OCR Text |
Show (UaDmnmmc&ffitt Heview-Wednesda- y, December 10, 1986 -- Page 2 I, t '' " - Shop at home and give you, your town present A well-wor- n bit of advice on "How to Ruin Your Town" offers the following gem: "-- everything you can out of town or in a discount catalog. These firms are the first to come through with the donations and service to thecommunity." That's A sound piece of advice for those hoping to undermine the economic well-bein- g of their community. And it is never more appropriate than at this time of year. For retail businesses, the Christmas season provides the highest sales volume of the year. That's because we are buying more this month than we buy at any other time. As a result, there is a great deal of competition for all that money floating around at Christmastime, and that's reflected in increased advertising on all levels. Naturally the largest amounts of advertising comes from the larger stores -- - those with national advertising budgets. The advertising is designed to draw shoppers from everywhere -- - and it work.", to the detriment of local businesses and your local community. If we are interested in supporting our communities, we must be interested in seeing that the dollars we spend go back into those communities. That means we should shop at the stores located closest to home. There are a lot of other good reasons for doing business with people you know and who have the same stake in the community as you do. The so-call- lower prices offered by the discount stores located at the out-of-tow- n malls and shopping centers don't take into account driving time and ex-pense. And spending retail dollars iri another town does nothing to improve the tax base of your own community - which receives a portion of the sales tax however, go to support the mass transit system tL?' 1 residents of that community get to use. l,ldiine Of course, it's up to local merchants to offer petitive prices and the type of service that justifies W i patronage. But a close examination will show that businesses are most li competitive. In addition, they are convenient, they are operated bv friends and neighbors who have an interest in keeDinp your business, and who are responsive to your needs they have better, more personal service and they have a good selection of merchandise. When buying gifts and goods this holiday season vou can give yourselves and your community a Christmas gift by shopping at home. Jl Time for Christmas in all its decor j By MAKCELLA WALKER Making Christmas bright is getting to be harder and harder all the time. We must have gone to a dozen Christmas Tree lots Saturday before we found the tree that was "fat and affordable" at the same time. I believe in putting Christmas trees up early in December. They smell nice, and they add such a festive touch to the home, but most of all, the time of Christmas goes so fast that if you do not get them up early the time is gone before you have really had an opportunity to enjoy it fully. My kids like fat trees. I kind of like a bit thinner tree, one that allows for the ornaments to hang down bet-ween branches and be seen. Not the kids. They like fat trees. We have a fat tree. I'll admit that it is pretty in its way. It is certainly large and fills the entire corner of the living room very adequately. Never mind that we have a small front room. The thing I like best about the whole thing is that now the girls are old enough that they like to decorate the tree and all I have to do is watch them and say "How pretty!" at the right time. They also put up the other decorations and they do a good job. It is wonderful for a very uncreative mother who used to have to do it all alone. This year for the first time in many years, we have some real live mistletoe. I want all the cute boys in town to make a note of that because both of my teenage girls would like to be kissed beneath that mistletoe before the season is out. For your information it is located right above the door to the front room where it goes into the entry jp.gr. blab By MARCELLA --ZTVV J WALKER way. In fact, any friend or neighbor who would like to bring their sweetheart in for a kiss under the mistletoe are - invited to do so as long as they flaunt it in front of my husband so he might get the hint. Christmas trees are one of my favorite things. I love to go for drives at this time of year and look at the Christmas trees glowing from the windows of the homes we pass. As. I was growing up, our tree was a very traditional one. It was just a plain ordinary Christmas tree, just like everyone elses. What made it special was the ornaments which were different from everyone elses and which had special meaning just to our family. There were the red, green and blue balls which had Santa and his reindeer flying through the air on them. There was the green bell, in my favorite color, that I put on each year. There was the little red ball, my very own, that I hung on the tree. And there was the silver star for the top. There were the homemade decorations that we made at school that Mom was good enough to let us hang on the tree. There were icicles. Not all trees have icicles any more. In fact, Joyce Poulson, who does the gorgeous tree in the City Hall each year, said that it is hard to get good icicles anymore. To me, icicles make the tree look complete. That is probably because when I was young that was the way we completed the tree. Presents under the tree make it look finished, too. I love presents under the tree. When we were young, we would give the boxes a little shake and see if they rattled at all. This, I suppose, could give us a clue of some sort of what might be inside. When I was little I used to check under the tree each morning for days before Christmas to see if just by chance old Santa had come on the wrong day. One of the most memorable Christmas tree experiences is one we had a number of years ago when the children were very small. We had used an aluminum tree for several years. It looked nice with red balls and a revolving light beneath it which made gorgeous reflections on the walls and ceiling. That aluminum tree had been in place for a few weeks and was still standing there waiting for Santa when the children went to bed this particular Christmas Eve. After the kids were all tucked in bed and asleep, we went to a nearby Christmas Tree lot and bought a live tree for about $1. We took down the J aluminum tree and put the real tree in its place. We put the lights and decorations on it and Santa left the I presents beneath the tree. j The next morning as the children (our family always goes in together to see what Santa brought) entered s the room, they stopped dead still. Their mouths came open and thev stared straight ahead at the tree, the Ii live tree which glowed with lights 'jJ and decorations. 0 They did not look down at the II presents under the tree. They just !:a stared at the tree. The older ones ;'.n asked where the tree came from and 'a we said that Santa must have ill brought it. That was a special tree in W my memory. p; I have heard a lot of tales recently j about how long some people keep s their Christmas trees up. One said her neighbor kept her's up until one of her children's birthday in February. Another said that her neighbor kept it up until Memorial Day. One lady said that her neighbor had an artificial tree and she did not like to take it down and put it up, so .' she just put it in the corner of her family room, covered it with a sheet !' and left it there all year, uncovering jy it in time for Christmas. Lots of people take their tree down V the day after Christmas. I at least tk want ours to stay up through New Years. After that I will willingly take it down. Yet, I hate to see it taken down. It represents something pretty special. A warmth and friendliness of the Christmas season u is symbolized in the tree and when it is put away for another year, so is all r' that goodness we felt. i'' I would like the beauty of the Christmas tree to be in our home all year long, even though the tree itself might not be there anymore. ( letters to the editor J State cruel to handicapped Editor: I finally decided to write this after I read several editorials about how prejudiced and inhumane, cruel and a afraid a lot of the citizens of Lindon are supposed to be. It makes me angry when people feel their point of view is the only right one. Some people can't respect another point of view on the same subject. I'm talking about the proposed group home for the handicapped that might go into a neighborhood in Lindon. I am a concerned neighbor in that neighborhood. I have nothing against the handicapped. I am not prejudiced, and don't like being called such. I feel that I have the handicapped people's welfare in mind, just as much, if not more than these people who have written editorials and also the State Social Services. The first meeting about this group home got rather emotional and we were told by the state that first meetings always do get emotional. The state brought in eight men who would be living in the facilty so we could meet them. They didn't have to bring them, especially since they were aware of how emotional these first meetings are, and they were free to take them out at any time, but chose to have the men stay. These men have feelings like anyone else and I felt it was cruel on the state's part to subject those men to the meeting. The home being proposed as a group home would house eight men, a house couple and their two children for a total of 12 persons. Many have voiced concerns over the size of the home and the suitability of said home for this purpose. The home has no adquate dining space for so many individuals and is quite small. Renovation would have to be done to form bedrooms from storage rooms and windows would have to be put in these rooms to meet state codes. A fire escape would have to be built as the home is two-stor- The square footage is small, the state says it's adquate, but we feel it is too small and would be unsafe for these handicapped men. We feel that a home could be found that is much more adequate and safe without the major reconstruction that this home will require. It is our tax money being used for this home and it should be used wisely. These are concerns for these individual's safety, privacy and welfare, not signs of prejudice. We feel that eight individuals in a home with only two individuals supervising them is too much of a load on the house couple who are to provide supervision as explained by the state. This couple is young, with a family of their own and the father is a full-tim- e BYU student. We feel that adequate supervision is a legitimate concern and that these men deserve the attention that they need. This is not a prejudice. We are concerned over liability for our property and thers, also. At one of the meetings with the state we were told as this was a "non-profit" organization, they were not liable for any damage any of the individuals might do to anyone else's property. We were told to lock our gates if ' we were concerned about our animals being accidently let out. I don't want to have to lock my gates. I feel that this group home should be liable just like anyone else, for damages the people living their might incur. We have been told that htey will be "just like any other family." If this is so, then they should be liable just like any family in the neigh-borhood. This is not being prejudiced, just a concerned neighbor. We are also concerned with in-creased traffic on our strets, with that many individuals, there will be people visiting, state agencies in-specting, so we have been told, and more traffic in the residential area. This is a concern. The state law passed says that cities have to allow group homes for the handicapped into residential areas, but that city ordinance can regulate them. I feel they should be treated as a business. In actuality that is what this is. The individual contracting with the state to put this group home in is making a living doing this, or at least a profit, or he wouldn't be doing it. To me that constitutes a business. The city should follow-u- p on this to make sure this business complies with all regulations, etc. This is for the benefit of the entire city and not to be nitpicking. Things have to go through certain steps and procedures and a business of this type should be no different. They will be putting more group homes of this type into neigh-borhoods all through the valley. The state informed us of that. Or-dinances need to be written to help establish guidelines for these homes and followed. All codes and regulations need to be adheared to as in any business. Because of these above concerns, we are called prejudiced, afraid and cruel. I feel possibly the shoe is on the other foot. We are only con-cerned citizens. --Wanda Martin Lindon Biggest Christmas trees lined Main Street Every time cities start sprucing up for Christmas, I find myself remembering the giant Colorado blue spruces that ran down the middle of Main Street in my home town of Montpelier, Idaho. Through downtown Montpelier four blocks of it - Main Street was four lanes wide. But starting at 7th Street, the two inside lanes were replaced by a wide raised divider covered with grass. Each divider was a block long, and each had three or four huge spruce trees down the center. I have no idea how old those trees were. Coming into town on Highway 89 turned into Main Street - the massive spruce trees were an im-pressive sight, and probably the town's most memorable charac-teristic. Highway 89 is a major route to Yellowstone National Park, and it winds through a lot of small towns in the southeastern corner of Idaho. But people remembered Montpelier as the town with the trees down Main Street. They remembered it even more around Christmastime when, in the course of getting ready for the holiday, the town turned all of those spruce trees into Christmas trees, strung with huge colored lights that could be seen for quite a distance. These weren't the delicate lights you find in Provo or on Temple the editor's colum By MARC HADDOCK Square, but large, brightly colored lights. Despite whatever was done in the business district, those gigantic Christmas trees dominated the city's Christmas decorations. Montpelier is cold country, and if the snow falls anywhere, it falls in Bear Lake Valley first. Towards Christmas, snow falls regularly. My earliest Christmas memories are of driving down Main Street in the evening, everything covered with white and snow still falling. The roads were kept clean by snow plows that piled up excess snow on the dividers and, in the business district, in the middle of Main Street - reducing the four lane road to two lanes. But the ice on the roads always made the trip down Main Street, or any other street, an ad-venture. When it got dark and cold, the trip was even more interesting. In that odd winter combination of dark skies and white snow, with huge flakes adding to the piles and covering the trees' branches, those massive Christmas lights strung on the spruce trees seemed to give off more of a soft glow than a bright light. I always thought they were the best Christmas trees that could ever be. I would have thought so even more if I had realized that other towns didn't have Christmas trees like that. Those massive trees gave the community character, and the residents of town were proud of them. Small towns need something that makes them stand apart. Some rely on a sense of history or a nearby natural feature to increase com-munity cohesiveness. Those trees had helped fashion Montpelier's individual character. There was just one problem. They were on a major highway instead of a city street -- - and one day someone who had little concern for the town's unique character decided they had to be taken out. Traffic through town was in- - creasing, and two lanes down ( Highway 89 were no longer enough. The trees had to be pulled oul so more cars could come through. Bui every town had cars running down V. the middle of Main Street only ft Montpelier could say the same for v'j its trees. But in our society, progress tends to take precedence over traditions n. that are no longer functional. The served no function other than to separate lanes of traffice and lo look beautiful. The trees and I left town about Ine same time. I was 19, and tta) started tearing them from l ground the day before I headed out for a two-ye- visit to Mexico. I remember walking down w street, looking at the massive re with the dark dirt hanging fro them and the earth piled up w the ground has been disrupted violently. It's the last clear vision' have of home. . By the time. I got back. Ma Street was smoothly paved wi tt awkward four-lan- e highway thai) will find in any of a thousand mm towns intersected by major rw and Montpelier wasn t anymore. ,.n Time and circumstances haa out my roots as well. ' But every Christmas 1 find reta-king that mental journey C again. L i You can't take it with you, except . . . By BECKI GRASS JOHNSON When you exit this world, there's not a lot you're able to take with you, although there are those who have given it their best shot. (Strange that the man who has money to burn, cannot take it with him.) It's a weird custom, but in many cultures, people have been laid to rest with their most prized possessions. Kings were buried with their gold, their linens and finery. Some were even buried with sacred writings. The greatest of Viking warriors were set adrift in ships loaded with armor and swords so they could sail to Valhalla with dignity. In India, the remains of leaders and all their worldly possessions, including wives, were burned. (And Nancy Reagan thinks she takes a lot of heat being the First Lady! ) In certain Indian tribes, it was customary for a chief to be buried in full battle array along with his horse, squaw, and several warriors. grassroots " I Copyright fT &i986 V i ' I 1 Becky 1 rass v 1 Johnson fowiYfinfft by BECKI GRASS JOHNSON They woulcThelp escort mm 10 mat great hunting ground in the sky. I heard of one man whose greatest love in life was his little, red sports car. On his death bed he issued to his family his last request; that he be buried in his beloved MG. I don't know what in the world he must have been thinking! He's certainly not going anywhere, and I doubt the top was down. Personally, I wouldn't want to be caught dead in anything less than a Ferrari! I've heard of people who have been buried with escape hatches built into their coffins. Now that has got to be the ultimate sign of an optimist ! So what if the escape hatch works? Where do they think they are going to go? Unfortunately, I don't know of anyone that has had one installed and then been able to use it. My friend Shirley insists that when she goes, her phone is going with her. I suppose it will be a cordless. I told her I won't hold my breath waiting for her to call me. I really doubt she's going to be in any kind of shape to "reach out and touch someone." She has reassured me that she will leave a number for me to reach her. Somehow I have the feeling that if I do call, I won't be talking to Shirley. I'll just get some stupid recording that says, "Hi. I'm sorry, but Shirley . can't come to the phone right now . . ." When my time has come, I don't wish to be buried with any expensive luxuries. I can part with the waterbed. I won't miss the station wagon. I will kiss my Reebok shoes goodbye. I wish only to take a few simple mementos with me. I will be content to die with a twinkie between my teeth, an American Express card in one hand (don't leave home without it!) and a National Enquirer in the other. And long after my American Express and I have expired my bereaved family will be able to say, "Yes, she may have been a junk food junkie, but she died with an inquiring mind." Hubby says that as far as he s concerned, he's not interested in taking anything with him into the next life. He just wants to look "natural." I guess that means I won't attempt to pry the channel changer from his hand. Pleasant (rSroue toieui ISSN No. 2 U.S.P.S. No. Published weekly except for Thanksgiving Newtah, inc. and Christmas by 11 South Mam Pleasant Grove, t'tah 84062 Telephone Numbers Advertisings Circulation. News . Brett Edit0rS MaSaVr Subscription price 516" Per ,j Second class postage paio at Pleasant Grove Post Off : PI Bc.x7. American rom. " 'w s j |