1 / • • N. 82 opinion Herald & lantern 22 August '84

Lookin' and Listenin'

A 'Dummy'? By DOROTHY D. FREAS Looking at the pictures of the small "dummy" on the long-gone railroad line from the Grant Street Station to Cape May Point, we'd be puzzled to understand why it was so called. It had a motor engine and was in reahty & small steam locomotive within a trolley body — hopefully less frightening to horses than if they had passed a locomotive on the street. When the Delaware Bay and Cape May Line started in 1879, the owners of the steamboat landing, who had a daily round-trip of the Steamboat "Republic" to Cape May Point from Philadelphia, owned this little railroad line. BEFORE 1901, the West Jersey and the Atlantic City Railroads had tried to pick up arrivals at the steamboat landing on the western end of Island Turnpike, now called Sunset Boulevard. ****** Of course the people who lived in Cape May Point wanted a connection to Cape May and the rauroad stations at Grant Street (a summer terminal) or to the Jackson Avenue station, where the Wawa store stands as present. No successful plan was formed until the Philadelphia and Reading R.R. took control of the then current Cape May, Delaware Bay and Sewell's Point Railroad. There was a short line before that, running from Grant Street to the Point, in competition with a trolley which ran from Sewell's Point, (area where Coast Guard base is now) to the Delaware Bay. C^PE MAY borough paid $50 a month for the line to continue some service through the cold weather. By 1893, there were two sets of tracks running parallel to each other, to take riders to and from the area of Cape May Point, the dummy pulling the cars. In 1900, the West Jersey and Seashore R.R. brought in one new dummy and another car, open for summer use, to connect Cape May Point with the Grant Street station during the busy summer season. i There was a commercial operation located at the end of Sunset Boulevard, taking sand from the beach, washing the salt out of it with fresh water and loading it in cars to be shipped. To handle this traffic, a very small camelback switcher was run 6n the parallel trolley line, pulling loads of sand for shipment out of the county. ■» THE STEAM DUMMIES were used on streets of many towns, pulling trolley cars in Longport, Ocean City, Stone Harbor. Even the city of Brooklyn purchased one in 1878, similar to the one operating in this area in 1882. Small locomotives have been frequently used since then, but not always steam. A gasoline driven one movaf freight cars for the Sewell's Point U.S. Navy Base, duri^ World War I. These tiny engines filled their necessary place in our 19th and early 20th century development of the shore resorts.

v UttM ) Published Every Wednesday By P.O. Box uo The Seawave Corporation Cape May Court House. N.J. *8210 Joseph R. Zelnik Editor Bonnie Reina General Manager Gary L. Rudy Advertising Director John Dunwoody Special Promotions Director Parrel! Kopp Publisher Saawova Corp. 1984. All rights reserved. All properly rights lot lh« entire contents of this publication shall be the property of the Seawave Corp. No port hereof may be reproduced without prior written consent. DEADLINES News & Photos Thursday Advertising Friday — 3 P.M. Classified Advertising Friday — 3 P.M. j 465-5055 For Ngws or Advertising Information | Vithr-r lurtir iiMtiiiu ..I tli. III. II VI II t\|» I tMIIIN v ill In n-.imn.ilrl. rrr lr.rl.lr l..r is |muru|thi.-al . rn.r-. .1. . in ant I In .-.Iil..r n -.-r.. . tin rutin ... .*<1 ant I. Ilr-r ..r I.niill.-rf To mar Townthlp - LANTERN ¥ Pa bOshcd Every Wednesday By P.O. Box US I: •

Is The President Interested ? Are the Needy Hurting?

"Not one single fact or figure," said President Reagan It his press conference the other day, substantiates charges that his budget cuts have hurt the poor. May we remind him of not one, but two .. . or three or four more anyway? The morning after the President's press conference the -r Congressional Research-Service released a study analyzing cuts in cash welfare included in the administration's 1984 program. The shgiy found that these cuts alone pushed mOre than half a million people — most of them children — into poverty. That's just one small part of the picture. Many other programs for low-income people were also cut. And many of the people losing benefits were already poor, so their losses don't show up in ihe simple poverty count. Others were made worse off, but not quite enough to qualify them for official poverty. If the President is really interested, he might want to look at several other studies that confirm and enlarge upon the CRS findings. FOR EXAMPLE, a regent study from the General Accounting Office found that a large percentage of families whose welfare benefits were cut were poor either before or after their losses. The cuts also caused many families to lose all medical coverage as well, run out of food at least once during the study period or have their utilities shut off. The Congressional Budget Office has done several relevant studies. One released this spring, for example, showed that, as a result of the President ' spolicies , families with incomes below $10,000 lost $23 billidq in after-tax income and benefits over three years, while families with incomes above $80,000 gained $35 billion. ( It is true, as the President pointed out, that certain programs for the needy are now spending about $64 billion a year compared with about $47 billion in 1980. But the President forgot to adjust that spending for inflation — a mistake he never makes when he talks about military spending. Prices rose by more than 25 percent over the period. And the cost of medical care — which accounts for the rise in Medicaid, the fastest growing of the programs — rose still faster. THE INCREASE the President points to is also inflated byfthe fact that the low-income housing programs he included in his total are still spending money authorized in the Carter years. He also failed to note that others — such as welfare and food programs — would have been much lower if Congress had made additional cuts he asked for. And he neglected to count losses in those programs for the needy — job programs, day care and other services — that took the biggest cuts. Nor did the president take account of the fact that the

deep recession, cutbacks in unemployment insurance and the growing number of elderly people mean that more people are now in need of help. Adjusting for all these factors, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that all programs for the ' needy are spending about $16 billion less this year than they were when the president took office. That's a loss of about one in six dollars. What's that again about not a single fact or figure? t \ — The Washington Post

Our Readers Write , »» Bike Riders Are Careless

To The Editor: Something has to be done! Isn't one accident I recently heard about enough, with disasterous results that made# few people serving the Rescue Squad not want to go oh runs for a little while? V I am referring to the bicycle riders up and down all streets of Avalon and Stone Harbor. I have seen youngsters darting in between cars and out of driveways in congested areas, people in groups of six riding three abreast. I've seen some with no regard for stop signs or traffic signals. The riders at night usually don't have proper markings on the bikes and no lights at all. It frightens me. I TRY TO TAKE precaution backing out of my driveway, or a parking place in either Avalon or Stone Harbor business district. Shouldn't the bike riders be careful also? I ride a bike and delight in it, so I can appreciate how the summer people enjoy themselves. I certainly wouldn't recommend banning the sport. But something should be done. Unfortunately, I have no solution except to appeal to the town planners to come up with an idea to protect us both. Fast! HELEN R. HOLLINGER Avalon

-And for a Cheap Birch Beer ... Try Wine and Lose Weight

V Bv J*E ZELNIK i 'ThanKyotrfor revealing that the county's Fare Free transportation ts~for everyone, not just senior citizens," writes A. H. of Nummy "How do you learn such things, and do you know any more secrets?" Reporters learn secrets from sources, usually anonymous. But they can never/write anything based simply on an anonymous source; ibey have toeheck it out and either see for themselves/ or find other reliable sources. / Government secrets are hard to come b> in Cape May County. I don't want tA suggest that people are afraid they 11 lose their jobs, but the last source I talked to met me at midnight on the other side of a sand dune at Whale Beach, wore a Jimmy Carter Halloween mask so he or she couldn't be recognized, and spoke through a toy trumpet to disguise his or her voice. THE SECRET I LEARNED, and personally verified, is that the cheapest soda in the county is found hidden on a stairwell in the county library building. Here, for half the price of a take-out restaurant across the street that shall be nameless (since it doesn't advertise), one can get for a mere 30 cents, Coke, Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper, Sprite and Birch Beer! This machind used to*e on public display in the main entranceway, second floor, of the library building with a note taped to it saying it was only for county employees. But the American Civil Liberties Union threatened a class action suit, saying the public could not be denied access to a soda machine in a public building. THE FREEHOLDERS had to choose between paying County CounseJ Albert M. Ash about $85,000 to fight it to the Supreme Court, or hiding the machine. By a 3-2 vote (Ash advocate Tony Catanoso and jurisprudence junkie Jim Kilpa trick opposed), the freeholders voted to conceal the machine. Now you have to go to the second floor, turn right, tiptoe to the end of the hall (being careful not to waken the attack dogs), turn left and go out the exit door. There's the bright red Coke machine on the left. , The freeholders have been consuming a lot of time on beverages lately, mostly because Gerry Thornton is a sales representative for Gallo wine ( in case this plug warrants a reward, I prefer its Hearty Burgundy). |

THORNTON HAS a conflict of interest because when he wears his freeholder hat he heads health and human services, including the Council on Alcoholism, but when he's bareheaded he's pushing Gallo wine. The more Gallo you guzzle, the bigger the car Thornton can afford. j I'm not suggesting any impropriety, but, since the Health Department (also under his jurisdiction) began reporting a sodium problem in some county drinking water, Thornton went from a Pinto to a Buick. I personally think wine is a heckuva beverage. For one thing, it's low in calories. A four-ounce glass of white, for example, contains about 72 calopes. I hate to do anything that could threaten Ruth Wanberg's "Diet Do's" column, but wine has been recommended as an ideal ingredient in a low-calorie diet. j If you're worried about a beer belly, for example, dnnk wme. That's what I do. I have no beer belly, but I do have a wine spare tire. WINE DOES PRESENT some problems. For one thing, it s very IN nowadays to drink beer out of the bottle. Try standing around some crowded tourist joint with a bottle of Chardonnay in your hand. Another problem with wine is that it makes some people sleepy TTiose persons making a big fuss because Ronald Reagan falls asleep at cabinet meetings should consider that he usually has a glass of Thunderbird with lunch. And as for his falling asleep while sitting alongside the I*;, as he gave a televised address in 1962, how long fell ileep? " 10 someone taIk in Polish before YOU 1 OF COURSE DRINKING to excessjs bad and a high-alcohol-content wine like Wild IrisFftose, which Ty father sips, can be a killer He's 79 and beginning to show signs of tiring after three hours of polkaing ""f about wine helped Thornton renege on his proposal to offer county employes a Gallo wine a™ffee break, the way brewery workers get beer breaks. That "fringe benefit" was negotiated by Thornton and Sam Kelly, who either is or isn't head of the SLeffEhUnlM' " 8 ^ <he ^"bo* thing fell apart after Kelly demanded three wme breaks a day ; a choice of red, white or rose; chilled glasses, and a wine Stewart in each department.