Down River – July 3, 2014
Happy Birthday:
Let Down River join in the birthday salute to the United States of America.
Yes, we have a great country and we have a tremendous amount to be thankful for, but I have this growing concern we as a nation are becoming increasingly frayed around the edges.
I look at educational test scores, I look at our increased collective obesity, I look at Supreme Court decisions (where corporations are now deemed people), I look at the inability of our elected representatives at the state and federal level to address ongoing problems in need of solution (for instance, pension reform at the state level, immigration reform, the Highway Trust Fund at the federal level).
I could go on and on and I’m sure you could add a favorite or two of your own to the list.
What I am attempting to say is that we as nation once did much better and we need to do better now and in the future.
Our military personnel continue to hold up their end of the deal in exemplary fashion; it is too bad on this Fourth of July we can’t say the same about too many of our elected officials and too many of the citizenry at large.
In the meantime enjoy your Fourth celebration and make a point to thank those who have played a positive role in creating and sustaining our land of opportunity.
Need Some Here:
There was certainly some irony with this week’s ribbon-cutting at the nifty new state police barracks in Lamar Township.
Local state police now have a state-of-the-art facility from which to work and that’s a very good thing.
But a very bad thing is the decline in staffing at the local barracks; sources tell Down River promotions, transfers and retirements are in the process of depleting the number of available troopers to serve Clinton County.
This is something law enforcement officials don’t want to broadcast, but the public needs to know the reality of the situation, particularly in a time when the state police are stretched even thinner, providing additional hours of coverage in the Renovo area.
On a more positive note, if it comes to fruition, the state police numbers statewide should soon be bolstered:
From an otherwise piecemeal “kick the can down the road” new state budget will be more state troopers. The Corbett administration has proposed funding for four new cadet classes in the new fiscal year, this at a time when the state police ranks have been thinned by retirement in recent years.
Field of Dreams and Renovo:
Here’s a follow-up sidebar on the recent column item about Kevin Costner’s line, “Do you want to have a catch?” in “Field of Dreams.”
Costner wasn’t happy, preferring instead to say, “Do you want to play catch?” And that’s how everyone I’ve talked to says it, from Tom Elling whose baseball background extends from Smoke Run in Clearfield County to Woolrich in Clinton County all the way to the still playing Cole Hanley whose experience extends from Orviston in Centre County to Beech Creek in Clinton County. We all say, “Do you want to play catch?”
Until retired local educator Bill Corter approached Down River the other day (Corter, by the way has a ball-playing pedigree all the way from county league baseball to the Country 92 softball team; he also says, “Do you want to play catch?”).
Corter’s career in education included a stint at Bucktail High School where he served as baseball coach somewhere back in the 1980s.
He made a point to tell me he was jarred when a couple Bucktail players at the time used the term “have a catch.”
So I turned to former western Clinton County sports great Butch Knauff to find out what he knew/said from his years of long ago.
Knauff said when he was growing up in South Renovo they had a huge yard behind his house. He claims the term “have a catch” was interchangeable for all sports depending on the season, baseball, football, even yard darts. But for baseball, he recalls, “play catch” was the term of choice.
Somebody call Bernie Green to break the tie.
A Correction:
County commissioner Joel Long correctly pointed a Down River error in a recent column relative to prospective candidates for district attorney in 2015.
One Republican name being heard is Tom Rosamilia. Down River listed him as one of the county’s public defenders; Long notes he is not. The public defenders are David Lindsay, Dave Strouse and Kathleen Long.
