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are certainly not true. In Waterloo, the area covered by the Central Residential District Secondary Plan represents virtually all of the comâ€" munity that existed prior to World War II. We can hardly believe that every inhabitant of Waterloo, from 1805 to 1939, was wealthy. On the contrary, the vast majority of the older houses are, and always have been occupied by ordinary peoâ€" ple of average means. In fact, many of them are occupied by senior citizens, a group whose income levelis a matter of national concern. It is therefore not true that one has to be wealthy to own an older home. A perusal of the real estate ads indicates that many old houses are priced at or below the prices of modest new houses. For that money, one gets a house that is larger, more solidly built, and possessing much The local daily paper recently published an editorial which indicated somewhat of a misunderstanding of some of the problems facing downtown neighbourhoods. The ediâ€" torial writer seems to believe that all old houses were lived in by wealthy people, that only wealthy people can afford them now, and therefore that commercial expansion into the downtown residential neighbourhoods is inevitable. In the specific case of the city of Waterloo, these beliefs By Geoff Hoile There is a segment of society that has unjustly been branded sinister and gauche on the basis of manual dexterity despite the fact they can count among their current numbers, Barbara Frum, Don Harron, Gorâ€" don Pinsent and Paul McCartney. Estimates of the group‘s unofficial membership vary from twoâ€"toâ€"35 per cent of the population. They are the world‘sâ€"lefâ€" I first became interested in the cause for leftâ€" handers last August when 150 people in Toronto staged a parade and peaceful demonstration outside Queen‘s Park. To promote the event they had one of the Toronâ€" to Sun Sunshine girls on display in a tight Tâ€"shirt with the words "Rights for lefts‘‘ undulating across the front. ties. For as far back as historians have recorded human behavior, it seems that leftâ€"handers have been viewed as some sort of aberration. According to UW psychoâ€" logy professor Philip Bryden, they were accused of being everything devious, from swindlers to witches. because of their leftâ€"handed inclination. Englishâ€"speaking people have taken the French word for left (gauche) and applied it to anyone lacking With a whole new year extending itself lubriciously before us, perhaps it‘s time to wonder what we are going to do with the next 10 or 12 months. My play for the next 12 months is to become an ecâ€" centric. This may not seem much of an ambition, but I‘ve always admired eccentrics, and secretly desired to be one. My wife and other close friends have already sugâ€" gested that I am a bit weird, but that‘s their problem. After almost 20 yeers as a teacher of English, I‘m gona spell ‘er like she is, the way my students do. That‘s only one of my eccentricities. I am also going to grow hair in my nostrils, not to mention my ears. No more of this to the barber. ‘*Yas, give the ears a liddle trim. and the eyebrows." I want hairy ears and eyebrows. I want to look like an ancient Jewish profit _If that isn‘t enough. I‘ll grow flurd in my bellyâ€"butâ€" ton. You know what flurd is. I hope. It‘s that cottony stuff that grows in your bellyâ€"button Flurd was the real cause of the American civil war The Northerners were growing more flurd in their bellyâ€"buttons than the Southerners were on their planâ€" tations But enough of flurd_ And who ever heard of a "civil war? A war may be full of fiendish cruelty or dreadful atrocities or monumental indignities but there is nothâ€" ing civil about it A civil war occurs when you sue vour neighbor to tear down the fence that is bowing over vour begonias Back to my eccentricities Every summer. until now. I have eschewed the wearing of a tie And I know Downtown Perspective â€"According to Hoile more interest and charm. It is true that a number of young families have moved into downtown areas, precisely because of the charm and character of these neighbourhoods. However, it is also true that many of these families are families with children: this is why there is so much concern about the fate of the downâ€" town schools. It is also true that there are people in the suburbs who would like to own a downtown house, and who might very well move downtown, bringing their children, if they could feel confident that the neighbourhood into which they would move would remain as a decent neighbourhood. If the neighbourhoods were stable, more families would move in. If more families move in, as older people sell off their houses, the neighbourhoods would remain stable. In order to aecelerate this desirable trend we must get rid of the old idea that loss of the older neighbourhoods is ineviâ€" table. It is obviously not good to tear down a decent neighâ€" bourhood, except perhaps. for those who might make a proâ€" fit from such activity. Note we are not talking about clearâ€" ing away wretched slums, or of demolishing buildings which have received great physical damage, but rather of neighâ€" Have you ever noticed how most Europeans go right through a meal holding the knife in the right hand and the fork in the left? Maybe they have a higher percenâ€" tage of the leftâ€"handed population than everybody else and are selfâ€"conscious about it. It has long been a source of amusement to Europeans that most North Americans start eating the same way, cutting whaâ€" tever needs disecting and switching hands to get the fork to the right hand. I recall trying to follow the conâ€" tinental style while I was eating, of all things, peas. Not only did I take 20 minutes longer than everyone else over the meal, i stabbed myself in the cheek tryâ€" ing to guide a forkload to my mouth using my notâ€"tooâ€" dextrous left hand. in social experience or grace. Sinister (which also stems from European dialects meaning left) has beâ€" come a modernâ€"day adjective suggesting an evil inâ€" fluence. Although nobody has been able to come back with any form of proof, there have been a lot of people strolling through history spreading the gossip that the devil is leftâ€"handed. Based on this kind of superstition the lefties have had more than their share of bad press over the years. my dignity has suffered. I‘ve heard people say it. They say, "Look at his dignity. Did you ever see such suffering? Next summer, come what may, I‘m going to chew a tie. Every day. It may be a little rough, a tie a day. but with the price of lettuce what can you lose? Another thing I plan to do next year is dribble. No, no. not dribble a football about the backyard. Any ineccentric can do that. I mean dribble at the nose and mouth. constantly. And I will wipe it with my sleeve. This is only slightly less eccentric that picking one‘s nose in public and eating it, which a real eccentric will do every time. Do I begin to disgust you? Don‘t worry. It gets worse. I have wellâ€"formulated plans to wear white wool sox with black patentâ€"leather shoes, brown shoes with a blue blazer, and white shoes with an orange tuxedo bun to go with my granny glasses I am planning a big party for the Twelfth of July. So far. only the Pope and a few cardinals have accepted But I‘m expecting a few other rare birds. Like King Billy the Eleventeeth. It promises to be quite a conflaâ€" gration Another thing I‘m going to do in the new year is Not Go South For the Winter. This is becoming one of the more eccentric things to do And I‘m going to change my whole attitude toward my grandboys No more love and attention That‘s not will wear my hair long. but always in a discreet Bill Smiley Submitted for the WDRA by Bob Rowell Waterloo Chronicle, Wednesday, January 17, 1979 â€" Page 7 bourhoods whose potential quality is at least as great as any other neighbourhood in the city. Neither is it inevitable that commercial uses and other reâ€"development must take over the downtown neighbourhoods. Nothing is inevitable unless thinking makes it so. ‘ What, then, is the answer? . The answer is that the official, and then the business segâ€" ments of the community must decide what many of the downtown residents have already decided: that the central residential area is a quality area for people to live in, and that it is the existing buildings and the trees and the streetsâ€" capes that make it that way, and that these elements and the area itself can and must be retained. This means that all necessary planning and zoning meaâ€" sures for the retention of the downtown neighbourhoods must be put into place and vigorously enforced. It means that the business community must recognize the presence of the residential areas, and plan their projects so that they do not replace or otherwise affect the residential area. These things mean that families can have faith in the downtown neighbourhoods, which in turn means that the downtown neighbourhoods can continue to be an asset to the community in the future as they have been in the past. The Sinister Shop in Toronto apparently sells everyâ€" thing from corkscrews to playing cards for lefthâ€" anders, putting into practise the motto, "Lefts have rights too.‘* Leftâ€"handed scissors are not an extension of the old leftâ€"handed screwdriver joke. They tell me it really does make a difference to the cutting efâ€" ficiency of a pair of scissors when you cut with the left hand instead of with the right. It seems to have a lot to do with the natural pressure applied to the blades and how they are positioned. Turning a corkscrew or a nutcracker away from you, as any southpaw will tell you. is a lot easier than twisting it towards you. My eightâ€"yearâ€"old‘s idea of a gauche gotcha is to set the dining room table with the knives where the forks should be and vice versa. Whether it‘s a blow for felâ€" low lefties or part of his campaign to get out of helpâ€" ing around the house is hard to say. Nobody has been able to satisfactorily explain to me why I throw with my right hand, swing either a golf club or baseball bat from the right, but shoot from the left playing hockey. On the other hand, I can‘t help wondering why over the last few centuries man hasn‘t made more of an efâ€" fort to become efficiently ambidextrous. I‘d just love to say, "I disown you,. and I‘m leaving the business to your cousin Elwood. who smokes pot. hangs around the poolâ€"hall. goes out with fallen women,. and doesn‘t know whether his arm is glued or tatooed _ 1‘d love to see the look on their faces There are a few other bad habits I‘ll have to discard if 1 want to become the complete 20th century eccenâ€" tric. (Don‘t try to say that one unless you have your partial plate in.) Or would I° This eccentrrc business is not as simple as it seems. And you‘d better have your dentures in for that one eccentric. That‘s bourgeois. This year it‘s going to be, ‘"Get off my clavicle, you little monster, or I‘ll give you a good scelpt in the lurch."" That‘ll teach them that it doesn‘t pay to fool around with a relic. I have some eccentricities in store for my old lady, too. Instead of sitting there reading the paper. I‘m going to look up. smile brightly and say, ‘‘Darling. that‘s the most fascinating account I‘ve ever heard of how you made the bed and did last night‘s dishes and vacuumed the living room."‘ She‘ll probably go into a state of total oblivion. I‘m going to stop semiâ€"supporting my kids. No more handouts. Perhaps this seems excessively eccentric (see paragraph above). but at the respective ages of 30 and 26. they are no longer my business. In fact, I wish I had a business. so I could disown them. A nice hardware business. for example. with a net profit of about $50.000. $V <a