WESB: Dale Neil of Bradford stopped by to make a contribution to
our ongoing columns about radio personalities at WESB. His brother,
the late Donald Neil, had been the man who was in charge of the
nightly “Dreamdust” for many years.

After the 11 o’clock news, the radio station played some
“dreamy” music, presumably to help listeners fall asleep. Signoff
was midnight.

Donald handled “Dreamdust” in the late 1940s and early 1950s
but, as we recall, the program continued many years after that.

SURPRISE: It was just a week ago that Pennsylvania voters staged
one of the biggest upsets in the past 40 years.

The top two leaders in the state Senate and at least a dozen
current members of the House were ousted from office in the
primary, quite a feat where the system is set up to favor
incumbents.

A couple of the deposed expressed surprise at the outcome.

Surprise? Just goes to show how out of touch they are with
voters.

People who vote in the primary tend to be the more loyal and
informed than average so it’s no surprise that they clearly
remembered the hurt and anger when “our” legislators gave
themselves a pay raise last year.

Adding insult to injury, they passed the measure in the middle
of the night, and then allowed the money to be taken immediately –
even though that circumvented a requirement that sitting members
can only approve a raise for those elected in the future.

Not to worry, though. Our legislators got around that, too, by
giving state judges a nice raise. Apparently, their hope was to
make sure any state challenge to the raise was considered by a
happy group of judges.

People are going to forget this injury-insult combination?
Hardly.

The primary election was just a mild reminder that they work for
us – not the other way around. Wait until November.

ELECTION 2: Speaking of elections, the afternoon newspaper in
Bradford in the 1930s used to signal its opinion about the outcome
of an election in an unusual manner.

One of our old-time readers tells us that the Star Record would
show a raccoon (an illustration, we assume) with its paws over its
nose to indicate its displeasure with the voters’ choice. The
animal would be “reversed” to show the publisher’s approval.

At that time, the publisher was Robert Habgood