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the tribune thursday july 8 w6 amync sobkripowu mjm pr ynrla cum ltj awdttjmrmv o cjrammavx l public generally unamused by teenage pranks vandalism visitors to centennial square in stouff- ville on thursday were generally unamused to find soap suds in the fountain for about the third time in two weeks even less funny was the disappearance last week of the two flags in front of the municipal offices for the second time in a f month while hardly serious in themselves the i sum total of crimes of vandalism costs tax- payers a bundle in repair and replacement fees not to mention in time spent by the police in patrolling for and tracking down these mostly youthful miscreants to us it seems that of all crimes that appear oh the york regional police reports vandalism in some ways is the saddest for one thing youths who resort to in- fantile pranksterism on a regular basis must be incredibly bored as well as insensitive cynical and occasionally cruel individuals j and furthermore the occurrence of j vandalism indicates there are a large proportion of parents who dont have the 1 time to strike j opposition weak there has never been a more opportune time for federal opposition parties to down the present liberal government than j how but this opportunity must go un challenged because of opposition weakness- 1 the liberals have found themselves deep in trouble with the recent air traffic strike- i capital punishment and the workingsof the antiinflation board lining up a majority of canadian citizens against them defense v spending has been another thorny problem rand the continual enlargement of the civil servant army on top of all this scandals have swirled around a number of liberal members despite this mass of liberal problems the opposition is helpless to bring them down the conservatives have been- very slow to rally ij behind theirnew leader joe clark and whether they will everbe able to do so is a j question on many tory minds the public has been showing a distinct favoritism to turn right and this has left ed broadbent and his ndp farout in left field the idea of more socialism is not popular and i many believe they have had too much from the liberals already any election called now would certainly leave the voters with a dilemna and could i even mean that thousands might forfeit their 5 vote entirely faintest notion of how their children spend their time in fact they often would rather not know getting a child involved in some adult- supervised activity for the summer while sometimes helpfulwe submit is no substitute for parents giving their kids consistent love and attention its the only final answer to the vandalism problem weeds neglected a simple drive about town will soon show anyone that the weed crop this year in town must be one of the finest ever and the neglect the greatest both public and private property has been sadly neglected in many places something which irks the eye of anyone in terested in neatly trimmed lawns and gar- dens public ditches have been allowed to grow up with hip high grass and weeds and even the puc building with its rear exposure on blake st is far from tidy other areas are just as bad many of them private the railway property and rightofway which has never had a neat appearance since thedays of the local section crews isagain in a sorry state it has always been a mystery how private property owners can walk in and out of their premises each day and pass by knee high weeds reaching up from every corner the sight certainly brings comments from the many in town who- take pride in their homes and business places and gives the community as a whole a rundown appearance this night view of stouffvilles train station was executed by sdss artists and developing students and the resultant book will feature a great student steve skyvington the work has been submitted for inclusion in variety of styles and interpretations steve has gained some notoriety for the centennial sketch book contributions have come in from professional the athletic mural he painted on the high school gymnasium wall ossugar and spice the thin line betwen hero and bum by bill smiley as we all know especially those who have ever engaged in sports theres a very thin line between being a hero and being a bum one day youre at bat three runs behind three runners on base the count three and two anil you smash a home run two days later in exactly the same situation you strike out same man exactly first time you are cheered to the echo second time you are booed out of the park id like to report that most of the time my excerpts from the tribune from july ii 1946 combined agestotal s76 years 50mile an hour back the ontario government has legalized the 50mileanhour speed limit again for motorists on highways and signs to this effect have now been posted on main traffic high ways in theprovince following the suspension of the 40 mile limit made by the federal government the province promptly and perhaps not wisely stepped up the speed last week to 50miles no pockets required the local tailor tells us that some in the trade are held up getting out tailormade suits because they cannot even get material for pockets after paying for a suit at the new prices for cloth we do not imagine the pur chasers will heed any pockets in the next suit so on with production mi m countdown stouffville centennial stouffville once the goldfish capital did you know that in the 1940s stouff- ville was the undisputed goldfish capital and george aston the goldfish king mr aston operated the stouffville goldfish supply coi a factory which stood on albert st south the present site of the testa villet apts the tanks located in the basement of the plant contained 2000000 of the little fish in the winter months and in the outside ponds located near ringwood there were enough to enable him to sell 12000000a- yearall over the world the fish were contained in 100 tanks inside and 57 ponds outside before the second world war mr aston was selling 250000 goldfish a week to one london england store he also sold 300 to winston churchill mr aston once recalled losing 110000 in seven minutes during a terrific cloud burst- which washed out his hatchery located at the time on north yonge st near the sir william mulock farm he told of fish flopping all over yonge st and said that the result was that people were pulling enlarged goldfish out of the holland river for years countdown layover meetings of the centennial committee have been suspended for the two summer months and this countdown column written by c h nolan will also be discontinued until september one hundred- and twelve years ago three morgason brothers and their wives migrated from england to canada they came in a sailing vessel and the crossing took 13 weeks the families settled in this part of ontario in uxbridge township finally there was a lad in the group john morgason aged nine years who just a cen tury ago married sarah morden and we find the couple settled north of glasgow on the second of uxbridge where now lives mr and mrs leslie morgason the place has been in the family for over a hundred years john morgasons wife sarah morden was born east of stouffville on the townline on the present floyd fairies farm john and sarah morganson raised a family of twelve children and today seven of them are still living oldest of the seven is william morgason 97 on the 20th of october next- thomas in his 88th year and sister maggie mrs seneca miller looking forward to her 86th birthday she keeps house for the two boys in-good- wood and ministers to their every need taking their nearest birthdays the three have a combined age of 269 years and probably establish a record in ontario for three brothers and sister living together doing their own housework v y- i the combined ages of the five brothers and two sisters reach an imposing figure totalling 576 years wife thinks im a hero but this column has always been noted for a dedication to veracity most of the time she thinks im a bum not just an ordinary bumi quote bill smiley you are a lazy procrastinating bum dont think i just sit there and take it oh noi point out with some gusto that shes never held a steady job in her life except as a mother and housewife that no guy who teaches all day and runs an english depart ment with 10 teachers in it and writes a weekly column can be called lazy but it seems were not talking about the same lazy shes talking about evading short of anything worse than a threat of death cleaning up the basement rather than playing golf im talking about the higher things in life as faras the procrastinating goes ill admit honestly and openly that i procrastinate but only in a limited way i am not an acrosstheboard procrastinator ill confess that from time to time on certain occasions i have been known all things considered by some suspicious people who are themselves too aggressive to procrastinate but the third term in that pejorative remark bum i will not accept not even from the old battleaxe a bum is one of two things a rear end a person who refuses to work i ani not the former though i have a few enemies who would question it i am not the latter i have worked since i was a stripling but i started work cleaning out lavatories and i dont in tend to finsh work cleaning up the basement all this is merely preamble to the happy note of this column last weekend for almost 72 hours with only a couple of relapses my wife thought i was a hero not a bum it was time for one of pur semiannual safaris to the city these are usually pretty ghastly i talk vaguely about going to a good hotel seeing a couple of top shows and eating a gourmet dinner or two in posh restaurants she thinks its all set v r comes- the- weekend ive forgotten all about it the trunk of the car has sprung from backing into a telephone pole no hotel reservation you couldnt get a ticket to that special show if your initials were pet and we have to stand in line for an hour for that gourmet grub which is one step better than x the local greasy spoon and eight times as costly relations are strained we go back to our secondrate hotel burping garlic which has covered a multitude of culinary- sins and sulkily watch a tv show that we saw as a re run last november but this time ah this time it was like a honeymoon a- week before driven by who- knows what buried guilt i sneaked to the telephone one evening and laid everything on best hotel in the city room overlooking the lake tickets for two shows dinner reservations next day i gotthe car washed and gassed sneaked away early from work- the old girl couldnt believe it everything worked they hadnt screwed up our reservations for once traffic was mur derous but only one bus driver really went out of his way to get us the shows were terrific dinners were excellent no waiting and the weather was splendid i think his awesomeness had finally decided to let poor old bill smiley be something other than a bum at least for 72 hours as i sat on the 26th floor looking over the lake while my wife was shopping next morning and wondered what the poor people were doing today i couldnt help thinking that god was in his heaven for once and all was right with the world but wait it didnt end there going out of the city we dropped in to see our grandsons with appropriate gifts they wanted to leave their parents and come home with grandad and gran how about that and one final frosting on the cake we got home lo and be hold the storm windows had been taken off the windows polished the lawn had been cut and the place looked great id- forgotten to tell the storm window man and the boy who cuts the lawn that wedbe away i didnt let on- just said well i see the varlets have been at work as instructed you wont believe this but the oldlady actually said you know sometimes bill smiley youre not a lazy procrastinating bum hows that for an accolade small town summertime ears ago by c h nolan this bench b now in place in front of the post officeand from all reports it has beenmuch appreciated by those making use of it the bench has the distinction of being the towns first centennial gift and was donated by the stouffville womens institute v- how did the kids of stouffville fifty years ago put in summer time i was one of them so let me tell you a few of the activites that went on in those late twenties the town had less than fifteen hundred people stouffville had two schools both contained in one building the present summitview there were five teachers in this single public school and the secondfloor housed a continuation school with three teachers to obtain your upper school or grade 13 certificate it- was necessary to go to markham school dismissed for the holidays about the same time as today and it was wonderful as one looked ahead to the long summer days i was an eastend kid just on the verge of becoming a teenager not quite to the point where having a summer job was a real necessity however to have some kind of minor employment seemed like fun and besidesit was the best way to keep a bit of spending money jangling in ones pocket berry picking was thething and the east- end hadjustthe places john mckinnons on montreal st for strawberries and a little later ed walls orchard across i from the- brierbush hospital all the strawberry picking was done in quart boxes and the pay was 3 cents a box when one moved on to ed walls it was raspberries where a similar box brought you 4 cents currants followed and here was the big moneymaker black currants at 30 cents for a six quart basket they were even better than red cherries which brough you only 20 cent and that for an 11qt basket a real smart picker on the black currants could make 1 a day but boy did it ever take a lot of those little fellows to fill a 6- qt basket stouffville was a farm community there were lots of farmers in town every day and there were plenty of opportunities for an eager lad to get on the end of a hoe in july to stook grain in early august and help around threshing time later in the month this stooking grain sheaves in the fields to be hauled away by team and wagon to the barn for threshing is a thing of the past today everything is combined right in the field i enjoyed all these jobs from time to time and participating in the work was still as great a reward as any financial returns those were the days when swimming pools were few and far between and certainly not in a community this size even in toronto the famous sunnyside pool and the ymca provided about the only artificial swimming places these were also the days when every local creek ran sparkling fresh with ponds the same the days before pollution as kids we spent hours building dams on creeks north and south of stouffville just to get the water deep enough for a good plunge sure the water was pretty muddy at times but as the saying goes it was clean dirt and we enjoyed it to the full if one didnt fancy this skinnydipping in the local stream there was always musselmans lake but the long dusty bicycle trip from town took some of the pleasure out of this exercise- r baseball was selforganized for school boys like myself no uniforms and the other necessary equipment you managed to get for yourself it was a big evening when the souffville oba intermediate team playing in the tricounty league hosted one of the neigh- boring teams itj slowly the lazy days of summer were wiled away and few were sorry when school returned for the fall