The polling people told me they couldn’t include my opinion unless I just happened to be one of those computer-selected. The chances of that are  less than my winning the state lottery.

           I wanted to be one of the callees because I have a strong fundamental opinion on this. I am against both taxes for a simple reason. They would be new levies on the necessities of life, which are already heavily taxed.

          Before necessities of food, clothing and shelter are further taxed, I urge that luxuries (of which an untaxed and low-taxed plenty are available) be considered. Taxing luxuries such as fancy cars, booze, and entertainment tickets won’t hurt anybody.

           How come these sources aren’t on the commissioners’ table?         

          Lately a possibility is a yet undisclosed but potentially desirable site in Carrboro.  This notion is commendable in that it recognizes a community-wide location. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are in fact one community and a site in Carrboro enhances that idea. More facts of course remain to be learned. 

         Meanwhile the Kidzu Board has asked the Town of Chapel Hill to consider providing a new site in the Chapel Hill-Post Office/Courts building – quite a nice location with primary essential services already located there. 

         If it hasn’t yet been pondered, I’d like to propose another centrally-located but under-used municipal spot for Kidzu: the top of the Wallace Parking Deck. It was good enough a couple of years ago to be selected for a municipal business/residential site, when it fell victim to insufficient finances. 

         It’s virtually unused and has the most adequate parking possible (eifht under this space). It’s obviously available. It must be structurally satisfactory since it was chosen for a more complex use. Locating Kidzu there would not prohibit development above it. 

           –Am I off base with this suggestion?    

         I harken back to the 1960s in Chapel Hill when the local Board of Aldermen debated enactment of a public accommodations ordinance. That local law would have prohibited racial discrimination in local business service. After many months of deliberation the ordinance failed. The proposal brought on a lengthy trial of conscience throughout the community. As a member of the Town Board I sided with the majority that did not support this ordinance on legal grounds.          

          Those legal grounds were the fact that municipal governments had no authority to pass laws except those specifically authorized for them. It all became a moot question on July 4, 1964 when the national civil rights law took effect.

            Although I believe such authority might yet be illegal, I would support enactment of this local law as I look back on it today.  I’d do so on practical grounds, as much as for the fact that I heartily supported then and now the elimination of racial discrimination.          The population of Chapel Hill back then would have generally accepted that first public accommodations law to be enacted by a town.

           I believe we (the Town Board) erred in not passing that ordinance despite its questionable legality. We (the Board majority) didn’t see the forest for the trees. That is to say, we focused on trying to persuade individual businesses to drop their racial barriers, when the bigger picture was to eliminate all discrimination.

          Chapel Hill back then could have taken a leadership role in that regard. There was no racial violence here, but it was a time of great strife that we could have and should have avoided by leading the way.

          Just about all of us who blog and read blogs have the basic necessities of life. But we’re uptight about and too often lack the necessities of the “good life.”  We are on edge and confounded by the unmet need for them. 

         Here is my list for these other important necessities. They are (1) a plumber, (2) an electrician, and (3) A yard man. Add to the indispensable essence of each of them the words “personal, dependable, knowledgeable and friendly.”

          Not being a capable domestic handyman, I was frustrated until I hooked up with each of the above. I have them now and thank each of them for the “good life” I enjoy.

          A local (adopted) citizen, John Edwards, is yet vigorously campaigning for the United State presidency.          

          A recently  repatriated citizen, Jim Neal, seeks the NC Democratic nomination for the US Senate. (Add coincidental local geographic information: He lives in the mid-town home which was long that of the late 12-term US Congressman from Chapel Hill, Carl Durham.) 

         Beverly Perdue, the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, has been going full tilt for more than a year in her bid to become Governor.  Another Chapel Hillian, hometown  native Hampton Dellinger, is a candidate to succeed her as lieutenant governor. 

         We expect Speaker of the NC House of Representatives Joe Hackney, to again be un-opposed in his bid for re-election to this powerful post.

          No doubt there are and will be more geographically local folks to seek higher offices, so this is yet no big deal.

          But in looking back for a precedent I can only recall that a rather stuffy local lawyer many years ago announced that “at the request of my friends” he would run for election to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen. He received six votes.

    That was Chapel Hill as young Sheldon White first saw it when his widowed mother moved here almost 80 years ago. A careful hometown historian, Sheldon died here recently at age 93. He worked as a grocery store clerk, served five years in the Navy during World War II, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, and was a retired life insurance agent.Through all that, Sheldon dearly loved Chapel Hill and all its curious elements.

       Franklin was “Front Street,” and Rosemary “Back Street” — where he grew up in his mother’s boarding house. He could recall every store in the one-block downtown business district – including one of the seven independent groceries, where he started part-time work at $2 a week.

          Chapel Hill was a “caring place,” he said. “People looked after each other. Mrs.  R.B. Lawson was the one-woman personal welfare department who checked the jail every morning. When people couldn’t pay their monthly bills the merchants tided them over until times improved. The reason that NC Memorial Hospital had to be built, it was said, was to fill in the gap when \Dr. Brack Lloyd died in 1949. The crusty, revered doctor once said “I take care of all the blacks and whites – and damn few faculty.”

          –Of such are the vestiges of the vanishing village that Sheldon White watched and nurtured during his lifetime here.

          Our family was at the breakfast table Christmas morning when another newspaper wretch telephoned to suggest we go interview Frank Rinaldi in his jail cell. I couldn’t imagine a rational defendantt granting such an interview but unwisely agreed to check it out. Surprisingly, the police desk sergeant and Rinaldi both acquiesced. We were admitted and locked in the jail cell. The policeman promptly forgot all about us until four hours later. It made for an interesting interview, but my wife was livid over the incident.

          Rinaldi was the beneficiary of a $40,000 double indemnity life insurance policy he’d taken out on his wife before they married that year. He said he was shopping for her Christmas presents the day she was found bludgeoned to death in their mid-town apartment. He was acquitted of the bizarre slaying following two trials. 

           That humbling truth is brought forcefully to mind by the disruption of the nearly 70-year-old septic tank that serves our hometown homestead. Yes, since the house was constructed in 1940 below the sewer line, it’s been served primitively but effectively by a septic tank. It functioned reasonably well – until Christmas Eve, December 24, 2007. 

           Maybe this had something to do with the 16 children and grandchildren  gathered so joyfully to enjoy a traditional family day together. Moments before the last ones left they discovered a rising pool of moist, aromatic liquid covering the lower floor.

          –Akin to the wonderful one-horse shay that ran for 100 years and a day, the cause was the buried line to the septic tank. Our blessedly helpful children shut off the water valve, mopped the mess out the back door, and departed for home, exhausted. –There was no place for them to sleep here.

          The important lesson of this Christmas day is simple and fundamental. Although I’d as soon the accident hadn’t happened, we’ve realized that we can exist and tolerate this inconvenience. We’re also more thankful for the under-appreciated tools of life. The repair crew will be here tomorrow. Neighbors have offered more help than needed. There’s a construction portalet next door, available to use if I truly wanted to do so.  Although I have the age-related malady shared by most other male octogenarians, it is tolerable. In youth, I thought camping out was fun.

           In summary, we’re still better off than millions of folk here and around the world. The troops in Iraq would willingly swap for our momentary plight. It’s therapeutic to be reminded of all this.

In summary, sincerely, Merry Christmas, blog readers.

          Judges Robert Winston and Crawford Biggs, Gen. Julian Shakespeare Carr of Durham and Chapel Hillians Dave McCauley and Charlie Lindsay put up $2,500 capital as original depositors.They hired Sam Peace Jr. of Henderson, who later recalled that he was at age 19 likely the youngest bank cashier in the country when he came from Henderson to take his $30 a month job in the spring of 1899, Peace had two years experience as a bank book-keeper and errand boy. 

          He later wrote that his 45-mile train trip to Carrboro, required four changes and took all day. Since the new bank had no safe he took each day’s cash home to his boarding house and slept on it.

          This local history came to light recently in a Christmas story written some years ago by Peace – who later became a successful industrialist and president of two banks. 

         He recalled returning home to Henderson for Christmas. Arriving there late  Christmas eve, he walked home and saw a lighted lamp in every window of the family home.  The sight moved him so that he sat down on the dirt sidewalk and cried.\