to find a good seat-The show was slated to start at 7:30 p.m. and we walked through the arena doors at 7:00 sharp. The arena was already packed to the cciling. Parents and kids (mostly kids) were jammed in every corner. Finally we managed to find some empty seats at the far end of the arena right on ground level. What a mistake. People were standing in front of us the entire evening - including a'police officer, who I can only guess, was supposed to be on crowd control duty. Of course, he decided to stand in front of us most of the evening. And towards the end of the show, he didn't even bother to keep the spectators back. As for the show itself, I'm still wondering why it was billed as the Monster Truck Show. Sure, there were three Monster Trucks, but if you ask me, it should have been billed as a circus that happened to have a few large trucks that made a guest appearance for a mere 20 minutes. I won't even mention the fact that the largest truck, Super Foot, developed stecring problems after only one trip around the rink. I hate to think what would have happened if the stecring problems had occurred at a critical moment. It could have Icad to disastrous consequenccs. The clowns were a nice touch. They performed some excellent juggling and bicycle routines. But I swear, if they had blown those stupid whistles one more time, I would have gonc nuts. The three-wheeler and motorcycle stunt driver was pretty good. But I have to wonder how wisc his stunts were. There were a lot of kids who probably thought pulling wheclics while standing on the handle bars was really "cool." Hopefully they're smart enough not to try these stunts themselves. : * AFTER ALL THOSE YEARS IN THE SADDLE EVER THOUGHT OF MAKING THAT wro 4 THREESOME ?" And as for the No Smoking policy in the arena, they could have done without this by-law for the evening. After all, with all the fumes spewing from the trucks, tri-motos, car and motorcycles, my cyes and throat were buming by the end of the night. A little cigarette smoke wouldn't have added to the pollution much. Being a member of the mcdia, I was fortunate cnough to have reccived free tickets to the show. I would have been really fuming if I would have had to pay the $12 admittance for the show. Pity those who paid for what turned out to be a disappointing evening. I doubt they'll make that mistake again. After all, it's an unfortunate fact of life that we often Icarn from our mistakcs. The News welcomes your Ict- ters to the editor. Feel free to express comments, opinions, appreciation, or debate anything of public interest. Write to: Editor Terrace Bay/Schreiber News Box 579 Terrace Bay, Ontario 13 Simcoe Plaza POT 2WO In order that we may verify authorship, please sign your Ict- ters. Shabby End for Onetime 60's Hero It's not often that a news story wobbles me with a three-punch combination, but this one did. The first jolt was the news that he was dead. The second jolt was the fact that it was suicide. The third jolt, oddly enough, was the revelation that he was 52 years old. Fifty-two? Impossible. He couldn't be more than...I dunno, thirty-five, forty maybe? Some people you don't expect to age, much less die and Abbie Hoffman was one of those. In my mind Abbie Hoffman was always going to be the skinny Yippie firebrand with the jungle of lustrous black hair on his head and a T shirt made out of the U.S. flag on his back. Always confronting cops or judges. Always being arrested or tried. That's what Abbie Hoffman was famous for and that's what I assumed he'd always do. I never figured on him dying. But die he did last month -- and not very gloriously either. His landlord found him lying fully dressed under the bedcovers in his New Hope, Pennsylvania apartment. The autopsy revealed that he'd gobbled a fistful of phenobarbitols and washed them down with booze. That's a shabby final chapter for a guy who captured headlines through the turbulent Sixties and almost - - hell, did rewrite history. He had a marvelous sense of guerrilla theater and he played the media like a piccolo. Abbie's the guy who slipped into the visitor's gallery overlooking the New York Stock Exchange and caused a near riot by showering the brokers on the trading floor with handfuls of dollar bills. The sight of grown men in suits fist-fighting over dollar bills and rooting like hogs on the stock exchange floor said more about the dark side of capitalism than any Marxist. manifesto ever could. It was Hoffman and friends who outraged Middle America by nominating a 300-pound pig for president. He was also one of the principals in that famous Chicago trial which began as a prosecution of eight radical dissidents, and wound up as a searing revelation of America's we ¥, Arthu Black judicial underbelly. But those were Abbie's Glory Days. The years that followed the Sixties were not kind to him. He was busted for cocaine in 1974, jumped bail and disappeared. After six years of hiding under an ' engagement assumed name he resurfaced,. pleaded guilty and went to jail. When he got out he scuffled around, filling in as a disc jockey in New York. He hit the college lecture circuit with his old fellow activist Jerry Rubin, but there wasn't a lot of interest in a couple of tubby, graying Yippies rehashing the Days of Rage. So Hoffman toured campuses solo, up and down the continent ranting against the apathy he found. The response was, well, apathetic. En route to a speaking last year, Hoffman suffered a car accident that left him in "chronic, nagging pain. Hoffman had mental problems too. He was diagnosed as manic- depressive and was supposed to be on medication to counter his mood swings. Friends say he unaccountably stopped taking his prescribed drugs last year. So why'd he kill himself? I guess a doctor would say he killed himself because he neglected to take the drugs that would have prevented him from killing himself. I imagine a romantic would say he killed himself because he could no longer stand the complacent, self-satisfied Me- Firstism of the Eighties. His old pal Jerry Rubin said something like that at his funeral. "At one level," said Rubin, "he fell victim to brain chemistry. On another level...he died of a broken heart. He sees all the pain in the world. He sees no one Cares.2--- Hoffman also got to see, in his latter =\-years,-- -the transformation of his counter- culture pal Jerry Rubin from fire-in-the-belly Yippie revolutionary to pin-striped Yuppie Wall Street margins trader. No doubt that, as much as anything, broke his heart..