The Charlotte News
Tuesday, September 17, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Shelby, N.C., that "a big, bad bearded billygoat
named Brandywine" had gone off its rocker the previous day,
chasing children, besieging a dwelling and alarming the whole
community, until, at the blast of a shotgun, it had been ushered
abruptly off to the billygoat hereafter—dead as a door nail.
Brandywine had chased three young people bicycling on a country road,
forcing two of them to take refuge on the roof of a shed and the third to
retreat to her home. The goat continued trying to butt its way into
the girl's home, breaking screens and window panes in the process. The girl's father
drove up in a pickup truck, make and model undisclosed, but the goat slammed into it and got on
its roof, was about to break its windshield when the father jerked
forward, causing the goat to fall to earth. In the early evening, the
father returned with a neighbor who had a shotgun, both men hurrying
into the house, as the goat again attacked, was halfway inside when
the man with the shotgun fired. The battle of Brandywine was over and
the people of the nearby Lattimore community buried the goat without
examination and no one grieved at the graveside. The farmer who owned
the goat could offer no explanation for its antisocial behavior other
than that he had perhaps become upset because of the death of his
mother two weeks earlier. Maybe he had gotten into the
brandy-wine
In any event, folks around say that in the middle of the normalcy of some seemingly innocuous, unobtrusive nights, when the weather is clear, there is a full moon, and no wind can be heard to interrupt the eventide's quietude and the dignified solemnity of domestic downy security, free of strife and controversy, the sound, emanating from points indistinct, of a temerarious billygoat crashing its horns into doors and windows with the fiercest of apparent destruction consequent, can be heard by those quaked awake, exclaiming billingsgate, and daring then to bend an ear enough timorously to listen; and yet, come morning, no sign of disturbance is discerned anywhere in the nation.
The editorial page is here.
Framed Edition
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