The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 118, No. 09, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 28, 2008 Page: 2 of 36
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Hemphill County Area Newspapers and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Hemphill County Library.
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THURSDAY 28 FEBRUARY 2DDS
THE CANADIAN RECORD
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
RECORD
ESTABLISHED 1893
(NCDRPDRATEDFEBRUARY19SS
PD Box 8E8, Canadian, TX 7E0I4
Phone: BDB.323.B4BI or 5321
Fax: 8DB.323.573&
BEN EZZELL Publisher/Editor
Publisher 1348-1333
NANCY EZZELL Publisher
LAURIE EZZELL BRDWN Editor
sditnr@canadianrECDrd.CDm
MARY SMITHEE Business Manager
mary@canadianrecnrd.cnm
ADVERTISING Holly Henderson
advertising@canadianrecnrd.cnm
NEWS/FEATURES
Cathy Ricketts, Julia Schafer
news@canadianrecnrd.cnm
SPDRTS Jason Turner
jasnn@canadianrecnrd.cnm
DESIGN BPRDDUCTIDN
Laurie Brown, Cathy Ricketts,
Holly Henderson
PHDTDGRAPHY
Laurie Brown, Cathy Ricketts
CONTRIBUTORS: Mary Jane McKinney,
Bob Rngers, Ruth Beasley, Jenny Klein
USPS DS7-9BD
Periodicals pnstage paid at the Past
Office in Canadian (Hemphill Cnunty),
TX. Published weekly in Canadian by
Nancy M. Ezzell
POSTMASTER: Send address changes
tn The Canadian Recnrd, PO Bnx BOB,
Canadian,TX 73D14
SUBSCRIPTIONS:
S3D/S3B/S42 Annually
Online Subscriptions S42/Annually
Available at
www.canadianrecord.com
&eutacUatt
RECORD
and the Ezzell Family
WINNERS OFTHE
2DD7 Gish Award
FOR COURAGE.TENACITY B INTEGRITY
IN COMMUNITY JOURNALISM
A call to
litter-busters
I HAVE NOTICED OVER the last several
months numerous cars being stopped cross-
ing the Canadian River Bridge for various
traffic violations, but none are apparently
being stopped for littering—or so it appears
from what I can see.
We personally pay to have Highway 60
cleaned several times a year from town to-
wards Glazier and up FM 1920, yet not a day
passes after cleanup that trash is not dumped
again on these stretches of road.
Trash ranges from entire sacks of trash,
styrofoam lunch containers, beer bottles,
tires, feed and mud sacks, and even tops of
hinged ice coolers.
You will notice the same type of trash when
traveling south on Highway 83 to Miami and
north to Perryton, as well as on Lake Marvin
Road.
Several weeks ago, one of our employee/
partners spotted a rig hauler from Pampa
discarding trash as they were traveling north
on Highway 60. With a license plate number,
the owner of the rig was contacted by the
Sheriff's Department, and the guilty party
was called in.
We need more awareness and involvement
from both law enforcement and the citizens
of Hemphill County. With all that Canadian
does to promote tourism, the area needs to be
clean of trash and debris along our pathways
tot he City.
With the promotion that the State of Tex-
as does regarding littering, all citizens and
guests of Canadian need to be doing their
part to keep our roadways clean.
RANDY BAILEY
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IT IS A THURSDAY MORNING, as I begin this column, and I've
just been roused from post-publication stupor by back-to -back vis -
its from two of my elders and fellow Democrats. They are talking
politics—a subject that stirs all but the dead and fatally indiffer-
ent in these early months of2008.
These are men who fondly remember the old days of the Demo-
cratic Party, when decisions were made by men who looked like
them, meeting in smoke-filled rooms behind closed doors that
barred women like me from entering.
Believing, I suppose, that I am a sympathizer, both men af-
firm their staunch opposition to presidential candidate Barack
Obama—which is fine—in terms that raise haunting images of
the Deep South, white sheets and burning crosses—which is not.
I feel shame and rage...but I also feel the stirr i ngs of resolve as
my now-unwelcome guests depart.
Their vitriol and animosity infuse this office with a stink I had
thought, hoped, and prayed—though never quite dared to be-
lieve—long gone from my hometown. My stomach roils in remem-
brance of similar words spoken to me as a child—words that lay
like weights on my conscience, as if I myself had said them.
Quite coincidental lv—or perhaps fatefully—a bound file of
The Record from the 1930s sits at the corner of my desk. I had dug
it out of the stacks and dusted it off days before to fill in some size-
able gaps in my knowledge of Canadian's past.
I know, by now, what I will find buried in those yellowed pages:
the report of a baseball game between a local club and a traveling
team. The headline that crowns that story, "Canadian Loses to
Colored Team," is a sickening reminder of a past we can't escape.
The story is a remarkable piece of date-stamped journalism—
bad journalism, mind you, littered with grotesque allusions to the
visiting team's skin color and their general inferiority as human
beings. Upon first reading, I had thought it a novelty and shown it
to others, shaking my head at the ignorance I was certain we had
overcome.
Suddenly it's not nearly so quaint, though.
The past has visited me in two old men, their voices cracked
with age, their faces creased with time and hints of sorrow, their
fear and hatred so long held, so resistant to thought, that it has
calcified.
I have a dream.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is our time.
Our time to make a mark on history.
Our time to write a new chapter in the American story.
Our time to leave our children a country that is freer and kind-
er, more prosperous and more just than the place we grew up. And
then someday, someday, if our kids get the chance to stand where
we are and look back at the beginning of the 21st century, they can
say that this was the time when America renewed its purpose.
They can say that this was the time when America found its
way. They can say that this was the time when America learned
to dream again."
Perhaps the Democratic Party will rise again in this country—
not to dominance, but to a kind of parity in which we will all be
forced to talk, to listen, to negotiate, to compromise, to find com-
mon ground and construct real solutions to the daunting problems
which await us.
But if it rises, it will not be on the shoulders of men like these,
who still hate and fear and long for a time when the white man's
supremacy was unchallenged. It will be on my shoulders, and on
yours...and on the shoulders of men like Barack Obama, who dare
to dream again of a better America—an America that has found
its way.
These are so much more than words. They are ideas that light
the darkness. They are a call to arms. They have power. Just as
those old words of hate and fear held us down, these words have
the power to lift us up, to awaken our resolve, to engage us, to
make us whole. And now it seems possible to hope that they will
also bring us back to the voting booth, to reassert our citizenship
and to pledge ourselves to an active role our country's renewal—
and our own.
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Brown, Laurie Ezzell. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 118, No. 09, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 28, 2008, newspaper, February 28, 2008; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth252693/m1/2/?q=technical+manual: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hemphill County Library.