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Era Oat- Wed December 1 THE ERA Serving York County Sine id every Wednesday at St New TERRY CARTES Second iwation YCH top priority York County Hospital is doing a fine job with the facilities available as the special report on Page 5 indicates but it also indicates that the hospital is operating at very close to its maximum capacity right now At the very earliest a new wing wont be finished until By then our hospital will be bursting at the seams It is obvious York County cannot afford any more delays in its hospital building program The hospitals nursery department equipped to han dle 24 children often has as many as young patients opera tions planned months ahead sometimes have to be cancelled only hours before the patient is due to check in because no beds are available the sixth floor psychiatric ward is always full and has a waiting list the emergency ward and moat of the other hospital facilities are doing double and sometimes triple duty Delays such as the two year long holdup imposed by Queens Park during and are not only costly in terms of the medical care available to the community they coat York County taxpayers cold hard cash Inflation will push the price of the new wing up eaeh month the plans are held up A provincial election is not far off probably late next spring and if it has not become very clear by then that York County Hospitals expansion has top priority at Queens Park the hospital crisis will become an election issue change to a rail commuter system GOing where The much heralded bus service from Newmarket to Torontos Union Station which was given to the area by Queens Park in lieu of a commuter train has attracted the sum total of new commuters to bus travel in the NewmarketRichmond Hill corridor A GO survey proclaiming this triumph said the com bined GO Transit Gray Coach service has provided a 50 increase in bus service in the corridor and that has risen from 1600 weekday passenger trips to a daily weekday average of more than trips during the last week of October Since each passenger that goes down must come up that works out to an increase of from to 1150 or new A mere drop in the bucket when you consider that in Newmarket alone of the working population commutes to the city according to Canada Manpower figures GOtrain booster John oneday special last fall attracted passengers GOTransit officials said Monday they are planning changes in their bus scheduling soon May we suggest they change to a rail commuter system sticks of vm BENNIES Pops of acid Editor This teller is in toll gales at York County Hospital in Newmarket I eel it is one thing to have to pay to get out of there after visiting one of your loved ones and quite another to have to pay twice I have lost money in that cursed thing and I know other people who have had to pay twice t pay and we do at least they keep the darn working EDWARD Eagle St Newmarket certainly not as they insist on paying tainly not as long as theyre mayors which probably Scott Young goodly back stairs I am only sorry that we didnt think to have recorded on film the meetings of our little Save the Back Stairs Committee There in microcosm was the ageless struggle of humanity attempting to stem the tide of progress two yeople man and wife hud dled night after night over the dining room table drinking coffee smoking talking drawing dia grams calling for order ruling interruptions from the floor out of order and calling in pas- even to cast tiebreaking votes We simply liked the hack stairs One hurry up the back stairs in bare feet and shorts whispering Gangway and stay un seen by a minister being ushered in the front door on a surprise visit One could get down the back stairs in pyjamas at midnight without alerting the neigh borhood by a succession of lights going on that Young once more was going down for some thing to help wash down the late show But there was back stairs In having best brains in the firm of Jones and Bailey contractors were bent to the problem of a rebuilding plan that would get the portable dishwasher out of the middle of the kitchen floor They said that to do this the back stairs must go He said NO that the wall under the hack stairs could he knocked out and a space made there for te dishwasher That was the stage at which I reported triumphantly some weeks ago that the back stairs indeed had been saved However on arriving home a few days later I was met by my wife Come and look she said We went to the kitchen That day the carpenters had been knocking out the wall to find a burrow for the dishwasher There where the wall had been was a mess of nothing except four water pipes rising heavenward toward the bathroom I took in the situation at a glance I suppose we need water in the bathroom I mused She nodded You dont Yes she said There is only one ay now to get rid of the dishwasher And that to knock out the back stairs Well easy One other thing had been found in tit that wall This was a tightlyrolled August newspaper with a the front page saying that US Pres ident Warren Harding had died the day before and that Calvin had become president One could only wonder about those knocking copy of Si Bill Smiley- though wed never seen the stuff before and trying to impress us And just two some nit of a cab driver told me sagely Sure looks like were gonna have a green redecorating the living room Its 18 10 Move all the junk out of that crypt to paint and theres no place elsewhere in the house in which you can draw a deep breath with out carving in some fibs against an upturned chair or a bookcase with its feet sticking out Everythings gone fairly smoothly but slip For sugar ami spice first snow of any consequence arrived at their rotten hare feet of her new mahogany coffee table Nobody of course adults included is allow ed to put a cup of coffee on the coffee table This morning she found that the painter had put a gouge about a foot long ami a quart deep in that virgin territory as much pain thought someone had taken a Ill l llf 1 I in her own skin I offer all sorts of comfort like Well now we can put our feet on it or notice that when its covered with cups hut the result is more like throwing oil on fire than on troubled waters The phone hasnt been working for two days For me this is unmitigated bliss Hut the old h asked taking children for a ride on my machine In a trail or on a toboggan to get but f Mosquito stand why Theyre wet and frightened suppose figure It must be fan became Dads Ami early Saturday having m much morning I was oft aed Sunday that 1 was really able to by for a I got the machine ma- Neighbor to the North lag was surrounded by hereafter named advisedly became and neigh- for rides N Old HNN a Be of head- mobile He bag ante the wild white K am Ma I variety el cecal My reason It NN hasnt used his His machine this winter only his Iters machine And her hasnt been able to ride her Iters machine because he has on It Well Sunday after noon and I headed north on Old St to revisit the trails fields bills and dales of last win- We broke roil on a trail that lakes us from the road down to the froun he fivemile round trio from Mosquito Manor Is a pleasant combination of wide open spaces across the snowcovered Ice and a trail through branches break trail through frtmi Tailor Walk you ent er Hie Hereafter Held This Is a wide open Hat niece of property which can rip across at full till If lucres a recent snow fall with drifting winds hope Ive given the reader the idea lb at 1 enjoy because I do 1 dont know what I did with ray winters before I got a machine And I wanner the apartment dwellers in workmen of 1923 with the death of a president on their minds Had they spared an uneasy instant to reflect that by placing those water pipes in that wall they were signing the death warrant of the new back stairs they had just installed In all reality to answer my own rhetorical question Not ruddy likely So out came the back stairs Three weeks later the kitchen was ready for use and we could stop cooking our meals in an electric chafing dish Where the back stairs had been stood the refrigerator and the dishwasher with a large and roomy cupboard above the dish- Also off the upstairs landing where the back stairs once had egress through a swing ing door there was the sewing room in the world Lets look at it this way my wife said courageously- We have not lost a hack stairs we have gained a sewing room When the job was done Mr Bailey the crew chief stood and looked around with some satisfaction The Youngs who had used he sugar flour bin painted wooden dm inboard case- it windows and gnarled linoleum there for told us two years ago when they joined all i wide grant And isnt thai what they said when they announced this regional government thing So when do we start seeing headlines about costs going down dawn Certainly not as long as theyre talking about building things like schools for artists as they are in Richmond Hill or and fire departments Somewhere some place somebody Is going to have to put a lid on J Eagle lUUs lake up space in j paper again this year but again I must protest the callous disregard some snowmobile drivers have lor other peoples property for a number year 1 plant ed about so small trees en each side at my property line During the summer and another went down the other side flattening all my young trees Fortunate ly they sprung back up and dont appear to be perman ently Injured Let this be a warning to these men theyre the last j that living with me now and he will take appropriate steps to keep my property Crier By BILL GAMBLE seriously about humor While response to some lighter columns has been cons ably better than average one i whose opinion greatly asked mi recently why 1 dont Lord or a birth in the familv Lord forbld Thats the I never call any body Itut without the outcalls she feels as a female with both arms hi sling anil a l i i i iiil Ive got a knee like elephant One of my old fnot hullwar knees has divided atari me off on a merry wintor and Is swollen right down to an ankle like a piano leg with curling too Hut it didnt help that 1 went to the local on night with a game leg and danced lot gamier than I should have With an elastic and pain pills I manage to got about lame enough so that I cant possibly help with moving furniture You should see that wife of mint manhandling a grand piano all by herself with me helping by grunting I doubt If shed lust ton pounds in the last two days Chinese waits torture Drop by drop it plerc your skull that yon were are and never will able to teach anything more than to tie his shoelaces All I have learned today Is that pros titute is now applied prosecute that savag ery has become and that a fellow who flies an aircraft is a piolit However am not complaining The painting Is finished My knee feels much bolter now that the furnture Is nil moved hack It has slopped snowing as Ive written The phono com pany lias been able to break through The old girl has forgotten her despair over the gouge by spot- ling a bump In the plaster And I just marked an exam paper worth per cent of the dance I have a now suit first In six years new shoes now gloves Quite smashing My wife who predicted her own death by noon Is alive and well and snarling commands Not a had old life really Better here than the graveyard though I could use Home of that rest If only it werent eternal on education religion war social disturbances and so on Somehow I found myself listening to her inner voice which was in reality saying You are far too facetious too apathetic toward world problems Well perhaps this lady is right Nevertheless here think is the place for brief mention of humor In writing Several years ago Malcolm former editor of the English Punch and later editor of the American magazine said Most editorial pages today as devoid of humor as the Sahara Is of water A weekly newspaper called tin Wichita picked up on remark writing an editorial on the subject which was considered something of a classic and which was republished later in The editorial read Muggorldge alas speaks the truth Laughter humor and satire out of style in America The editorialist who trios even a touch of humor will offend some persons ami confuse Muggorldge explains why the Americans mice a nation of jolly people have become sober- sided Pear requires it draws people into a herd where as laughter separates them as indi viduals When people are fearful they want everyone to be the same to reap the same values any the same things nourish the same hop es In a conformist society there is no place for the jester Both Britain and the United States are In the process of becom ing conformist societies and that is why their stock of laughter is noticeably diminishing All good humor Is In bad taste In other words the time are so deadly serious that laughter is shameful and anyone who tells joke deserve a punch in the nose Nevertheless the will continue to ladle buckets of laugh ter onto the deserts of seriousness Laughter we think means health and courage and happiness We seldom think of the wit who roads the can imagine the merry smite and gentle parables and sayings St Frauds of Assist was another laughing man Nor need one confine himself to the Christian religion The stories about the Lord are often