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Western Carolinian Volume 61 Number 09 (11)

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  • November 2,1995 Western Carolinian 13 Editorials Serotonin dip 'MY TOWN' By James Gray Went home this weekend to the rusted- out railroad town. MY TOWN- old Seaboard RR hub where freights chugged through west to east... Little town, once bustling because all the tracks leading into town lay on a bed of money. Not long after it was established, MY TOWN was evenly coated in soot. The money began to leave sooty marks on all the hands that touched it- since soot clings to money the most. Lackey's Corn Whiskey was the pride of MY TOWN and the hoot for far and wide- "mashed from the finest corn and pure water of Marks Creek, a pureeing Sandhills stream." It rotted the '■vers and fed the mouths and fattened the Pockets and fattened the lips of all walks of People for far and wide. When Prohibition came down, the Meggers hit the ground with both feet, rum»ng. The trains still chugged through «to west... And the whiskey was still PrXed"' D°Wn'down' down the hatch- option made urban ganglands run in °d and it coated the citizens of sleepy, ^'ng towns like MY TOWN in soot diieo. \MY T°WN PU,,ed through the dls^ofprohibition;andwegotnew schools and a post office out of the "New Deal" of the moaning '30s. World War II came and MY TOWN sent freight and good young men to the east, west, north and south to fuel the war machine. Through the middle of the century MY TOWN kept on a straight path. The good citizens were kept happy with just enough toys to make them feel like REAL AMERICANS. As opposed to the blacks, who may have buried Jim Crow but were kept at bay with just the right amount of carpetbagged de facto discrimination. As Bob Dylan once said: "The south politician preaches to the poor white man- you got more than the blacks don't complain you're better than them, you've been born with white skin they explain..." Through the seventies, the local elected officials looked out for the economic interests of the county. They voted out all the bad industries that hired through filthy communist union shops and paid more than twice the going rate of peanuts for wages. Major national brewer- NOPE! Big 3 automotive plant- NOPE! Additions to Cameron Morrison Detention Center-YES! More and more and more grandstands and parking spots and camping lots at the racetrack- YES, YES, YES! In the 80s the CEOs for the railroad devised a brilliant scheme for making their company more proficient. They started eliminating half of their workforce, leaving the remaining half to work twice as hard. The track beds of money became MY TOWN'S version of the "Streets of Gold" myth. The railroad is, as we speak, pulling out to the north, west, east and south. For the past seven or eight years freight train loads of crack have been smoked in MY TOWN. In 1991 one of the worst industrial accidents in this state's history took place in MY TOWN. Twentyfive workers in a meat processing plant suffocated on the soot of a raging petroleum fire. On Good Friday in 1993, MY TOWN woke up to find the Terminal Hotel, a cold water and no heat flophouse, had burned to the ground. The owner, Drake Sullivan- arch-Christian and County Commissioner said it was tough luck for all the "down and out" people who called the uninsured Terminal Hotel home. Like the meat processing plant, the Terminal had been "accidentally neglected" by MY TOWN'S safety inspectors. The railroad may leave HAMLET high and dry, but the soot will always be there. The Western Carolinian Lynn Jones Editor in Chief Colin Gooder Assistant Editor Associate Editors •Tony Taylor News •Scott Francis Features •Jason Queen Sports •Katherine Torrence Entertainment & Classifieds •Sean Corcoran Photography •James Gray Environmental •Tracy Hart Copy Editor •Earle Wheeler Invisible Academy Lee Ann Gibson Advertising Director Alisa Carswell Graphic Designer Paste-up Staff Cliff Meeks & Webb Lyons Office Director Christine Wilcox, & J.P. Rollins Circulation Brad Chappell Carolinian Advisor John Moore The Carolinian is WCU's student newpaper. It is produced entirely by students. Deadline for submissions is the Thursday before each publication. The opinions expressed in the editorial section of the Carolinian in no way represent those of the Carolinian or the WCU campus. Editorials are written to inspire thought, not to offend or be taken personally.
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).