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Citizen comment Conserve energy The cry to conserve energy became more acute this week as most of eastern Canada and the north east-United States were lashed by one of the most severe winter storms in recent memory. At last count more than 2 million Americans were out of work, the result of severe shortages in fuel and elec- trical energy. Residents have been asked to turn down the home thermostats, retailers may have to cut down their opening hours, gasoline for cars is, in some areas, running dangerously low. Whether or not the emergency measures imposed in the USA in the last few days will have any effect on the Canadian realization of an energy shortage remains to be seen. Chances though are there may be some clucking of the tongues, or some expressions of sympathy - and that's where it will end. We're spoiled here in the frozen north. Up to now we've basked in 70 degree F. "'room temperature'; we run all the electrical convenience appliances we can. The lights burn bright night and day in highrise office buildings. Government and _ utility representatives can sound off on the im- pending energy shortage all they like - up to now we've paid them absolutely no heed. Energy concerns rank near the bottom of Canadians' pre-occupations with the en- vironment, Jack Morrison of Ontario Hydro revealed last week. Despite the utility's repeated efforts to make consumers aware of the need to conserve energy wherever possible, we still insist on taxing the elec- trical output of this country to its absolute maximum. And we'll likely go on doing so until we too find the doors to our places of employment closed because of imposed energy cutbacks, until our lights burn dimmer and roasts cook longer because of necessary voltage cuts. It's unfortunate but we will probably have to be confronted with the consequences before we take seriously the crisis looming on the horizon. Hydro providers of course are largely responsible for the consumers' attitudes to electricity. Not so very long ago the proponents of electrically heated homes were everywhere; hydro, it was said is cheaper, there's a limitless supply, buy, buy, _ buy. Hydro now is put in the difficult position of having to contradict itself and changing the public's orientations. It is not going to be an easy chore. There is a message to be learned from what has happened in the USA. Energy shortages are with us to stay, it's a way of life we have to come to terms with. Our stan- dards of living may be affected as we are forced to revert to more mechanical utensils, alternative ways of heating as burning peat or reverting to solar energy and are forced to use mass transit rather than one of three family cars. There is however no alternative. The time to use energy conscientiously is upon us. Letters to the Editor Civinettes thanked Mrs. D. Dorion of Penetanguishene recently received the following letter of thanks from Mental Health Center ad- ministrator L.A. Moricz. In recognition of the volunteer contribution that the Civinettes have made during the past few years to the Mental Health Centre, I wish to express, on behalf of the Mental Health Centre staff, our sincere appreciation to your Organization. Your voluntary contributions to the patients at the Centre illustrates your Organization's dedicated committment to all members of the Community. During these present times of restraint in government spending especially in the Health Care field, the demand for volunteer involvement by the citizens in the Com- munity plays an every increasing imminent role in the day-to-day care of our patients at the Centre. Please be assured that your services are not taken for granted by the staff or the patients; and your Association deserved the highest regard from the Community and the Mental Health Centre. Sincerely, L.A. Moricz, B.A. M.H.A., Administrator Thomas M. Smith Marketing boards anecessity Shadyholme Farm R.R. No. 2, Utopia, Ontario The Toronto Star is a perfect example of why marketing boards are necessary. As in the past, people have believed they have the right to "cheap food" regardless of its cost of production. Until marketing boards were formed the producer was completely at the mercy of the middle man. The very future of some commodities was threatened. Marketing boards were set up to allow producers a say in what they received for their goods as well as to have an organization responsible to the primary producer. The set up prevents monopolies from being formed since it treats large and small alike with no advantage to the in- tegrator. Several boards have price setting powers and these operate under a cost of production formula which is open for scrutiny by the public. These boards work under a supply management system just as General Motors, General Electric The Penetanguishene 7 PRIZE wy, \ Bean' itize N DIAN COMM Un ? and indeed the Toronto Star, as well as all other industries. When G.M. or G.E. has an accumulation of goods they simply lay off workers or shorten the shift. Does the Star keep the press rolling regar- dless of how many papers they are selling? Of course not. They print what they hope to sell. Have you seen papers at half price because of over production? Never. The excess is destroyed. Hens and cows cannot be turned on or off as quickly as humans can be manipulated. Their produce cannot be stored in warehouses in- definitely like pots, pans or cars. No other industry answers to the public in as open a manner as marketing boards. No other industry answers to its producers like a marketing board. Has Westons ever given the cost of production of a loaf of bread? Who are they responsible to -- no one. The Star writes vicious and misleading editorials on agriculture. Why? Their policy has been to try and discredit boards and to shake consumer confidence in them. The $10.40 Year editorials, incidently, have remained anonymous. Thank God marketing boards do not operate this way. Hopefully producers and consumers' can achieve understanding and trust within each other. This will not happen through a medium such as the Toronto Star - con- troversy sells papers - not stories. with happy en- dings. The manipulation of many by a few was what made boards necessary and essential for the continuation of a free enterprise system which recognized the rights of the individual. As in all matters some rules and restrictions are necessary. The Star is attempting to manipulate the public mind. This is a dangerous and unhealthy situation - especially when it comes from a phantom with no apparent conscience. Tom Smith farms in Essa Township near Barrie. He is president of the Simcoe County Federation of Agriculture and a director of the Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board. 75 Main Street TELEPHONE 549-2012 Andrew Markle Publisher Victor Wilson, General Manager David Ross, Editor Member of Audit Bureau of Circulations Member of the Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association Subscription Rates: Home Delivery: 20c Weekly. Mail Subscription $9.50 yearly in Canada $24.00 USA or foreign Audit Bureau of Circulations regulations require that mail subscriptions be paid in advance Second Class Mail Registration Number 2327 Page 4, Wednesday, February 2, 1977 Sugar and Spice Boy, am I glad I'm not rich! There is nothing wrong with money in itself, though the love of it is reputed to be the root of all evil. It's what money brings in its wake that can make life a nightmare. For the past four days we've been a two- car family, and it's been a real brute. We need two cars about as much as we need two houses, and I still don't know how I got into this fandango, but I'm in it, and I wish I weren't. There wasn't a thing wrong with our old car, except that it was getting a bit long in the tooth. Or so everybody said. I didn't think a 1967 Dodge, with only 48,000 miles on it, that ran like a bomb, was something to be ashamed of. Dogs are said to age about seven to one, in comparison with humans. Thus, a nine-year- old dog would be like a 63-year-old man. That seems fair enough: missing some teeth, missing some hair, and getting a bit stiff and arthritic. But there are old dogs and old dogs, of both species. I don't know the ratio for cars and humans, but I'd guess it would be about eight to one. So, my 10-year-old car would be about 80 in human terms. To some of you young people, 80 might seem a great age. But to my personal knowledge, for some people life begins at 80. And many an old girl in a home for the aged will back me up. They know, from personal experience, that some of the guys, at 80, 82, 84 are among the most dangerous men they've ever met in their lives, socially and sexually. We've all been reading lately about the Male Menopause. At least I have. I think I came through it all right, but you never really know. Only last Sunday afternoon I was giving my wife a big blast because she didn't want me to join the poker club and go to the Legion Hall and play shuffleboard with the boys after work on Friday. She was a bit taken aback for about one minute. Then she snapped that she didn't care what I did. I could go and stand on my - head in a snowbank. I could go out and play poker six nights a week, as long as I didn't take more than a dollar with me, and didn't "expect me to serve lunch to a lot of men who'd leave a dirty mess to clean up and burn holes in the rug."' ~ I don't know how I got away over here behind the barn when I started out talking about the horrors of being a two-car family. Anyway. People made disparaging remarks about my old Dodge. A mechanic wanted to buy it. Cheap. When I suggested $1,300 as a fair price, he laughed so hard he had a mild heart attack. 'Smiley, you've run that old wreck into every tree in Blank County." Me and my car This was a gross canard. That car has hit only one tree. I'll admit that it has hit the same tree -- the one at the end of my driveway -- three times, once by my wife, once by my daughter, once by my son-in-law, but never by me. That shows you how rumors spread. ; It did have a wow in the front bumper from the time I hit a light standard. The back bumper was somewhat like a boomerang, because I bombed through two feet of snow in my driveway last winter, skidded across the street, and hit a telephone pole, backwards. But only one tree. On one side, the chrome was stripped off and the door caved in, when the Old Lady had an argument with the side of the garage. But the other side, until today, looked like a new car, except for the rust, which had eaten a bare 12 inches up into the fenders. Key words there are '"'Until today."' After today I have matching doors, both without chrome, both looking as though Paul Bunyan had taken a grievance and a kick at the door, in that order. Inside, the car is like new, if you don't mind a bit of foam spilling out of the seats. You can tell it has been a one-owner car. The two inches of cigarette ashes on the floor are all of the same brand. You can understand how sentimental a chap could get about such a car. Like an 80- by Bill Smiley year-old uncle with a few scars and wrinkles but a lot of zip still in the old bawd. People have made love in that car. People have been taken to hospital in that car. Babies have been brought home from hospital on their fifth or sixth day in the world, in-that car. I loved that car. But it was too randy for me. It was Male Menopause No. 2, the one that comes at 80. So I bought a new one. Not really new. Anybody who buys a new car today is either en or ripped-off. Jumped all the way up toa But I still have the old one. My wife loves, now, too, after asking me for five years it expected her to be seen in public in 'That old wreck."' So Ihave two cars. I juggle them in and out of a one-car garage and a one-car driveway. Today I had the new one off to work. Although I have told her 700 times that she can't back the car out of the garage, she tried it. [don't know what her technique is. I think she looks over her left shoulder and twists the wheel to the right. Or vice versa. Anyway, she creamed it right up against the post of the garage, could neither forward go nor back, and I now have matching dented doors. Sans chrome. At least it wasn't the new five-year-old one. Let us now exploit famous men i, 2 by Shirley Whittington It used to be that the world's great books were written by intellectual giants with rich imaginations. These days, a lot of them seem to be written by the former hairdressers, chauf- feurs, stenographers and lovers of the rich and famous. The private lives of a good many celebrated people' have lately been chronicled, in startling detail, by once trusted retainers. We have become a nation of Peeping Toms with library cards. (At the moment I am waiting breathlessly for a medium with a message to tell me what MacKenzie King was all about. This would be the ultimate in ghost writing.) I_used to think I'd write a book. In fact I started one once but halfway through the first chapter I went upstairs to take a nap. Somehow, I just never got back to it. However, aS I look back at my not uneventful life, I realize that I have not one, but several books of the kiss and tell variety inside me, just waiting to be neatly typed. The first one is to be titled '"The Lieutenant Governor's Woman - Almost," and records my brief but tumultuous connection with Roland Michener, the former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. A penniless student I was wandering through the Royal Ontario Museum one day humming, and waiting for love to touch me with its warty hand. Suddenly, I noticed that a way had been cleared through one of the rooms, and that the uniformed museum attendants were standing to attention. Walking toward me was this fit, distinguished looking gentleman. It was Roland Michener, and I'll never forget the way his moustache wiggled as he spoke softly to me. "Excuse me," he said, as he walked past.; Only two words, but freighted with unspeakable passion. But it was an impossible affair. He was Lieutenant Governor and I was only a poor student. Although I knew instinctively that he longed to wiggle his moustache at me again and again, it was not to be. We haven't seen each other since. Mindful of what idle gossip would do to his career, I have waited until now to reveal this intimate story. When that book's published, I'll use the royalties to buy a new typewriter ribbon and then I'll settle into "Witness to Yesterday" - reminiscences of my tragic love affair with Patrick Watson, one of Canada's leading journalists. We attended the same high school, but the vast differences in our social positions forced us to cloak our passions in total secrecy. He was an upper classman who bought his lunch in the school cafeteria each day. I was a lower school nobody who took her sand- wiches in a tin box with The Lone Ranger on it. He was president of the High Y. I was twice defeated in my bid to become Red Cross Secretary of 10B. Yet we managed, as secret lovers will, to communicate in our own special way. Once, when I was bottle-necking the line-up in the cafeteria, he spoke to me. '"'Are you," he asked tenderly, "going to stand there all day?"' We sang togther in the school choir, and every time he cleared his throat at choir practice, that enigmatic question echoed in my heart. He was a cheerleader. How well I remember him, in his white cable stitch sweater with the big purple O on the front, looking up into the stands and saying, in that tei way he had: "All Right! Gimme an Ol' We met a dozen times a day in the school corridors but never once did he betray with a Wind sculptures glance or a whisper how he really felt about me. Given a choice between stern duty and the selfish fulfillment of his heart's desire, he chose the former, and for that, I shall always respect him. But every time I hear his voice on the television saying, 'This is Patrick Watson, saying goodnight," I know he's saying it to me. I could list dozens of subjects with whom I have had brief but meaningful connections which I'm sure I could spin out into books. A - friend of mine's husband is a good friend of Allan Eagleson's. A lady I know once met Katherine Hepburn in an elevator. I know somebody who's Gordon Lightfoot's cousin. It's a heavy burden carrying all these secrets and I can hardly wait to spill them to the world. And when I get famous, and rich enough to afford a private secretary, I'll make sure to hire a deaf mute. The sauna - 'beef, well done' by Ray Baker After a couple of minor heart problems a friend of mine went on a health kick. I think we all would if it got down to the wire and we had to. Part of the kick was to eat less, ex- ercise more, and lose some weight. Easier said than done. Your most precious commodity, your body, is a curious thing. No matter what you do it finds its own level on matters of weight, have you noticed that? So after much thought he decided to build his own sauna bath in the basement, with his own hands. He lost weight initially by building it. That was an added bonus. Asking his doctor about it the good doc replied "O.K. if you don't overdo it'. So after making the room and putting in the plumbing, he designed and had made a huge steel contraption which I've christened 'The Iron Maiden', after those medieval instruments of torture that may still be found in Bavarian castle dungeons. The Iron Maiden This huge welded job stands about four feet high, three feet deep and four feet wide. Huge pipes run from its forehead through the sauna room. Its mouth, which eats hard- wood logs, is in the other room waiting hungrily. Its throat contains a half ton of limestone rocks which sizzle and crack if you spit on it, (if you can find any spit). Where its ears would be are two trays containing boiling water which bubbles and growls like a witches cauldron. You lose weight simply by looking at it as you go in. Sheer fright. I had only heard of this beast by hear say from acquaintances. That, plus the fact that my friend was looking slimmer, healthier and years younger piqued my curiosity. So I was ripe for what hap- pened when he phoned me on his day off (a self employed heating expert...what else.) The morning after the night before On a sub-zero Sunday morning at the crack of dawn (9 a.m.) he got me out of bed. "Why don't you come over and have a sauna?" So with my towel in my frost bitten hand I trotted over to his place. His basement (stage one) was only eighty 'F'. So off came the outdoor clothes. He assured me the sauna was ideal on three counts: 1. If you were filthy dirty. 2. If you had a hangover. 3. If you wanted to loose some weight...Luckily I qualified on all three. I had cut the Christmas tree and dragged it in, sampled the home made wine the night before to ensure it was doing well, and had eaten too much of Moms delicious puddings. The hot seat In the inner sanctum (stage two) a hot shower and into the sauna. From zero outside to 170 'F' inside was a welcome change. Mind you I wouldn't like to actually live there. It was pleasant once you learned you could breathe by putting a cold, water soaked towel over your head. The hot seat was the wooden bench. Soak in cold water and sit down. The nails had been countersunk luckily, otherwise they would have burned a hole right through the old derriere. We sat there watching the 'Iron Maiden' and my eye fell on the thermometer. An ordinary one would never do. It was designed for inside an oven (why not indeed). It started on 'foul' up to 'ham'. We were currently on 'beef', well done. Moving up to the bench under the ceiling (stage three) I sat and watched the thing climb to 'ham' 175 degrees F. I know how a turkey feels at Christmas now. The weightwatchers A look through his sliding door at the frozen lake decided us against rolling in the oe! and diving through the ice. We did talk about it though over a cool beer (well we were dehydrated weren't we?). I had truthfully lost four pounds so I figured that another twenty four and a half visits and I could be a 98 Ibs. weakling again. But as I don't want sand kicked in my face I may not take the whole treatment...and that was it. An en- joyable experience. I went home treading on air. Younger, lighter and fit as a fiddle. Got home at 11.55 a.m. and J didn't fall asleep until noon. Ray Baker is a Manager at Midland's RCA plant and a freelance writer for Markle Community Newspapers. He and his family live in Penetanguishene...