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 Holabird AdvocateProviding all the news we see fit to print since 2002!Friday, July 04, 2003 VOL. II Issue 7B AMERICA TURNS 227 While others take a day off to celebrate the freedom that we declared on this day, we at the Holabird Advocate have decided to put together a jam packed edition. Why do we do it. Well, there are the Readers to consider, but mostly it's because we had electric problems yesterday. Harold, Mary, and the rest left Jerry and E.E. Hinkle in charge of things at the Ponderosa. They are camped at Lake Oahe Campground 1, pads 20, 21, and 23. They planned on taking in the parade at Fort Pierre, the Capital City Band concert, and the fireworks display as well. They will be coming home Sunday morning because Mary will be in charge of the Methodist church service, giving the first of two sermons that Pastor Phil wrote for her out of the goodness of his heart. Jerry managed to record announcement of Century Club birthdays for July, and as suspected, E.E. Hinkle's name was one of the ten centenarians mentioned. he also managed to get a stuffed crust pizza in the oven for dinner. They got a call from Don Hinkle in California. Sounds he and his wife LaRayne will be going to the house of their youngest son, Juahn, to see the fireworks display of about 8 or 9 different towns in the National City area. Holabird will be "the" place to be this Indepedence Day, however, as Ed and Barbara Nemec are having a party to celebrate the occasion in grand style. Clearly only the very best of Holabird soceity were invited because Holabird Advocate Publisher, Jerry Hinkle, is on the guest list. Jerry and E.E. Hinkle are planning to go to Agnes Hahn's house for dinner tomorrow so E.E's Century Club plaque can be shown off yet again. E.E. hasn't been this proud of anything since he got a letter from Governor Frank Farrar back in 1971. NEMEC NUPTUALS NIPPED Bridget Nemec is not going to be married at the parental Ed and Barbara Nemec home as previously reported in the Holabird Advocate. Jerry Hinkle might have a chance with her, providing he's lucky and she's desparate. Actually she will be married at a later date, but we have a feeling that our courageous dynamic Publisher will not be invited to that event. HINKLE FAMILY OFFERED FARMERS UNION SCHOLARSHIP Mary Jo Nemec announced this afternoon that the Hinkle family has been offerred a scholarship to attend the Farmers Union Family Camp at Lake Herman next week. They'd better hurry up and decide, because camping spots are filling up faster than Rosie O' Donnell at a free buffet. MEMO TO THE MAYO CLINIC Holabird Advocate's Circulation Department has discovered that someone at the Mayo Clinic was looking for information on Darrel Hinkle at MSN. If this person would care to e-mail the home office at the following address: captain11xxi@hotmail.com our courageous dynamic Publisher will tell you anything you want to know, and maybe some things you don't want to know. FREEDOM ISN'T FREE by Rusty Limbaugh Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners, men of means, well educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured. Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his Ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags. Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward. Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton. At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt. Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months. John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we shouldn't. So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they paid. Remember: freedom is never free! It's time we get the word out that patriotism is NOT a sin, and the Fourth of July has more to it than beer, picnics, and baseball games. 'PARTYING' AND DRIVING: WHEN WILL THE LESSON STICK? By Kevin Woster, Rapid City Journal Staff Writer People tell me it's fun to get drunk. It must be. Lots of them do it. But from the outside, drunk doesn't look like muchfun. It looks hot and sweaty, disheveled and deranged. It looks like a bad case of the flu, or some sudden neurological disorder that diminishes speech, motor skills and, especially, judgment. Though I've never been drunk, I've certainly spent my share of time with people who were. I've seen grown men wet their pants, grown women vomit on their dates, otherwise reasonable friends pick ludicrous fistfights they couldn't win and, of course, married acquaintances sneak out of dreary bars with people they barely knew. Maybe I'm dense, but I can't see much fun in that. Drunk always looks dangerous to me, like an accident waiting to happen. Sometimes, of course, it does. That's how a Highmore girl named Jamie ended up dead last Christmas. That's how her friend, Scott, ended up in prison.Scott was driving drunk. Jamie died in the crash. There's nothing especially rare about that. A percentage of people have been driving drunk for as long as people have been driving. People have been dying because of it, too. It's always a horrid tragedy. It always devastates a family, stuns a community, forces people to look into the open grave of drunken driving and promise change. That change happens, of course. But, oh my, it happens slowly. As a people, we are infatuated with getting drunk-or, to use the popular euphemism, with "partying." It's just too much fun to stop, I guess, regardless ofthe costs. That was clear last weekend, as my wife and I enjoyed Old Settler's Day celebrations in her hometown of Highmore. I like Highmore. It's a typical, hardscrabble town in the mixed-grass plains of central South Dakota. Good people live there. Like the folks I knew and grew up with down around Chamberlain, Highmore people work hard, and they play hard. Sometimes they party hard. Throughout the Old Settler's Day celebration, there was sudsy evidence of the party mentality. It included the guy of about 40 who drained a bottle of beer as he rode down the town's main drag on a class-reunion float. That was 10:30 in the morning. But the full effects would take hours to appear. They were obvious that evening when Mary and I went to a local bar, hoping to hear some music and dance a step or two. It was early in bar time, about 9 p.m., but still too late to beat the cloud of inebriation. The place was packed, the people loud, the faces of many already far down the road toward their bleary destination. A man fell off his chair. Another teetered past our table, mumbling nonsense. Two women gyrated together out on the dance floor in a sweaty dance that, in a more lucid moment, they might have found embarrassing. The sign on the bar told part of the story: "FirstAnnual Beer-Drinking Contest: 5 p.m." Few things I see in a bar surprise me anymore. That sign did. I presumed beer-chugging competitions had long since passed through the bladder of time and into an ignorant history. We live, after all, in an era when breweries themselves promote "responsible" drinking. They operate Web sites like beresponsible.com and spend millions on advertising to discourage excess and encourage moderation. So, what were they thinking with this chug-a-lug thing? I called the bar owner a few days later to ask. She was friendly and open, and perplexed by the question. "It was just one can," she said. "We just had them see how fast they could chug one can of beer. We just thought it would be fun." Apparently it was. But if there was anybody in the bar who stopped at one, I didn't see them. I didn't see many Coke-sipping, clear-eyed designated drivers, either. What I saw was a fairly common bar scene: a crowd of semi-delirious drinkers inside and a fleet of cars and pickup trucks waiting outside to be driven home. You can find that scene in just about any town, on just about any Saturday night. But it seemed especially odd in Highmore, just six months after Jamie died and Scott's life changed forever. Yet there it was, another drunken night on the town, another accident waiting to happen. When it does, it'll be the same old tragedy with a new set of names. (This article was in the Rapid City Captial Journal on June 27, 2003. Some in the Highmore area were quite upset with Kevin Woster, one of "The" Wosters. Others in the area thought that it needed to be said and why did it take so long. What I thought is contained in our next article) MY LETTER OF REPONSE TO MR. KEVIN WOSTER by Jerry hinkle, of the Holabird Advocate Mr. Woster, You're article on June 27 has really got the Highmore/Hyde County area talking. For that, sir, I thank you. I am a Hyde County resident, but I claim Holabird as my home town, even though I went to, and graduated from dear old Highmore High School with your brother-in-law Grant. I do find it interesting, Mr. Woster, that you went into a bar and were surprised to see people getting drunk. I am sorry,sir, that you had to be a witness to such a sorry display. Had you and your family been to the Historical Society Museum, you would have had the chance to meet and talk to my Grandad, E.E. Hinkle, who was there showing off the plaque he received as a newly inducted member of South Dakota's Century Club. Grandad is a man that hates the abuse of alcohol more than you do, Mr. Woster. In fact, he is going to be 101 years old, and is already the oldest living Man in Hyde County. That, sir, is what you should have seen, and what you should've written about. And I'm sorry that you did not. As for Jamie's death, I dare say none of the residents of Hyde County have forgotten about it. Her's was not the first alcohol related death in the Highmore area, but I hope and pray that it is the last such tragedy we face. Maybe you're article will help people to think about that for a while. I wrote about Jamie's death in an article for the Holabird Advocate, A Newsblog that I publish in my spare time. I plan on publishing your article and this response to it. If you would like, I'll send you a link to the Newsblog and a copy of the article I wrote about that horrible day. I hope that you will come to the Highmore area again and as often as you can. When you do, please feel free to let me know when that is. I look forward to hearing from you. I know and have known your mother-in-law, Shirley, for many years, and she can help us get together and talk further. In the meantime, have a great Independence Day!
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