Thanks a lot, but....

I've eaten a lot of pizza in my life. The first I remember were the ones Mom would make. I think Chef Boyardee was the name of mix, and you had to mix the dough for the crust. I think it included a can of tomato sauce and a can of cheese. As I remember, you were on your own if you wanted anything else on it. We all thought it was quite a treat at the time. Do they still make that stuff?

When I found my way to Hagerstown a few years later, I discovered Dale's Pizza. Their thin crust sausage, mushroom and onion was the best pizza ever, in my opinion. It still is, in my opinion.

They knocked down the original Dale's Pizza a few years ago and built a bank on that corner, and Dales moved up on Main Street for a while, and then a couple of years ago they moved across the street and added a dining room.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about.

Dale's is adding a bar to their operation. The other night, we were discussing the the new addition with the owner. I was happy to hear that it was going to be smoke-free. Even though I won't be frequenting the bar section, I appreciate the fact that there won't be any smoke from the bar wafting over into the pizza part. Aside from my personal preference, I think it makes good business sense. Non-smokers out number smokers nowadays, so there's a larger pool of customers to draw from, besides the fact that you don't have to wash the windows quite as often.

Then he told me he figured the government was going to outlaw smoking in all businesses before to long, so he might as well get a jump on that by going smoke free right from the start. Now, like I said, I'm glad he's not allowing smoking in his business, but I hate it that, like so many other Americans, he expects and accepts that our government is going to continue to grow and extend its reach into our everyday lives and decisions.

That's one of the things that attracted me to the Libertarian Party. Libertarians don't expect government to continue to grow.

Or accept that it has to.