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6A Daily News– Wednesday, July 4, 2012 Opinion DAILYNEWS RED BLUFF TEHAMACOUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U N T Y S I N C E 1 8 8 5 This morning, several hundred thousand people across the land, this scribe included, will go to garage or closet, get out the $6.98 copy of Old Glory, walk out onto porch or into yard and put the Stars and Stripes on display. Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes let- ters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All let- ters must be signed and pro- vide the writer's home street address and home phone num- ber. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. 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How to reach us Main office: 527-2151 Classified: 527-2151 Circulation: 527-2151 News tips: 527-2153 Sports: 527-2153 Obituaries: 527-2151 Photo: 527-2153 On the Web www.redbluffdailynews.com Fax Newsroom: 527-9251 Classified: 527-5774 Retail Adv.: 527-5774 Legal Adv.: 527-5774 Business Office: 527-3719 Address 545 Diamond Ave. Red Bluff, CA 96080, or P.O. Box 220 Red Bluff, CA 96080 A most special day hardtop races alone after I'd chosen to stay home to sit with my baby sis- ter. can tell you … it was only yester- day. Most who do it will be 50 or more, although some of them a bit younger. Vietnam veterans or the young brothers and sisters of Viet- nam veterans, will also display the flag. Might be that Desert Storm made a few more folk aware we are honoring flag and country, not nec- essarily some conflict engineered by politicians and generals who have little conscience when it comes to shedding the blood of others. I don't know. It is Independence Day, and, with the possible exception of Christmas, the day that gets the most notice from me. I no longer do anything special, other than put out the flag. But it's always a special day. For remembering. It is the day, back in the late 1940s and early '50s, when fire- crackers mysteriously appeared in the hands of kids whose parents for- bade their possession. I'm talking real crackers, cherry bombs, strings of lady fingers. Serious ordnance. Most, but not all, of us survived intact. One buddy got some perma- nent scars on his backside when an older kid put a cherry bomb in the back pocket of his jeans. And, when my boyhood was winding down, the day was to take a good friend. That year in the early 1950s only one person was killed by fireworks over the 4th. That was here in Cali- fornia. In my hometown. His name was Ed. He was one of my best buddies. He'd gone to the At the midway point in the race program, they had our small town's annual fireworks display. The vol- unteer firemen were in charge. The fireworks were set off from the track infield in front of the wooden stands. tors. Oohs and aahs from the specta- Some of them said later it seemed the fireworks were too close to the stands. Pieces of powder- burned paper rained down on the crowd. One rocket did not explode. Ed was among the dozens of people leaning on the track fence, looking skyward. The unexploded rocket came down. It struck him in the face. He died minutes later. He was wasted. Since then I've seen many, many others. The ones who didn't fight had a point, although it was hard for many to see at the time. But those who did go did it for the country, for that flag I'll put in my front yard this morn- ing. 16. They later said he actually drowned in his own blood. His was the first young life I saw Another personal loss comes home to me this first part of July. A young cousin died in Vietnam the week of Woodstock. That was late June 1969 and it was near the Fourth when an Army master sergeant walked up to the steps at his folks' Los Angeles area home to deliver the news. My wife and I were visiting them at the time. A half-million people who stayed home from that war sat and listened to the music, some of the words opposing that foreign war. While they listened, this boy was dying in a field on the other side of the world. An only son. An only child. A quarter-century ago, when he was only 19. His mother and father little boys who die in wars, die before they can become men. And most of those politicians and not just a few of those generals never get close to a war. That has always been the case, sadly.) The Fourth is also good thoughts. Election season rhetoric aside, this mostly has been a year of healthy economy and no-message concerts. Most of us can afford hot dogs and pop, at least. July 4 was Dad's favorite day of (And yes, it's mostly My mother is a heck of a cook. Dad did the ribs, but she prepared most everything else. Her potato salad has no equal. My wife's comes close, but only close. The kids swam, the adults talked through the day. And when the mosquitoes took control late on the hot summer night, most of us were reluctant to abandon the patio. You knew it was going to be at least another year before anything felt this good again. The same kind of party in August would be pleasant, but not the same. I remember how we'd get a call in late June. Dad would be wanting to know if there was any chance we summer. It meant, if possible, a lot of his grandchildren and many of his friends were going to get togeth- er for barbecue, watermelon, cold beverages and, in his later years, some swimming in the pool he had built in the backyard. Guest View Cliff Larimer could get some time off from what- ever job in whatever place, and come home for the Fourth. We'd try. But if we didn't our phone would ring again the afternoon of Indepen- dence Day. We'd talk to family and friends who had made it. And Dad would tell me we'd missed some good ribs and a lot of good conver- sation. He's been gone a lot of years. July 4 comes and goes at the place. Once that backyard was alive with the noise of adults laughing and kids splashing in the pool. This year, it will be quiet, with only the sounds of the mockingbirds and sparrows to break the silence of the California summer. invites. But no little boys and girls shout to their grandfather from the diving board, "Watch me! Watch me!" He is gone. So are some of them. The pool is still fun and the water Mostly. Still. I will have good feelings. No other day brings me home to the good, and the bad, about this country as does Independence Day. I wouldn't miss it. (In slightly different form this first appeared in 1988. One thing had changed. Mom died a couple of years after this was printed. And it is the day of the year I have the tough- est time getting through. I'll lift a cold one to you, Pop. Maybe two.) Cliff Larimer is a retired newspaper- man. His stops over more than 50 years in the business include the Daily News, Chico Enterprise-Record, the Willows Journal and the Lake County Record-Bee. He now lives in Red Bluff. Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Jim Nielsen (R) State Capitol Bldg., Room 6031 Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 319-2002; Fax (916) 319-2102 STATE SENATOR — Doug LaMalfa (R) State Capitol Bldg., Room 3070 Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 651-4004; Fax (916) 445-7750 GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 558-3160; E-mail: gover- nor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Wally Herger (R), 2595 Cean- othus Ave., Ste. 182, Chico, CA 95973; 893-8363. U.S.SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 393-0710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224- 0454. Flushing away our freedom Commentary my father. My toilets are turning me into When I was a kid in the 1970s, there were few greater worries than the plumbing. This was mostly because plumbers were expensive and many families had only one income. My father, always looking for a bargain, purchased the cheapest toilet he could find for the powder room he finished in the basement. It never did work right. For starters, it was absurdly small — as though it had been designed for miniature people. It didn't take more than a few pieces of tissue to clog it. My father was soon spending much of his spare time unplugging it — and pleading with us not to use it. Inevitably, however, somebody would use it, it would clog, my mother would rush to shut off the valve, and my father would grum- ble to her, "For godssakes, Betty, why can't they use the upstairs commodes?" before me, the plumbing is one of my greatest sources of worry. That worry is caused by federal action taken in the early 1990s. Back then, each state had its own toilet standards, which made toilet manufacturing more costly. So a toilet association lobbied Congress to create one national toi- let standard, an idea that made sense. was seized upon by bureaucrats and environmentalists. They saw an opportunity to craft a federal law that would conserve the nation's water supply. Somebody arbitrarily decided that a 1.6-gallon toilet, rather than the 3.5- to 5-gal- lon toilets most Americans were then using, would do the trick, and some legislator slipped the require- ment into the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1992. For nearly 20 years now, the But the move to standardize Still, that old toilet was lots bet- ter than the new toilets I have installed in a couple of rental units I own — and now, like my father government has mandated that new U.S. toilets use only 1.6 gal- lons of water per flush, down from the robust 3.5 gallons per flush Americans had enjoyed since we perfected the art of indoor plumb- ing. Scientifically speaking, 1.6 gal- lons of conventional gravity flush- ing isn't very powerful. It's barely powerful enough to flush a few errant strands of tissue — which is great for singer Sheryl Crow, who recommends that that is all we use. Here's the kicker: Unless you get a top model at top dollar, which can be somewhat functional, the new toi- lets aren't necessarily conserving much water at all. A plumbing expert I talked with told me that to prevent clogs, people are flushing two or three times to get the job done. And so I worry. I've warned my tenants about the problem. I've urged them to embrace the Sheryl Crow philosophy, but clogs are common and a massive overflow into the rental units below me is just a matter of time. It's no wonder, then, that such lon toilet, but that hasn't stopped desperate fathers and landlords from driving to Canada, where the larger-flow models are still available. Tom Purcell If you get caught with one, though, the feds will slap you with a $2,500 fine and prose- cute you for transporting porcelain over federal lines for illegal flushes. This infringement on our freedoms is an out- rage, yet the ACLU is nowhere to be found. Hey, ACLU, govern- ment bureaucrats have no right butting into our bathrooms! away next? Our Reader's Digests? ——— What will they take Tom Purcell, a humor columnist federal laws are turning law-abid- ing Americans into criminals. It is now illegal to "procure" a 3.5-gal- for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.Visit Tom on the Web at www.TomPurcell.com or e-mail him at Purcell@caglecartoons.com.