1951 Columns, January - June
---

Roaming in the Gloaming

With Bob Forrest

Things Material and Immaterial

========================

January 4, 1951


  Spring must be just around the corner: we got our first seed catalog last week.
---   Our thanks go to the Christmas Carolers for their fine job on Thursday evening. Their sweet young voices in the frosty air with their blended singing brought back memories of the long ago.
---   Why not follow the Stalin plan: you can always learn something from Russia. Arm 500,000 Japanese and set them to fighting. Give them a quarter of the grub that our soldiers get and a quarter section of land in China and they’ll keep a lot of Chinks busy.
---   Among the things that evidently followed the buffalo is the sprig of mistletoe. Years ago a bashful swain needed a shot in the arm like the mistletoe to get nerve enough to kiss the girl he adored. In this hectic age there seems to be no need of it. The youth of today are self starters.
---   Why is John Bull so interested in that piece of granite known as the “Scone” stone? The English stole it from the Scotch in the first place. Better spend the time and energy in getting a welcoming committee for Joe Stalin & Co.
---   The Minnesota legislature which convened this week has a tough job on its hands. Everything is going up and to satisfy everyone who wants taxes reduced or even held at the present level will take the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job. The regular equipment of each member this session should be a pruning knife.
---   Butter that the Dagos get for 15 cents a pound is 75 cents a pound, bread, coffee and in fact everything we eat is soaring in price; brings sadness and wistfulness to the folks in the lower five. A welcome break came last week: to their sorrow and depression: was an ad that mink coats formerly $6,000 were cut to $4,500. What a lot of solace and joy that brought to many a sinking heart.
---   There was an ominous tone over the radio when bank reform [discussions?] opened. A speaker asked, “If we curb the banks too much they might withdraw from the Reserve system and then if they got nasty both banks and insurance companies could throw all their U.S. bonds on the market, which would bring chaos.” Big business carries a heavy punch in this democracy of ours.
---   There’s going to be less money spent this year than there was in 1950 for the simple reason that the government is making all banks in the Federal Reserve system maintain a larger amount of cash. There’s not going to be any money for speculating and there are a lot of articles that folks deem absolutely necessary that will not be bought. We’ve all got to spend less money.
---   Julius Schmall has left the Minnesota political arena, with his shield white and spotless. We met him first in 1906 when he was chief clerk of the house of representatives. Julius was of real early pioneer stock. His folks settled in Traverse des Sioux (St. Peter). Julius started as a country editor, fought his way to a state office. Through his grand personality and his natural ability he has held state office longer than any other man in Minnesota. A fearless scrapper for what he thought was right. But best of all was that trait, the trait that all men should covet: he never forgot a friend.
---   President Truman said in a speech at Kansas City that the people are not confused about the country and Korea, and that the country has been amply advised what is going on. The people seem to be as much informed as Washington is, but that does not seem to be a heck of a lot. One thing the people out here in the sticks are not confused about is Korea. Ninety per cent of the people are loud in their wish that all troops could be withdrawn from that ill fated country. We’ve already paid for someone else’s confusion with 40,000 casualties: too big a price to pay.
---   One of the most depressing letters from the war zone was carried by a nearby local paper last week. It is the kind that no armed serviceman should ever write, and we hope none of our boys will write one of this kind for publication. We’d hate to be this guy when some of the army boys catch up with him. We just have room for part of the story. “Just outside of Koto-ri my No. 1 fire team leader and I were lying side by side. A mortar shell came in and blew both his feet off and never even scratched me. That’s one I’ll never figure out. If I ever in my life saw a bunch of brave men, these Marines are it. We never retreated once. We just stood our ground and shot it out with them. Here’s one for the books, though. We were trying to team up with the elements of the 7th Army division, and as soon as the pressure was on they took off, every man for himself. To top it off, they left 24 truckloads of wounded behind for the Chinese to slaughter. We sent out a combat patrol and managed to save about 300 of their wounded, but the rest the Chinks got. They left their weapons and everything. All they were trying to do was save their own fannies and leave their buddies to their fate. Our combat commanding officer told us he’d personally shoot the first man who turned yellow, but he didn’t have to because that 1st Marine Division is really a fighting machine, and the Chinks really felt its sting.”
========================

January 11, 1951

  Cheer up folks, the winter will be half over next Monday and there is always a more pleasant feeling when you get over the hump.
---   Those republicans who meander over the nation hold meetings about who will be their candidate for 1952 make us tired: the same time could be used to see that we will need a president in 1952.
---   The Alaska packers are making a profit of $10 on every case of salmon and tuna. The government is going to investigate so we can look for a thorough report about 1954.
---   Wisconsin makes all lobbyists register. If they ever make the lobbyists that swarm around the Minnesota capitol register and wear a badge or pin, the capitol will look like an international convention of the “Sons and Daughters of I Will Arise, etc.”
---   See where they’re holding tractor schools for boys: better start one for the girls. You are going to see more females at work on the farms this year than you have seen since their grandmothers pitched hay, stacked grain and shocked, sixty years ago.
---   While radios ring with appeals for the polio fund, the help at the Kenny institute at Minneapolis has gone on a strike and the patients are being moved to other hospitals. This is about the lowest form of strike imaginable: no wonder Sister Kenny left for Australia.
---   Senator Hans Pederson of Ruthton is the chairman on the Welfare Board committee in this session of the legislature. One of the most important matters to come before the legislature is that of abolishment of the lien on old age assistance property. Why not write Hans your ideas on this question?
---   If you have not been in the armed services and are under the age of thirty-one, even if you are married and have one child you’d better start packing that old kit bag: your number will soon be up. Story is that all men that have been in the service will be deferred until all available non-servicemen are called.
---   The Roamer attended the golden wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Guy Hollenbeck of Slayton last week. A goodly number of friends, old and young, were there to extend congratulations. Guy is the salt of the earth and his good wife has perhaps visited and comforted more people at the Home hospital than any other person in the county. More power to both of them.
---   We are the greatest nation of grafters and profiteers in the world. Just mention “War” and out come the lead pencils and the marking up begins. Everything is higher, from grass skirts to Coca Cola. Cokes that were sold four months ago at six for 25 cents are not 39 cents: up about fifty per cent. Sugar is down, water is about the same price. Only thing that is up is the goo used for coloring and pepping up the beverage.
---   Here’s a school district that got a lucky break. Construction of a $130,000 school addition at Appleton, Minn. will get under way early in the spring, according to Hubert H. Swanson, Minneapolis architect. The project will include a gymnasium-auditorium seating 1,500; six elementary classrooms; a band room and practice rooms; storage space and offices. Construction will be of brick and glass block. The contractor has not been named.
---   The chairman of the Beltrami county board got caught in the web of receiving money from a road machinery firm. Before the grand jury he admitted his guilt. When the trial came up last week his counsel told the court that testimony before a grand jury was null and void. The judge agreed and the indictment was quashed. Here’s a guy that admitted his guilt but goes free. Golling may have lost a legal victory but he won a moral one. By the way, the voters up there re-elected the county commissioner last fall. Let the people rule.
---   The speech of President Truman last Monday was the best in his career. He spoke out from the shoulder and informed the world that come what may America would stand by the western nations of Europe in the fight against Communism and aggression. He warned the people that were confronted with more problems than ever before, including the right to live in a free country. Finest thing in his talk was the things he didn’t say: he refrained from turning to petty politics, something he has not always been able to do in the past. The weight of applause was evidence that a large majority of congress was back of him. Let’s all start tightening our belts.
---   Notice where some of the national guard towns are organizing units so that the boys in the service will be not be forgotten. It would be a fine thing to form a unit of this kind in Lake Wilson. An organization could easily be formed by relative and friends. For instance, the unit could get the date of the lads’ birthdays and give them a shower of cards and small gifts that would please the boys. They should also be informed of changes of address of all the lads from this community. Army officials say that letters and cards from home do more to keep up the morale of the servicemen than anything else. Some of your lads may be in posts where there is no one they know, and that letter or card will cover part of an aching heart, that gets might lonesome at times.
========================

January 18, 1951

  The coming War III will in reality be a religious war. It will be Christians and Jews against Communism and with this line up we can’t see any chance for Satan to win.
---   When does the paper drive start? Time’s a coming soon when we’ll all be geared up in the war effort. There should be a defense committee in every town and village. It’s not too early to get going.
---   Newspapers in Minnesota have the right to examine all public records and take photographic records of the same, rules the attorney general. Hennepin county strove to stop the press, hence this ruling. Nosy folks ain’t they, those newspaper guys?
---   The outlook for top baseball in this section of the state does not look too bright. A lot of the players are going or have gone into service. And there’s another thing to remember in all entertainment circles, most of the young fellows who were the best attendants at these events are not here now.
---   One of the neighboring townships that got on the right side of the ledger was Chanarambie township. Five years ago this township was over $4,000 in the red. This year she is $400 in the black. A mighty nice showing and a good condition to be in, in these times.
---   You’ve talked about the Panama Canal all your life, and the immense value it is to the United States. How long is the canal? You know the score in every sports event in the country, but is the Panama Canal ten miles, twenty, thirty, forty, sixty, seventy-five or a hundred miles long?
---   General Eisenhower is trying to arouse sentiment in western Europe so that they will defend themselves. The only fly in the ointment is that General Eisenhower should have been asked to come over there and help them. Some nations seem to have the attitude that they don’t care.
---   When you put a tag on the everyday run of Minnesota lobbyists, why not put one on the many senators and representatives that represent the big corporations. Many a man who gets there and swears to work for the best interest of the state carries a retainer fee in his hip pocket.
---   The U.S. finds fault with Britain because she wants to continue business relations with Red China, forgetting that we shoveled out $120,000,000 to Spain and then refused to send an ambassador because Spain was Communistic. These moves on the diplomatic chess board makes one dizzy.
---   With every war comes heart rending appeals for aid through the mails and over the radio for donations from everything from cock-eyed men to women with a broken girdle bone. Some folks send donations out of sympathy, others to ease their conscience and seem to know little about the cause they are assisting: “Only Wise Giving is Generous.”
---   A sales tax is in the offing for Minnesota. Labor unions will fight it but after all it may be a just tax. To the lower five it will mean but little. We bought our mink coats, diamond bracelets and Cadillacs last year so we can’t be hurt any more than we have. Did you ever stop to think that some trainmen today are getting bigger salaries than country bankers?
---   One of the saddest things in the sport line that has happened to Murray county is the complete destruction of fish in Lake Shetek. Hundreds of fishermen were busy last week trying to get the fish before they smothered, and the ice in some spots was lit up at night like an ice palace. This lake has been the most popular fishing spot in this section for generations, and the fish loss will be felt keenly by anglers young and old next summer.
---   If we are really in earnest about our war efforts, all non-defense projects like the big Dakota dams should be dropped. Projects that require a lot of manpower and material could wait for a couple of years. Six billion dollars are ready to go into non-defense projects, and that amount of cash would aid a lot in our war effort and go quite a ways to help hold your taxes down. Have you written your congressman or senator yet? No, you won’t, you’ll just sit and growl like the rest of us.
---   The pen “May be Mightier Than the Sword,” but they are both small potatoes compared to the auto. During the last twenty-five years over 700,000 have been killed in the U.S. in auto accidents. More lives have been lost in auto accidents than all the men this country has had killed in action from 1775 to 1945. The total number of men killed in battle since the start of this nation, that is to 1945, was 385,486. That auto of yours is the most deadly weapon in the world.
---   Here’s an odd law in Minnesota. If you become too earnest a follower of John Barleycorn your folks or officials can blacklist you and your source of supply is cut off. Years ago a blacklist notice was pinned up on the back bar so all could see that infested Palaces of Sin. In this day and age a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse, you can blacklist someone but the notice is not for public discussion. Here’s the funny part: you can get drunk on whiskey, 6% beer and get blacklisted, but you can get drunk as a lord on 3.2 beer and on one can blacklist you. Didn’t the U.S. supreme court, the big shots, say that 3.2 beer was not intoxicating?
---   The length of the Panama Canal is forty miles.
========================

January 25, 1951

  Everything is not going up. Violators of the game laws in Jackson county were only fined $10 for shooting hen pheasants: time was when a violation of this kind cost a hundred bucks.
---   A movement is on foot to give selective service men from Minnesota who are in Korea a bonus. Good idea. But why omit the Minnesota boys over there that are in the regular army. They are saving our hides just as much as the boys that go later. Maybe they have no folks in Minnesota that can vote.
---   The television sets are the worst enemy that the dry minded people have had to contend with. Men that cohabit with John Barleycorn, that otherwise would take on their load and beat it for home, now line up at the bar to watch the TV and when there’s a fight on they stay till the last dog. All of which costs money and added vitriolic arguments when the man gets home, loaded with sport statistics and other loads that bring no joy to the folks at home, who have been sitting up waiting for him.
---   A fighting air general has suggested that the atomic bomb should be used on the Chinese. His statement set all the brass hats in Washington in a dither: to think that any soldier could even have an idea. They sure are blasting Major General O’Donnell, who was trained to fight, not to back up, but it looks like “Good Night Irene” for this fine fighting guy. Washington is never tolerant of the fighting men who have ideas: “Theirs Not to Reason Why, Theirs But to Do or Die.”
---   A bill to raise money through a lottery for increased funds for old age folks has been introduced into the state legislature. Could be a good vote getter for the introducer, but why clutter up the time of the legislators with a bill that will never pass.
---   The Minnesota legislature has another weighty problem--naming a state bird. The goldfinch, the wood duck and the pileated woodpecker all have friends and the going will be heated. If they can’t agree, why not select the “Early Bird,” you know what he gets.
---   Talked with and listened to a lot of folks from all over the state at the state fair meeting at St. Paul last week, and it was appalling to hear their ideas on the war situation, especially in Korea. If Harry every comes down to the people and asks for authority to send 18 year olds abroad, he might be the first president to be egged. Did you hear of the people of a democracy voting for war?
---   Youngsters over in Korea are fighting for you at twenty below. They get oleo while the dagoes get their butter, and you are filling that deep freezer with butter, etc. A fine bunch to be fighting for. Time was when the soldiers came first, but that was in the long ago. It looks as if we may be headed for a fall. You can’t bull your way through life living like a butterfly, and that’s what we are doing, in our books. “Tomorrow never comes”: it will someday. It did to Rome, Spain, France, Britain and Germany. These nations were tops in their days.
---   This winter has been the worst ever for the road maintainers who have the jobs of keeping the roads free from snow. There has not been a road blocked in this vicinity this winter, something that is very unusual. While it is hard on the maintainers, tax payers are not complaining.
---   This is the time of the year when the cry is “My taxes are higher.” So is everything else that you have to buy and the outlook is that taxes will be high for years. That’s not the worst of it. Those Liberty Bonds that you bought several years ago are only worth fifty cents on the dollar, and in some cases thirty cents, depends on what you want to buy. It may take a year or so, but it will gradually sink into us that the days are coming when we’ll wear patches on our shoes and pants.
---   Stassen say, “Taft’s views are not those of the G.O.P.” Dewey says, “Stassen does not represent the party.” Taft says, “Dewey does not speak for the party,” and old man Hoover says, “They are all wet.” When it comes to harmony this quartet sounds flatter than a gracious maiden whose first name is Margaret.
---   Sitting in the bus depot in Minneapolis, one is reminded of the days of World War II by the number of youngsters in uniform that are either coming for a furlough or going back. You sense the idea that there is something big in the offing. by the way, few folks realize that the Minneapolis bus depot is the largest in the northern United States, and is perhaps the best arranged. Bus travel is the popular method to go places, especially if you live off the main lines of railroads. The busses are big, roomy and comfortable and the drivers, at least the one we had last Wednesday night, was as courteous and diplomatic as a member of the UN. He stopped three different times on the way down and let farmers off at their doors, saving them miles of walking, and at three villages he dropped off three females to save them trips of four or five blocks across icy sidewalks. You just can’t beat that kind of service.
========================

February 1, 1951

  Cheer up! In another four weeks winter will be over.
---   The price control went into effect last week and like everything else in this day and age it is “bollixed” up and as usual no one is satisfied with it.
---   The war in Korea seems to be a sort of a proving ground for new war implements: sort of a high school war. But it is the loss of lives that hurt the folks back home.
---   The move to cut the fishing license for non-residents should be voted down by the legislature. No sane fisherman will admit when he plans a fishing trip that the license ever cuts any figure.
---   The death of E. C. McElhaney is a sad blow to this village. Since coming here two years ago he has taken an active part in all village and community affairs. His counsel was timely and wise and he will be sorely missed.
---   Just why the governor picked on 3.2 beer for a heavy increase in taxes is hard to understand. This type of beer is non-intoxicating. Why not tea or coffee? All are sipped and swallowed to get a kick. Let’s not get too catty, governor.
---   The movement to urge the removal of troops from Korea is gathering momentum in Minnesota. Down at Zumbrota the United Farmers of America are circulating petitions to congress urging that soldiers be removed to stop the unnecessary shedding of blood.
---   Down in Omaha, Nebr., Judge Rhoades is seeking to sterilize an unmarried woman who has given birth in recent years to three children by different fathers, and is expectin’ a fourth. This amiable dame evidently takes the injunction, “Be fruitful, multiply and replenish the Earth” a bit too seriously.
---   A South Dakota state senator got halfway down in his political grave last week. The school lunch bill was up. This senator evidently was against school lunches and said, “It was being continued so that indifferent mothers could play bridge and hang around cocktail bars.” Just wait ‘til “we” girls get to that bird next election day.
---   This village has as snappy a volunteer fire department as any village in the state and it is a real village department. It answered a country fire call last Friday. In the cab were two councilmen and hanging on was the mayor. The record of the department in answering fire calls is A-1.
---   Months ago they were telling us of the deadliness of the atomic bombs in papers, magazines and radio. Now the experts are taking up the other side, telling us that if you are a mile away from the bomb you won’t get hurt. All we hear nowadays is contradictions. No wonder our minds are befuddled.
---   A North Dakota legislator has introduced a bill that will ban the sale or use of fireworks, fire crackers, etc., in that state. If the law is not any better enforced than it is in Minnesota, it will be another joke. Years ago when the sale of fireworks, crackers, etc. was permitted, the Fourth lasted about three days: not it is dragged out for a month.
---   While medical men are adding years of life to the human race, the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune took a poll to find out what to do with the old people. Those taking part in the poll evidently wanted to get rid of them, as the majority were in favor of putting them in institutions or letting them die. Of course they were too polite to say they should be shot. Only sixteen per cent were in favor of letting them live with the children, forgetting that some day the time will come when they will be singing, “Silver Threads Among the Gold.” Remember the commandment, “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother, etc.”: evidently it has no place in our modern civilization.
---   If you are of Norwegian descent, maybe you should not read this item. When Minnesota had state birth pains back in 1856-57, they came at a tense time in the nation’s history. The slavery question was getting near the boiling point. Minnesota was looked upon as a non-slave state and the south did everything in its power to deny it statehood. They jeered, sneered and ridiculed the territory as unfit for human beings to live in. A senator from Missouri said, “There may be in this territory Norwegians who do not read one word of English. What a mockery and what a trifling with sacred institutions it is to allow such people to go the polls and vote.” Senator Douglas of Illinois, later defeated by Abe Lincoln, rallied the northern votes and Minnesota became a state on Feb. 24th, 1857. What of the “dumb, ignorant Norwegians?” Nothing much, only they took up with a bunch of Swedes and have had Minnesota by the throat politically for the last fifty years. Times were when they could not make it with the republican party, so men like John Lind, John A. Johnson, and Floyd B. Olson switched over to other parties so they could hold the reins of government. They’re still with us: Youngdahl, Anderson, Mike Holm, Burnquist, Bjornson, Lindquist, Christianson, Matson and hundreds more. What a fine bunch of outstanding citizens they are and they have given much to the grand old state of Minnesota. The cultured gentleman from the south did not realize that the Scandinavian race civilizes, or rather Americanizes, quicker than any other group.
========================

February 8, 1951

  The lurid dispatches from Korea telling about the number of Chinese killed in battle means nothing to the folks back home. What we are interested in is the number of American lives lost and why.
---    The big soap companies burned up the telegraph wires the night before the price control orders went into effect, raising the price of soap and soap powders: looks as if there was a leak somewhere.
---    The republican senators and congressmen in Washington, D.C. could render no better service to the people than by making a determined effort to cut out all non-defense projects from the budget: let the pork barrel appropriations wait until the present unpleasantness is over.
---    There’s a bill in the legislature to permit trucks to be five feet longer than they are now. Why clutter up the highways with vehicles of that length? Give ‘em fifty feet and in two years they’ll want sixty. Most drivers will admit that they are too long now.
---    Gen. Eisenhower gave an interesting talk on European affairs. He did not give any facts: no one expected that he would. If you listened closely you would have discovered that we were going to Europe more to save our own necks than anything else.
---    Charley March of Slayton died last week. He was one of the real old timers in this section. He volunteered in the Spanish-American war and of late has been a patient at the Vet’s hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D. There were but few sporting events in the old days that he did not attend.
---    The administration, hopping mad at Sen. McCarthy, sent a group of income tax men to Wisconsin to scan McCarthy’s income tax reports for the last three years. They labored hard and dug deep and discovered that McCarthy had overpaid income tax by $147. Even Drew Pearson forgot to mention this little item on his broadcasts.
---    Remington, another of the Hiss type, is rather an odd sort of a chap to be drawing $10,000 a year from the U.S. Government. He blithely admitted being an adulterer, beating his wife and then knocking her down. Highly educated, one cannot help but wonder what induced so many young men to turn Communistic and seek to overthrow the only government they ever knew.
---    The “sick” switchmen should be taken to an army hospital at once and when they’re fully recovered sent to a health resort in Korea, somewhere near the 38th parallel. These men, who are supposed to be under government control and are willfully delaying the shipment of war material and depriving citizens of food and fuel, can be placed in the same category as Communists.
---    There should be no weedy fields in Minnesota this year. Sig Bjerkson, state supervisor of weed control, says a land owner who is negligent in cutting weeds does not have to be taken into court. Local weed inspectors have the power under the law to have the weeds cut and the cost assessed against the land. From this statement it looks as if the town boards are relieved of a load of responsibility.
---    This is the time of the year when villages that have municipal liquor stores swell out like a bunch of bubble gummers, telling how much money they made on their palaces of sin. Just why they take pride in enormous profits is not quite understandable. There’s no other business that is taxed as liquor. Perhaps they realize that many a taxpayer who talks dry and votes wet would switch if the profits went down to a reasonable level, and money talks louder than ever these days.
---    See where a Minneapolis man has been convicted ten times for drunken driving. Why does the law permit a man of this type to operate an auto? A man that would swagger, shooting a revolver at will, would soon be arrested, the gun taken from him and he put under bonds not to repeat. An auto is just as deadly as a revolver and there should be a law that after a driver, male or female, is convicted twice for drunken driving they should have their driver’s license revoked for ten years.
---    While in Slayton the other day we heard a lady comment bitterly on young ladies going barelegged in zero weather and wearing scanty dresses. We ventured, “Their grandmothers wore but little in the old days, come Monday mornings when they would grab a basket of clothes, wade through the snow in zero weather and string them on the line, until their fingers were blue.” She answered, “How well I know that. That’s why I’m buying medicine today.” We ventured to say, “How old are you?” “Only 83,” she answered. She was Mrs. Gray, early settler in Mason twp. and as hale and spry as a woman of fifty.
---    Mrs. Thos. Anderson of Los Angeles, Calif., evidently did not love her husband too much. She kept calling him, “An old fool.” It did not have much effect on Thomas. So she bought a parrot and taught it to say, “You old fool.” Between the two of them they wore the old man down and he got a divorce last week. Just another instance of man’s dumbness. Why didn’t he teach the parrot to say, “You old bat.” No doubt he realized that the old lady would have killed the parrot, something that the dumb ‘cluck’ had never thought of doing. What the country needs is a department at Washington to aid and assist brow-beaten husbands.
========================

February 15, 1951

  The striking switchmen that were so sick last week should be vaccinated to prevent a recurrence of the disease. About as good a preventative would be six months service in rebuilding railroads in the vicinity of Seoul.
---    After listening laboriously through an hour of classical music the other night, we came to the conclusion that Beethoven was not the only artist who wrote an “Unfinished Symphony.”
---    The weak spot in Mr. Hoover’s argument that no ground troops be sent to Europe is what will become of the sixty thousand men we have in Berlin: let the Russians surround them with artillery and wipe them out like rats?
---    Remember the Albert Lea case where a farm woman inveigled a poor innocent farm hand into a life of sin and then ganged up with him to poison her husband. They were both found guilty. He is the pen. She is out on bail: the woman does not always pay.
---    Truman wrote another letter last week. The federal reserve board was in session and Harry wrote a letter telling just what would happen. It didn’t. The board refused to go along with his ideas. The president doesn’t seem to know what’s going on any more than the rest of us.
---    Whatever the legislature does about school strikes should try to devise a contract that is binding on both the teachers and the school boards. Ever since we can remember the contracts have always been one-sided: the teacher could always quit when she wanted to and no recourse.
---    Over eighty lakes in this section of the state have been opened to “Promiscuous Fishing.” If these many orders insinuate that fish life is almost gone in this section of the state, perhaps there should a rebate for non-resident fishing anglers, providing they bring their fish with them.
---    The non-essential appropriations must be pared to the bone. If you are in favor of it, write your representative or senator or even the president, giving your reason why. Of course it will take about five minutes of your time, but be generous for once. Your taxes are going to be high the way it is.
---    If you want a self-started legislature, get the man who writes the bills for the members to start work December 1st, 1952, so that the members can have their bills ready for the hopper when the show opens. Might be a good idea to offer a bonus of $25 for every bill that is ready when the legislature convenes.
---    Human nature has some funny quirks. The youngsters from Lake Wilson who have gone into service leave with grave misgivings on our part about the lads going out into a strange world. They come back on a ten days’ furlough, visit at home for three days, say “Hello” to the old folks about town and then sit around waiting anxiously for their furlough to expire so they can get back to camp. It’s too lonesome here.
---    The cost of a presidential primary will be about $200,000. Why not offer that amount to the first firm that brings in an oil well in Minnesota? Oil is the blood that runs the business and social heart of America. Why waste that much money to pick out a president? The crop looks poor to say the least. Too many men want to pitch when they should be playing the outfield or the bench. This country sorely needs a Moses to lead us out of the wilderness.
---    Balaton has a right merry, congenial and neighborly fire department. The boys had their annual party one night last week and they had a feast. Opened with broiled grapefruit, then roast turkey with all the fixings, ending with a whopping dessert. Who wouldn’t want to be a volunteer fireman? A fine program was given in the church basement where the meeting was held, and best of all the newspaper men were invited guests. “Oh! Somewhere in this land of ours the sun is shining bright.”
---    At a Cedric Adams party last week, Senator Don Wright of Minneapolis made a remark that really should be printed in every paper in the state. He said, “We get lots of letters and postcards from constituents urging us to vote for or against a certain bill, but they never state their reasons. They should give us some line of argument why we should or should not support the measure.” Don could have added that petitions are a sort of joke, legislative members would rather get ten letters written in pen and ink, stating reasons. Ninety per cent of the people never read the petitions they sign. Don is one of the ablest senators of Minnesota. He should be, for he had a grand old dad who was in the house back in the early 1900’s. The Roamer clerked on his committee and no man was more highly respected than F. B. Wright.
========================

February 22, 1951

  Either send a good sized army to Europe or start evacuating Berlin.
---    Between you and me, what is the difference between the atomic bomb and poison gas?
---    Minneapolis Boy Scouts have been doing a fine job this winter in shoveling the snow from fire hydrants: hope they will be our neighbors when they grow up.
---    Folks set their teeth and sometimes even swore inwardly when the say that 1,500,000 pounds of butter to the Dagoes: even the cows blushed.
---    Senator Hans Pedersen is doing a fine job in the senate this session. He is chairman of the General Welfare committee: a problem he has been sincerely interested in for many years.
---    During the relentless warfare in Korea most people seem to have lost sight of the suffering, misery and hardships that country is going through. The mental and physical suffering of those people must be terrible.
---    The teachers profession has hit a new low in the Minneapolis school strike. The dignity and honor of the profession is gone and many folks around here put them on the same level as the striking switchmen, the men that president Truman said were worse than the Russians.
---    The Fulda high school basketball team pulled the David and Goliath act on Worthington and Slayton last week: a real achievement. One of the real thrills of the smaller towns in the county is to beat the county seat team.
---    In spite of the turmoil and strife of modern civilization, the church still increases its membership. One church in Lake Wilson does not have seating capacity for its members if they all came on the same Sunday, and it is the largest church in town.
---    Trapping, perhaps the most fascinating of all sports to the youngsters in days gone by, seems to have passed out of the picture. It was a proud moment in the farm boy’s life when he brought home his first mink, as some of you oldsters will well remember.
---    An orchid to Ernest P. Brendt of Pipestone, for being awarded “Best Driver of the Year” by the State Motor Assn. He has been making this village for years for the Hess Transport Co. of Pipestone. The Hess people are to be congratulated on having such a fine careful bunch of drivers.
---    The folks who come back from the south will be telling what a wonderful time they had: don’t believe them. Down in the Rio Grande valley everything was wiped out by frost. The south lost more cattle this winter by the cold weather than Minnesota ever did in all its blizzards in the past fifty years.
---    A pat on the back for President Truman for the curt remark about the striking switchmen. He said they were worse than Russians. Never has any president applied such a stinger to the Brotherhood of Trainmen. They are F.F.’s, in the railroad circles, the cream and the elite of the Union Labor’s unions. It took a lot of intestinal fortitude but he cleaned the bases with the smack.
---    By the way, a member of the state legislature wants to extend the term of the members of the lower body from two years to four years. Leave it the way it is. If we elect some yap, we can change him in two years: why wait four. A good representative can always be re-elected. The only change we should have is that half the senators should be elected every two years.
---    Be careful about buying hospital and accident insurance by mail. The advertising is alluring, inviting and cheap. We had one but we’re all through with it. Found out from the state insurance department that the company was not licensed to do business in Minnesota. Which means that if you ever have trouble in settling a claim, the company has no representative that you can sue.
---    Of all the pusillanimous, inept, unfit outfits that has ever been foisted upon the American public, it is the new Price Control board. They are entitled to the big Pontiac potato with four big, juicy grub worms. Instead of controlling the prices they have let everything hit the ceiling until your dollar has hit the twenty-five cents mark. It even grabbed sugar, the only remaining standard of what a government can do to stabilize prices, and upped the price on that commodity. If there were salt mines in the U.S. every one of them could qualify for a lifetime job. They lifted more money from the people of the U.S. than all the gambling and vice mobs could have in two years.
---    Down in Georgia, a female married a young fellow to reform him. It didn’t work and she ran around to the neighbors telling what a good for nothing he was. At last she applied for a divorce. The judge told her that she had no right to knock her husband. The evidence disclosed that the woman had been nagging her man day and nite. The court, besides being a judge was also a male and no doubt had some experience with women. Refused to give the woman a divorce. All of which would indicate that in spite of being saturated with the K.K.K. and fights against the FEPC, Georgia has some redeeming qualities.
========================

March 1, 1951

  Senator Kefauver, who has given the nation his best efforts, may resign from the committee next month. In spite of what that old bumbling, fumbling Connaly can mutter, you’ve been of real service.
---    No one can call the Republican party a hide bound partisan organization after listening to six or seven of the top leaders mouth their views on the war question. They have more ideas and theories than the Populists did in days gone by.
---    Now hormones have bee discovered that will grow hair on a man’s bald head. All of which is of no interest to the average Scot. What a true Scotchman would want hair to come back, when it costs all the way from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half to get it trimmed?
---    Hong Kong, a British colony, has been shipping rubber, tin, etc. to the Chinese Reds. Best thing for the U.N. to do is to sink every ship carrying aid to the enemy. Queer world, ain’t it. It is not so long ago that American ships were carrying aid to the Reds and the little National Chinese navy was riddling them full of holes.
---    The members of the Lake Wilson Community Club are planning a banquet in the near future for the members of the high school basketball teams. Both teams have a fine record for the past season and the lads are entitled to credit and recognition for their fine sportsmanship in the games played.
---    See where a young fellow in Ohio got an eight-foot chain and chained his wife to the floor of their trailer while he went up town and cashed her check. Is emancipation for males coming soon? Say, some of you guys better be getting your orders in for the chain before the guy gets his idea patented.
---    The meanest man in the country lives in Texas, and besides being mean he is also deaf. He comes home at night with something on his chest and proceeds to tell his wife a lot of things that might have been left unsaid. All the while the clouds are gathering on mama’s brow. Then he stops abruptly and pulls the hearing device from his ear.
---    The fixing of basketball games in the east has rocked the sports world. Most folks bitterly censure the players, but you’d be surprised how many folks are saying, “How can you blame them, after the goings on in Washington?” The odor of the nation’s capitol is getting putrid in the nostrils of a people that are girding themselves for an all-out war.
---    A farmer told us the other day that the reason butter was sold to the Dagoes for 17 cents a pound was that the city and town folks would not buy it: last week the government bought 2,500,000 pounds of oleo for the army. The average citizen will pay fifty cents a pound for butter. When it gets above that he quits. It may cost more to produce butter than that amount, but if it is all the consumer can pay, what can we do about it?
---    President Truman is going to take a long vacation in Florida. One often wonders how he can stand up under the nervous strain, day after day. It seems that every day adds more problems and worries. Many of the men that he appointed have turned out to be traitors not only to him but to the nation as well. The weakest spot in his makeup seems to be sticking to unworthy friends. Who was it said, “Lord save me from my friends, I know where to find my enemies.”
---    One of the top newscasters on the air comes on the KNUJ station at New Ulm in the morning about eight. That lad has a clear plain voice with that “it” in it that’s going to push him into big time. KNUJ gives more local news than any other station of its kind in this section of Minnesota: it is the Country Newspaper of the airways. New Ulm revels now in the title, “The Polka Capitol” in the U.S. It has more German bands than Milwaukee, that play snappy lilting tunes that everyone can enjoy.
---    No alarm may be felt over the letters that the congressmen wrote the RFC urging loans to certain industrial organizations. Ninety per cent of these letters were written at the urgent request of honest voters. A manufacturer comes to town, offers to start a plant that will bring millions of dollars to the town or city if he could get a loan from the RFC. Then everybody in town that has a pull urges the congressman to get busy, and as they have voted for him in the past and he plans on running again, naturally does just what you or I would do.
---    Nast, the cartoonist, was the inventor of the name “Donkey” for the Democrats and the “Elephant” for the republicans. An unknown cartoonist gave the name “Gopher” to Minnesota. Back in 1858 a group of far sighted citizens had the ridiculous idea that a railroad would be good thing for Minnesota, and the legislature was urged to appropriate $5,000,000 to induce the construction of railroads. The long haired and unwashed pounced upon the bill tooth and toe nail. It was preposterous, they said, and a bitter fight was on. An artist of the day made a cartoon, called it the “Gopher Train.” The train was drawn by eight gophers with human heads, with the faces of the active proponents of the measure, and it fastened upon the state the nickname, “Gopher State.” One of the early sing-song ballads of the day started out, “An Now They Call Us Gophers, As You May Understand,” etc.
========================

March 8, 1951

  What has become of the war talk? Several months ago everybody was jittery and excited. War today is as flat as a cold pancake and a light colored one at that.
---    Well, Mother Nature pushed man and all his inventions to one side last Friday afternoon and Saturday, and slammed the lid on everything. When Nature opens up in earnest, Man looks awful puny.
---    At last there’s a beacon light for the republican party. Out in California Governor Warren, when asked for opinion about sending troops to Europe, said “That’s a military man’s job.”
---    Murray county farmers have been doing real well of late years. There are more farm owners in the county than renters. Nobles county, one of the top counties in this section of the state, still has more renters than owners.
---    A Dallas, Texas man was put under $50,000 bail to refrain from committing another assault on his wife with a sledge hammer. The judge, however, had a heart as big as Texas itself and never mentioned hatchets, hammers or pickaxes.
---    Labor and capital got together last week and figured out just how much of a raise in prices the public would stand and still live. As usual they agreed on what that amount should be. Years ago, Wall St. had a solo, “The People Be Damned.” Now it is a duet, with Phil Murray handling the tenor part.
---    The heavy fall of snow last week means that there will be enough moisture for the crops next spring. But the worst feature is that our many ditch systems will be busy when warm weather comes, removing our much needed moisture and taking not only water but much of our top soil down to the Gulf of Mexico.
---    Last fall every county in Minnesota had candidates for the legislature that pleaded for your votes. You were tops then, you were the backbone of the country. You were king. Last week a bill came up that, if passed, would give you the opportunity to vote on re-vamping the state constitution. What happened: a majority of the members decided that, in the words of the late vice president Curtis, you were too darned dumb to vote on matters of this kind, and the bill was shelved.
---    Down in New Ulm over fifty years ago there was a state senator who did not vote on a bill in the legislature the way the folks down home thought he should, so they set him a wire, “Slippery Sam come home, your name is Pants.” It’s about time the folks in Wisconsin sent Senator McCarthy the same kind of a message. He did a fine job in awakening the people to the danger of Communism, but the darned chump had no brakes and ran hog wild. After the recent race track escapades he’s through. How come Drew Pearson never got hold of that juicy item?
---    The White House stenographer with the $8,540 mink coat reminds us of a story of several years ago. A young maiden who lived north of Brainerd had been working in Hollywood, Calif. for some time. She wired her folks she was coming home for a visit and the old gentleman drove in with the team to meet her. They got into the wagon and started for home. From some place in her dress she pulled out a big roll of bills and said, “Dad, this will help you pay off the mortgage on the farm.” He looked at the roll and then looked at her, all powdered, painted and dolled up and said softly, “Have you been a good girl since you were in Hollywood?” She looked the old man square in the eye and said, “Dad, you’ve got to be good to get a roll that size in Hollywood.”
---    Last September two companies of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were holding Hill 282 in Korea against the Reds. Their ammunition gave out and they asked the air force for help and more ammunition. The U.S. air force came over, but instead of strafing the Koreans, strafed the Argylls. There were only 30 men left and they were forced from the hill. At the foot of the hill, Major Muir led the thirty men in a charge and they recaptured the hill. Muir was killed at the brow of the hill and last month he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. For many generations the Argylls and the Forrest family have lived at Stirling, Scotland. It was a real joy and pride to us when a lad, to listen to the shrill notes of the bagpipes as they led the regiment from the old Castle to King’s Park where the men drilled every summer. A bagpipe band is always inspiring and emotional, and when it came marching proudly up Port Street, we would sit on the fence around the Black Boy fountain and watch it go by, colors flying, pipes a skirling, kilts a swinging. It aroused emotions that were hard to stifle. Funny how clear that picture is today, as we sit snowbound. As we grow old we seem to remember the actions and happenings of the days of our youth more clearly than we do those of five years ago. By the way, the Argylls from our old home town were the first detachment of troops to join the Yanks in Korea.
========================

March 15, 1951

  Quit kicking about the storm: it could have been lots worse. There was power, light and water. The weather was mild and there was no suffering. There were no fires which would have meant a loss of life. Let’s just be thankful it was no worse.
---    Heard two Minnesota commentators tell that the storm recalled the blizzard of March 1888. We can’t remember any vicious storm in March that winter. The big blizzard, one of the worst in Minnesota history, hit on the 12th day of January. This storm took a toll of 107 lives in western Minnesota. No old timer can ever forget that storm.
---    Mary and Phil Flannery left for their new home at Monticello last week. Their going takes away another of the old families in the vicinity. Phil has lived here over fifty years. What fine neighbors and friends the Flannerys have been. Always agreeable and sociable and their many old friends here wish them happiness in their new home. The Roamer feels responsible for all their trials and tribulations, for we can remember introducing Mary and Phil in the old Wilson store forty-four years ago.
---    In the election of Art R. Warren to the office of county commissioner, a new era was born in commissioner circles. Art is the first local born resident of the district to represent it on the county board. An intelligent young farmer, resourceful, clean and sincerely honest, Art has the start of a man that will be an asset to his district.
---    The RFC scandal in Washington is a disgraceful picture of American politics, and as the days go by the folks in Washington have started to wear clothes pins on their nostrils. Albert Fall, that got a hundred thousand in the Tea Pot Dome scandal was a piker compared to the good-time bunch in Washington. Even Pauley, a California millionaire with scads of money back of him, had a hold of one of the teats.
---    The Minnesota legislature of days gone by were responsible for the selection of the board of regents and the unlimited power given that group. Evidently by so doing, the legislature eliminated itself from any authority of this famous institution, that derives more money from your taxes than any other department. Seems as if the legislature can’t even tell it to go slow, or to get it to listen to any suggestions. Another case of the creature being greater than the creator. Just another straw in the wind that is giving thinking voters in the state something to worry over.
---    Six weeks ago a woman was found in a Chicago alley, frozen stiff. She was full of liquor, pickled in fact, and a temperature of 64 degrees. Medical men shrugged their shoulders, said “No one can survive with that temperature,” but she did. The whisky and the ice got out of her system. Then came the collapse and amputations. One strait laced individual sneered sarcastically, “She was a woman of low character and a woman of easy virtue.” Our memory went back to the long, long ago and a story we read about a woman who had strolled down the Primrose Path too many times and the neighbors took her out into the street and started stoning her to death. A voice startled the mob, and they withheld. Her story was told by many a biting tongue, but the Master said, “Go Thy Way and Sin No More.” In this busy hectic money-crazy world, the space in our hearts for mercy, pity and charity seems to grow smaller as the years go by.
---    Governor Youngdahl and the Minnesota legislature are doing a lot of wrangling that is not helping legislative matters. The governor was sore because the state liquor agents were not given the power of arrest when they saw fit. While some pressure was brought on the legislators, not enough was forthcoming to change the legislative views. Back of the opposition to the governor’s ideals is the feeling that is growing in the rural districts against this ever adding to centralized power. The voters feel that Minnesota is getting away from the old town meeting idea. The intrusion of the president of the sheriff’s association was unwise and untimely. If the sheriffs in certain counties in Minnesota had been doing their duty, there would have been no need for assistance from the liquor control department.
---    A friend of ours sent us a copy of the “Mojave Desert Packet,” a pocket sized newspaper covering the early days in California. It is profusely illustrated with wood cuts that were not made for art’s sake. It tells all the old tales of the Ghost Towns, Mirages, Lost Mines, Burros, and Gold in a pithy salty manner. Years ago when the neighboring village of Holland was having its birth pains in the boom days, Paul Hubbard, a young and clever newspaperman, ran the Holland Advocate. He later drifted to California and besides being the publisher of the Packet, having a grand time out there, he also runs the Ransburg Times. A footline at the bottom of the front page, “Only Newspaper in the U.S. You Can Open in the Wind”--it is printed on a light weight cardboard. By the way, Mrs. Paul Hubbard is a sister of Bill and Esther Shafer of Lake Wilson.
========================

March 22, 1951

  Like many other villages, Westbrook is pressed for school room and the situation is so serious that a mass meeting was called to decide whether to build additional classrooms or to restrict attendance to district residents.
---    When it comes to snow removal, the month of March of 1951 has taken more money than any other month in the history of the village: snow removal is going to add to next year’s taxes all over southern Minnesota.
---    The crime commission has invited Gov. Dewey to appear before it. Don’t be a piker, Tom, if you have any dirty linen get it out and have it washed: the truth is never as bad as a half truth or an insinuation.
---    Of all the ornery months in the year, March wins top honor. In the first 20 days, we’ve had snow, bitter cold weather, icy streets, more snow, moderate winds that blew the snow into big drifts, then some hail and sleet. Had everything but prairie fires.
---    Cheer up. In spite of all the snow, spring is just around the corner and we’ll soon be going fishing again. don’t forget you’ll be fishing in Lake Shetek in the spring. The loss of fish life will be heavy but there will still be a lot of fish left.
---    The front page of the Pilot looks like a winter edition this week.
---    Some guy of the O. Henry type was arrested in Minneapolis last week. He was peddling grass seed that would not grow over two inches in height. Officers said he was a swindler. Could be, but we would be tempted to buy a pound of the stuff and try it out.
---    Lobbyists and employees have jammed the corridors of the Minnesota lower house so that members have to get into the chamber by being derricked through the dome. Story is that the lobbyists are thicker than grasshoppers were out here in the late ‘70’s.
---    The 3.2 beer is a strange commodity. It is about the only thing under the sun that congress did not slap a tax on. Out here in Minnesota things are different. It is taxed the same as whiskey and its sale is forbidden on certain days, such as when the town elections are held in the village the sale of 3.2 beer is prohibited.
---    George Grim sure lost face in this immediate vicinity last Saturday forenoon. He said light snow would fall in southwest Minnesota. Snow fell here to the depth of 13 inches and the folks who listen to George on the coffee hour were doing a lot of panning: all of which would indicate that he has a lot of listeners here.
---    Ten of the largest electrical firms in Minneapolis were indicted last week for manipulating the sale of electrical goods in the twin cities. Indicted with them in this conspiracy were two Minneapolis Labor Unions. All they did was to follow in the footsteps of Jess James. The take must have been more than pin money, as it involved the sale of over $11,000,000 of material.
---    Elliot Roosevelt and his “blushing” bride, both four time losers, or winners as the case may be, are still wary. Saw a picture of them the other day, both holding hands. The ceremony had not taken place yet and evidently they were waiting for the bell to ring before going into action. The man in the case was wedded in sports clothes. Just why morons of this type wear clothes is hard to understand.
---    This war in Korea is shattering one of our idols: the air force. The idea was prevalent several years ago that air power could win a war. One of the finest air forces in the world has hardly made a dent in the battle lines. As usual, it s the man in front that is doing the job. It’s a different type of war than the last two. Can’t help but think that 10,000 Sioux, the type that stopped Custer, would be in their glory in the class of fighting in the Korea hills.
---    Korea is not quite as large as Minnesota, yet it has or rather had about 25,000,000 inhabitants. The capital city, Seoul, had more inhabitants than Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth combined. If you would cut Minnesota in two at the line north of St. Cloud, this would give you an idea of the size of South Korea. In this area every public building, every railroad, every bridge has been demolished, in fact the country is a barren waste, as any section is when armies have been fighting over it for months. The people are dazed, stunned and future life holds but little in store for them. The suffering must be intense, yet we have not seen or heard of any organization lifting a hand to help them. The Marshall plan should be extended to Korea at once.
========================

March 29, 1951

  Wasn’t it Andrew Jackson that made his coon skin cap a slogan back in 1828? Pelts may again be the slogan in 1952.
---    Costello, that ain’t his name, he’s a Dago, says proudly he never voted in his life. Nothing new about that, kings never vote.
---    The Marshall plan with Italy should include the return of the bunch of Italians that seem to head very vice ring in the country.
---    Why all this hullabaloo over the Public Employee Strike bill that has been passed by the legislature and signed by the governor? Simmered down, all the bill requires is that both parties live up to contracts signed in good faith.
---    Cheer up, you old folks, a Promised Land is in sight for you. Florida will construct modest apartments and small buildings that will rent for $19 a month. (Utilities not included.) We have to delete California and insert in lieu thereof “Florida, Here We Come.”
---    The selection of the president by popular vote is a much discussed question. Folks should remember if it had been a law in 1860, there would have been a North United States and a South United States. Lincoln, who was elected president that year, did not have a majority of the votes cast in the election
---    See where a North Dakota woman said the recent storm was terrible. She had to eat bread that was two days old. Ain’t it awful the privations and suffering the people have to undergo in 1951. Bet her mother and father ate bread that was a week old, and darned glad to get it.
---    A man by the name of Murphy came to the “End of the Trail” several weeks ago and murdered his wife. When the trial came up last week he told how his wife had “henpecked” and snarled at him for years. After hearing his pitiful story, the jury found him “Not Guilty.” Now don’t go running for the hammer or hatchet right now. Murphy lives in Canada. Nothing to prevent you from planning your summer vacation trip.
---    Can’t help but feel sorry for that man Parks. He had admitted being a Communist in his youthful days, but that he had forsaken Communism and all its teachings. He has two young sons and he wanted to make them good Americans. Nearly every man and woman, except you, committed indiscretions in their youthful days that they would very much dislike to have aired before a morbid crowd of listeners. When folks honestly do their best to condone the errors of youth, they should be commended instead of being dragged through the mire.
---    When one reads and hears of the nationwide crime and graft that is rampant these days, their mind goes back to the days of 1916 and the following years. Women were on the rampage these years. They demanded the right to vote. Leaders who thronged the corridors said that women with their purity and intuition would clean up the United States and make this country a cleaner and better place to live. Crime would become extinct and law and order would prevail. Evidently that was not the answer, to a nation that lives with the dollar for its God.
---    If you are a fisherman, try and get hold the Ford Times for April. In parts of Ohio there is a new wrinkle in fishing. Farmers are damming up pot holes, sloughs and creeks and making them into fishin’ ponds. They either seine the fish from Lake Erie or the Ohio river or buy them and stock the ponds, not forgetting to put in a few big ones. They charge the fishermen so much a day and in some cases so much a pound for the fish they get. By the way, this Ford Times is one of the finest in the U.S. The illustrations cannot be surpassed by any magazine, and the articles are tops. We get ours through the courtesy of the Grattan Motor Company of Slayton.
---   
An Unfair and Unjust Tax   Old King George III in his long struggle with the colonies never concocted as unjust a tax as a Minnesota legislature. Years ago when dairying was in a slump frantic efforts were made to boost the price of butter, and among them was a tax on oleomargarine that contained cottonseed oil. On this type of margarine a tax of 10 cents a pound was levied. This tax placed a burden on the poor man with the large family. Take Blue Bonnet, one of the popular kinds of substitute: pays 10 cents tax while substitutes of the lard type pay no tax. The Summit avenue people and the Lake of the Isles folks never use oleo, but the folks in the lower brackets do and they paid into the state treasury last year $250,000 in taxes just because they are poor. If this tax went to pay for aid in developing better and improved dairying methods it would be different. From Governor Youngdahl down to the man that feeds the gilt horses on top of the building, everyone in the Capitol, including the legislature, hearts bleed for the woes of the common man at various periods every two years. When the opportunity comes to right a wrong, they forget. They are afraid of the man with a cow. Why? Not one cent of the tax goes to his aid. If we must take this pound of flesh from the common man, why not make it a sliding tax. When butter goes up, cut out the tax, when butter goes down, up the tax. Every person admits that the tax is unfair and unjust, but they do nothing to repeal the nefarious law.
========================

April 5, 1951

  Ernest Espe of Austin was sentenced to ten years in St. Cloud for forgery: he’d got by easier if he had murdered someone.
---    Top ranking students in the schools are going to be deferred from drafts hereafter: now watch the kids get down and study. More time will be applied to lessons and less to basketball.
---    Saw a picture of Mrs. Young the other day, took another look and then we knew that there must be inflation in Washington, D.C. No dame with her looks would rate a $9,500 mink coat in normal times.
---    The state crime agents raided four places in Faribault last week and closed them. Could four places in the town of Faribault exist without the knowledge of the city officials and sheriff’s office? Page Senator Kefauver.
---    We watched the skinny emaciated pheasants along the highways picking up grain that had been put out for them several days ago. Why would it not be a better plan to trap the birds and put them in a warm place where they could be fed and nourished.
---    Casey, who made a bunch of money out of buying war vessels from the government, is being investigated. Why not also investigate the government officials who sold them? If a look into his bank account don’t show a substantial boost, he’s just plain dumb.
---    Mighty sorry to hear of Paul Light’s going. Grand fellow, one with a heart that beat for the average run of men and women: one that beat for the sick, injured and maimed kids. The Pioneer Press is not the only one that will miss him. Paul was Howard Kahn in real life, and his column “So What” was always inspiring and educational.
---    MacArthur has put a tight censorship on Korea. We have only a slight conception of what is going on over there. But the pendulum swung backward and hit Mac just after he shot his mouth off with his ultimatum to the North Koreans. Like the Swede who wanted to lick everybody, he just took in a little too much territory.
---    The average guy looks on this food price control as a joke. There is staffing in every town in the U.S. with men and women to enforce the new regulations, which will include a list of everything in grocery store prices, which are to be looked over every week. All of which makes the merchant unhappy. The control board had better put restrictions on pencils, as its going to take a lot of them.
---    Continued reference is still being made to the “blizzards” in the past month of March. There were no real blizzards in that month. Blizzards are always accompanied by winds of high velocity and a dropping of the thermometer ranging from twenty to forty degrees below zero. Here is a definition of a blizzard: “A furious hurricane of wind with fine blinding snow and characterized by intense cold.”
---    City newspapers are turning their big editorial guns on Peron: the Argentine government, for suppressing a newspaper that did not agree with him. No doubt, Peron read in these same papers of the black cloud that seems to hover over the government of every large city in America and wonders why they did not expend that verbal ammunition on their city governments before starting on Argentina, two thousand miles away. We’re the best long distance fighters on earth: we never see the mote in our own eyes. The movement for good government should start at home.
---   
THE SCONE STONE” The Scone Stone, the Stone of Destiny, is again in the news. Members of the Scottish National party have struck a medal to the unknown men who stole the Stone from Westminster Abbey. No article of any kind has the tradition wrapped around it as this block of limestone. Tradition has it that the Stone of Destiny was the pillow for Jacob when he had his dream. The Stone followed the Tribes of Israel and all through their wanderings. It was used as a ceremonial stone when kings were crowned. It was taken from Palestine, tradition says, to Spain, five hundred years before Christ was born and from there to the north of Ireland. It was used by the Gaelic kings in Ireland for over a thousand years. From Ireland the stone was taken to the land of Iona on the west coast of Scotland (the village of Iona in Murray county was named after this island). It remained in Iona for over five hundred years and was taken to Scotland and deposited at Perth where it remained until 1200 A.D. when it was moved to England. The English claimed that it was given them by the Scotch. That’s pure bunk: the Scots never gave anything away. Anyway, for seven hundred years an element of the Scotch nursed the memory of this stone, and when it disappeared there was joy in some places in Scotland. Funny thing about it is that is only a piece of limestone, a little over two feet long and ten inches thick. It weighs about 500 pounds. But this type of limestone is not found in Europe, only on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, which only adds a little more mystery to the Stone. The tradition among the Scotch was that “wherever the Stone would be, a Gaelic king would reign.” It isn’t true about the present king of Great Britain, but his queen Elizabeth was born about thirty miles from Perth. Our modest interest in the stone comes from the fact that we were born in Stirlingshire, the county that borders Perthshire.
========================

April 12, 1951

  For the first time in 68 years there is not a horse in Lake Wilson. If anyone in 1883 had predicted that would happen, people would have said he was daft.
---    State basketball officials have been having a gay time of late, rapping the knuckles of the sports writers of the daily press, forgetting that if it had not been for those same reporters the state basketball tournament would be a rather tame affair.
---    Senator Hans Pedersen continues his fine work in the Public Welfare committee in the present legislature. Hans is chairman of the committee and around the capitol he has the reputation of being the best chairman that the committee has had for ten years.
---    An American tourist writes, “Paris is gay with beautiful women, cafes and money but the women folks in Rome have more money, and spend it lavishly.” Those Dagoes can afford it: look how much money they must have made out of our 15 cent butter.
---    There is no sympathy for Rosenberg and his wife who were sentenced to death last week for being traitors to their country. If a man or woman in the heighth of passion commits a crime, there might be some excuse, but these culprits deliberately betrayed their country. There has been too much coddling of criminals in the last ten years. Too many suspended sentences and paroles and it’s time we were getting tough.
---    McArthur got into the limelight again last week (when is he over out) and his outburst and letters are going to hamper Eisenhower in his work in Europe. He says we are going up against a million men in Korea, and that we would be badly beaten. Last December he predicted that the boys would be home for Christmas. He was evidently wrong on that prediction and may be in the last one. He makes us tired: always prancing around like a short-tailed bull in fly time.
---    The Pilot had a cut made at Sioux Falls, S.D., last week. The engraver sent it to Lake Wilson via the Greyhound bus. The cut is about three inches long and weighs five ounces. The postage, or rather bussage, on the cut from Sioux Falls to Lake Wilson was $1.04. If your government could charge and get the same rates, it could give away postal cards. This is one case where a private concern does not do things cheaper than the government.
---    Congress had better change the law that gives the bright kids in school deferment from the draft. There’s a lot of protest against it, most of it is made for rich men’s sons whose dads have the money to put them through school and college, while the poor man’s son has to be satisfied with a common education. Many a millionaire, highly educated, has achieved fame only in a divorce court, while the common every day man has a son that is occupying high positions in business and worthwhile activities.
---    A branch of the government should take cognizance of the manner some of the hospital insurance companies are milking the public. There are three cases in Lake Wilson, where folks have been paying hospital insurance for years, but when they get out of the hospital and put in a claim for insurance they find that their insurance “does not cover the case.” Efforts are being made to effect a settlement, but the companies blandly write, “Nothing doing.” What the country really needs is an insurance policy without the fine print at the bottom of the policy.
---    Rutledge, the Iowa doctor who murdered the man that seduced his wife, died by his own hand last week. Two men are dead and the woman goes free. Somehow it does not figure out from a legal or moral point of view. The very least the law could do would be to lock her up so that she would not lure men’s souls to the shores of sin. She had a loving and faithful husband, one that she had sworn to cherish and love, yet she broke every vow: her husband is dead by her hand, yet she goes free to peddle her wares: it just don’t seem right.
---    Scientists claim that the weather has no effect on the human system: they’re nuts. Nothing except a toothache is more depressing to old folks than a leaden day like last Saturday with skies full of snow or rain. Reading is dull, conversation becomes irritable, even radio programs get jaded, your bones creak and your muscles ache. You reach for your pipe and find out there’s not a speck of Edgeworth left in the can: that is the end. All at once you start thinking about the folks in the flooded areas and the discomforts and annoyance they are going through, and it sinks into you that you are not so bad off after all: maybe scientists are right after all.
---    Here’s a little bit of Murray county history you might want to put in that scrapbook of yours. The first surveyor in Murray county came here over one hundred and sixteen years ago. His name was John C. Fremont, a lieutenant of U.S. Topography engineers. He did some preliminary work here, spending some time at Lake Shetek and Bear Lake. He was with the Nicollet expedition. Fremont the surveyor named a little lake after himself. He was a brilliant young man and rose in military and political circles. John C. Fremont was the first candidate for president of the newly formed republican party. He was defeated by Buchanan in 1856. Fremont’s running mate in that election was nobody but Abraham Lincoln. In any other country there would be a little marker near Lake Fremont telling how it got its name.
========================

April 19, 1951

  This country was a seething mass of people when they heard of the news about Gen. MacArthur’s dismissal: some were against the removal and naturally some were for it. In the final analysis the president of the United States is the commander-in-chief of all armed forces and he can remove any officer in either peacetime or wartime. He is not the only president to remove a top military commander. Lincoln removed McClellan because he did not cooperate with him. The shoe was on the other foot then. “Little Mac,” as he was called by his men, was a Democrat and Lincoln a republican. The democrats were hopping mad and ran Mac for president against Lincoln in 1864. The result in the electoral vote was Lincoln 221, McClellan 21. The tumult and the shouting soon dies and fame is fleeting--by the way, can you remember the name of the general who made this an English speaking nation?
---    The government is taking on a lot of territory if it undertakes to feed India. Once started, this free wheat will continue going on until the Crack O’ Doom. The main product of India has been children, and the end is not in sight. Why would it not be better to send 1,000 tractors over there and teach them how to raise crops instead of running around and kissing holy cows.
---    Another miserable week end and many farmers are beginning to be a little nervous about the lateness of the season. Motorized machinery makes a lot of difference in farming. Four or five days of good drying weather will see a lot of land seeded: it was different in the old days with horses. Over between Brookings and Huron, S. Dak. last week, farmers were busy in the fields.
---    Talked to Dr. Patterson of Slayton, explorer of the upper waters of the Des Moines River. Doc is going to try it again. He is now firmly convinced that too much icy water, like other liquids, is not good for the human system.
---    Mississippi, the state and not the river, is in the headlines these days. Seems as if the top politicians down there have been selling government jobs. One poor guy paid $3,000 for the job as rural mail carrier. That’s pretty high for a carrier. We can remember when a $1,000 was laid on the line for a postmastership, but that was in the days before inflation.
---    President Truman is entitled to one credit from the republicans: he seems to have united the republican party into a fighting unit: the first time in two decades.
---    The hoodlums that hung the president in effigy represent the lowest type of a moron. We did not vote for Truman, but he is still our president and head of the nation. The logical thing for the hoodlums to do would be to hang in effigy the voters who put him in office, and as there were over twenty-five million voters that did that very thing, it might be hard to find enough telephone poles.
---    The gay young lads of today little know what they missed by not being on earth forty years ago. When fall came, the young swains would get ready to meet the trains. They would stand in front of the drug store mirror, buy some “White Rose” to put on their coat lapels, put Bay rum on their cheeks, soak their hair in vaseline, put some Sen Sen in their mouth, take a look at their shoes to see if all the buttons were there, and armed for the fray they would amble indolently down to the depot a half an hour before the old branch passenger arrived. They selected their points to stand on and then waited until the new flock of school ma’ams got off the train. They would scan the gals amorously and critically with inward Oh’s and Ah’s, sometimes a “Naw” as the girls walked pertly across the depot platform. In a minute the show was over for the present. It’s different nowadays. There’s not a Miss in our faculty, and what’s true here is true all over this section. By the way, you’d be surprised if you knew how many grandmothers are teaching in Murray county.
---    There is some misunderstanding as the meaning of the word impeachment in some minds. Impeachment in the United States means bringing an accusation against high officials of the government. When the people, or rather the opposite political party, wants to get rid of a president, it can bring impeachment proceedings against him in the lower house of congress. The members of this body, that is a majority, accuse the president of such crimes as treason and other high crimes. The information secured in these proceedings is brought to the members of the senate who vote on the charges. It takes two thirds of the voting members to sustain these charges. The chief justice presides at this meeting. One president was impeached by the lower house, but was not found guilty by the senate. Andrew Johnson was the accused, and he squeaked through by only one vote majority.
---    Leonard Timmerman, age 43, appeared before the bar of justice in Milwaukee, Wis., last week charged with embezzling $80,000 from the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. At the trial his wife stepped up and said she was to blame. She was one of the “gimme” type and admitted nagging him until she got what she wanted. She assumed the blame of driving her husband to spending more money that he should: there’s one woman that’s entitled to a place in the Hall of Fame in Washington.
========================

April 26, 1951

  The village of Lake Wilson has no bonded debt and the school district has no bonded debt, and our bank has a total footing of over a million dollars: lots of worse towns to live in than Lake Wilson.
---    In spite of all our fights and squabbles this country is still the best place in the world to live in.
---    The Iowa legislature adjourned last week. The members appropriated $12,000,000 less than they did two years ago, while Minnesota increased her appropriations double that amount. Our iron mines pay in taxes almost as much as the rest of like corporations in the state. We often wonder how Minnesota would have been able to survive if it had not been for the tonnage tax.
---    After all, an early Easter this year was just an early Easter. It’s connections with the weather man did not seem to click.
---    Time was when this section was on the main route of the wild geese in their spring trip to the north. They seem to have a new route as they have been mighty scarce this spring.
---    Another old phrase has gone into the discard. You old timers will remember when you needed credit in the old days you would go into the store and say, “Will you trust me.” Their descendants merely say, “Charge it.”
---    Horses are coming back. At least Jack Thomazin said Monday that he would have a team soon to plow the gardens for the men with sore backs, lost ambition and general disability.
---    What a changeable, nervous, erratic and sentimental people we are: two weeks ago the country was ablaze with crime searchings and Senators Kefauver and Tobey were receiving thousands of letters commending them for their fine efforts: now they get two postal cards a day.
---    Senator Humphrey got in a brawl the other night with a couple of senators when they were debating the MacArthur incident that did not improve their standings with the people. The senators used to be known as an august body, but now they are getting down to the level of the common people.
---    The Jewel, Iowa superintendent of schools made his 14 year old son a present of a .22 rifle a short time back. The boy got angry at his dad last week and pumped eight shots into him. That boy will have to live with his conscience all his life: a worse punishment than any law made by man could impose.
---    Ex-Governor Thompson was called to Washington and given a job at $60,000 a day. He did nothing for twelve weeks, got ashamed of himself and gave up in disgust. If every man and woman that was doing but little for their salary would follow in his footsteps, the housing problem would be solved in the nation’s capitol.
---    A traveling troupe of wrestlers put on a good show at the county seat last week. In the bunch were two female wrestlers that were real tough, and they flung one another around like they were sacks of oats. Yet some men had the temerity to take their wives along to see the fray: might be starting something, boys.
---    Lake Wilson is going to have a team in the old Gopher League this season. This is no fancy highbrow bunch. They pay no salaries for the folks to holler their hearts out during the summer and forget them when fall comes. The Gopher League is a strictly amateur organization, players receive no salary and play for the fun of the sport. There’s no game fixers in this league--the best team wins.
---    See where an army officer says that the Chinese army facing the U.N. in Korea has suffered 800,000 casualties in the last five months. That’s pretty near a record or something else. In the Civil War there were 646,000 casualties on the side of the north and the total number killed in battle was 184,000. Could this Chinese loss be as Mark Twain said, “Somewhat exaggerated”?
---    We could be wrong and perhaps are, but we believe the old method of removing rough fish from our lakes was just a little more efficient than it is under state supervision. Always seemed as if the rough fishermen who had contracts stayed on the job when they had a haul in the net and worked far into the night to be sure and get every fish possible. Men working for day’s wages don’t have the same incentive.
---    MacArthur’s triumphant parades reminded us of the Dewey parades. Not the Dewey you’re thinking of, but Admiral Dewey of the Spanish-American war. His ships cleaned the Spaniards out of Manila Bay. The country just went wild over him. The school children of the United States donated a penny apiece and bought him a fine new home in Washington. He took unto himself a wife and in a moment of weakness he donated the home to her. She was of a different faith than he and the Dewey rocket sank into oblivion. People are fickle. When he came back from Manila is was Dewey this and Dewey that; after the house incident he faded from public interest.
========================

May 3, 1951

  The three largest cities in Minnesota are Minneapolis with 517,277, St. Paul 309,474, Duluth 104,066. What is the name of the fourth largest city in the state? Now don’t look, just guess and then read the last line in this column.
---    We feel that the legislature did right in no increasing the appropriation to the Minnesota University. The large decrease in students did not warrant it. Could be hard on the long hair profs but it is just one of those things that can’t be helped.
---    Slayton, Fulda and Iona are girding their loins for the opening of the First Night league. The League does not open until May 20th but all the teams will be getting workouts with exhibition games. One thing we hope, that each of the teams ends the season in the black. Dead horses are awful hard to pay for and they leave such a sour taste in the mouth.
---    In the town of Hoffman, five high school boys didn’t like one of the teachers, so they circulated a petition requesting the board to dismiss her. The supt. expelled the boys, the parents as usual sided with the kids--other boys may be wrong but not ours. So the entire faculty went on a strike. The teacher were right. Comes to a pretty pass when the enlisted men should vote who they want for a general: the result would be chaos. Somehow there must be discipline even in a democracy.
---    Under a law passed by the recent legislature, the price of booze is going to be same all over the state: that is, the minimum price. Liquor sellers can still boost the price, but you can’t just shop around. It’s all adding to the price the liquor consumer has to pay. Some day he may rebel and start drinking water.
---    The elderly people of Balaton, who do not look upon old age as a misfortune, have an Elderly Fellowship Club, says the Balaton Press-Tribune. This club has dinners were they discuss the pleasures of old age. A grand idea for those traveling the sunset trail, the trail that no one knows when it will end. Oldsters are getting more plentiful in this day and age. In the village of Lake Wilson there are over seventy people that are over sixty-five. Old age is the most deadly disease of all. After men and women run the gamut of sickness and operations they finally face Father Time with his scythe. You put off the day a short time, but in the end he’ll get you.
---    “Race Track” McCarthy of Wisconsin is the type of a politician which is too numerous in American life. At the last republican convention Gen. MacArthur was an avowed candidate for the office of president. His supporters made an active campaign, but he only got 8 votes out of twenty-seven delegates from that state. In the convention, if you’ll remember, out of the 1,094 votes he only received eleven. McCarthy, who is now loudly and brashly for him, was busily supporting Stassen.
---    You’ve heard for years how the folk in European countries loved pomp and ceremonies. We may not like ‘em over here but we do love parades. You can whip up a parade in any large city in this country any day. If Ringlings ever put on a parade in New York there would not be enough paper left to wad a shotgun.
---    There were plenty of dead fish cast up by the waves in Lake Wilson last week. Lack of oxygen is the cause, the experts say. Could be, but we didn’t have heavy losses when there was plenty of water in the lake. Many explanations are made about Lake Shetek, such as rough ice, too much snow, etc., but over in Lake Sarah where there were the same conditions no great loss in fish life has been reported.
---    The Fathers and Sons banquet last week was one of the really enjoyable events of the season. It was a real community gathering and everyone seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion. No doubt these little gatherings will continue as the years go by.
---    There was only one fatality in Murray county on the highways in 1950. A really wonderful record, considering the number of autos on the highways. There were 116 accidents reported.
---   
A Slip That Really Showed
_____   The Minneapolis Star of April 23rd had this item on its front page.
“LEGISLATORS SEE SOLUTION TO FUND SNAG   The Minneapolis house and senate neared a midnight adjournment deadline today with the choice of compromising a 10 million dollar difference in appropriations or going into special session.”
_____   St. Paul folks were so made that night they did not sleep. One guy said, “We know that they had included both St. Paul and the university as being in Minneapolis, but this is the first time we’ve heard of them taking over the legislature.”
---    Rochester is the fourth largest city in the state: the population is 29,634, just one thousand more than St. Cloud.
========================

May 10, 1951

  Frank Sinatra must have one of the richest voices in the world. Promoters sued him for non-appearance on a show and they secured a verdict of $46,000. A golden voice and a verdict of that amount must be wonderful advertising.
---    What’s become of the school ma’ams? Years ago they were begging for a job. Can’t help but think that flaming youth is to blame to some extent, or rather the parents. The kids seem to wield more influence with their parents than you did when a boy or girl. Years ago, father and mother stood by the teacher. Now the youngsters rule the roost. When were a kid back in school in Scotland and we got a licking in school we deserved it and proceed to get out the hair brush and apply it, well you know where.
---    Did you notice how the profits of big businesses are piling up. It will not come in our day, but the day is coming when it will come to a head.
---    Nearly every farmer is interested in one change in the state laws. It is the one referring to refunds of the gasoline tax used by tractors, etc. Heretofore you had six months to make your report to get your refunds. The law changed, limiting the time to four months. Tie a string around your finger. Last year the state issued eight million dollars in refunds.
---    Leaving this man O’Dwyer in as ambassador to Mexico is a shadow on the government. He has been linked and re-linked with crime of all sorts. There seems to have been no denial to the charges either, but he still holds on. He should either demand an investigation to clear his name or quit.
---    The new state highway map is really the best in the history of the department. Besides a comprehensive map of Minnesota it also has the population of each town, also the population of each county. The distances between towns are changed. They are given in bold type so that you can read it while traveling instead of having to reach for your specs. Better get one. They’re handy to plan that trip, even if you don’t make it.
---    Some newcomers--no, not this year but in the last twenty years--are at times inclined to be critical of the village in which they now live. At times they say, “Why didn’t they do this and why didn’t they do that.” The men who worked for the village in the early days built better than they ever anticipated. Lake Wilson started after a dozen villages in this section of the state, yet it has outdistanced them. No village of its size outclasses it. We have a lot of things that the other villages lack, and business done in this village is not surpassed by any other village of its size. Yep, the old timers in spite of their many so-called mistakes or errors built better than they hoped for.
---    After looking at the Strom Construction Company now at work on No. 91, one wonders why the army does not get a bunch of those bulldozers, etc. and build a retaining wall across Korea. At the rate these boys are moving dirt, it would not take them long.
---    Notice where many states have selected bodies of men to look after crime conditions. Thanks to the able and sincere efforts of Gov. Youngdahl, Minnesota is out in front in the movement for not controlling but eradicating crime as much as possible.
---    Jesse Davidson, the only career man to ever take over the office of postmaster general, started in with high ambitions to try and reform and improve the mail service, but he got stuck in the mire of politics. He was ordered to appoint men to postal offices in Mississippi by a certain committee, irrespective of what their qualifications were. A sad ending to the career of an able and capable executive official who tried to do his best, but failed.
---    Cedric Adams had in his column Sunday, “Highball drinkers are ordering Bourbon and Clam Juice.” He adds, “Ugh.” Nothing new about this drink. Forty-five years ago they tell me it was common, even in Adrian. By the way, a Lake Wilson merchant still has a few bottles of clam juice that had been bought for that very purpose: not much new in this world.
---    In spite of the dramatic poses and the meticulous phrasing of words, we can’t help but remember that last November McArthur said, “The war is over and the boys will be home for Christmas.” Nor can we forget that he as commander was responsible for the frozen body of many a G.I. in Korea.
---    See where the take of rough fish in Minnesota was over three million pounds less than it was the year before. Two more state crews could have got that many out of Lake Shetek, and their removal might have saved the life of many a game fish.
---    If you like clean wholesome entertainment and are getting tired of the cheek-to-cheek mode of dancing, why not try the square dance. A Square Dance dancing club for the county is being started at Slayton. There’s a lot of fun and pleasure in the quadrilles, which bring with them the stately Virginia reel, the Money Musk, the graceful waltz and many others. Worthwhile amusement. Wish we weren’t so darned old.
========================

May 17, 1951

  You’ve often wondered why there were so many women and men out on parole in Minnesota. It’s just a plain business proposition. It costs $1,300 to keep ‘em in jail and the cost to the state when the prisoner is out on parole is about seventy dollars.
---    Already the republicans, that is the top ones, are jockeying for a position in the coming republican national convention: some of them are counting out Truman. Don’t do it, boys--he is strictly in the running, so if you want to beat him it will need a real leader in the republican party and the whole-hearted support of the rank and file. He has had the knack of surrounding himself with friends that seem to be of a shady character, yet he has come out of it almost unscathed.
---    Top men and women of the republican party met at Tulsa, Okla., last week and discussed the coming campaign pro and con. Some exuberant delegates proposed that they endorse MacArthur, but this was quickly pushed to one side. The old boys know how fickle the human mind is. “The Tumult and the Shouting Dies,” and they did not want to hold the bag for what appears to be an army row more than anything else.
---    Already the movement is under way to have Gov. Youngdahl run for a fourth term. Franklin D. made it, why not Youngdahl? Would rather see him in the senate, as he would give the north midwest an outstanding leader.
---    Five Pipestone business men, they tell us, are going to be “angels” for the Nite League team this season. They, it is said, are responsible for the selection of players, the firing and most important of all is to see that the team is in the black at the end of the season.
---    Speaking of baseball, we would like to put our oar into the discussion long enough to tell you that the Lake Wilson baseball team in the Gopher League is as good a business organization as it is on the field. The boys, all amateurs, set aside $200 out of the gate money last fall, and this spring there was no going around to the business men asking for a donation. Good idea, boys, and best of all a sure way to have the money for supplies in the spring.
---    Worthington’s fine new million dollar hospital was opened to the public Sunday, and what a crowd there was to see one of the most modern hospitals in Minnesota. Can’t understand why they ever placed as important a building as this on an off street. It is an institution worthy of a better setting: it looks as much out of place as a diamond would in a ring of wood.
---    School kids will be pleased to know that they will have to go to school 170 days the coming year. If winter storms and bad roads in the spring curtail school days, they will have to be made up at the end of the term. Does this mean that teachers’ contracts will have to contain a clause that “they would be required to teach 170 days”?
---    Wineburg, the Minnesota professor, is putting up a mighty poor case for himself. He refuses to answer such simple questions as if he “Lived in Berkeley, Calif.” or if he “Lived in the state of California in 1943.” He refused as his answers might incriminate him. Any man that cannot answer questions such as these is setting a darned poor example to the students in his classes. The state should get shut of him.
---    If you live in a one-story house and you build a ten-foot fence around it on the north and west, you will cut down your fuel bill in half. At least that’s what an engineer says. It’s those stout north and west winds that drive the cold into the house.
---    A new law prohibits hunting within 500 feet of occupied buildings. This will be good news for some farmers, who are annoyed by hunters hunting right up to their front door.
---    Few folks out here realize that rattlesnakes are found in Minnesota. Some counties in the southeast part of the state offer bounties on them, and the recent legislature allowed the counties to increase the bounty from fifty cents to a dollar.
---    Capt. Mark Fowser at San Antonio, Texas sends the following clipping: “Washington, May 1.--The House punished the Atomic Energy Commission Friday for building an $85,000 cat and dog hospital at Los Alamos, N.M., a year ago. It knocked that amount off the A.E.C.’s appropriation.” Mark adds, “Looks as if our money has gone to the dogs.”
---    Just thinking that Russia must be getting not only an eyeful, but also an earful of this nation’s dirty linen. The nation’s security means nothing to some of those senators who love the sensational spotlight.
---    Faribault has rallied to the support of a bartender who was arrested for permitting gambling machines in the building of which he was in charge. In the second trial, the local judge threw the case out of court because, “There was no evidence connecting the bartender with the machines.” Page Senator Kefauver.
========================

May 24, 1951

  There’s a smile on the Slayton baseball fans these days. Their team defeated their deadly rival, the Fulda bunch, on Sunday night by a score of 7 to 4. If the team plays at the same tempo as the hearts and hopes of the fans, they’re going to win a lot of games.
---    A short time ago the Pipestone Star had the following classified want ad in its columns: “Wanted to share, 2 room apartment with 2 respectable girls.” Advertiser did not state whether she was a she or a he: it makes a difference sometimes.
---    Women fought for years to do jury duty. Down in Iowa last week a woman preferred to go to jail before she would serve as a juror: some women just love to be ornery.
---    About the most inane effort in years is this endless questioning of Marshall, etc. over the discharge of MacArthur. The investigation has gone far afield and MacArthur’s far in the background. Looks like a woeful waste of time to read about it, and on the next column you learn of the U.N. troops retreating on a fifty-mile front. The senators could well afford to see that our men in Korea are properly supported with reinforcements, supplies, etc. The MacArthur incident will keep.
---    An effort is being made to organize a troop of Girl Scouts here. A mighty fine organization that has done a lot of good throughout the United States.
---    If you want real odds on the war situation, try Lloyds of London. That company will bet you $50 to $1 that there will be no World War III before Sept. 1st.
---    Three months ago this government dumped millions of pounds of butter into Italy at a disgraceful price. It was a surplus, the bureau said, and was killing the market. Last Friday, government experts said there will be a possible shortage of butter this fall. Looks as if the bureaus are doing their best to encourage the use of margarine.
---    A drunken driver in Tracy was fined $100. A common everyday drunk only paid $5.00. After all, there’s some balm in being poor.
---    One never gets too old to learn. Ran across the word “immolate” the other day. ‘Twas new to us, as it is to you. Had never heard of it before. In an article in a national magazine we read where an Assyrian king, Sardanaphlus, when surrounded by enemies, gathered his wives and concubines (and there was a lot good looking wrens among them, according to the picture) and “immolated” them. We thought maybe that the word meant vaccinate or immunize, etc. The dictionary said “Kill or sacrifice.” All of which brings up the thought--”Murder” is a harsh brutal word. Why not change it to “Immolate,” there’s more of a poetic and gentle ring to it.
---    Ever since we can remember, we have seen the “Carter Little Liver Pills” ad in the papers. Now the government has discovered that the pills have no effect whatever on the liver. Progress does knock out a lot of ideas, yet there are thousands of cases--that was years ago when “Carter’s” was a household word--and where it “cured” thousands of cases of liver trouble. Why take them away from people when they thought they were getting some good from the pills. After all, most of our ailments are imaginary.
---    Time changes a lot of things, doesn’t it? Forty years ago when the 17th of May came round, the Norwegians in this vicinity and their youngsters had the Gala Day. Hundreds of celebrations were held in Minnesota. Western Murray county was no exception to the rule and celebrations were held there, with speakers, brass bands, balloon ascensions, baseball, etc. All that has passed away and this year the 17th of May was just another day.
---    About the best man the country could select for president is J. Edgar Hoover. During his career as head of the FBI, the people have come to realize that he is a man of wide experience and judgement. If ever this nation needed a man of common sense in the White House it is right now: we had too many darned politicians for the last thirty years.
---    Mrs. Gavle of Albert Lea will have to pay the heavy penalty for her trip down the Primrose Path. She connived with a farm hand to poison her husband so that they could be married. The wrong man got hold of the whiskey bottle they had planted for the old man, and died. The supreme court decided last week that she had a fair trial and that she should start packing her clothes for a long, long stay at Shakopee. The wages of sin are worse than death: look at the heritage she has left for her four children.
---    Wallie Smith says, “Why don’t you ever put something in your column about the band?” You’re right, Wallie, and we hasten to apologize. Everyone should have a kind word and a pat for the local band. Lake Wilson is one of the few villages left that has a band. The boys and girls meet every Monday night and they need your encouragement. After all, a band is like a fire department: you never pay any attention to them until you need them.
========================

May 31, 1951

  The revival of the old fashioned square dance looks like the return to sanity. After years of jitterbugging, black-bottoming and jiving, the trend has turned to square dance. Every county in the state has fallen and joined the parade. Over 200 couples had a square dance at the Armory at Worthington lasts Sunday. The Murray county square dancing club meets at Slayton and the young folks are enjoying a lot of good clean fun. Nothing like an old fashioned square to brush away those cobwebs of class. Remember our first square dance. We walked across the prairie two miles one night to the Johnny Mihin log house. Johnny Soules, typical Yank with a black goatee, played the fiddle, seated in a chair on top of a rainwater barrel, did the fiddling, the calling and all the while kept a cud of Horseshoe going around in his mouth. There were only three ladies present, Mrs. Mihin, her sister Miss Ryan and the school ma’am. Being the youngest, and built more like a lady, they tied a white handkerchief around my arm and said, ‘You’re a lady.” The price for the dance was 25 cents. Being a lady, we did not pay: it was a regular Scotch holiday.
---    Down at Jackson, John L. King is still active in newspaper work. John is the dean of all the newspaper men in this section of the state and they don’t make finer men than John King. He has been a democrat all his life, but never wore blinkers. Always fair and quick to see the faults in his party, but last week he went far afield. He asks, “Did Youngdahl ever read, ‘Reaching for the Moon’?” Didn’t you know, John, that the governor is a teetotaler?
---    Minneapolis papers are urging the use of voting machines to cut down the number of errors at election time. Machines are not always perfect. Our old Oliver makes more mistakes, especially in spelling, than it did thirty years ago.
---    The men of the armed forces must feel humiliated in the spreading of their views of conducting war by a so-called investigating committee consisting of a lot of political lawyers. The people of the United States down in their hearts know that our armed forces have never lost a war and our politicians and statesmen have lost every peace.
---    For decades we’ve been hearing, and so have you, that the youngsters are steadily getting worse and the country is going to the dogs. In this village we have never had as clean a bunch of young men and women as those attending our local schools. They are a clean wholesome bunch of young Americans and their conduct, not only at home but in the neighboring towns, is a matter of comment. They are a credit not only to the parents but to the school. Even the real youngsters are better than they were when we were kids. One of our merchants leaves his tomatoes, cabbage and flower plants out in front of his store all night long, and not once has there been any sign of destruction. The world must be getting better.
---    There’s plenty of time to transplant tomatoes, the favorite vegetable in this section. Experts say they should be planted about June 1st. For once we agree with them. We put out our tomatoes three weeks ago, nurturing them with care, fed them with Vigoro, nitrates, potash and prayers, but they have not grown an eighth of an inch. Tomatoes need warm ground they say, so set out some more plants.
---    The “Roll of Honor” sign in the park that has, or rather had, the names of lads who were in the last war, is an eyesore and a disgrace. The paint has faded and so have most of the names. Some organization should take it on itself to re-paint the sign and place on it the names of the youngsters now in the service, or it should be removed.
---    See where some towns are raising their water rents fifty per cent. Here in Lake Wilson we don’t realize how lucky we really are when it comes to water. All the water we use comes from flowing wells, and since the large well was sunk nearly two years ago there has never been a shortage: not even a “Don’t Water Your Lawn” sign in August. The water is tops. There’s a lot of good things in the world in spite of our many gripings.
---    During the last session of the legislature there were many criticisms of that body. They were tied with suggestions of what to do and what not to do. The law supplement, which contains all the laws passed, were published and placed for free distribution in every newspaper office in the state. The Pilot, not exception to the rule, carried an item asking those interested to come and get a free copy of the supplement. Up to date, Monday, only one person, and that was an eleven year old boy, has asked for a copy and it will in time be placed on the pantry shelf.
---    See were some of the top military men are going to Europe to confer with Eisenhower. Before they go they should tell the members of the senate just what, where and when they are going to say. It will save having another investigation later.
========================

June 7, 1951

  A new assessor in a neighboring township asked the other day, “Why do some folks act angry when I call on them?” It is really hard to understand, unless it is a throwback when the assessor was also the collector. In this day and age the assessor does not make the taxes. He merely goes into your house or onto your farm and asks some questions. The answers that you give him, he writes down and lays them before the town board or village council. These boards have the power to raise or lower any figures that the assessor may present. From the township or village the assessment roll goes to the county assessor, and he has the authority to raise or lower any article that has been assessed. From the county assessor it goes before the county board. This board has the authority to make any changes they see fit, especially in the matter of equalizing the assessments of the various towns and villages. From Slayton the figures go before the state tax commission for review: the end of the trail. Taxes are not made by assessors. Most of them are voted by the citizens, then come school boards, then councils and town boards. But remember the legislature takes a big hand in the tax story. The people, that is the country people, vote just what taxes they will need, the county board levies enough money to keep the county going, to keep up the interest on bonds, to keep the graveled roads in repair, and that counts up, as every mile of gravel road in Murray county costs $200 yearly. Coming down locally, the household goods tax is the most unimportant of all, yet the law says everything must be assessed. And bear in mind what makes your taxes high is that refrigerator, deep freeze box, electric range, diamonds, and that fur coat. Of course you really don’t need to give them in, as your neighbor has already given the assessor a complete line of all the new stuff you have before he visits you. Remember the assessor does not make taxes: you do. but cheer up. The time is coming when there will be no assessors. Each tax payer will list his property just the same as he does his income taxes.
---    Experts say, “Don’t cut your lawn grass so short. Leave it an inch and a half long and it will grow faster:” what sane man ever wants his lawn grass to grow faster.
---    In Minnesota and many of the neighboring states newspapers carry items from local hospitals telling of births, accidents and operations. We saw one the other day that was really interesting. We cannot give you the names of the hospital or parents, that would be unethical. It read, “Born to Mr. and Mrs. John Doe at the Jonesville hospital, a girl: accident.” Somebody got mixed up, and may the Lord have mercy on the poor linotyper.
---    Have a fine letter from Kenny Gowin this week. He keeps us posted and tells you what war looks like to a kid that three years ago was going to school here. Keep the letters coming, Ken. A youth that has made 200 flights to Korea must absorb some little knowledge of modern warfare.
---    The wet weather generally forecasts a horde of cutworms, and naturally the tomato plants are the ones that bring worry to the gardener. One man claims that he puts a spike along side of each plant. He says it never fails. Another method is to sprinkle a ring of wood ashes, lime or phosphates around each plant. Up to date the weather has been too darned cold for even a cutworm to work without a fur coat.
---    A subscriber wrote the following note a while back and we are printing it, even if it is a little late. She wrote, “We want to thank you for getting the telephone men to break their way through the drifts and fix our phone when we were all sick, and Ruth, tell the men how much we appreciate their efforts.”--Mrs. Frank Bose. That’s a grand gesture. We have got so we never think of the kind things that are done today, and the grand efforts that the men and women in public service give through the year. A kind word costs so little and it means so much to the average man and woman.
---    These cold rainy spring days have created a real problem for the baseball manager, especially those who have salaried players. Warm weather is needed, both for the fans as well as the players, and if this brand of weather keeps up, about the only teams that will weather the financial storms will be the group that are in the playoffs.
---    Many newspapers are publishing Dr. Surber’s dope for the relief of mosquito bites. The late doctor and the Roamer had adjoining offices in the Game and Fish dept. in St. Paul, and no man in the state knew as much about wild life in Minnesota as he. Always at home in the woods and prairie, always searching for new means of increasing the crop of game and fish. He did a splendid service to the state. He worked hard for the present dam at Lake Shetek, also aided in the project to secure more water for Lake Wilson. His recipe for the discouragement of mosquitoes included olive oil 4 oz., Beechwood creosote 1/4 oz., Gum Camphor 1/4 oz., Oil of Pennyroyal 1/4 oz. The doctor always carried a bottle of this with him, especially in the north woods. With the amount of rain we’ve had, it looks as if the warm days are going to produce some good hatches of the pests. Better cut this out and put it in your billfold. It will save a lot of scratching and itching. Don’t use anything synthetic. Dissolve the camphor gum in a little alcohol.
========================

June 14, 1951

WHERE THAT TAX DOLLAR GOES!    One of the most pertinent questions of nearly every month of the year is “Where does our tax money go?” How is it spent? Here is how your tax money in Lake Wilson is spent. Better cut this out. It will save many an argument. You will notice that the school takes 58 cents out of every dollar: more than all the other taxes combined. State of Minnesota. . . . . . . .$.07 County Revenue. . . . . . . . . .$.06 County Road & Br. . . . . . . .$.06 County Welfare. . . . . . . . . . $.04 Bonds & Int. . . . . . . . . . . . . $.02 County Sanatorium. . . . . . . .$.01 Memorial Hospital. . . . . . . .$.02 School Transp. . . . . . . . . . . .$.01 Hospital Maintenance. . . . . .$.01      Total Co.. . . . $.23 Village Revenue. . . . . . . . . $.10 Village Band . . . . . . . . . . . . $.02      Total Village. . . $.12 School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $.58      Total . . . . . .$1.00 This breakdown of the Lake Wilson dollar was made through the courtesy of the county treasurer, Norman Johnson.
---    The Russians are all het up over the “attempt” of the Yankees, who it is alleged are trying to destroy their potato crop by scattering Colorado Beetles (potato bugs to you) over that country. Bet some of you older folks felt about the same way when Ma used to say, “Better get out and bug the taters.” Remember when we wandered down the rows picking potato bugs from the plants.
---    We’re a fickle lot. Down in Washington a speaker’s bureau, a non-political set up, gives the prices of top men who represent us in the halls of congress but are not averse to getting a few shekels on the side. Top man is V.P. Barkley. He gets $1500 an hour and has sometimes used a government plane with a crew of six at your expense. Down the $300 bracket is Senator Humphrey. Thye is not mentioned in the list of prize orators which are the attraction at county fairs, dinners and community gatherings. The fickleness of you folks is aptly illustrated by Metcalfe, who runs the bureau. He says, “The MacArthur senators and the story of Communism have ceased to interest folks.”
---    The senate investigation on MacArthur is petering out. It is the old story about the general who marched “thirty thousand men up the hill and then marched them down again.” Digging into future plans of top military men was not popular with the American people. Acheson should have been the first man at bat. They should have put the screws to him, and he might have resigned: which would not have been too great a loss for the country to sustain.
---    Yep, fame is fleeting. How many of you can remember the name of the man who had 7,000 miles of road in Minnesota named after him, some years back?
---    See where the state is putting in a million pike fry into Lake Shetek. Good. But let’s not forget the pan fish. Eighty per cent of the folks that fish Lake Shetek never caught a walleye. They take their kids there, catch a mess of bullheads or other panfish and go home happy. So put in sunfish, crappies, bullheads and bluegills. What Lake Shetek needs most of all is two feet more water.
---    Somebody with more sentiment than sense wrote, “The tenderest thing on earth is a woman’s heart:” bet he never tried to break in a new set of lowers.
---    This will be news to a lot of farmers we know, but a recent survey shows that the average farmer in the U.S. is worth over $17,000. Please do your cussing in silence.
---    Kinda like that Truman gal. She took all the knocks and sneers like a veteran. She was quiet, dignified and reasonable with her critics. She is certainly making a fine impression abroad, something a little different from our movie queens, who forgot not only their marriage vows but the color line. After all, Margaret is the best political asset that the Truman clan has.
---    Farmers these days should be standing side by side, but it’s not so. The Farm Bureau and the Farmers Union are feuding as bitter as the McCoys and the Hatfields, and they’re beginning to hate real bad. Out in Utah a federal grand jury last week gave the Union a $10,000 verdict against the Bureau for saying things about that organization. The war wages on; these groups are getting farther and farther apart.
---    Soy beans are getting mighty popular in this vicinity but flax leads them by a two to one margin in bushels sold in the Lake Wilson market.
========================

June 21, 1951

  The following postal card was received Saturday night, postmarked Slayton. The signature was missing: “From something you said in your this week’s column, I take it that you are guilty of race discrimination. What makes you so sure that you are any better than your brother with a black or brown skin? Believe me, there’s many a black heart beats within these superior white bodies.” Could be. We’ve been guilty of everything else. Why not race discrimination, my dear woman, and we use the words “dear woman” advisedly, because few men are interested in the glamor and filth that surrounds the movie stars we referred to. Sometimes think it’s the black and brown races that have been injured by being mixed up with these girls. But back to race discrimination, we’ll plead guilty to that when you marry a penniless dark skinned male.
---    See where statisticians (hard word to spell and even harder to pronounce when your store teeth refuse to even approach state of intimacy) say that old men should keep out of gardens: too many accidents. In the winter we can’t shovel snow and all we can do is to sit and think, and if you do that real hard, the morals squad would be tapping you on the shoulder.
---    This section of the world would be almost perfect if we had 60 days of June and omit the month of March.
---    Generals and admirals have been popping off at Washington before the senate committee. Their views are contrary to the top men who had passed them by on the way up: a jealous army man is on the same footing as a jealous woman.
---    Lawrence Amundson says that columnists who write, “Wrens won’t live in a house painted yellow” are off the beam. He took the Roamer to his place and showed him a yellow bird house filled with contented wrens. Could be that our wrens are color blind.
---    We may think we are great uncle to all of Europe and wonder why they don’t go all out for defense. You can’t expect them to do much the way we are carrying on in Washington. They have just as hard a time wondering what our political prophets and acrobats are doing as we are.
---    Cedric Adams, top entertainer in the Midwest, will be at the county fair at Slayton on the evening of Tuesday, August 14th, where he will conduct a Murray county talent show. This will be a big event, as Cedric has many admirers in this section. He will also give the regular 10 o’clock broadcast. He will broadcast from the stage in front of the grandstand and arrangements are in the making that in case of rain the show will be transferred to the high school auditorium.
---    MacArthur has been making speeches in the deep south of late. Looks like an attempt to carry the state at the next national convention. The top men in Washington, who have made good use of him in the Truman or rather Acheson attack, don’t like it. They want him to help but not heal the ticket.
---    Just because you have heart trouble it does not mean that you are a shut-in. Doctors now say you can smoke, play, fish, hunt, drink and even climb stairs, but do all of them in moderation.
---    Somebody by the name of N. Foster of Minneapolis had a letter in the Saturday Minneapolis Star Journal crabbing because a woman was at the head of the Rough Fish Dept. in the State Conservation Dept. Why not a woman? Ann Feist has been with the department for twenty years, is capable, competent and efficient. Doing a splendid job. Has the confidence of her superiors and besides that she knows more about rough fish in a minute than this man Foster does in a year.
---    Pipestone Star said last week it would be the shopping center for the Chandler radar folks, adding that 100 men would be working there and that they would spend $20,000 a month in Pipestone for groceries. Either the price of groceries in Pipestone is high or the radar folks have large families. Even in these times $200 a month for groceries is considered high.
---    Mike Holm, one of the grand old men in Minnesota, no cut out the last five words, he’s just 75, but he’s a grand guy all the same. The Roamer has known Mike very pleasantly for the last thirty-eight years. We met first at a state fair meeting and every year we meet and talk of the days when the state fair convention was the testing ground for state politics. Mike used to come down from Roseau with the county exhibit and win all the prizes. His friends grew in number, they liked his quiet modest ways and they elected him secretary of state. The first meeting of the state fair people was held in a little building in the state fair grounds. It was attended by eleven people. The state fair convention is now attended by over send hundred delegates and friends, and Mike is always there: may you live to be an old man, Mike.
========================

June 28, 1951

  General Ridgeway should be a good fighting man. Any guy that’s been married to three different women must have picked up a lot of experience along the way.
---    Baseball in the west ain’t what it used to be. In four games in the Western League the total paid attendance was only 1,508. In that league are towns like Des Moines, Omaha, Denver and Lincoln. Is money getting tighter or are there too many young men in the service?’
---    For years you have listened to stars on the radio telling of the softening qualities of this or that shaving cream that tenders tough and wiry whiskers in a jiffy. Truth is, soap does not soften the beard, it’s water that softens the hair not soap. At least that is what the Williams company says, and they were selling shaving soap in the little round cakes to grandpa years before you came on earth.
---    An interesting sporting event would be a champion baseball game between colored and white players in the major leagues. Wouldn’t that have the fans a buzzing. ‘Twould be a good game: if the white players won.
---    Mighty good thing that the U.S. has an income tax law: if it was not for this law we never would be able to get a racketeer or gangster to the pen.
---    See where a lady justice at Tyler slapped a $100 fine on a drunken driver, and added another $50 fine because he was driving a car while his license was revoked. Seems as if there should be a law on this drunken driving that would provide for cancellation of a license for at least a year, if found guilty twice for drunken driving.
---    For years we’ve sneered and jeered at the South American republics insinuating that they were nothing but a bunch of cheap politicians: seems as if we run in the same direction, only no sane man would ever accuse our politicians as being “cheap.”
---    Now they tell us after the battle is almost over that DDT will cure that bug-ridden garden of yours, and it can be made free from insects. Because of cutworms that climb, cutworms that bore and cutworms that dig in the garden we were hit hard this year. Get powdered DDT and sprinkle on your plants and put some on the ground around the plants, then resume your job of saving the nation.
---    Last week a Minneapolis citizen and his wife were walking home one night. A man and a woman walked up behind them. The man stuck a gun in the citizen’s back and proceeded to rob him. The gal that was with him started on the woman and got her big purse. That’s what one would call equal franchise. Women will soon be pushing the men out of the holdup brand of crime: the clinging ivy type woman has gone.
---    Men in a pickup drove through the residence districts here on Sunday night and lit giant fire crackers and tossed them out at random as they drove along. Brave men like these should not waste their time on a Sunday night awakening babies and sick people. They should be in the front lines in Korea hurling grenades. It takes a brave man to get out in the dark of night hurling fire crackers.
---    The peace overture suggested by the Russian government last Saturday was greeted by mixed emotions in the U.S. Frankly, there are millions of people in this country that do not want the war to end: naturally for business reasons. They see good years ahead. But the Roamer hopes that some good will come out of it. We feel keenly for the mothers who have sons in the front ranks in Korea and for those who have sons that are billed for the front. For the sake of these people we should do all we can in an honorable way to bring about a cessation of the war.
---    The town of Lake Benton can well be named “The Bull Head Center” of Minnesota. We were over there the other day and witnessed the unloading of state fish traps, and the catch was really enormous. Up to date the state has taken over 200,000 pounds of bullheads out of Lake Benton. The bullheads have gone a long ways, 12,000 pounds going to Philadelphia. Truck loads have gone to other states: some of them to provide enjoyment for citizens of Nebraska as the fish were placed in private ponds. Both carp and bullheads are shipped in big trucks and arrive at their destination alive. The carp besides going east also go south, some going almost to Tennessee, where they come into competition with the catfish. The price of bullheads is five cents a pound and on carp 3 cents a pound. Many carp have been bought by local people, and when they are smoked they make a very palatable addition to your luncheon or dinner table. We’ll be able to tell you more about it next week.
---    Big interests are now urging the construction of more dams, under the guise that it will make cheaper electricity. They claim it will put more land under cultivation. Today and in the past we’ve been raising too much grain and have had to peddle it to the European countries, some of it a pure donation. Pretty soon we’ll be taking it out to the ocean and dumping it. Don’t make sense.
========================

July-December 1950      Home      July-December 1951