The coastland times. [volume] (Mnateo [i.e. Manteo], N.C.) 1947-1959, 1951-01-12
IT Taxes
ALL KINDS
BY DAVE WEST

| reading the Sunday News and
Observers society page. Mean to
keep it up, too; for last Sunday
we learned that a girl from Char
lotte whose given name is JEFF
frie is engaged to marry fell
low from Raleigh whose first
name is Hazel. If Hazel should
someday name a son Jeffcie and
Jeffrie name a daughter Hazel,
wouldn't theirs be an interesting
place for a census taker to call?
There Bill went round the null
berry bush One morning last
week something was wrong with
Francis Meekins' car. He tried a
little of the hocus-pocus and me-
chanical know-how he uses to get
the typesetting machine or the
press back in order when they go
on the blink, but the car still
wouldn't start. Then he called
Billy Gates at the Times Office
and asked him to drive out to
Sunnyside and give his car pull
They had several false starts
before the improvised tow-rope
was broken down to a length short
enough to hold. When they reach
ed the Airport road, Francis car
started. ust to save little time,
Billy jerked ahead with his car
to break the fiimsy rope, which
he did-and blew out tire in
the process. The boys went on to
work and left Bills car behind.
That noon Billy went out in
truck to change tires. And there
Messr. Gates vehicle troubles for
the day-but, after the tire was
changed the truck refused to
start . When we drove to work
in the afternoon, we passed Billy's
discouraged coupe towing the
truck back toward Manteo.
The "rush-rush" manner (or
mannerism, perhaps) of Yankees
was being discussed by two lad
les in the Times Office the other
day. We overheard ("eavesdrop-
ped" is such a nasty word) the
neatest possible retort to the Yam
kee claim for superior energy.
yankees can talk all they want
to-" one of the ladies said, "but
I've never known a one of them
with get-up enough to make hot
biscuit" (Our appreciation was
too loud, and the lady turned to
assure us that she didn't consider
mid-westerners Yankees For
which we're glad.)
One Halloween joke played last
year is long-lived. The geranium
that sits in the front window of
the Times Office must belong to
someone in Manteo. Must have
come off someone's front porch on
Halloween night. 1t turned up in
Vic Meekins' car next morning.
The geranium has survived our
move from the old office, which
should prove it is a hardy plant
and one worth retaining.
When they begin to crack I'M
der the strain of these hectic
times, their screwiness may shop
up in any way imaginable. A
friend (whom we shall begin to
regard with a wary eye) has CIV
en- US the results of a project he
just completed. He has counted
the number of times Gov. W. Kerr
Scott used the personal pronouns
"I" and eve" in his January A
message to the General Assem-
bly,. He has also compiled some
nonsensical statistics from his
pointless mathematical doodling.
He has not explained what, if
any lis the significance of his fig
ures. When we asked what he did
the frittering for, he said belli-
gerently, ''These are facts. I'm
probably the only man in the
world who has found them out"
But what significance did the
facts have, we inquired. "You
can't get away from facts" he
said.
Here are his ''facts." Gov.
Scott, he says, used 81" 116 times
and eve" sc times in the speech.
The printed copy our zany friend
mutilated was 1912 pages long.
This works out to slightly over
SO ops" and just short of 3.4
"We's" per page.
If you make no more sense of
this stuff than we can, we sug-
gest that you do with it what
we're going to do-file it away in
the folder entitled Subjects To
Discuss When You Want People
To Go Home"
that it violates the Potsdam