As I write this column on Microsoft Word after using the Microsoft Explorer to go online an research a couple of items and will use Microsoft Outlook Express to e-mail it to the paper…. I notice that the Attorney General Janet Reno is jubilant about the great day for consumers now that the government seems to be beating up on Microsoft and declaring it a monopoly.  She makes sounds about how this will open up the competition and make things all better.  It may be, but somehow I do not look forward to the government winning this case.  

After the breakup of AT&T we now have a phone system that may be less expensive but can anyone figure it out?  Don’t you look forward to those phone calls to change your long distance, and can you ever really figure out what you will pay per minute for your long distance calls? 

Ms. Reno is jubilant about a victory against a big business, but quite reluctant to even tackle a case that may singe the President on Campaign Finance law breaking and buying elections.

But I do not write about Microsoft,  they probably can take care of themselves.  But the David Case Cider Mill in Mansfield, Pennsylvania  doesn’t have the same clout, money or influence that Bill Gates has and is the victim of government intervention.  You may never have had the chance to enjoy “Autumn in a Jug” fresh cider put out every fall by hundreds of small cider mills around the northeast.  I have not sampled the work of David, but I can remember every fall watching the stand of the local cider mill for the sign… “Fresh Cider Today” and seeing the jugs sitting out on the table for people to stop, plunk down the money (honor system, of course) and taking home this year’s version of “Autumn in a Jug”.    It was fresh, not pasteurized, and pressed from a white oak cider press.

Soon to be a thing of the past.  New rules you know!  The government has decided that the tradition of over 100 years is not the thing that we want.  These new rules have put David and hundreds of other small business out of business.  The action of the government will hurt competition, will lessen the choices and allow the big companies to take over producing a pasteurized, sanitized, tasteless cider that never comes close to the “Real Stuff”.

The new rules will eventually say that you will pasteurize, and of course you cannot use that 100 year old white oak press… must be stainless steel.  Further rules prevent you from pressing apples for the hundreds of families that brought their own apples, a tradition for generations.

I have been intrigued by the marketing of “Water”.  When I was a kid my parents built a primitive cottage on a lake.  By primitive, I mean no running water and an outside toilet.  All the people around the lake and for a wide area always went to the spring to fill up jugs and enjoy the “Best Water Around”.  Often I have thought of bottling and marketing that water.  But with regulations as they are, it is almost impossible.  So the only ones that can do such a thing are the big companies like Perrier with all of brands including Perrier, Zephyrhills, Arrowhead, Poland Spring, Great Bear and many others.  Thanks to the regulation, competition is stifled with the resulting pricing…. Have you priced a jug of water lately?

So something passes from our heritage, something special, something uniquely ours.  I am sure the attorney general is jubilant.  I doubt see ever tasted the “Real Stuff” and doesn’t know what she is missing. The Government has protected us from ourselves, destroyed competition and taken something from our past.  In its place we have something that looks like cider, says it is cider, but can never hold a candle to the “real Stuff”.