i __ ____ VOL. LXI O’NEILL, NEBRASKA, THURSDAY. JANUARY SO, 1941 NUMBER 38 SOUTHWESTERN BREEZES By Romaine Saunders Along with the inability to keep, track of the growing billions of, •federal debt, the public has also| forgotten that starting in ’33 we were to be led “out of the red with Roosevelt,” Raymond and Ford Garwood moved a large herd of cattle from the ranch down at Swan Lake to feeding grounds up in the Inez neighborhood a day last week. With the slaughter of four hogs and a beef the Fredericks family are wintering with an ample meat supply. Elmer Fix pulled his saw and grinding outfit to the James ranch Thursday for a job of fuel sawing and feed grinding. A young baseball performer has been signed up to put his fast balls over the home plate next sea son for $30,000. Just about take oare of the payroll of the entire high school teaching staff of Holt county. The top administrative head of WPA in Nebraska receives $5,500 annually; on down through 113 others the annual pay ranges from $4,400 to $2,160 at the bot tom. No—the bottom is around $600 which goes to the man with the pick and shovel who does the real work. We will have to admit the “weak ness of democracies” as exemplified by our big town gunmen is petty larceny in comparison to the jobs | of the lords of totalitarianism— not merely a lone payroll messen ger their victim, but whole nations —bodies, souls, money and prop erty. Sun and stars have been obscur ed during much of January. Pink tints of early dawn, the yellow and gold of sunset, the gleam of dis tant stars, has for days been shrouded with mists and fog. But these emblems of gloomy desola tion have touched the southwest with artist finger and decorated tree and bush and grass blade with cold but delicate beauty. Snow, in “silence deep and white” lies across valley and hill. Hoarfrost makes ropes of wire fences and hangs in heavy cluster everywhere, fsnow, mist, fog have settled over the prairie like a moist blanket from which is wrung a goodly quantity of water as warm days follow winter frosts. On my last business visit to ■O'Neill, early in January, 1 had thought to get around to see J. C. Harnish, having for twenty years been a near neighbor of the family. ' Weather conditions became threat ening, so it seemed best to hasten homeward while traffic was open. And so that opportunity to rem inisce with an old neighbor is gone forever. Selkirk, Harnish, Cor bett. Evered, Smoot, Meredith, Baldwin—that was the neighbor h*>od of whom only Mrs. Harnish and her daughter Ruth remain. We were just across the street and though but a youth on whom life’s darker shadows had not yet fallen, an admiratoin for Mr. Harnish de- j veloped from observing the in-1 dustry, the thoroughness, the! methodical, and moreover artistic management of the simple affairs of the home premises. He gave encouragement by precept and ex ample to we obstreperous youth in the ways of industry, sobriety, learning and spiritual aspirations. John O’Malley would discover a •gold mine of interest in a letter 1 lately reeived from John Brennan out at Salt Lake City. Mr. Bren nan, happily unincumbered by j great learning, has what is more important, a heart; and this with a peculiarly distinctive analytic strain combined with a droll humor, a shocking disregard of all rules