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April 14[?], 1955
Bishop Sheen, one of the great and clever speakers of the times, always comes up with a good story in his talks. Recently while visiting at a home, the conversation started on the road to success in his church. The family started out with college priest, then one says, “What comes next? Monsignor. Then one says, What comes next?” One spoke up and said Bishop Sheen. Then the head of the family said, “What comes after Bishop Sheen?” And quick as a flash came the small boy’s voice, “Milton Berle.”
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What gangland gangster runs the trading stamp business in Minneapolis? He must be a monster. A bill before the Minnesota house requires any merchant in a county the size of Murray to pay a license of four thousand dollars a year. If selling stamps is so vicious why not make it a crime? We’ve never bought anything that had a trading stamp attached to it, but we can’t for the life of us see why a merchant can’t use a stamp or anything else if he thinks it will stimulate his business.
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The resignation of Winston Churchill removed the greatest man of our time. He is eighty and we are eighty-two. He lived through the Queen Victorian age, so did we. Saw the dumpty, chubby majesty once. Our uncle John Brewster was station master in the Royal Borough of Stirling for the Caledonian railway and once he was presented to the Queen when she was on her way to Balmoral castle. To a Britisher that was a way above getting a bid to play golf with President Eisenhower on the White House lawn. We were only a kid then and queens did not mean as much to us then as the good looking ones do now. This country is full of queens: it’s not an honor to meet them, it’s a pleasure.
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Encouraging reports come from those working on cancer and polio. Little by little the reports get more encouraging and the day is coming soon when both diseases will be almost eradicated. Can’t help but think of the “prairie” days when diphtheria was one of the dreaded diseases and was never content with infecting only one member of the family: you seldom hear of diphtheria any more. Another dread disease was small pox. It was not unusual to see men and women with pock marked faces. When have you seen one? This disease and whisky helped the government wipe out the Noble Red Man and his family.
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Robt. Service once wrote “strange things are done in the Midnight sun by the men who toil for Gold.” He could say the same thing about the Minnesota senate. One day last week the senate voted in favor of the “fifty” foot truck bill and an hour later voted to kill the bill. Senators have as much right to change their mind as a woman has, but don’t do it too often boys or cynics will want to know how the market is today.
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We remember the times we used to go to Canada in years gone by. We really felt sorry for the Canucks. They were so eager to get our dollar that is the U.S. dollars. The shoe is on the other foot now, Canada if present conditions continue will one of the richer nations. The government recently cut $10 off each tax payer’s income tax: and we used to be sorry for my Lady of the Snows.
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Saw a couple walking arm and arm the day: they were a married couple too. Have not seen such a display of love and affection since the days when we used to kneel down and put on the “girls” overshoes when we were leaving the dance hall or any other social event.
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At last the millennium has arrived. To you dear girls who have never spent as many days working your lily white fingers to the bone getting one minute rice ready, or dragging your weary feet one after the other to the range to get out a batch of two minute oatmeal or ten minute buns and a lot more this kind of dope, relief is here at last. Saw a picture of a gadget on a kitchen range the other day and there was a sweet looking dame who put in two written recipes in the gadget and then tripped wearily downtown.
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There’s been a lot of progress made since we came on earth. More perhaps than in all the years before. A while back we thought we had reached the peak but as later years go by we begin to realize that we have not started. The new atomic power brings to mind the changes we’ve seen in power. First it was the oxen that brought and kept the early settlers alive; they passed out of the picture. Then came the horse: remember when it was the sole motive power for the farm; then there was the coal burning locomotive power, that’s gone. How long will coal, gas and oil last? Will the nuclear end those big dams? Strange things are in the making. We have billions of dollars in airfields. Now comes a new plane that starts straight up and lands standing up. What a wonderful place this is going to be in twenty-five years.
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We’ve never received a medal for being too moral and it’s never been our lot to receive an award for being a goody-goody chap, but old and hardened as we are there are still some things that sting us to the quick. One of them came along last week in that show called “A Night in Vienna.” It’s hardly fair to burp about juvenile delinquency and then see the parents sit complacently through a show that is filled with filth and suggestiveness and flaunting of wedding vows. Parents must have felt a twinge in their hearts when the children were looking on, especially the budding daughters that were watching those sexual morons frolic and gambol. If the performers had been of the denim, calico or burlap strata, most folks would have left. Filth is filth whether it comes wrapped in silks or rags and to the Roamer the “Night in Vienna” show resembles and smells like a dead stinking carcass with a thin coating of vanilla ice cream.
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Gallup is taking a poll of the nation’s tobacco smokers. While he is at it he should include tobacco chewers of plug, fine cut and snoose. Some say they can’t break the habit of smoking cigarets: that’s all bunk. Sixty five years ago nearly everyone chewed tobacco. Shipments of plug tobacco came to the stores in crates five feet high. The snow in the winter along the board sidewalks was yellow, every house had a cuspidor or rather a spitoon, banks offices, stores had boxes of sand or cuspidors of cast iron, the nifty places like the banks and hotels had polished copper beauties up to 18 inches high. Some real chewers of Spearhead, J.T. or Horseshoe used to carry a plug 10 inches long in their hip pockets, some of the staunchest church members we ever knew in Murray county chewed and there even female devotees of the weed. The habit has almost vanished. Why can’t the cigaret smokers forget the coffin nails? But hold on a minute; look at the taxes we would have to pay if there were no cigarets and a lot of folks hate taxes worse than they do polio, cancer, T.B. or any other disease.
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April 21[?], 1955
These mild sunny mornings reminds us of a spring when the Minnesota State Angle Worm Hatchery was located at Lake Wilson. One of the worms poked his head out of the earth one morning, looked around, stretched a little, looked around again and saw another worm close by. The first angle worm looked again and it being spring, started wiggling furiously. The other worm sneered and said “Stop it, you old fool. I’m your other end.”
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That name Wallace on the Readers Digest does represent what it is supposed to be “Scotch”. After running the finest magazine of its kind for years it finally succumbed to the wile of advertising. This month, they opened the bars and advertising for one issue netted them almost a million dollars. What for?
“Did you ever think as you strive for gold, that a dead man’s hand a dollar can’t hold.”
You may pinch, starve, and save, but you’ll lose it all when you reach the grave.
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Wanting a little information, the editor of the Truman Tribune attended a meeting of the village council and here is what appeared in the paper:
“The Truman Tribune asked for an inventory report of operation of the liquor store, and councilman Don Gray stated that such a report would be available only once a year. Asked if this wasn’t rather unusual to take inventory only once a year on a municipally owned liquor store, Gray said that it wasn’t. That is Gray’s opinion. Heitner did submit a report for the month of March which showed a gross of $5,984.47 and expenditures of $5,721.55. These figure indicate that the store is making less than 5% net profit. Max Bosshart was the only councilman to express concern over the high overhead of the liquor store when he said “The overhead is up to one-fifth of our gross now.” Nothing was said by any council member as to how much was made or lost during the months of January and February of 1955, nor were any reports on these two months offered to the Tribune.”
Bartenders must have heard of the raise for congressmen, or applejack has dropped to ten cents a drink.
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Was invited out to dinner the other day. It was at a restaurant, the waitress came around with the menu and her order blanks. There was “young turkey.” We said O.K. “What kind?” She asked, “Light or dark?” We said, “A little of each.” “Can’t do it,” she said. “Got to be either dark or light.” “All right,” we said, “Bring me white.” In the party was a southern couple and the lady demurely said, “You seem to have segregation problems in the north, too.”
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One of the counties that still has faith in the county fair is Lyon county. The county advertised for a new grandstand. The lowest bid was $48,000 and from the looks of things there will be a new grandstand at Marshall next fall.
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A good law would be one that would keep the governor of Minnesota from being a member of the fried chicken, green peas and mashed potatoes circuit. Governors have enough to do, without running around the state when the legislature is in session. Those late hours are hard on a governor’s nerves and he sometimes does things that he would not have if he had gone to bed at 9:30 p.m.
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The annual “Nut” season opened at the Nebraska “U” last week when 1,000 members of the “brain” union invaded the women’s dormitories in search of “panties” and other things of which we have no knowledge. As usual in those brain bruising contests the thing got out of hand, property was destroyed, seven thrown in jail, feelings hurt and the Nebraska senate mad. Can’t understand youth of today. Years and years ago they tell me that those unmentionables were lots bigger than they are today and had lace on them seven inches wide, now they tell me they can put ‘em in their vest pockets, if they had a vest. Don’t tell me that some of the girls didn’t enjoy the evening.
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See by the Lakefield Standard the fox hunting season has closed. The farmers down there have a pack of fox hounds, the paper did not say whether they wore red coats or not, but they did bring home the bacon, netting 37 foxes during the season: that ought to help the pheasant population this fall.
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If you go hunting up north this fall and see a moose, just drop your gun and start running for home. They’re trying to pass a law that if you accidentally or otherwise kill a moose, you have to stay in jail for eight months; you wouldn’t have to stay in jail that long if you slew the whole legislature with an auto.
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You just can’t determine the depth politics can reach. Col. Ernest Miller of Brainerd, hero of the famed Bataan march was told to take off his hat and go home by Gov. Freeman. Like Banquo’s ghost this dismissal will come back to haunt Gov. Freeman.
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For years you’ve read and been told how smart and wise beaver are. You’ve been told how the trees they felled dropped right where they wanted them: that’s pure bunk. There’s been a lot of beavers on the upper Des Moines northwest of Slayton: bank beavers, and if you drive out there some day you can see six or seven trees in one place that the beavers gnawed through that are still standing or leaning on some other tree.
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Had our garden planted last week: all but the melons, beans and corn. A farmer said, “Too early, all it will do will be to lay in the ground,” and in the same breath said, “I sure wish we had a heavy rain, just finished planting my small grain yesterday.”
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Cheer up kids, you’re not so bad as some folks say. There were thirty “jail” auto cases in Minneapolis one day last week, and think of it, only two were under twenty. Seven of the old goats were over fifty and one was sixty-two. What the country needs is an old age delinquency law.
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One of the great inventions for the use of the good wife brought more joy to the male sex than you can imagine: the vacuum cleaner. Before it came on earth, this time of year was filled with bitterness that included words. Who can ever forget spring cleaning time, especially the beating of the carpets and mattresses: plain unadulterated murder, especially when the bullheads were biting. Can’t ever forget when the good wife with a critical eye would say “You’d better go over them again.”
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There’s going to be lots of baseball this year, with a lot of the high price glamour boys looking in. That’s the way it should be. Give the local youngsters a chance. Save your hysteria for the kids which have grown up in your town.
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Natural gas is crowding out diesel oil now. Down at Mt. Lake the village is contemplating a change from diesel to natural gas. The cost the change over will be around $20,000 but it will pay for itself in four and a half years. The oil costs 11 cents a gallon while the cost of gas would be five cents for the same amount of heat. In this day and age you never can tell how long you’re going to last.
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The most important announcement (counting war out) was the one that came last week stating that a polio vaccine that would halt the disease had been placed on the market and available to everyone. All praise and grateful thanks go to the doctors and scientists Thomas Francis and Jonas Salk, who developed this vaccine. Let’s stop here and ponder a minute. Isn’t it about time for the United States to recognize the advance made by medical men and scientists. Would it not only be sensible, but appreciative, if we had a society named “The American Legion of Honor” for men like Francis and Salk who have done so much for humanity. We’d even include non-residents like Fleming of penicillin fame. Let’s give them awards or medals for their outstanding progress in saving human lives. A medal, a Congressional medal is awarded a soldier if he saves a life in battle, scientists and doctors can and do save thousands of lives. Let’s give them their medals while they live: even the prettiest flowers have but little perfume if you’re dead.
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We’re for a primary presidential bill at any cost. This is one law that gets ‘em all out. We begin to feel that we are part of the government. Don’t put the presidential electors’ names on the ballot: that’s just a lot of excess baggage. Let the authorized state political party committee designate them.
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April 28, 1955
Minneapolis will have a primary election next month for city officials. There are over twenty offices to be filled. There are five and six candidates for some offices. Only one office has one candidate and the office is an important one: that of city treasurer. The candidate’s name is Gladys E. Miller.
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Taxing a poor man’s pipe of tobacco twenty per cent because it is said to be a luxury in the state of Minnesota is rotten. Why not put a tax on $5,000 mink coats, $200 suits of clothes, $250 shot guns, dinners at $5.00 the plate etc. and etc. Raising the tax 20% on cigarets is a disgrace. What about the cup of coffee you take for the same reason that a cigaret is smoked. We don’t smoke the dirty filthy things but there are a lot of decent people who do.
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Benson of the Mpls. Tribune has a two column spread, sort of a sob sister blend, about some post officials in Mpls. losing their jobs and a S.W. Minn. P.M. who is hanging on by a string. Four years ago every postmaster in the U.S. was a Democrat. Why? On a sunny morning Mr. Benson, drive over to the capitol in St. Paul and watch Republicans being pulled up like radishes and thrown into the incinerator. Why not shed a few crocodile tears for them?
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Here’s a common sense law that we believe if the people got a chance to vote on it, it would carry: cut down the size of the Minnesota legislature in half. Take it, in our own senatorial district a senator represents three counties, why not a representative representing three counties? A congressman represents eleven counties. Why not a state senator representing five counties?
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The Minnesota legislature will soon be one of the highest paid legislative bodies of its kind in the world.
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We had letters last week from Senator Vadheim and Representative Wee. They had both been over to the department last week on the Lake Shetek matter and found out that problems such as property rights in the raising of the lake is now in the attorney general’s office, but no definite disposition has been made of the Shetek level for the simple reason that there is a new commissioner in the office and as yet he has issued no definite promises so we must sit with our fingers crossed hoping for some help on Lake Shetek.
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A wind like that of last Wednesday, mixed with six inches of snow and a thermometer registering more than ten below zero, was what we would call a blizzard in the early “80’s”.
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Gilbert Carlson a progressive young farmer of Cameron township is the new commissioner from the 3rd district. A mighty good choice. We’re just a little bit interested in Gilbert. We used to work for his father when he had a store in Lake Wilson, and several years before we worked in the harvest field with Fred and Alex Lowe one harvest for Johnny Mihin. Some folks say you never worked. Anyone that worked with that trio had to work.
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A movement is on foot to change the rules in one of our sacred institutions: the game of baseball. There’s a move on to shorten the game in some way. The other two national sports, basketball and football have time limits. Baseball is different, the game can go on and on. The pitcher too often is to blame. When the shadows fall he gets on the mound, turns around and reads all the signs around the park, looks up at the sky, pulls his cap down, takes a hitch in his pants, takes a rub at the rosin bag then steps into the box, all ready to pitch. The batter then steps out and goes through the same program. We’re a nervous excitable nation and the fans start seeing red and the lilies start dancing in his tummy. He knows he will be late for supper and worse still “There’s a wee wifie waiting in a Wee Butt and Ben.”
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We get strange ideas at times and one of them is that women have been backward in educational matters. Not enough of them are on local boards. To tell the truth the average man knows but little about school affairs, the same is true about religious affairs. He is willing to delegate these problems to his wife. She takes a greater interest in the kids. They come home and tell her their school problems and happenings. She knows more about their minds and visions than the man, consequently is more qualified to serve on the board. We firmly believe that Mrs. Margaret Downey played an active part in the recent Fulda re-organization. She is an experienced sensible woman with an intelligent personality. Fulda is lucky to have her on its school board.
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Some of you whose hair is silver will remember the old plush photograph album. It was kept on a little table, underneath the big ornate kerosene lamp, with a globe plastered with roses or violets. When company came the photo album was religiously passed around, with one member of the family giving the pedigree of each. They were all there except cousin Jake, he had been picked up for playing a game called poker and his picture was transferred to a box in the attic. He was a good kind of a guy, good to the kids, everybody liked him but he was foolish enough to get caught. Then there were those big crayon pictures with the six inch frame. You got the picture free, if you bought the frame or was it vice versa. Grandpa that fought with the Rebs stared down at you with an ornery look, that convinced you why the Gray lost. Then there was always a wedding picture, the dame sitting on a chair, she was not showing her legs, but her petticoat. Along side of her stood her man, with one hand on the back of the chair; the other arm akimbo, with a new hat lying on it, their eyes staring out beyond the future; in later years the frames made good kindling. Today they have passed on. Most of the photos today are little things, snaps that are replaced weekly but no photos of past generations. They just don’t belong in the set up of 1955; time marches on.
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Einstein, the greatest man in the world died last week and we all mourn. Folks bow their heads in his memory, but you can’t say intelligently what he did. We can talk about Edison, Bell, Ford, McCormick and other men who changed conditions, but we can’t say what Einstein did. We just don’t understand.
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A new postal regulation says: throw away all lists of patrons’ names. Make every envelope have the correct address on it or send it back. That just ain’t common sense. We never saw a post office that did not have help enough to try and help some either old or young person get their letter to the party intended. Another thing: sending this letter back to the writer 2,000 miles away don’t sound like economy.
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Lets all hope that this new Polio vaccine will be a success; if it is not a success it will be the worst blow to medical science in the last four generations. Let’s get our mind ready to accept the fact that it will not work one hundred per cent. For another campaign to take the place of Polio, let’s get after the farm tractor: they killed twice as many people in Minnesota last year as the disease called polio.
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June 16, 1955
What a fine looking band is that Slayton High School outfit. Well drilled, striking uniforms, excellent music, lithe majorettes that marched with their shoulders back, a real snappy bunch of youngsters that would be a credit to a town five times the size of Slayton. The youngsters did their part in bringing a lot of color and pep to the annual Lake Wilson Saddle club parade last Sunday afternoon.
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If you read the big bold, black type in the country newspapers one would think that the super markets were the pioneers in low prices. Don’t you believe it. Up in Lowville twp. one hundred and thirty years ago a store was selling groceries lower than any “super” ever did. For instance, take black pepper. It was listed at ten cents a pound. Remember this pepper was grown in far off Java, came the U.S. in a Yankee sail clipper. Landed at St. Louis. Transferred on a boat for St. Louis where it was ground. Up the Mississippi to St. Paul. Transferred to a smaller boat, up the Mississippi as far as Fort Snelling. The up the Minnesota to “Traverse Des Sioux” St. Peter. At that point the pepper with a lot of other merchandise was loaded on a one ox, two wheel cart and hauled over the prairie to Bear Lake timber where the post was located. Plug tobacco that came in the same shipment was listed at ten cents a pound, scalping knives made in England were listed at 25 cents each. Everything wasn’t so cheap: there were women in those days too. We noticed “Three pieces of scarlet cloth, sixteen pounds, twelve shillings and two pence,” which was about $85.00 in American money. Face powder, vermillion was called war paint. Women still use it, they tell me. Only it is called “Lady Esther” or something. In real Indian days they had to pay ninety cents a pound.
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Here is June 15th and not a house fly yet. Nights were real cold last week and furnaces and snuggies were mighty popular.
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There are some really outstanding fields of corn in Murray county. Some of them will be thigh high come July 4th. Of course there are lots of fields that are still in the timid stage.
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Folks are feeling a little blue at Lamberton. The vote on the $600,000 bond for a new school house was beaten by a 345 to 296 vote. Thirty five percent of the voters did not take time to get to the polls. Rural voters turned out in greater percentage than Lamberton. This puts the board in a quandary as there will be no room for all the pupils.
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The pastor of the Presbyterian chruch at Balaton has resigned to take up the job of chaplain at the state prison at Stillwater. Reminds us of one pastor that did not get along so hot with his flock. He spoke one Sunday morning on John 14-2 “I will go to prepare a place for you.” In conclusion he said, “I am leaving tomorrow for Harrisburg where I have a position in the penitentiary.”
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The railroad business, that is the passenger end of it. If the old gent buys a full fare ticket he can lug along, not only the little woman but the youngsters for half fare so that all the family can come home with strained necks from looking through domed windows at the Rockies. If you have not got enough money some roads will trust you for the balance.
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Minnesota was a pretty dry state in May. In many counties less than an inch and a half of rain fell. But dry as it was, Pennington county up in the northern part of the state wants to be drier. The sale of liquor has been legal in that county since 1947. A petition was filed with 1,908 votes requesting a vote to oust John Barley Corn. The election will be held in July. Red Lake Falls is the county seat of Pennington county.
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Even hospitals don’t get along too well these days. Over at Fairmont five nurses got perturbed at something somebody said at a meeting and according to the Sentinel they took their dolls and walked out. You read that phrase (walked out) quite often. They “walked out” what else could they do: even nurses can’t fly.
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Another monkey wrench in one of the school reorganization set ups was a tie vote in School District No. 21 in the Hendricks district. The ayes are gaining, however. In April the vote in the district was 21 for to 22 against. At the recent election in 21, the vote was 21 to 21. Another vote will have to be taken soon if additional rooms will be available by September.
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Skies are gloomier than ever for the cigaret smoker, after the A.M.A. convention last week. But figures show that you can now write your own ticket. If you smoke less than a pack a day your lung cancer rate is 128 per hundred thousand. If you smoke from one to two packs a day your chance to get lung cancer is doubled and if you smoke over two packs a day your rate would jump to 460: ninety times higher than that of nonsmokers. Queerest thing about this whole smoking business is that moderate cigar smokers have the same rate as nonsmokers. In the meeting there was not one word of praise for the “filters.” Only mention was, one speaker said he “hoped the filters could be improved.” Seems as if the problem could be solved by making cigarets out of the same tobacco as cigars.
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Gardens continue to do well with the fine rains. Never before have they been so far ahead. For years it was the custom to have green peas and chicken on July 4th. This year it looks as if there will be no peas on July 4th: a lot of our folks started using them June 1st.
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One of the big fishing centers in northern Minnesota has been around Grand Rapids and Deer River. Saw a picture in the Grand Rapids paper last week of a Grand Rapids fisherman that had just come back from Canada with a fine big bunch of lake trout. That is where most the real hot fishermen head for, eventually.
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We’re quite a TV fan and one thing we miss are the Archbishop Sheen programs. While of a different creed we never failed to get some good out of his talks. His talks on Communism were the most interesting and informative of any we have heard: the outstanding foe of Communism in the United States is Archbishop Sheen.
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Hubert Humphrey well known politician states definitely that Ike has not a chance against Stevenson: didn’t he say the same thing two years ago.
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A lady from Minneapolis was visiting at our home last week. She taught here over forty years ago. We were reminiscing and she told about joining a lodge in Slayton. Mildred Hanstrom was her name then. On the night she went “in” she was joined by a freckled nosed, pert little miss from over west of Currie who was working here then for Doc Balcom. Her name was Jane Doonan. A mile west of Slayton the car got stuck in a mud hole and the young ladies who were dressed up for the initiation hopped out of the car, got behind and helped push the car out of the mud. When they got to Slayton, they were a sight. They went to the old Park Hotel where they curried and scrubbed while the lodge waited and wondered. The freckled nose miss kept on pusing and finally became the Grand Worthy Matron of the Eastern Star in Minnesota. Her name now is Mrs. Chas. Topel of Balaton. Mildred is now Mrs. P. Kramer. These were the days when shoes did not have high heels and girls were not afraid of a little mud.
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Thirty five years ago yesterday was one of the blackest days in the history of the proud state of Minnesota. One that day a Duluth mob lynched three negroes. They were members of a circus that showed there. Minnesota led the nation in number of lynchings that year. Saddest part was like most mobs, they forgot to wait to see if they were guilty.
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Val Bjornson former candidate for governor and who is now associate editor of the St. Paul Dispatch delivered the address at Sleepy Eye on Memorial Day. Val still has his fingers on the political thermometer and will be heard from again. Good man.
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July-August, 1955
SLOW DOWN AND LIVE
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The weather the past week or so has been repulsive to man and beast. Too hot to work, too hot to play. Even too hot to get anything for a column like this.
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Yes, you can be a good law abiding citizen in Minnesota, go the polls and vote and still lose your vote.
Don’t say “They can’t deprive me of my vote.” They can and do. Down at LaCrescent in Houston County (population 1,228) last fall the judge of the district court threw out the vote of the entire village, because the election board selected by the village council did not observe the rules and regulations of the election laws. A defeated candidate appealed to the supreme court. It agreed with the district court judge. So if you want to be sure our vote is counted, look over the election board. No one was arrested in the case: it was not fraud but pure ignorance on the part of the council and the election board.
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Braunen Lake southwest of Marshall in time to come is going to be costly for the state of Minnesota. The first death from drowning was reported last week. The lake is an artificial one. Created in a huge ravine with steep banks. When you take one step, the next step does not hit the bottom. You just go down. Advocates for the lake state that there are plenty of “Danger” signs around. All good and well but suppose a bunch of kids come along, start fishing, fall into the lake and drown. What then? We’ll bet a jury would find the state guilty.
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Well, we passed another mile stone on July 21st, making the 83rd. Who ever expected to live to be over eighty, when we were young? We think then that if we can get to be fifty we’ll be doing well. Never have a birthday but we think of an oddity we have in our family: (might have mentioned it before) but every president of the U.S. lived within the lives of my grandfather, Dr. W. H. Forrest and mine. He was born in Scotland in 1799 one month before George Washington died. We helped to bury the old gentleman when we were seven years old.
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You hear a lot of how we are living longer than they did a hundred years ago. Could be but here’s the ages of our first nine presidents. Washington sort of disgraced the bunch by dying at 67, the others did not do bad, Adams lived to be 90; Jefferson 83; Madison 85; James Monroe 73; J. Q. Adams 80; Andrew Jackson 78; Van Buren 79 and in those days there were no serums, vaccines no nothing not even tummy operations; they must have been a hardy lot.
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In every township in Murray County these days you’ll find an excited bunch of youngsters. They are members of the 4-H clubs and are busy getting their exhibits ready for the coming county fair next month. Whether it is a high priced calf or a small exhibit of vegetables they show the same vim and interest and they really have to, for without the 4-H clubs there would be no county fairs. Murray County has always had an outstanding horticultural exhibit. The woman’s building has always been filled at fair time but in keeping with the times, the school exhibit is getting to be but a memory. In the open classes for livestock, well that is a thing of the past; only seven or eight entries being exhibited. Plan on attending the Murray County fair. It is the mirror of our endeavors for the past year.
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The canvassers and peddlers are always with us. A new one, with a crooked slant is making counties in the eastern part of the state trying to get out cook books for the 4-H clubbers. Shun them, kids as if they were a rattle snake. They are not more interested in the 4-H than they are in the Pyramids of Cheops. They also take a swipe at the business men in the small towns, urging them to take a page ad in the cook book or else they would expose them throughout the county. One merchant said “An ad in there is not worth $25, but I’ll be glad to give $10 to the 4-Hers.” He did and in a week he found out they were a bunch of fakers and asked the canvasser for his money back. He laughed at him and said that money had already been sent in to the publishers.
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“You don’t use the right word sometimes,” said a reader. Possibly. About the only man who used the right word was Noah Webster who wrote the dictionary. Mrs. Webster came down early one morning and found Noah embracing the comely hired girl, purring softly she said, “I’m surprised, Noah.” “That is not the right word,” said Noah. “It is we who were surprised, you should be more careful with your words.”
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Bob Forrest, columnist on John Weber’s Murray County Herald, penned this observation last week. Wish he’d stick to writing about his own editor: “A man came driving a flashy car down main street one morning and people just gasped, “Where did he get the money?” “Why don’t he pay what he owes?” “He owes every business man in town.” The man sneered and said, “I haven’t paid for the car either.” -- Truman Tribune.
“Oh, many a shaft at random sent. Find’s mark the archer little meant.”
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The tax that the legislature put on cigars is a heavy one. Harvester, La Palina and La Frendrich that formerly cost a dime are now 12 cents, an up of 20 per cent. If the same ratio would have been applied to cigarets it would have meant 5 cents on each pack, on gasoline it would have meant close to six cents on the gallon. Why pick on the cigar the only virgin form of tobacco. All other forms of tobacco are contaminated with flavoring and drugs, some of them even give you lung cancer but not the cigar. It’s the one form of my Lady Nicotine that brings:
“Thought in the Early Morning, solace in time of Woes
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close.”
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Some folks think a lot of our soy beans go into gadgets. That is not true now: most of it is eaten either by humans or livestock. The soy bean is one of the really deadly competitors of the dairy cow: twenty five per cent of all margarine was made largely of soy bean oil last year.
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Members of that ancient and honorable game of “Horseshoes” are getting ready for the annual state tournament that will be held at Westbrook this year on Sept. 4th and 5th. The game of Horseshoes is as old as the hills. It first started out as “Quoits.” Horseshoes became common. They were handy; a new game was born. It’s a peculiar game, Horseshoes. The national championship has never been won by a player of the middle west, in fact no player east of the Rockies has ever won the National championship. Colorado won it twice and the other 18 times it has gone to California. L. Isaias of Los Angeles, Calif. was a real wizard: he held the championship for six years in succession. Remember the dates.
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And the dry weather continueth in western Murray County. One the west side of the ridge it is the driest it has been in 40 years. Springs are drying up and so are the creeks. Towns in the southwestern part of Minnesota are dry and here’s a funny quirk, while Worthington is talking of being forced to curtail operations in the big poultry plants and in other towns water is “out” for washing cars, lawns etc., up at Olivia a little over a hundred miles away they had to call out the National Guard to build a sand bag dam to hold back the water from an excessive rain.
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The bartenders in the American Legion post that started selling hard liquor were not too discreet in their sales. At Storden and Jeffers two representatives of the Liquor Control Commission had no trouble in purchasing the hard liquor. They were fined $112.00 by a Windom justice.
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You folks who read the “Fifty Years Ago” “Down Memory Lane” columns should get a kick out of this item from an English paper. It was printed on Dec. 15th, 1754 over two hundred years ago. It must have been an editorial, and the writer could have used fewer words to tell what he wanted to say. “The Corruption of the present Age is so great that we are daily running into a new kind of Hypocrisy, which hitherto wants a name and consists in appearing worse than we really are. A Strain of such diabolical Weakness and Wickedness, that if such Characters were not common, the imputation would be as incredible as it is at present incontestible.” Now what did he really want to tell his readers?
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