A week ago we wrote an article on the above subject, or rather under the above subject, and now some have gone and construed the article to be a criticism of our Mayor. Nothing could be further from our purpose. We were trying to write about the little folks having a good time skating, and how they were getting special privileges in other towns where streets were roped off and turned over to them so that they might have the time of the lives.
It was the poet Byron who said, “The days of our youth are the days of our glory.” If ye editor was not able to recall so many happy occasions during the years of boy hood he possibly would not be disposed to urge the rights of the little folks who are about him now. The memory of the horse races, the boat rides, and the rabbit hunts, and the swimming holes, and the steel traps along the river banks and the rabbit gums along the fence rows, and the rosy cheeks of the school girls, and the great times we all had at school closings and Christmas parties—when these are recalled we get sorry for these town kids who are, to some degree, hedged about for the want of opportunity to get out and have a natural and normal good time.
No effort of the women of this town would be more far reaching in real value than to get back of a movement for greater opportunities for the children, in the way of amusement.
One thing is certain, a child of normal health and disposition will have his fun and find some way to amuse himself. It would be far better to have some control over the manner of his pleasure seeking than to allow him to do his own choosing where the choice might not be of the best.
Many here thought that the new all park was to be a great step in this direction, and it is, but it is practically monopolized by the base ball teams during the best part of the year. So far as this park goes, it is well worth while, but there should be further efforts along this line.
We suspect that if there was more effort to encourage tennis playing and other out-door games there would be much less card playing in the homes. In a way cards are all right, maybe, but no one would contend that a card game ever hardened a muscle or developed a strong healthy organism.
Hundreds of boys spend hours and days along the streams about this city during the summer months in the many holes of the creek, far from any parental restraint, and often in such company that many parents think that it is far better to dispense with this pleasure rather than get the effects of the association the child must endure. A swimming pool would correct this. Naturally we are not expecting every one to agree with all this, but there are many who do, and these are the far-seeing, progressive spirits who must do this work if it is done. Other live towns are awaking to the needs of the child and coming to see that in a very large sense, “He owns the town anyway.
These kids who are now romping the streets, free hearted and pleasure hunters, will in a very short time be the proud or sad owners of every foot of land about here. They will make and shape the destinies of the years that are not so far away. The kind of citizens they make and the kind of town they will have will depend to some degree on the deal we now give them. To hedge them about with unhappy, hampered conditions will be a misfortune in their lives, but to make the days such that they will recall them with delight and real joy will e time worth while, for “The Days of Our Youth Are the Days of Our Glory.”
From the editorial page of the Mount Airy News, Feb. 16, 1922. The paper doesn’t list an editor, just J.E. Johnson & son as publishers.
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