The Way it was Ten - Part 9

 

May 23, 1983

 The long nose of the law

 How does the old song go… everybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it…?

Ask the owner of any business with a video amusement machine in just about any town in our area.

Without exception, you’ll find that, one at a time, often copying from each other, the towns are getting into the business of licensing the machines (for fat fees, of course) and settling rules (and rules, and rules, depending on the town) about who can have machines, where they have to be and how many there can be.

I have mixed feeling about it all.

First of all, I see it as a businessperson. And I don’t like it at all, while I wear that hat. It’s just another way the towns have of wringing revenue out of an enterprise that is open and vulnerable to being counted, taxes and penalized for existing.

It violates free enterprise and singles out one particular business tool as victim to its financial greed.

On the other hand, I’m a parent. And in that instance, I see it two ways. First of all, I strongly believe that video machines in 1983 are no different than juke boxes or pinball machines were in 1955. Probably the video machines are more valuable in terms of overall requirement for some skill than anything we had available to us when we were pre-teens, but the purpose is the same … something to do.

However, I’m dead set against a video arcade or business watching school-age kids spending hours at a time during school hours, playing machines.

On the whole, though, as a parent, I would want to feel that my daughter could enjoy a quick game of Ms. PacMan while I shopped for groceries in the Acme or wandered around K-Mart for a while… or spent an hour at the mall window shopping. It’s more fun for her and gives me the peace of mind of knowing where she is and that she is absorbed in something she enjoys. And for that reason, I would hate to think the licensing laws would drive the video machines out of the stores, pizza parlors and arcades,

It doesn’t make any sense to me that this type of activity should be required to pay any more than the standard mercantile license fee required by any town for the operation of any business.

Here at The Journal, we conform to the requirements of the Borough of Berlin by paying an annual mercantile fee of $50.00 That entitles us to the services of the borough and gives the borough some return from our presence. Now, thanks to the new law just passed here, not only does the owner of a business pay the mercantile license fee, but an additional $50.00 per machine for every video amusement device in the place.

And I’m not picking on Berlin. In various combinations and varieties, it’s the same in Berlin Township, Clementon, Stratford, Waterford Township and Winslow Township so far. And in each town, the reasons given for singling out the video machine industry is the regulation of the pastime.

Heaven forbid we should honestly say it’s another way to make money for the town!

But the money grabbing isn’t the part that bother me the most.

It’s the downright violation of human rights involved in some of the ordinances being passed in some of the towns.

Clearly, mark that as my personal opinion, please. But consider, if you will, the use of power that permits a town to say yea or nay to the issuance of a license for video machine operation on the basis of the morality of the proprietor of the business.

Since when is it anyone’s concern what one’s moral convictions are?

Business reputation, yes. Investigate all you want how a person runs his or her business with regard to financial stability, ability to keep order and respect the law, prior record of difficulties with the business or its clientele and so on.

But leave the owner’s personal morality out of it.

In many cases, the personal biases of the judges, whether they be governing body officials or police chiefs, may get in the way of any kind of fair decision.

In all cases, one’s personal morality is just that… personal.

Between the individual and his conscience.

Not among the individual, his conscience and the law.

The Way it was Then - Part #8

 

May 13, 1983

When it hits where you live

 The environment never was one of my causes.

In my younger, college-age years, I was a great civil rights advocate, complete with marches and candle-light vigils.

Once or twice since reaching staid adulthood, I’ve gotten wound up about a local issue and passed out leaflets, manned telephones, worked the polls and fought to win (or defeat) the question involved.

But the environment just hasn’t turned me on.

Granted, I don’t live next to Love Canal or even the GEMS landfill.

Maybe proximity might have moved me sooner to care about what is done with toxic or hazardous wastes. But I have to candidly confess I’ve not lost a great deal of sleep wondering where we’re disposing of the radioactive wastes from Salem I.

It sometimes takes just a little thing to stir the juices and make me wake up to an issue I’ve let slip by.

Like Tuesday night’s occurrence.

As anyone who knows me will attest, reading is my very favorite solitary pastime. I often get so lost in the story line (especially in an extremely well-written book) that I don’t hear the phone or doorbell. And whenever I’m not working, doing laundry, cleaning up, running errands or helping with homework, I’m reading.

So last Tuesday might, I had an hour… between nine and ten p.m. to catch up on some library books I’d been itching to get at.

With reading light turned to just the right brilliance, radio playing at just the right volume, dog walked and cats fed and satisfied, I curled up on the couch and opened the book. Immediate absorption.

At about 9:30, I noticed my eyes were tearing and beginning to smart. Looking up from the book, I caught the bitter odor of burning something-or-other in the air. Thinking the house was on fire, I went from room to room pretty rapidly, checking the temperature of the walls, looking for evidence of smoke. Nothing, thank goodness.

And still the smell worsened and my eyes burned badly.

Remembering that a friend had complained to me about a week earlier about a horrible odor ground her home one night, I opened the front door and was assailed by one of the worst smells I can recall. Even the cats, alarmed by the silent invader, leaped from their windowsill perches and ran into the basement.

Outside the house … it was awful. On such a clear, cloudless night, one could almost feel the stench. It was strong enough to have body and substance.

And then, minutes later, it was gone. It took about fifteen minutes for my eyes to stop smarting, though, and I don’t want to guess what inhaling it did to the lungs and genetic systems of those of us inadvertently exposed to it.

The Berlin police, summoned by central dispatch when I called to inquire about possible sources of the odor, said it might have come from one of the industrial operations nearby.

In conversations with friends since Thursday, I’ve learned it’s a common happening around these parts, but repeated attempts to uncover the source have failed.

Obviously, it’s not a healthy thing that is let loose in the air. If it were, it would be done in the daylight when monitoring devices would pick up the emission and record it. If it were, it wouldn’t make eyes tear and cats flee.

And that scares the dickens out of me.

I don’t live near any well-publicized source of pollution. On purpose.

Heaven knows we ingest enough of the junk that kills in our food, our air, our clothing, the substances around us everyday. We can’t help what we don’t recognize.

But an odor that seeps into the crevices of a pretty tight house, that brings tears to the eyes of a concentrating reader, that makes animals prick their ears and run in fear … that should be controllable.

Maybe if enough of us keep the EPA Hotline number (800-424-8802) by our telephones and dial it the minute we catch a whiff of something unusual, the surrounding industries will be monitored closely enough to scare them into stopping whatever it is they’re doing.

In the meantime, ask around. See if your neighbors or your families know about the awful smell. Write letters, if you’re so inclined, to the officials of the industries that surround us and let them know that living in a healthy environment means a lot to you.

Maybe it was nothing at all. Maybe not.

I’d rather be alert and try to put a stop to it than die prematurely from its possible carcinogenic effects.

The Way it was Then - Part #7

 

May 6, 1983

When Old is really Beautiful

 The older I get, the older young is.

Guess we can all say that … remembering especially how old our parents were when we were kids and they were, say thirty-five or some such ancient number.

Funny, those of us who have seen thirty-five come and go (or are on the sunny side of it … but just barely) think that thirty-five (or forty or fifty) is really very young.

My father is a young mid-seventies; some of my best friends are over sixty. To my children, I’m sure these people are near decrepit, but to me they are far from ready to throw in the towel.

People often become more beautiful (inside and out) the older they get. Sometimes, it’s because they’ve met and conquered the miseries of the world and have gained a serenity that comes from dealing with adversity. Sometimes it’s because they face less cares and woes than they had in their youth. Sometimes it’s a radiance that comes from having learned how to face life and find the best it has to offer.

Furniture often becomes more precious the older it gets.

I remember sharply the conversation I had with my mother about all of the old things she liked to collect. We were downstairs cleaning out the basement. I should say she was cleaning out the basement and I was fussing over all the “junk” she had saved.

“I hope you’re not going to leave me all this stuff someday,” I said sarcastically (as only a wise young know-it-all can).

Mom sighed and remarked that she’d better never die then, because she couldn’t bear to think of all this beauty being sold or going to waste because no one wanted it.

Beauty?

All I ever saw was old.

Old furniture. Old bottles. Old knick-knacks. Old pots and pans. Old needlework. Old dolls. Old pictures. Old, old, old.

At that stage in my life, I dreamed of the magazine-perfect plastic, glass and chrome that my home would look like. All modernistic paintings on the wall and nary a trace of anything old.

Fortunately for my mother (and definitely for me) my appreciation of age changed before it was time to find a home for my mother’s things. Now, I am proud to polish all those relics of former time that grace my home, keeping in mind that nothing like them will ever be made again.

Houses, too, have a certain character that often becomes more interesting with age.

This month, the Camden County Cultural and Heritage Commission will honor some local people for the work they’ve done to restore and preserve the beautiful houses we see in our travels around the county.

Next time you’re driving on Tansboro Road toward the Acme shopping center, take a gander at the old Wooster farm on your left, just after McDonald’s. The owners of that gem could easily have razed it and started again … to build a modern two-story Colonial with center hall and the other commonplace things we put in our houses these days.

Instead, the first thing that happened was the restoration of the turret room that was originally a part of the house. In the weeks that I’ve been watching the beautiful old home being carefully restored, it’s been like seeing something reborn. It’s almost like being able to witness the metamorphosis of a crumbling ruin into the image of its once glorious past.

In a way, it’ll be a shame to see it completed. The process will be over and the house will be someone’s home, not a project that we passersby can continually share.

In a time when it’s easier to tear something down than to preserve it, how wonderful that some people like the owners of that house, developers like Bob Scarborough, entrepreneurs like those who rescued Philadelphia’s Bourse and those who have decided to keep the old Lit Brothers building from destruction, are financially able and emotionally capable of deciding to preserve history.

But for them, our country would lose much of its heritage and we would be without a great deal of beauty.