April 24 , 2008

I'm just saying . . .
If we followed instincts, maybe we wouldn't be in such a mess
By James Cook, Times Editor

By now we all know that there was an earthquake in southern Illinois last Friday. In fact, many of us may have felt it. I know I sure did. But it is the events before it happened that, at the time, did not make sense until after the shaking was done.
My daughter has a miniature schnauzer named Roger. Roger is a good dog and very protective of my daughter. He likes to play and has a temper if ignored. However, he can be an annoyance at times. Maybe he just annoys me for the fun of it. But he does not play around when it comes to protecting his buddy, my daughter.
That morning, he was up at 3:30 a.m. just running back and forth through the house. I got up to see what he was doing. I figured he either wanted to go outside or there was someone around the house that should not be there. He has done that before and I have caught kids messing around after dark behind my house. But on this morning, he had no interest in going outside.
Just a little after 5:30 a.m., he jumped up in my lap as I watched the morning news. Suddenly, I felt the doublewide shake. At first I thought the wind had picked up, but it stopped just as quickly as it started. Then the news reported the quake. I then remembered that animals have instinct and can sense danger and reportedly changes in the earth and atmosphere, like earthquakes and storms.
That got me to thinking. Too bad we as humans do not follow our instinct as well.
For too many years our instinct has told us to find other alternative means for energy. We need to find a way to get away from depending so much on oil. But we ignored that, and still do, so look at us now. We have to pay the price, no matter what it is, so we are led around by the nose by the Middle East and big oil companies.
Let us look at it further. For too long our local economy has steadily grown worse. Too many of the powers that be wanted to hold down growth to keep whatever power they felt they had. So we allowed our infrastructure like sewers, roads and water fall into danger areas. Our county and city budgets are in crisis, because instead of biting the bullet and doing what needs to have been done back when it started to show, we borrowed from Peter to pay Paul. Maybe that is what was necessary at the time, but it became the norm and now we are depending on the state to help us. Of course, now they are in crisis as well. It seems that politicians like to point fingers of blame instead of using the Harry Truman philosophy of “the buck stops here.”
That goes for our city parks as well. Our instincts tell us to give our kids stuff to do and they will stay out of trouble, pretty much. But instead, 30 years worth of grants have come in and the parks are no better than they were back then. Sure, if a group works on it, the ball fields get better, but if they don’t then it goes to pieces. We fill in the city pool to put a skate park next to the Senior Citizen’s Center. Which if you think of it, the seniors want to enjoy each others company, not hear skateboarders crash and bang all day.
I guess what I’m saying is that the recently proposed restaurant tax may help in this area. It may cause some problems for smaller restaurants as well, but we can only hope all goes well for everyone. More importantly, I hope the parks and kids will benefit like we have been promised. It should. I really hope that the cities will take the opportunity to use some of the money to build a ball field for girls’ softball, seeing how baseball seems to take every field. Instinct should tell us that we need to treat both boys and girls fairly, but reality is that politics does not. I guess we’ll see if anyone takes this challenge and does the right thing.
Instincts are strong in animals; it is what keeps them alive. To keep our cities and community alive, maybe we need to use some of our instincts about what is right and wrong. That should be decided by fact, not the wallet or who we can blame when it goes wrong.
I’m just saying . . .

View from the Mountain...
Remembering Hobe's Taxi Service
By David G. Griffin, Times Reporter

Before I was a gleam in my father’s eye, Daddy (G. H. “Hobe” Griffin) was delivering packages from the L&N Depot in Mt. Vernon. In those days, the job of delivering packages was referred to as a “dray man.” (Dray means to haul.) It was during WWII, and Daddy delivered Western Union telegraph messages from the War Department that also arrived by way of the train depot. This gave him the horrid task of delivering messages about soldiers who had lost their lives in battle.
Since he was so consistently present at the L&N Station, lots of folks coming into Mt. Vernon on the train would ask him to take them home in his pickup truck. That gave Daddy a bright idea – a taxi service was obviously needed and it would need to cover the entire county. At that time, the Greyhound Bus Station was located across the street from the depot in the building that later became the Dinner Bell Restaurant. His idea quickly became a reality.
Daddy started his business with a 1940 maroon Chevrolet. He had the rear windows lettered with the name, “Hobe Griffin’s Taxi.” It was a time in which gasoline was approximately 25 cents per gallon. He figured how much it would cost him to transport individuals to specific places in the county and in nearby cities. After hand printing a list of places and the cost per person to transport them, he placed it above his visor.
Over the next few years, his business grew continuously until he finally had three taxis in his fleet. Several men in the county drove for Daddy; they included: Bobby Carter, “Piggy” Southard, Hobart Hansel, and my brother Al.
Eventually Daddy moved his taxi stand into a small room between the Ideal Café and McBee’s Department Store on Main Street in Mt.Vernon. All three cabs were busy carrying people throughout the county.
Many individuals did not have automobiles (especially during the war) and lots of people depended upon Daddy to bring them to town for their mail, banking, grocery shopping and other essential needs.
Needless to say, it was a little strange to have a taxi as the family automobile. Each day Daddy took me to school and then came after me in the afternoon in one of his cabs. Sometimes he even had paying passengers with him when he picked me up.
On Sunday afternoons, the family occasionally went for drives in his cab. When sitting in the rear seat, it was hard to see out because of the lettering on the windows. My brother Al learned to pronounce the letters backward (ixat sniffirg eboh) and joked about it all the time.
I also remember Daddy taking the family to the Smoky Mountains one summer in the taxi. People thought some rich family had hired a taxi to bring them to Tennessee from Kentucky. It was sort of embarrassing.
I distinctly remember a bear coming up to the side of the automobile and my brother asking Daddy if the bear wanted us to take him somewhere. Daddy did not think that was funny.
When I was very young, Daddy would occasionally allow me to go with him on his taxi runs. There was one night when I was with him that he picked up a passenger who had a little too much to drink, and he paid his cab fare with a sock full of coins. Frankly, it disgusted my father [expletives deleted] and he did not even bother to count the change. Instead he gave me the sock filled with money for my piggy bank.
I guess that I have always remembered that incident because I thought that it was just too cool. I definitely recall hoping that we would pick up more men who were under the influence of alcohol.
Daddy once told us about another event that happened when he had a customer who was drinking. The man said that he needed to go to the Sand Springs area. When they were almost there, he hit Daddy in the back of the head with a whisky bottle, jumped out, and ran into the woods. (I am certain that Daddy pulled out his handy 38 Smith and Wesson and yelled profanities at the passenger. He never left the house without his S&W pistol.)
My family was nervous about Daddy being attacked when he was driving his cab. My father did not put much stock in banks and, therefore, kept most of his money in his shirt pocket. We were concerned that he would be robbed. Both pockets were usually filled to the brim with money, notes, and pens. He was a little on the eccentric side about things like that.
Daddy lived to tell tall tales, and each time a story was told it was embellished a little more. He also had a tremendous imagination and loved to describe events from when he was a boy living in poverty. I cannot begin to count the number of times that I heard him tell of drinking water out of a mule track when he was young.
My wife loves to describe Daddy as being quite a “character.” I agree that he truly was.

(You can reach me at mtnman@mis.net or you can send me a note at P.O. Box 927 – Stanton, KY 40380. I appreciate your comments and suggestions.)