Game officials have got to be kidding
These are difficult financial times and the Department of Fish and Game lacks sufficient funding for the trout hatcheries. Even so, we must stop the department from enacting its current plan.
Technology enables the department to laser-etch small identifying numbers on some of their hatchery trout. This helps keep track of the health and longevity of these fish. That is a great idea and deserves our support.
Unfortunately, some high level officials in the department want to use this laser-imprinting equipment to cover one whole side of the fish. They want to sell this as advertising space. A great deal of interest has surfaced. Commercial interests note that as the fish gets bigger, so does the advertisement.
We trout fishermen are a conservative lot and just can’t accept our presently beautiful speckled brook trout as swimming billboards. We have complained to the department without much success. They did finally agree to laser-printing only one side of the fish, preserving the other side for us to use to take pictures.
Please join us in preventing this assault on one of North Carolina’s greatest treasures. Call Fish and Game today. Tell them to stop now!
— Joe Roberts
Salisbury
Editor’s note: The writer suggests that those who find the above letter a bit fishy consult the calendar.
Smokers will pay
This is in reference to raising the price of cigarettes.
Nicotine is a very addictive drug. I was a smoker for years. I tried to quit half a dozen times before I finally quit for good.
People are going to continue to smoke regardless of how much they keep raising the price of cigarettes. When I started smoking, the price was 25 cents a pack, and a carton never cost more than $4 during the years I smoked.
I had bronchitis and upper respiratory infections. I quit in 1999 through prayer.
People are really foolish to want to smoke. You’re just wasting your money and letting it all go up in smoke.
I’m so glad I kicked the habit. I just pray more people will do the same.
I lived with a friend who had emphysema. It’s not easy to watch someone you love die. She had quit smoking six years before, but it was too late.
— Joanne McKinney
Spencer