I am writing this in hopes that you will share this plea for assistance with the larger Madera community. The United States Airpower Museum Foundation and the Veterans of Prisoner of War Association in conjunction with the Veterans Administration Hospital in Fresno, have been working on a project for the last two years (Wall of Honor) to recognize and honor many veterans who were imprisoned in the worst possible conditions, under constant threat of execution, for months and years.
Many of the members of the Veterans of Prisoner of War Association are in their 80’s. They have fallen short about $10,000 to complete a wall memorial, which is meant to be installed at the front of the VA Hospital on April 10, 2010 (National Ex-POW Day).
These veterans would appreciate support in completing this monument.
Donations in any amount, no matter how small, can be sent to the Office of the Director, VA Hospital, 2615 E. Clinton Ave., Fresno, CA 93703 (Attn: Delores McIntyre) or mailed to: United States Airpower Museum, 4877 E. Norwich Ave., Fresno, CA 93726. Delores McIntyre can be reached at 228-5337.
The man whose 2008 Prius ran away on him and accelerated up to 90 miles an hour on a San Diego freeway is having to put up with insinuations that he is some kind of publicity-hungry goofball, and is himself responsible for the behavior of the car.
I think that is not the case. If it had happened to me, it would not have been something I would have faked. In the first place, the driver, James Sikes, is 61 years old. When a guy gets to be 61 years old, he eases up a little on the gas pedal — he doesn’t floorboard it. If the car floorboards itself, even though you might be a driver with 45 years’ experience, you might not know what to do.
We are used to having cars do what we tell them to do. If we push down on the gas pedal, we expect it to speed up. If we push on the brake, we expect the car to slow down and stop, not speed up and tear the fabric off the brake pads.
The California Highway Patrol believes Sikes didn’t fake the incident. After all, they didn’t give him a ticket, even though he was going 90 and his brakes were smoking.
The Toyota people, who make the Prius, are naturally very upset by all this. They don’t believe their car was at fault. Neither do a lot of other folks.
The Toyota Prius for years has been at the top of reliability surveys by Consumer Reports, which rates cars, among other products, but does not accept advertising from carmakers, or from anybody else, for that matter.
A friend of mine has a Prius and thinks it is the best thing since the wheel. Actually, it is his wife who has it, and she doesn’t let him drive it that much, but she loves it and so he does, too. If he drove it at 90 miles an hour and jammed the brakes at the same time, she’d box his ears, which is another reason I don’t think Sikes was faking it.
This last month of February, three good friends of mine passed away, and I have real good memories of them.
The first was Henry Soto, who died Feb. 18. I first met Henry when he was working for Shebelut Chevrolet. That was at the corner of 6th and D streets, across from the Post Office. Henry used to work in the body and fender shop.
In 1950, another friend of mine, Frank Molina, started a softball team called the Owls Club, and Henry joined the softball team, so once again I met Henry playing ball with us. In 1952, the Night Ball Association started a softball league, and we, the Owl team, joined the softball league.
While in the Young Men’s Institute, I also joined the softball league. Angelo “Hank” Massetti played first base for the YMI, and he was good first baseman and a good hitter. “Hank” was also a great basketball player in high school. He was the most valuable player in 1937. Last Saturday while talking to Joe Campos he told me that “Hank” used that hand-pivot shot, and it made him a good basketball player.
I first met Angelo “Hank” Massetti at Radio T.V. Hospital, in 1954 when I bought a Philco radio to listen to the Giants, and boy that is a good radio, and I still have it, and later on we bought a TV from Angelo, while playing softball against the YMI. It was just like the Giants playing the Dodgers and these are good memories of Henry and Angelo “Hank.”
Another good friend of mine, was Thomas “Tom” Solorio, who passed away Feb. 28, and I have some good memories of him. When I had the Madera Merchants baseball team he played with us in 1966. He was a good ballplayer, nice and quiet; he just enjoyed playing baseball. He played a few years with us, and those are my good memories of Tom. He also had a brother, Vince, that played with us.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and what better way to celebrate it than with a few Irish stories:
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The foreman looked the applicant for work up and down. “Are you a mechanic?” he asked.
“No, sir, I’m a McCarthy.”
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An Irishman was painting a house, and working fast. Someone asked him why he was in such a rush. “I’m trying to get through,” the Irishman said, “before the paint runs out.”
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An Irishman was digging holes in which to plant trees. A passerby asked, “So, Mr. Flanagan, you’re diggin’ out the holes, eh?”
“No, Ma’am,” Flanagan replied. “I’m diggin’ out the dirt and leavin’ the holes.”
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“Pat, do you understand French?”
“Yes, I sure do, if it’s spoke in Irish.”
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A man filled with curiosity went into an Irish church at which the bells were pealing. “And why are the bells being rung?” he asked the bell-ringer.
“Because I’m pullin’ on the ropes,” was the reply.
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“Pat,” asked the judge, “Why in the world do you drink so much?”
“Well, your honor,” said Pat, “it’s this way. When I drink, I eat onions to take away the taste of the whiskey. And then I have to drink whiskey to take away the taste of the onions.”
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An Irishman who was an eligible bachelor visited a widow in his district every evening and had tea with her. A friend suggested that he should marry the lady. “I have often thought about it,” he said, “but where should I spend my evenings then?”
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Shamus O’Reilly was in confession and told the priest he had kissed Mrs. McGillicuddy on the lips. “Now, Shamus,” said the priest, a little suspicious, “are you sure it was only one kiss?”
The back page of the first section of the Tribune on Saturday, Feb. 22, had a full-page advertisement for Stockbridge Development of Clovis. The ad was expressing appreciation to Dr. Hassan, Dr. Javaid, Dr. Rauf and Aman LLC Group (Dr. Akhtar, Dr. Ashraf, Dr. Anwar and Dr. Javaid) for their selection of Stockbridge Development to build their new medical facility in Madera. In addition, 12 sub-contractors were named and thanked for their contributions to the construction.
The facility was built to accommodate physicians providing medical practice to the citizens of Madera and the surrounding area. I would also believe the doctors anticipate making a profit from these same citizens. And yet, these doctors elected to take their construction spending outside of the city.
According to my very limited inquiries, the primary developer and none of the 12 sub-contractors operate business in this city, nor do I believe, anywhere in Madera County. While I have no way of knowing, readers are free to speculate with me in what county the building materials were purchased.
Why would these doctors take their money outside of the city and deprive local residents, from whom they intend to make money, from receiving the benefits of spending in our community?
As our local unemployment soars well above 10 percent, many local businesses struggle to survive, the construction industry in the tank, our school district in the process of cutting millions and local entities of government finding it difficult to balance their budgets, I find the doctors decisions to be undefendable. While I do not deny them their right and privilege of selection, instead of seeing a Clovis developer standing, in the ad, with a big grin on his face, it would have been much nicer to (see) someone we recognized that contributes to our community.
I would hope the Chamber of Commerce has not, nor do they plan, on sponsoring one of their open houses at this facility.
William F. Colston,
former Madera police chief,
Madera
Even though I have been a teacher (high school and college), and enjoyed it very much, I don’t think I would want to be a teacher now. Teachers are in the crosshairs of school boards, politicians, parents and students. Their unions are being blamed for the state budget collapse. Through these unions, they are perceived as having too much power, power that they use unwisely.
Do teachers deserve all this blame? Years ago, teachers had no unions, and they were treated like second-class citizens. If you were a woman, and you happened to become pregnant while you were teaching, you lost your job. Some school districts didn’t allow their female teachers to marry. They couldn’t date or have a drink in public in the same town where they taught.
All teachers, men and women, were paid at the bottom of the local wage scale, whatever it was. While they didn’t necessarily need a college degree, if a teacher did have one, it didn’t mean he or she would get much of a raise.
When I was growing up, the teachers in the schools I attended had to work second jobs to make ends meet. This included working in potato warehouses, checking groceries and cooking in restaurants.
When teachers began organizing into unions, and signing contracts with school boards that raised wages and improved working conditions, it was because the school boards had left them little choice.
Now, 40 years later, the unions are perceived as being too powerful. But remember this: Those labor contracts had to be signed by the boards as well as the teacher representatives. If you are going to blame the teachers for a contract, you also must blame the board. And if you are going to blame the board for financial difficulties, you also must blame the teachers.
By sharing power, the teachers also must share responsibility. Blame on both sides should be put away so problems can be solved.
I would like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Dave Berry for providing more than four acres of land on which to build the new VFW Hall. Thanks, also, to Berry Construction for building it. I’m sure happy with the location where we are now.
It’s too bad I can’t say I agree with the design of the building inside, with a 3,000-square-foot dance hall and 5,000 square feet of offices and storage.
Our funding mostly comes from renting out the hall. The designers blew it big time. The design should have been the other way, with 5,000 square feet available for rent.
Mrs. Doud and I can’t wait for our Census forms to arrive in the mail this week as promised. We will fill them out and send them back because we want it to be known, for present and future generations, that at this time and in this place we were Americans, we were Californians and we were Maderans.
Also, it’s the law. As we are residents of the city, we are required to participate in the Census.
Think about that last statement. Being a resident doesn’t necessarily mean one is a citizen. Some who are not citizens, who may be here illegally, but are still residents, may not want to fill out a Census form because they fear being busted and being sent back to where they came from. Well, that won’t happen.
The Census, like your income tax forms, are private.
But if a resident, whether citizen or non-citizen, doesn’t fill out a Census form, he or she may be doing harm to the community.
The federal government hands out about $400 billion a year to state, local and tribal governments based on Census counts. If you aren’t counted, you deprive your community of your share of those monies.
Mrs. Doud and I want Madera to have all the money it can get just from the fact that we live here. We love living here. It is just the right place for us.
We happened to spend a couple of weekends over on the coast the past month, and while we enjoyed ourselves (I have some nice, new fat from all the meals I ate), we were very glad to get back home to paradise.
For one thing, in Madera, we don’t have to spend hours and hours waiting in traffic. Prices are more reasonable here. And we know a lot of the people.
So, we want Madera to benefit. We are going to fill out our Census forms, and we hope you do, too.
On Friday, March 5, Bob Christiansen wrote a letter to the editor regarding our existing school system. He suggested we eliminate unification. What an excellent idea. He said that when he went to school, California had the best schools in the nation, and they weren’t unified schools. How true. Unification was the beginning of the end of our school system.
I also went to school prior to unification. I went to Alpha Grammar School in Madera, which at that time was out in the country on Avenue 11 1/2 and Road 25 1/2. All we had were two teachers and a part-time custodian.
Mrs. Dan taught grades 1 through 4 and Mrs. Chalfant was the principal and taught grades 5 through 8. Mr. Bill Bare was the custodian. We only had two rooms, so grades 1 through 4 were all together in one room and grades 5 through 8 were together in the other room.
We had approximately 80 children year in and year out, with only two teachers. Discipline in the classroom was excellent, because the teachers did not have any politically correct rules to follow. Also they had the authority to discipline. If you got out of line, you got a slap. I know this for a fact because in the eighth grade I was the recipient of one. And by the way, I never told my parents about that because I would have gotten worse at home. Times sure have changed. Today the courts would probably be jam-packed with lawsuits.
We had a cross-section of children in Alpha. There were Irish, German, African, Mexican, Italian, English, French and Japanese, and we all got along fine. We played together and studied together. Of course that was before unification, bussing kids from one school to another and before our government started trying to legislate love.
A few of the subjects they taught us were arithmetic, grammar, spelling, history, (unrevised) geography, civics and others — all things that were important to prepare us to grow up to become independent productive citizens and not dependent on the government.
Mr. Christiansen’s suggestion of eliminating unification is right on target.
If I may, I would like to take this one step further and suggest we shut down government schools altogether and go to a voucher system for private schools. This would serve three prime purposes. One, it would save an unbelieveable amount of taxpayer dollars. Two, private schools would give our children a better education. And last but not least, it would eliminate the school unions and their interference with our children’s education.
The first outcries for the opponents, mainly school union heads and others in the movement to dumb down our kids, would be there are not enough private schools and what would happen to the teachers? First, with this free-enterprise system we have in this great country, private schools would spring up overnight.
Second, the good teachers — and we have many good teachers — would be gobbled up by the private schools.
Now, how would we save that unbelieveable amount of taxpayers’ money? Simple. Private schools can operate for less than half of government schools and still make a profit. Profit, that dirty word that makes the socialists’ knees jerk.
The Madera Unified School District would probably fess up to a cost of about $9,000 per child per year with very little of that going into the classroom. If the real truth were known, it’s probably closer to $12,000 per child per year. In some other California school districts the cost is much higher!
When our great grandson was living with us, we sent him to a private school in Madera for four years. The last year he was there we paid only $2,700. That was about four years ago. It’s probably a little more now. He got an excellent education and they had excellent teachers.
It’s something worth thinking about, isn’t it? Of course if you don’t care about your tax dollars being wasted and your children getting an inferior education then in that case don’t worry about it.
Music Video: “I Won’t Stop” by Jordan Johnson
(a parody of “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha)
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All comments are edited for length and content. Because of content or space limitations, some comments may not be published. More than one comment from the same person during the same week will normally not be published. Please limit calls to two minutes or less.
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Several calls were received about the “three doctors who moved into new offices.” One caller said, “they didn’t use Madera contractors. I’m a contractor myself and one of them is my own personal doctor. I will be going in and picking up my records from his office and going somewhere else. You would think they could have used someone (a contractor) from Madera.”
He also mentioned “outside contractors coming in and pouring the handicapped curb ramps.”
A woman “wanted to thank the three doctors for keeping Madera’s unemployment rate high by them going with an outside builder. They are keeping our local people — their patients — unemployed, which are roofers, electricians, dry-wallers, painters and more. Maybe we should be changing to other doctors. They are not helping us.”
A woman “would like to know who was the teacher at (an elementary school) who got pulled off the campus by police for fighting with the principal. How come you never put that in the newspaper? How can you sit there and tell us what’s wrong with our superintendent, but can’t tell us what is going (on) with our teachers? You ought to be ashamed or yourselves.”
A woman left a somewhat confusing message about the school district: “These are really old people. They really, really need to grow up.”
A woman left a message about “Clovis schools and overcrowding” and concluded with “what’s wrong with this picture?” Unfortunately, the Red Line could not understand all of her message.
Referring to past comments on the school board, a man said “We’ve pretty much gone over all of that.” He wanted “to change the subject and talk about the Scions. They’re the pretty ugliest dadgum cars I’ve ever seen. I would love to hear what other people in Madera really think.”
A man talked about an out-of-town dumping site used by “the city, where they keep dumping their dirt. I noticed they keep pushing it farther and farther into the Fresno River and closing down the water channel. I wonder if the Bureau of Reclamation knows they are doing it?”
“Once again a big thank you to the road department of Madera city,” said a man. “They came out the next day and filled in a serious pothole. That’s one-day service. Can’t get any better than that, Madera.”
A woman said, “How dare supervisor Tom Wheeler accuse me of not caring enough when I went to speak to the supervisors on March 2 about the cuts to the staff of the Madera Animal Shelter. “I had left my job and taken no pay to speak to the board. After I left, Wheeler accused me of not caring enough to stay. He picked the wrong person and I’ll be waiting for his apology in person.”
A man, who stated, “first off I do not work for the railroads,” wanted to comment about the train derailment on Feb. 27. “A city official said, ‘that’s why main lines don’t belong going through the center of town.’ Surprise, the town grew up around the railroad,” he said. “The railroad didn’t come through the center of town. That was very crude. The railroad was here before the town, and helped to build it.”
“I guess with the new high-speed rail coming through we can forget about that new Amtrak station planned for Road 26,” said a gentleman. “The board of supervisors and city council waited and wasted enough time so now they probably won’t have to worry about it.”
An online reader, self-identified as “King,” wrote, “Just another observation made today: A woman drives up in a Madera County car, parks and goes into pay her bill and drop off some mail at a PO Box depot. The car inside is strewn with personal items including a baby seat. These items appeared to be there for while, not just that day.
“Shame, shame, county. We all wish we had a company car to run our errands and drive our kids around. Are the citizens of Madera County paying for her gas, too?!”
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