What I Heard Along Main Street

Most of my comments here are the outgrowth of something that is discussed along Main Street, at the post office, around the court house and in many other places where I find myself witnessing what is going on.

This happens to be one of the days when I take no responsibility for what is said, other than to quote some mighty good people who were talking up and down Main Street in Hazard on Saturday afternoon.

Members of the Business and Professional Women's Club and the United Mine Workers were hotter than Herman Goering when the first airplanes bombed Berlin, Saturday afternoon. As they told their story: The good women volunteered to hold forth along Main Street the previous Saturday with tables whereby the passing public could be asked for donations to the Red Cross. Some good money had been spent to prepare for these solicitations. More good money has been gathered in the previous Saturday to swell the Red Cross fund.

As they told it, still not my story, one merchant told them to "scram" from in front of a place of business where money had been collected the preceding Saturday. "We lost more than $300 last Saturday by this table being near our place," the merchant said.

The table was moved in compliance with the order given, but the talk failed to die down. In fact it got hotter and hotter. Ed Reynolds, speaking for the mine workers, made no bones about how his organization felt and said this would be not the last of this matter.

Some of the good women called attention to the fact that our boys could not make $300 in a whole year, spreading their precious blood over the snows and in the foxholes of Germany.

Ed Reynolds says he feels sure that St. Peter won't allow anybody to take money inside the pearly gates. This will be a sad disappointment to some people, he seems to think.

That's what I heard along Main Street. 1945