By Bion H. Butler
Stacy and I put some Keith’s 13-miles-an-hour gas in the flivver Monday and hit out the pike for the county seat to see the reins of government pass into new hands. It was a bit frosty, and the wind blew thru our whiskers fitten, but we got there in time to see Dan McLauchlin elevated to the position of chairman of the new board of county commissioners, and Mose McDonald and John Wilcox sitting beside him as demure and interested as though they had not dropped Hugh McPherson and Dr. Shaw outside the breastworks. The new board elected Spence for county attorney to succeed Burns, who has been a mighty capable and energetic worker for the county. But Spence is another chap of that intelligent and energetic type, and will be received by the people with much favor.
I have known and watched the work of the retiring board right well, and they have done a highly creditable job during their tenure of office. In fact I have no doubt they have given more return for the salary they received than any other bunch of men in the county unless it may be the road commissioners and the school commissioners, who hustle about as vigorously and get even less than the county commissioners. I am going to offer the departing board a vote of thanks from the county, and if anybody does not want to be counted in on the vote, he can talk to me privately about it. Fifty years ago we used to hear an old song in the lumber woods about “Mr. Riley who keeps the hotel.” And that song assure dust that “If that’s Mr. Riley they speak of so highly, Why that Mr. Riley, he keeps it d—n well.”
And so I figured about the old board of commissioners. But is reasonable to expect that the new board will be a capable factor in the county work even though county burdens and responsibility continue to increase each year, and if the new board has no court house to build, it will have its own problems to face and they will not be trivial ones. One thing that confronts them under the new laws and the new applications of old laws is to be a more rigid system of county operation. With the county auditor keeping tab on each separate department and each separate fund the increasing volume of county business is requiring a more definite book-keeping and a more frequent balance sheet. This is essential for the work of the county offices and for the satisfaction of the people that they may have a better knowledge of what the county is doing. Mr. Bell is to be continued in office, and he is earning his salary, and some besides, and it would be a mistake to think of letting him go.
Sheriff Frye succeeds himself. All he had to do was to go out of his office, turn around, shake hand with himself coming ack as he met himself going out, and say a few words to the commissioners, and he was back in the familiar place again. Frye has made a popular sheriff, and his vote tells how he suited the voters.
W.J. Harrington followed E.C. Matheson in the recorder’s office, and gives promise of doing good work. He is a man who holds the confidence of the people, and he is a good scout. He does not need much introduction. Matheson has been sawing the wood there at the court house for a long time, and he is so well posted regarding land titles and county affairs that it is a pity to let him get away from a responsible place. But it seems that about every so often the citizen has to chop off heads, no matter how much sense may be in them, and so it goes.
Judge McIver stays on in the clerk’s office, and that cordial smile will be there as before to meet the folks who drop in. Naturally you hate to see the old timers drop out, but it is gratifying to know that when they do there is a fair amount of good material to gather in a new force.
The road commissioners was in session. Present were Sandy Jones, the patriarch of Deep River, Brown from Hemp, Cameron from Vass, Maurice form that Paradise Heights over on the Norfolk Southern, Ed McKeithen up from Aberdeen, and the rest of the bunch, and Charliey McDonald says a pleasant time was had, and the new machinery is working to the queen’s taste, and at much less cost than making roads the old way.
We fooled around over there awhile, and nobody offered us anything to drink, so we finally came home and decided to go to Carthage again some day when the weather gets warmer. And that’s all of the story.
From the front page and page 8 of The Southern Pines Pilot, “a paper devoted to the upbuilding of the Sandhill Territory,” Friday, December 5, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073968/1924-12-05/ed-1/seq-1/
No comments:
Post a Comment