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Show Comment lU-view - Wednesday, August 22, 1&90 Page 2 We can build for future without razing the past Do we just keep tearing down the old to make way for the new? Or is some of our architectural past worth the efforts it might take to restore, remake and renovate? That's the question American City officials must answer regarding re-garding the old American Fork High School and Junior High School which is rapidly deteriorating on the hill it has occupied the past 78 years. And the question Lehi is pondering even now, as city fathers dedicate $50,000 to stop the deterioration of its historic Lehi Memorial Building. The problems with these structures are similar. The buildings are old and don't meet current standards. Walls are deteriorating. At the American Fork building, broken windows invite birds to seek shelter inside and the roof is gone is several places. Stucco on the Memorial Building is falling off. Both buildings have recently lost the organizations which occupied them. And building without occupants begin to fall apart fast. Summer with grandkids passes too fast ; - All summer we looked forward '. to the visit of our daughter and her ichildren who live in California. The : time passed quickly and they ar- rjved on Aug. 3. ; ; I knew that the time they were ; here would go fast, too, and I tried - to hold back time but you can't do : lhat- l Last Saturday morning we gave tbm all big hugs and sent them ! back to California and to their I husband and father, whohad spent ! the vacation with the Boy Scouts at 1 Camp Philmont. ; ; We filled the time they were : here with a trip to the zoo, a ride on the Heber Creeper, lots of barbe- cues and picnics, shopping trips, .visits to great-grandparents, going to lunch, Saratoga, and so forth. T- '. We wanted to go to Lagoon but when we figured out how much it Would cost because of the increases tin parking fees and tickets, we I changed our mind. Besides, our . - i o t;and between that, the heat and : three small children she (and us) - would probably have been done in ;.ly the end of the day, anyway. -, I savored every minute they were here because we don't get to see "them very often and each minute Z has to be placed in memory to last I until the next visit l- It took the entire, two w&elu 'almost for the youngest, their only Son, to make friends with Grandma ahd Grandpa. He is 16 months old and didn't know whether he could uaueiiu;! ibcauclliuk aiiuLiiei uauv Installing sprinklers is I have come to gain a new appre- Nation for the concept of eternity. -' That's right, I'm installing a ;- sprinkling system in our new yard ;:all by myself - and that's how soon - yie will have grass. . We moved into the home in the Spring - with hopes of having a ';;4awn planted before the snow fell. - Now it seems well be lucky to have ',- a lawn planted before snow falls in ; a place that rhymes with fell. I've long held that yards and .yardworkareunnecessaryevilsof a : too-civilized life. (That's right, Jiis is my annual I-hate-yardvork col- umn, but I waited for the late '. summer. That's because yard work . has taken on a whole new mean-: mean-: ing.) " I figure we'd all be better off if we planted wild flowers, scrapped the lawnmowers and enjoyed nature. Anything else is work - too much work for the yard to ever be en- - joyed. ; But these unorthodox views on "- yards are not broadly accepted, and - tend to produce feelings of hostility among certain elements in our soci- - ety wno will not oe mentionea. Z'l- Anyway, here we were in a new ; house with enough money to buy a lijtle sod and have instant lawn, or r'l J r -Jrlor hanHa and install n ennnk hnff ctrcrom mirselves. . we Dougni ine pipes ana mey have been gathering dust in the garage ever since while we worked " t get the yard ready. There were some difficulties. -t Three days after we moved in, I 'got a call at work. . I "Help!" said a frantic voice. "We're ; being flooded out. There's water all '$ Lindon Continued from front page jijal Improvement Districts progress: Ing on Geneva Road. The storm Trains have been installed. The t engineering for the SID on State t . $treet is underway. It was mentioned men-tioned when they were test pump- ting the number four well, they Jfiboded the park. It helped to re-Jvjve re-Jvjve the lawn. ' ' Z Mayor Greenwood praised Pe- ' jlerson's diligence, effort and con-. itribution to the City. - - Ji Dale Macomber met with the ctuncil with an evaluation of the- ". f3ty Fair. Ilerommented thfit the j Ofoyor miiki-s mighty ,-" m-In '1Ut 'here' r .n't very totiv to. p.g. blab ( A a. By MARCELLA WALKER trust these strange people or not. But we did enjoy the last couple of days when he had decided that we were alright and we became his friends. The children have two sets of grandparents here in Pleasant Grove, Roland and Yvonne Oliphant and us, so they got to be spoiled in two places for two weeks. I am sure they enjoyed it. . - " Before they moved to California, Califor-nia, this family had lived with us for a couple of months when their apartment in Provo was flooded. The Editor's Column By MARC HADDOCK around the house." I hurried home to find our new yard transformed into a moat. We were one of the first to move into the subdivision, and part of our yard was located where an irrigation irriga-tion ditch had once run. The ditch had been filled in and abruptly stopped where our yard began. No one had bothered yet to build the run-off pipe to carry the irrigation irriga-tion water away. And no one had bothered to tell us about it either. As chance would have it, the third day we were in the house, the irrigation water came all the way to our yard and then had no place to go except over banks of the ditch and onto our new yard. There was water everywhere, threatening to flood our new home and carrying away the thin layer of Council hear it at the flag ceremony. He wondered if there might be a better : time for the ceremony than right after the parade. : s ' It was reported that breakfast : was served to 285. The Lindon Sixth Ward High Priests served as the breakfast crew and the $l meal paid for itself. . The M Acomlrs received a lot of comments alxiut the parade. Many, felt it was the biggest one yet. The ' piirnde committi tried to work ' t hrough the wards and they found ' f i lot of interest in participating , sind attending the parnde. ' T1' nm 1'nW-rl.immoiit has livn After rejecting the venerable Memorial Building as a project to be renovated for new city offices, many Lehi residentsfteared. the historic structure would toon tee the demolition crew. Lthi's council has demonstrated, however, a commitment to the old structure even as construction it underway on new city office. That commitment should preserve the building until a new permanent resident ran be found American Fork officials face a stickier problem. The old junior high is in a greater state of disrepair, and has been tagged as a possible site for a new city swimming pool, but a determined Historic Preservation Committee has generated two proposals to turn the old building over to developers who would turn the old building into new housing. The proposals would include total renovation of one of American Ameri-can Fork's most historic buildings, and the prospects of many possible residents (28 apartments ranging from studio to three-bedroom), three-bedroom), as well as retaining the gymnasium and auditorium. A glance in today's classified ads will verify the need for such During that time the girls had implored me daily to read them a book called "The Fat Cat," a Danish Dan-ish fairytale. Knowing that they were coming to visit, I fished out this book ana had it ready to read to them. I knew they would ask for it. Guess what? They didn't even remember it until I read it to them and then they recalled the story. Of course, I did get to read it several times while they were here. I wanted to read them The Bike Lesson" of the Bearnstein Bears but we never got it read. Maybe some one else read it to them. I enjoy reading to the children and we only have a few who are old enough to enjoy it. All but one of the grandchildren who live in Utah are under one and one-half and they will look at books and let us read to them for a short time, but then they lose interest. I found myself torn between being a good grandmother and playing with the children when they came and asked, and staying with the others and listening to the conversation. conver-sation. I really tried hard to reach a happy medium by spending time pushing them in the swings, reading read-ing to them, playing games, listening listen-ing to them, watching them, and doing it close enough to the adults so that I could be in on the conver-' sation, too. Children know instinctively that grandmothers are their best fans lifetime job, topsoil which had been spread around the yard only days before. After a few phone calls (mostly to people telling us that it wasn't their problem), we got the water diverted, but the yard has never recovered. The topsoil was gone, and the water had left a tremendous depression de-pression in our front yard where the water meter had been buried. It's been uphill ever since. But it's been educational. We live in the rocky soil common to much of the area -- in fact, rocky is much more accurate than soil in describing the ground. I put in the stop-and-waste before be-fore we purchased a pick - and spent hours working my way from rock layer to rock layer. Then there came the actual installation. To say I am not mechanically inclined is an understatement, but somehow I managed to saw through the pipe (I even turned off the main line first) and get the stop and waste installed properly. Then about three weeks later I started digging the trench for the main line around the house. It was pick and shovel work all the way --and --and took forever. In the meantime, some of the same persons with whom I disagree about yard work were beginning to despair that our yard would ever be ready for grass seed. Finishing that trench was a triumph of man over nature. But then I started assembling the pipe, and my own mechanical ineptness took over. I was about three feet short of pipe. Then I built a valve box that leaked, and had to rebuild it and outside in the past, and this year it was held in the pavilion. The performers per-formers like it and the audience enjoyed sitting in the shade. , : DeanXBlackhust reported that they served a "bunch of people" waU-rmelon. Marker Walker helped' with the children's games and Don PekTson helped get the tables set up for breakfast, and helped arrange ar-range Tor a lot of the animals for the ari-na events. . -; The council evaluated the letter , prepared to send to the citizens concerning the secondary water . system. Several people have come into the city office to sign up for the and devoted admirers. They know that they can crook their little finger fin-ger and giandmother will be at their beck and call. Grandmothers cannot resist their pleas to come and watch them do this and that. It wears you out, but you do it anyway. Even those little ones who are just past one year old know that they can toddle over and take grandma' hand and she will go where ever they want. It might be to the cookie jar, the toy box, outside, out-side, or to see a bug, but they grab your finger and off you go, pleased to be asked. When they are here for an extended ex-tended visit or even just for overnight, over-night, you go to bed at night and are worn out and glad the little ones are tucked in for the night. You sigh and hope you hold up through it all. But then when it is a new day you are all ready to go again and repeat the same routine all over again. It is hard to tell them goodbye and send them off; knowing that you wont see them for a few months probably. But the hardest part of all was how quiet it was at home when they were gone. We will have to get used to that all over again. Thank goodness for the little ones who live close. They keep things hopping just enough in the meantime. and more patch the new valves into the exist ing pipe. It was trial and error, and I have made many visits to the place where we purchased the system, sys-tem, trying to figure out how the dam thing works. Finally, the main held water, and we started on the trenches for the individual lines. Saturday I finished the second of eight planned water lines - and I'm starting on the thnv tomorrow. It has been tragic to watch our neighbors build yards and sod lawns while our front yard remains covered cov-ered with mounds and trenches. It is nice to know, however, that we are providing some fun for the neighborhood. neigh-borhood. Last evening, I entertained the neighbors tryingto adjust the heads on our new line. Long streams of water were spraying onto the streets and into the living room through the window as I attempted to limit the sprinklers', arcs to our lawn's configuration. I want to make a public apology to that poor individual in the van who drove by with an open window about the time I aimed the spray into the street. I am certain he never knew what happened. I suspect this comedy will continue con-tinue for a good time to come, since we are only a fourth of the way done. .' The only benefit to the process has been the increase in my biceps - a natural result of swinging a pick and shoveling dirt Oh, and Fye learned all the words to Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons." Anyone who has put in their own sprinkling system is sure to understand. fc, 1 secondary water already. ; . . The council indicated the cost of both the culinary and secondary water should not exceed $24 a month but it will depend on culinary U8e-The U8e-The secondary water should not exceed $10 a month.' Theminfmum culinary billing is $14, as they will not be using the same amount for culinary water as they do now because the secondary water will be used for outside wa- ter use. ' The letters will be sent to the residents with a sign-up form to be sent to the city. The sign-up time will be held from now until Oct. 15. rental unit in the north Utah County area. , The point is these old buildings have meaning for us, as part of our past And the efforts to make them part of the future of our communities as well are worthy ones. There was a hue and cry when it appeared that Lehi City might abandon the Memorial Building in favor of the new city administration admini-stration building. The fact that the city is willing to work to save the old building is significant. The old junior high, having been allowed to decline to a much greater state, has lost much of its support outside of a few outspoken individuals. But American Fork City officials should give serios consideration considera-tion to the proposals to make the old structure a valuable part of the community once again. After all, there's no need to build for the future at the expense of the past when we can do both -- build for the future by preserving our past. Prayerless shouldn't command majority This A.C.L.U. thing and prayer is getting to be ridiculous. A handful hand-ful of prayless people wants to tell the majority whether or not under certain conditions they can pray. Dont they understand that prayer is a vital part of the human makeup? ma-keup? Throughout all the world prayer has been part of life manifested mani-fested in many ways. In darkest Africa the natives who we consider ignorant have a form of prayer. They realize there is something out there that is beyond their understanding. They feel a desire to worship. Even though their form of life may be the lowest yet, they feel within themselves them-selves there is a divine power that governs their lives. We watch their primitive dances which is a form of prayer. Have you watched our fellow Americans, the Indians, express themselves in song and dance. It is a form of prayer. Before my parents joined the LDS Church, I attended several other churches. The worlds of the prayers were a little different but the meaning mean-ing was the same. It was a petition to God for blessings. Now comes along the A.C.L.U. and pour out their godless spirit upon mankind. They have never experienced an answer to a prayer. 1 All they know is the promptings of - the evil one. From the beginning of time we have had various forms of the A.C.L.U. People who have tried, and in many cases stirred up the Godless to do unchristian acts. But can you imagine what a world this Letters to the Editor Prayer should be permitted Editor: "Majority rule and the protection protec-tion of minority rites are the delicate deli-cate balance of a constitutional government...measures are too often decided, not according to rules of justice and rights ofthe minor party, but by the superior force of an interested in-terested and overbearing majority." (Federalist Paper no. 10 To a point, this is true. But to a fai greater degree, minority rights takeprecedenceover majorityrule. (If you don't think so, ask the A.C.L.U.) Jefferson said that the lesson of majority rule is the first lesson of importance. It is also the last thoroughly thor-oughly learned. Once disregarded, no other remedy remains but force, which must necessarily end in . despotism. . The founders wrote the Constitution, on the democratic principle of mass participation to elect representatives, but ; then turned to the republican principle of having these representatives pass laws and administer government. This makes the United States a democratic republic. A constitutional republic, fed-' eral republic and democratic republic re-public all operate upon the supreme -will of the people. The people voice their will through their elected representa-. tives, in whose hands the welfare ofthe people lies. I'm a Mormon and I believe this : nation is a choice land. I also be- ; lieve that the Constitution is divinely di-vinely inspired and should be strictly 1 interpreted, if not, it's to our own detriment, for God will not be mocked. " jr As for the matter of church and state. The original separation of church and state applied to the federal government i t " When Jefferson became president, presi-dent, he proclaimed a religious holiday. When toldhehad nopower to do so, he explained in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, on Jan. 1, 1802, his position and said the constitution had created a wall between church and state. The Supreme Court has taken this out of context and used it for an excuse to meddle in religious affairs within the various states. browsing I'll M i M By TOM GRIFFITHS g would be if it was controlled by the A.C.L.U. From the beginning of time there has been at least two influences in the world, one good and one bad. Just think of some of the evil acts that have been perpetrated on innocent in-nocent people. The death by burning burn-ing of Joan of Arc. In our own country coun-try the burning of witches at Salem. Not to mention the treatment of the Mormons in the early days of the church. So now we have the A.C.L.U. Their intent is not to build up goodness good-ness and mercy but to tear down. While we cannot take physical action, we can let our voices be heard. If we want an example of a Godless country look at Russia who denied prayer and worship. She was an abject failure. Let's stand up for what we know is right and kick the evil down where they belong in hell. About 1 1 years ago, in a rebuttal to Senator Jesse Helms argument in favor of school prayer, Senator Edward Kennedy said it was an attack on the separation of powers Ofld fliaf itlftQlUMUMttAMntMU.lJ' viii uuw euro uuui L wuuiu no longer be able to rule on religious reli-gious issues, thereby stripping the court of some of its power and giving giv-ing it to the legislative branch. (It was taken seriously) It's, amazing to me (hat some legislators are so blind, Kennedy's rebuttal to me, was a feeble attempt at-tempt to undermine religion, and constitutionally is so full of holes, big holes, you could drive a truck through one. , tV.." Even though I am a Mormon, living in a predominately Mormon community; I think , that school prayers should be non-denominational and non-offensive. (But that should be for the state to decide, not the federal government.) , A belief is a supreme being is fundamental to a vast majority of v people. People with no religious beliefs are a small minority. Will the majority be restricted on ac count of a few people? Prayer in school doesn't hurt anyone (either physically or mentally). men-tally). It ought to be allowed without with-out all the controversy it causes. ' Psychological pressures on stu-, stu-, dents who believe contrary to non- sectarian prayers is nonsense, they're either non-existent or so small you would need a micrometer microme-ter to measure them. . . -The first amendment's impeccable impec-cable validity is pretty well self-explanatory. self-explanatory. ' The framers intended the first amendment to protect religion from l government not people from reli-gion. reli-gion. . yi 'iiii. ii -.' i If s amazing how the A.C.L.U, can take a seemingly immovable . mountain and legislate it down to a handful of dirt. (That's exactly the , case with school prayer.) If we aren't careful, the dirt we still have will turn into mud. , If people would study the '. constitution and learn their rights, and not let the government take care of everything, they'd be a lot better off. : -Mark Farnsworth |