Published: April 07, 2008 03:19 pm            

4/6/2008 Letters to the editor

Don’t let museums get away



I have read in the paper that two new museums, the glass museum and the railroad museum, are thinking of locating in Alvarado instead of Cleburne. Is this because they have been given no support from local authorities?

What are you thinking about, Cleburne? Here are two prime tourist attractions that could draw people to Cleburne, and you are doing nothing to help locate them here? Cleburne was a hub of the Santa Fe Railroad for 70 or 80 years. Why should Alvarado be the site of the museum? Mrs. Long, the owner of the glass collectibles, is a Clebume resident. Why should Alvarado be the site of her museum?

Cleburne, you are missing the boat here. Why don’t you use some of that gas lease money you have and help build these museums here? They would be a wonderful addition to our city and to our heritage.

Wake up city leaders and do something before it is too late, and Clebume is left behind with nothing to show for its long and respected history.

Respectfully,



Sherri Graf

Cleburne



Thanks from Relay For Life team



We would like to express our thanks to those who made our fundraiser for the American Cancer Society such a huge success. The beans from Cotton Patch, Red Chew Chew BBQ and Grill, Leach Bros. Pit Bar-B-Que and the West End Grill were wonderful.

Music by No Turning Back and the Jammers made the evening very enjoyable.

Domino’s Pizza provided cups and all our team members assisted in serving. To one and all, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”



Cowboy up for the Cure team

Relay For Life



Recognizing the poverty line



Occasionally I get discouraged writing letters to the editor. Why? Because, while people read them and tell me to keep it up, the people that need to read them cannot or do not. Today on TV, they (principals, educators, etc.) were complaining that the dropout rate among various schools was too high. Basically they blamed it on poverty! If we would just give them (schools, educators, the children’s families, etc.) more money then the problem would be solved.

These people wouldn’t recognize poverty if it bit them. My parents got married in 1930 in the back woods of Arkansas. They started out with a corn shuck mattress and a couple of handmade quilts. I can remember my father stating once that while they were attending college in Oklahoma (paying their tuition by cleaning toilets) that he hated the one and only dress my mother had. She would wash it every night for wearing the next day. They both graduated and worked hard their entire lives. Neither relatives nor the government gave them a dime.

Being teachers, they were ineligible for Social Security, and I can remember my mother finally getting an increase in her teacher retirement from $63 a month to $306, when she was 86 years old. They provided their own retirement, asking only that the government leave them alone. My mother’s father died when she was 8, and my father’s mother died when he was 5.

I can remember back in the early 1960s, when I was in college coming home, and my wife informing me that President Kennedy had announced the poverty rate, and we were beneath it. Those were hard days, but like our parents we worked and got through it. In the 1970s I built our house because I knew we couldn’t afford the mortgage on the size house we wanted. We basically financed it with the U.S. Savings Bonds we had taken out of our pay for 10 years plus.

Now these Democrats in Congress want to increase my taxes to pay for people who bought houses they couldn’t afford, (mortgages in the $475,000-plus range are in the most trouble). We need to bail out the financial institutions that made these loans. They were claiming that up to 25,000 people would have to be laid off, and their average salary was over $378,000 a year. I never made that much money in my 10 best years combined. Then last week they were given a little bit of help totaling $230 billion, and they whined that they needed a trillion dollars.

Today, Congress had the top five oil company CEOs before them ranting about their $123 billion combined profit last year. Well so what. At least they provide a product that we must have. Less than 1 percent of the company’s stock is owned by these men. The companies have already paid the second highest combined business tax rate in the world to our government for Congress to waste on pork. The rest of it is owned by retirement funds, and millions of stock holders who are taxed again for more money for Congress to waste. Also remember that 30 percent of the price of gasoline is going to the oil speculators, who in turn give Congress even more money to waste.

Incidentally, the latest figures I can find put the minimum cost of the millions of illegal aliens in America at about $142 billion a year above and beyond any taxes paid.

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that sums it up: “REPUBLICAN, Because everybody cannot be on welfare.”

    

W.V. Bonds

Cleburne



Thanks from wreck victim



I would like to thank the people who stopped for me and pulled me out of my wrecked car March 15 on Farm-to-Market Road 4. I wished I knew your names so I could thank each of you personally. Just know you will forever be in my prayers, and I consider you all my guardian angels. God bless you.

Thank you,



Charnell Burrow



Thanks to Dr. Surratt



I feel compelled to write again to old and young alike, but mostly to senior citizens. Be sure and see your eye doctor regularly.

All the living wills, financial advise, retirement money to live on won’t do you any good if you go blind. Most people as they get older tend to have cataracts. I almost waited too late. I never knew the grass was so green and Easter eggs so colorful.

My cat has green eyes — I’m no longer colorblind. I can get my driver’s license renewed because I’m sure they will check my eyes. Surprise, surprise, I can see. Thank you, Dr. Surratt, for making it possible for me to live a 100 percent better life. And don’t say, “I’ll probably die before I go blind and my teeth fall out.”

Don’t count on it. You might just be surprised.



Thelma Walls

Cleburne

        

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