Revenue Officers are ripe in the Land of Mears

-In this war - torn hour when the maps of Europe and Asia and maybe the Aleutian archipeligo are changing overnight , when boys are going out , some of them never to return , when we need to save every dime to buy war stamps to bring us victory over the malice and machinations of Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito , how galling it is to find in our county a bunch of people who , ignoring all admonitions to civilian economy and retrenchment , are anxious to plunge Oceana county head- long into a ten thousand dollar a year extravagance like this soil con- servation district monkey business . I went to Tommy Tompkins yester- day and I said : " Mr. Tompkins , there are some people who think that Uncle Sam is a Santa Claus , that he has thousands of dollars to throw away , and as long as the federal government pays , why should they worry . Here we are at war . We need to save every dime to win the war . And yet you want us to plunge into this soil conservation district business which might cost the federal government alone $ 10,000 a year in this county ( besides all the private expense . Mr. Tompkins , do you know what the national debt is now ? Eighty billions of dollars , and still agoing . Why should we launch out now on something we do not need ? Mr. Tompkins , do you have a farm of your own ? " Mr. Tompkins ad- mitted he didn't . Mr. Tullis from Montague refused to tell me what his salary is . Neither would Mr. Tompkins tell me what his was . I told him I couldn't see why , seeing how he was a public official . Maybe their salaries are so high they don't want you plain farmers to know . But the figure is aplenty . But having a princely salary to spend and not having any farm to pay taxes on , like you fellows , no spray dope to buy , no fertilizer to pay out for , he doesn't worry about economies like you or I who have to count our pennies to see if we have enough to buy a loaf of bread for supper . Mr. Tompkins doesn't worry if the national debt goes up $ 10,000 or so . Many an " agricultural expert " of that type could not run a peanut stand and make it pay if thrown out on his own to sink or swim . That is the real test of business skill and acumen , the horse - sense on which business is founded . - To Keith Corliss in Mears for fresh fruits , cold meats , vegetables and fresh baked goods , adv . It was a sight to see Floyd Krauter out with his combine this week . These harvesting and threshing machines are scarce in this section . Silver Hills Farm has gathered in its crop of spelts into the granary-

-Betty Paton from Kingsley is visiting her aunt , Norma Normire , and when she feeds her turtle she gives him Hartz Mountain turtle feed . Her father , Don , caught a 44 pound trout at Stony Creek . - The Mears homecoming will be on Sunday , August 9 , at the brick church . - The Dayton Journal - Herald in its issue for Sunday , July 19 , devotes two whole pages to Swift Lathers , there being one solid page of pictures specially taken by a member of their staff , and another page with the story and pictures . There are twelve pictures in all and Photographer Bervin Johnson has done some very good work here . The Pic Magazine for June 23 had three pages of pictures about The Mears Newz , and the Detroit Sunday Free Press for May 17 had two pages of pictures about the editor in the rotagravure section . The March number of the Ameri- can Mercury Magazine ran a five - page story , all in type , about Swift Lathers . Three years ago he was pictured in Time Magazine . - We mention these things today because it is the birthday of The Mears Newz , which was founded 28 years ago in an old cider mill . There was no flashing rush to success in a streamlined super - six . It was a slow plodding foot journey down through the path of the yearning years . I lived my own life , unstandardized , unconforming and unafraid . I ac- quired such riches as a dictionary and a sand blow and a magic lantern and some rusty old scales with cast iron weights , an ox yoke , some test tubes and brown drug store bottles which washed up in the waves . These things might be junk to you , but to me they are more greatly to be desired than motor chariots . Simplicity of life and contentment are the great desires with me . As a boy 1 searched the junk piles for bottles to scrub out for my chemicals . My pleasures are the costless joys of foot journeys and chess . I ponder , I put my wonderings into type and my world wonders with me . I fight for principles , for the rights of the common people and for justice , for the open roads that humanity may enjoy the beauty of the lakes . If you like me , if you believe in me , if you have faith in me , in the clarity of my vision , in the sincerity of my purpose , in the fibre of my courage , then you can help me with your subscriptions to feed my family , to get them a few of the comforts of life , to unfold my dream of the desert , and to buy more print paper and ink so that I may bring laughter to the weary , justice to the down- trodden and truth to those who earnestly desire it . You who quibble about wages and time and a half for overtime cannot understand how a country editor will work patiently on year after year without any sal- ary , getting his precarious living out of the few coins that are handed him here and there , perhaps going without butter on his bread that he may buy print paper to get out his weekly issue . Around him every day he sees those who never subscribe , who see the ball game through a knothole in the fence by borrowing their neighbor's paper . Sometimes they are the cynics , the critics , down through the years . Sometimes they are the members of the Mears school board who are so unpatriotic that they give the school printing to the out - of - town newspaper . Down through the years the home paper fights for the home enterprises . fights for the home high school while thoughtless members of the school board send their children to the ninth and tenth grades in Hart when they could send them to the high school in Mears . The home pa- per puts the home town on the map . It labors on through the years and brings fame to the landscape . If the eynics , the critics , the sourbelties and the people who see the ball game through the knothole in the fence would come forward with their subscriptions the editor's buildings would have paint and his children would have milk . - Miss Jane Quail has brought to Silver Lake her sunny flowing flaxen hair from the pleasant streets of Pleasant Ridge . And with her is Doreilen , the friend

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of her bosom , sweet as corn syrup , and her face is delicious , her voice is like honey . Quail's Trail is the bath mat of the Osgoods and a lot of other entrancing people whose names are written down on that piece of paper I dropped out of my hand when I banged my finger shutting a cottage door and made a quick streak to soak my hand in the waves of Lake Michigan before it got red , white and blue like the Fourth of July or Mr. Whitehead's feet . In the alliterative allegations of the primer , Q stands for Quail and for Quality . - Karen Lee Pierce , 5½ years old , is visiting her grandpa , Nate Pierce , in Shelby . - William R. Green , who sells cascarets and sodas in Litchfield , was in Mears yester- day to see the shrine of a famous newspaper . - Jane Pickering tells Barbara she ought to reduce an ounce or two . - If you want to sell your farm or village house , list your property with N. D. Pierce , the big real estate dealer in Shelby adv . - When you get tired of riding in the " original dune scooters , " come over and ride in Shogren's " tin cans with outboard motors attached . " adv . - A competitor's driver spoke of them that way . - Ruth Jean Moore was plastered with poison ivy this week and went to Hart hospital . She was working at a summer home at Whitehall . Today she was out again with her arm bandaged yet.- So the United States revenue officer came to Mears to see the sand skooters and inquire why they had not been paying the 10 per cent luxury tax . The theaters have to pay it , the ball games , the Grey- hounds ; how did the skooters expect to get away without paying it ? Just how many dollars or hundreds of dollars the revenue officer col- lected from the Silver Lake skooters in the last few days we do not know . It was the rightful revenue of the United States and should have been paid long ago . One skooter operator boasted last summer that he didn't buy any license plates and he didn't pay the gas tax . It is our belief that in the three years preceding the state of Michigan had been deprived of hundreds of dollars in gas tax . Whether the auditor gen- eral of Michigan has since instituted a suit to recover this back gas tax we do not know . If he didn't he ought to . It is computable by the to- taling of the refund vouchers . Two weeks after that time the attorney general ruled that scooters in the state park must have licenses . The following Sunday the state police issued five tickets to drivers . There is a big war poster down in Shelby in Kelly & Spellman's showroom . It shows some soldiers driving an army truck onto the battle field , fel- lows with a grim , stern reality written on their faces . Below is the admonition to " Save on rubber . They need it worse than we do . " And we have in our midst the unpatriotic example of these dune skooters , a dozen at least . Six or seven of them with ten wheels , some with eight . 108 tires desecrated to the cause of greed and pleasure , the unpatriotic greed of their masters and the idle pleasure of their patrons . Behold the example of this to a rubber - reducing nation , where some people are laying up their cars utterly and others saving on tires all they can . And yet one of these skooter operators ballyhoos to the world how patriotic he is . We don't see it . A real patriot would want to save on rubber if it did pinch his pocketbook . A real patriot would not want to do his state out of the gas tax or his county out of the revenue tax . Isn't it about time these dune skooters folded up for the duration of the war ? Western and native beef , spring chickens , lamb , bacon , bam , home- made sausare . We especially welcome resort trade . Sanitary Meat Mar- tet . east side Shelby's Main street .

Gilb rt candies , Arctic ice cream , first aid kits at Collins Drug Store on the corner in Hart .

-Delicious sweet cherries at Esslinger's Fresh Fruit Market . Also 1 4obilgas , on Oceana's busiest corner , US 31 and MS2 , adv.-