Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 3 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
To the editor:
One job of a local newspaper is to call attention to and report significant local events.
In your. News of Record (May 11, page 2), you record, among your list of public drunks, speeding drivers, and other miscreants, that one Alvin Ernest Stanley was fined $25 plus $20 court costs for “hunt ground hogs on Sunday.” But recording isn’t reporting. Where’s the rest of the story?
How did Alvin get caught? If I were to go hunting for ground hogs on a Sunday (and I won’t say whether I do such things), I don’t think I would get noticed. But Alvin was noticed by someone.
Did a vengeful neighbor report him? Is our game warden nosing around, at great public expense, in order to make Sundays a safe day for ground hogs? Maybe one of our deputies spotted him. But, if so, how so? Surely, he wasn’t hunting ground hogs on a public road. Or, if he were, shouldn’t he have been found innocent by reason of insanity?
Then, too, there is the matter of the fine. Mr. Stanley was stuck with $25. But the public drunks were fined only $15. Is it the law that says that hunting ground hogs on Sunday is worse than being drunk in public? Or do we have a judge or a prosecutor who is biased in favor of ground hogs? Is it that the crime occurred on a Sunday that makes it grievous? (The ground hog, incidentally, does not do the Lord’s work on Sunday anymore than he does it on other days.)
How did Mr. Stanley plead? “Ignorance,” I can hear the judge say, “is no excuse.” And, last Sunday,
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