Bell Ringers

Bell Ringers

With Christmastime upon us again, a familiar sound, that of the Salvation Army bells, fills the air outside many stores in malls and also downtown. Old Corporal has volunteered to be among the bellringers this year, as with the economy apparently in freefall there’ll be more people needing help than in one of your average years.

Back in the days of my youth (better known as the Dark Ages) there were always plenty of volunteers to keep the Salvation Army bells ringing merrily, right up to Christmas Eve. Downtown merchants and, a little later, those in the growing commercial areas on the hilltop, would stand by the red kettles for a couple of hours, clanging and haranguing (sometimes, if the haranguee was a friend they knew was financially comfortable) to get more coins into the pot to help the less fortunate have a happy Christmas. Service club members also took turns ringing the bells, gratis, and it all worked out well.

Of course, anyone who keeps up with what’s happening in the community knows that nowadays the volunteer spirit is waning fast. That lamentable fact has affected our unpaid (professional) fire departments, the service clubs themselves — and the Salvation Army’s efforts to help the needy at Christmas. The organization now has to augment the shrinking ranks of its volunteers by paying people who need work, to help with the bellringing.

salvationarmy

The latter course, while often providing a paycheck to people who need it, in return for performing a service to help those even more in need, in a way hampers the purpose of the Salvation Army kettles. If the wages for many bellringers who are not volunteers must come “off the top,” then there is less green stuff “down below” to help the rest of the needy.

If you’re a retired person, like me, or if your work schedule will allow you a few hours off here and there, why not go to the Salvation Army Office at 331 E. Main St., or call the office at 265-2157, and volunteer to ring those bells for a few hours this Christmas season? It’s for a good cause!

Meanwhile, if you happen to enter CVS Pharmacy on Clifty Drive or J.C. Penney’s in Riverpointe Shopping Center the next couple of days, you may see Old Corporal, clanger in hand, urging people to “Put something in the pot, boy!”

You’ll know him because he’ll be the one with icicles hanging from his graying mustache.
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Speaking of jobs, or the lack of same, around here lately, remember how we turned down the chance to have a riverboat gambling operation in Jefferson County in that referendum in 1994? “Bad for our nice little community! Will bring crime, alcohol and drug use, prostitution!” trumpeted The Madison Courier, the local preachers, the business bigwigs who didn’t want to see the local wage scales go up. Unfortunately, we believed them. Be nice to have that gambling boat, and a big swanky hotel, here now, with so many industrial jobs gone a glimmering, wouldn’t it?

Remember how, a few years before that, the Jefferson Proving Ground made the short list of places where the state of Indiana might erect an additional state prison? The word hadn’t been out for two days when a large public meeting was organized, where community “leaders” brayed about how we didn’t want a prison in “our nice little community.” Yeah, folks, we don’t want all those good-paying, excellent benefits state jobs it would provide. Give ’em to somebody else!

So the state did.  Some other community got those jobs, too.

Now, with layoffs (and rumors of layoffs) occurring in our shrinking industrial base, just in time for Christmas, one local entity has offered a ray of hope: 50 new state jobs, with those wages and benefits we let get away before.

Bet there’ll be plenty of local people scrambling to put in their applications for THOSE jobs. Now that we’re down on our uppers, we’re not so persnickity. Because, lo and behold, those 50 new jobs are being offered by none other than — a prison!

Funny, isn’t it, how circumstances alter cases?

Old Corporal <corporalko@yahoo.com>

Helping the bellringers, – Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 18:37:48 (EST)

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