Good reads
I just had to write to make a comment on Mr. Paleno’s “Wish Machine” stories. They are absolutely excellent! The only thing that is disappointing about them is that they end every week, leaving me waiting in anticipation for the continuance.
Thank you Mr. Paleno! Your article is the very first thing I read!
Jeanene Parnell, Kelseyville
Better, but …
I was surprised — nay, shocked — to read (Feb. 22) that the “Press Democrat” is responsible for the “negative image” of Lake county.
When I bought my home, and the extra lots around it, fifteen years ago, I was thrilled (lovely spot).
However, when friends from Berkeley and Sonoma County came to visit, they were appalled at the derelict trailers, trash, and decrepit houses that they passed. Mostly near my home and south end of the lake.
None of them have desired to come back and “can’t believe you’re still there.” True, I probably shouldn’t have warned them not to wear expensive jewelry, however the people moving in have improved the area, and homes are being fixed up, slowly but surely.
But, as I’ve said on the radio, we “still look like a poorly-funded Mel Gibson movie”. That is the image.
R. Roon S. Searcy, Lower Lake
Some guidance
This letter is to Mr. Guff Worth.
Mr. Guff Worth if you dislike the Academy Awards so much, I suggest you turn your TV to a different station or read a book so you won’t get so upset with them.
I myself enjoy the academy awards very much. I get to know what movies to watch, and to see the beautiful dresses the women wear. I can’t afford to even buy one, but to look at them makes me happy.
Mr. Guff Worth I read your letters, and find you complain a lot. Why don’t you write about something you like, I would enjoy reading them.
I think you are an older man. I’m 78 and enjoy happy things like the letter from Ron Rose about the benches at Library Park. It would be great to have them, he came up with a solution, and Kevin Nance wrote about sidewalks in Hidden Valley.
So Mr. Worth if you write maybe less, like once every week, your letters would be more readable and enjoyable.
Jacqueline Baranzini, Kelseyville
An old paper
Do we sufficiently respect the institution of the newspaper? A stark example of newspaper involvement of practical life happened to me many years ago.
Looking back some 70 years, I see myself a mere child of 24 years. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had managed to grant electrical implementation of the rural areas of the United States, and I was wiring a neighbor’s farm. One afternoon, busy with this business, I noticed a dirty fragment of an old newspaper, not much larger than a postcard, lying on the ground in the barnyard. Why did I stop and pick up that torn bit of newspaper and read its few lines of print? It was a whimsical act, quite out of character for me when engaged in important work. The print on this dirty fragment of an old newspaper reported the deaths of two men due to the explosion of a gas tank on which they were soldering a leakage. Having read this, I threw the bit of paper away and continued my work.
The very next morning the man who owned the farm I was wiring approached me to have me use my soldering equipment to stop a leak in the gas tank of his tractor.
“Okay,” said I, the wise one now, “but we will have to fill it with water first.”
“Oh, we won’t need to go to all that trouble,” he rejoined, “it’s empty. We would have to take it off the tractor.”
“If we don’t fill it with water,” said I, “it will explode and kill both of us.”
Reluctant to climb down from his variant position, my employer, faced with my adamancy, finally yielded assent. We took the tank off the tractor and filled it with water, leaving about as much space as might be filled by one’s hand.
Preparing the leak for soldering, I noticed that, seeking to prove me wrong, my employer had lighted his cigarette lighter and was cautiously moving the flame slowly toward the opening of the tank. Soon there was a loud POOF! That made my inquisitive employer jump. I, however, playing the part of the wise old man, only glanced soberly at all this action as at a mischievous child and continued the soldering process without a word.
Would anyone proffer a guess as to what would have ensued if I had not stopped and read that dirty fragment of newspaper the day before? For before I read that bit of print, I, like my employer, did not know an “empty” gas tank is full of very explosive fumes. It’s difficult not to accept the tenet of teleology and hold that nature had adopted the design of protecting my employer and I for some mysterious reason.
But no; the two men whose death was reported in that piece of print that I found in the barnyard were people as we were people; and the tragic occurrence could have happened as well in our case as in theirs. Nothing happened that depended on magic. It was a matter of happenstance, a matter of luck. My wife was at that time in hospital giving birth to the prettiest and smartest little girl in the world; my employer at that time had a daughter and son in college. I, inadvertently, by reading a few lines of smeared newsprint, saved the lives of their father and myself.
Dean Sparks, Lucerne
