1959 Columns, January - June
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Roaming in the Gloaming

With Bob Forrest

Things Material and Immaterial

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January 1, 1959
   Something happened to the soybean market last week. Soybean oil dropped 9 1/2 cents a pound: the lowest price since 1902. Cottonseed oil went down 4 cents a pound.
---    We ran across the word “nubile” a while back and honestly we did not know what it meant. Do you? It means one of marriageable age. We like Honey or Dear better.
---    Don’t see much holly as we used to and mistletoe so much needed in our bashful days has gone forever. One cheery old lady said it was not needed in this day and age. Holly costs 40 cents a pound in car load lots. Worst thing about holly is there are not enough decent sized sprigs on a branch. Ninety-five percent of all the holly comes from Oregon and Washington.
---    This story comes from Russia. It could just as well come from the Pipestone and Currie R.R. branches in Murray county. A peasant tired of living decided to commit suicide and chose being killed by a locomotive so he walked to the railroad and stood between the rails. A neighbor came over and asked him why he was standing there and he told him about wanting to be killed by a locomotive. The neighbor looked at him again and said, “What are those loaves of bread for?” The peasant replied, “They way the trains run around here a man could starve to death before he was killed.”
---    Some parts of northern Minnesota are having a real winter so early. In Kittson County the thermometer has averaged 25 below zero since Dec. 6th to Dec. 15th, and there are 26 inches of snow on the level: and winter doesn’t really start until January.
---    Was surprised to see Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup with the old familiar label advertised on the front page of the London, England Daily Mail. What really surprised us was this statement, “The tomatoes Heinz uses are especially grown for them in the warm Mediterranean sunshine of northern Italy,” which implies that Florida, Louisiana and California cannot raise as good tomatoes as they do in the old country.
---    This may not be malicious conspiracy but it looks insidious to us. A man hailed a taxi, got to his destination. The taxi man told him what the fare was. He paid the exact amount and started to leave. The driver said, “Haven’t you left something? Your bagpipes, for instance?”
---    W. A. Davis, the father of Bondin Township, had a brother A. N. Davis who was in charge of the first fire department in the township. On July 26, 1876 the county board paid him $21.00 for breaking 12 miles of fire breaks in Bondin township. Money went a long way in those days. A derelict, Henry Blake, passed away at Currie in January, 1874, and M. Finch was asked to make the coffin. He submitted the following bill to the county commissioners: “To making a coffin for Henry Blake and furnishing trimmings, $4.50,” which after due deliberation was ordered paid. Doesn’t seem possible but that’s what the minutes said.
---    Some wise old owl with whiskers a foot long said the other day that sports are not a part of education. He’s just plain crazy. If all the high school gyms in Minnesota were destroyed or closed, there would be no more schools. The boys and girls would be heartbroken and unable to go to school. Athletics are the backbone of every high school in Minnesota.
---    We are a hypocritical nation. We rant and rave over Civil Rights, even want to go to war on segregation, yet a minority of our highest law-making body can thwart the majority of the Senate and the will of the people by simply talking the bill to death. Then there is Czar Sam Rayburn, speaker of the House, what he says goes. He vetoes more bills than President Eisenhower.
---    Some autoists get peeved when they arise the morning and ... [missing lines] ... man deflating “tyres” and the J.P. gave him twenty days in jail and a spare tyre to play with.
---    We enjoyed the traditional family Christmas tide party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. R. D. Elias in Minneapolis. Kae came down from Moose Lake where she is doing a three months nursing hitch at the State hospital, and to make the circle complete, Nola came in from San Francisco the first of the week. Ray and our granddaughter Peggy came to get us and bring us into the party. The tree brought many memories--memories of our youngsters when they were young. How they used to crawl on hands and knees to feel the packages, just as you did with glistening eyes. Then there were the grandchildren that did the same things--wonderful memories, memories that never fade.
  After the presents were distributed the family attended the midnight Christmas service at St. Luke’s church. Then there was the Christmas Day dinner--turkey, scalloped oysters, plum pudding and everything. We were all humbly grateful to God for seeing that the family circle could be together once more.
---    The writer of this column wishes its readers a healthy New Year, you’ll live longer. ========================

January 8, 1959
   Another article of mail order gift food that is growing in popularity is the lobster. Smallest number you can buy is ten, and they cost $15.95. The lobster people have a new plan. They begin trapping lobsters in September. Then they pen them in a secluded cove. The lobsters burrow in the mud, stick their heads out and fatten on the herring fed them. Nothing new about planting fish. We remember one year Art Beal and Charley Durgin rented Smith’s Lake, filled it with tons of carp netted in Lake Shetek, but they did not get enough money for the carp to pay for the corn fed them and the extra work.
---    Coffee took another tumble last week. A good grade of Brazilian beans sold for 42 cents--thirteen cents below that of a year ago. It is odd to note how long it takes for drops to hit the midwest. Ole Olson who lived on the edge of Lake Wilson used to say, “When grain goes down we get the news by telegraph. When it goes up the news comes by freight.” That’s what helped start the Farmers Co-op.
---    It was new to us. Mr. and Mrs. Brown were making a trip to the West Coast. Rain and fog made driving bad. They struck a town that had seen better days. So had the hotel. They asked the lantern jawed man at the desk for a room. He showed them one. They were so tired they took it and went right to bed. Mrs. Brown got up at one and rang the telephone. She asked, “Are you the hotel keeper?” He snarled, “Yeah, what’s eating you?” “That’s what we would like to know,” said Mrs. Brown.
---    Another attack is being made on the cigaret. A group of researchers in Texas has discovered that cigarets have too much arsenic in them, which is responsible for many cases of cancer. The arsenic comes from the insecticides. When bugs are bad, it takes more spray. Don’t matter what they had in cigarets, people keep on smoking them.
---    Soft coal miners and owners settled their differences. The price of coal went up 20 cents a ton. Looks as if it would be only fair to call in the public and have it sit in during those strike meetings: in the end it has to pay the bill.
---    Clinton Musgass of Gatzke, Minnesota was sentenced to two years in a federal prison for refusing to report for military duty. Musgass claimed he was a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses and was opposed to war. Judge Davis at Fargo, North Dakota thought different.
---    The Israelites got thunder for worshipping a golden calf. We Americans worship a golden calf, only it’s around three years old and nobody says a word. The golden parts of our calf are the steaks--the real golden ones bring $5.33 for 12 ounces of boneless sirloin. The steak is the choicest of all steaks sold by Pfaleger of Chicago. It goes to every state in the Union and is known as “Prime” and only about five percent of the beef eaten in the United States grades “Prime.” Of course this beef has been aged at the right temperature and humidity. You can buy Prime stewing beef for $2.00 the pound.
---    Had a short visit with Mr. and Mrs. Curtis Johnson and family of Skandia Township last Sunday. Curtis is a nephew of Ed Engebretson, an old friend of ours.
---    The raising of tax money is a real problem these days. The Chairman of the Board of Equalization of California declared last week that a sweepstakes lottery run by the State could help cut down the deficit. He expects to have the state lottery bill introduced this session. Another state digging for new resources is Massachusetts. A three cent sales tax was defeated last year. They think it will pass this winter.
---    Ingrid Bergman the actress has been married for the third time, this time before her Italian divorce was settled. There’s one woman that fears neither God nor man.
---    Some one knowing our fondness for home made brown bread--some friend, sent us a load for Christmas. There was no word of any kind on the package, so we don’t know who to thank. But we do.
---    A lady columnist in the Brainerd Dispatch is offering her services to the public who writes to Ann or Abigail. Mrs. John Dullim in her column, “The Farmers Wife” said last week, “How about an advice to the love-lorn column? Send me your problems and I’ll try to find an answer. I’ve had a lot of experience and I may have an answer.” If you have any emotional troubles or any other problems, give her a ring.
---    Railroads are still fussing about passenger trains. The 1,200 mile Lehigh Valley Road has asked for permission to abandon all passenger service. That’s what it’s coming to out home. The lone passenger on the Omaha (Northwester) is on its way out. There’s no dining car on the present train--goes back sixty years.
---    Minnesota with its 35,832 students is the second largest university in the country. It seems it should get a bill through the legislature for money to buy five or six good football players and then pick enough out of the 35,000 so there will be a good football team next fall.
---    Here’s the greatest boon that has come to women and a few men in a long time. It is called Teflon--a super slick paint made from floaspar and carbon by Dupont. A chemist stands in front of two sizzling frying pans. He breaks eggs into each pan. In one pan they stick like glue. In the other pan painted with Teflon the eggs don’t stick to the pan. It is the slickest thing known. Good for farmers too. With your plows coated with Teflon you can plow in high gear through a sticky soil, while others would be forced to go into low. It costs $4.50 a pound, but they do not say how long a coating of paint lasts.
---    Saw one of those Western gun shows the other night. A group of would-be bad men started shooting and the dead started falling like cottonwood leaves in the fall. There were two young women in the blazing gun fight, one held a double barreled shotgun and the other a revolver. Can you blame the kids if they pitch and toss when they go to bed? “Am I my children’s keeper?”
---    Faces with a penitentiary sentence a year ago, Hoffa’s aim seems to be the Hitler of the U.S. He started his unionization of the New York police a little too soon. He plans to unionize the police, then the national guard, then the army, then “Heil Hoffa.” Mankato is the only town we know of in Minnesota where the police department has been unionized by the Teamsters union. ========================

January 15, 1959
   Years ago there used to be a poem, “St. Peter stood guard at the Golden Gate,” etc. According to the story he must still be up there. Five newcomers approached the Gate. St. Peter said the first, “What brought you here?” “Kidney trouble.” The same question was asked the second man. The answer was “Liver Trouble.” The third said “Arthritis.” The fourth might have been a cigaret smoker, as his answer was “Lung trouble.” Then St. Peter asked the last of the group, “What brought you here?” “Seenus trouble.” “You mean sinus trouble,” said St. Peter. “No,” he was told, “It was seenus trouble. I started dating my best friend’s wife and he seen us.”
---    Well the “M” club, former graduates of the Minnesota University, presented its attitude on the Warmath-Armstrong clique the first of the week by suggesting that President Morrill has been manipulated by Armstrong and Warmath. It is an outspoken article--calls spades spades, and is well worth while being considered by the legislature and regents. Athletics should not interfere with education, some say. To many, sports are the most important part of education and certainly the most popular. Did you ever see a Peach section for education?
---    A fortnight ago we mentioned seeing a Heinz ad on the front page of the London Daily Mail. Last week we was a 33 inch ad of Van Heusen shirts on the front page of the Stirling Scotland Journal and it was the only ad on the front page. American ad men are teaching foreigners the real value of advertising.
---    One of the really perplexing problems of the day is the stead continued rise in farm values and further gains in prospect for next year, and farms sold are not going to big outfits or companies--they are being bought by farmers--generally neighbors--yet there seems to be more organized dissatisfaction among farmers today than there has been for generations.
---    For you gals who the cooking here are three new ones coming up. Dried bananas, looks like a dried fig, but still tastes like a banana. New dried potato flakes when whipped up in water or milk taste like potatoes. Out in Seattle they soak white wheat, they dry it. They say it tastes like wild rice.
---    The trotting horse is coming back faster than you think. The state of New York started distributing nine million dollars to the private trotting race tracks in the state. This nine million dollars comes from the profits of the running horse pari-mutuel gambling, race tracks, sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Ohio and Illinois use this same system.
---    The broiler business is not such an easy way of making money. A group of business men over at Richmond, Wisconsin built a broiler plant last year. Two weeks ago they got 17,500 day-old chicks. They had them shipped in batches so they could be unloaded by officials and stockholders to cut down expenses. To date the firm has marketed 45,000 chicks; to date the feed bill for the broilers is $25,000.
---    Anent the retraction published in last week’s Herald, please remember that the communication asking for the retraction went to the Herald, not to us. So we gladly retracted the entire article in which, according to layers up here, contained nothing libelous. Collier objected strenuously to our use of the word “unsavory” in commenting on his being both City Attorney and the attorney for the malting company as unethical and we have apologized. We aim to present items of interest in this column for its readers each week, and to us the one about an attorney holding both the offices of city attorney and that of the attorney for the largest concern in that town is unique, rare and unusual.
---    One of those seventeen year old juvenile delinquents who thought his age was his shield found out he was wrong. Eugene Wandersee of Mankato was sentenced to five years in the Youth Conservation Camp. He was a graduate of the Red Wing Training School.
---    What is really libel? Over at Shakopee, the mayor’s wife wrote this sentence in her mimeograph newspaper last September about the village council: “I had a duty to expose the sadistic perversion of a depraved degenerate demoralized calamity that called itself a council.” You would think from reading it that she would be sent to Stillwater. Her lawyer presented a dictionary, his only witness. When he got through, the jury in District Court acquitted Mrs. Halver. The case was tried before Judge Harold Flynn, a former Murray County resident. This is the way her lawyer translated the sentence with the aid of an American Standard dictionary: “I had a duty to expose the weak, disorderly, unorganized, demoralized misfortune that calls itself a council.” The defense attorney was both clever and brainy.
---    This has been a wonderful holiday season for us. Here we are over 86 and were able to spend Christmas and New Year’s day with our family: Nola returned to San Francisco last week. ========================

January 22, 1959
   We remember one winter on the farm in Cameron Township when high winds packed snow so tight that the cattle could walk on fifteen foot drifts without breaking through. A seventeen foot drift near the Wilson farm was so hard that loads of hay were hauled over it for the rest of the winter. Some of you folks won’t believe it, but up in Kittson County they had one of those storms on New Year’s Day. The next day some of the drifts were as hard as a rock. Let County Engineer A. C. Chard tell it. “Snow was so compact that the drifts were as hard as cement. The drifts were hard enough so that the 12 ton rotary plow could ride right over them. In other places the V plow with wings were carried by the hard drifts. To clear the hard drifts we used the hydraulic blade on the 12-ton tractor to break loose the snow and then moved back and forth until the snow was broken up.” This was three weeks ago, and the winter was only started.
---    The Republicans put in more effort and enthusiasm over the election of a State Chairman than they did in the whole state campaign last fall. It was an awful mess last November. Not a leader in sight. Thye, nice old man, lacks the quality of leadership. McKennen kicked the whole pot of beans out the window when he started his attack on liquor. Men who started reforming the liquor business in Minnesota committed political suicide. Ninety per cent of the people in the state are interested in the booze business. How many towns do you know that do not have a municipal saloon, voted not always for but generally kept for the purpose of helping pay taxes. Did you ever hear Humphrey or Freeman express themselves on the liquor question.
---    The real leaders were fighting their own battles in congressional scraps and they did a fine job, especially H. Carl Anderson of Tyler, who was up against the most popular of all of them, and won. We can’t remember a congressman in Minnesota who has served his district more faithfully and better than Carl.
---    Heading through the “As yet unclassified” column written by Rena Olson last week in the Moose Lake Gazette, we read, “Last Sunday morning an unofficial report recorded 46 below zero in Moose Lake and another source reported 51 below at Barnum.” That beats anything in Murray County history. Lowest we ever heard of was 42 below in 1888. A few years ago scientists and so did some of the rest of us say our winters were getting warmer.
---    A reader, Elmer Schmidt, gives some novel ideas in the Mankato Free Press. Boiled down, he asks why pay a sportsman for killing a fox? They don’t pay a bounty every time they shoot a duck or a deer. What difference does it make who kills a pheasant, a man or a fox. Time was, he wrote, when pheasants did so much damage that the farmers wanted them shot. Now, he says, the pheasant has been enshrined.
---    And take Fairmont for business. It just finished its first year the municipal off sale liquor store with a net profit of $50,000. Man, that’s half a swimming pool in one year. You can say that’s another town that is really in the liquor business to stay.
---    One of the popular books of the year for women will be out next month and it has not got a love story in it. It is called the Coupon Magazine and is strictly for bargain hunters. The book will be full of coupons exchangeable for merchandise. The February number will have coupons worth $5.00 on soaps, Armours, coffee, etc. It will cost you twenty cents at your supermarket.
---    We used to laugh at the House of Lords in Britain. Now we can laugh at ourselves. The present U.S. Senate voted 60-36 that no new rules could be adopted by each new senate.
---    That fuel oil for your furnace is going to cost you more money. The unseasonably cold weather has taken a lot of fuel for this time of year.
---    For years the General Electric has been paying part of the dealers’ advertising to help keep up established prices. The company withdrew its offer and now the dealer can sell his toaster for what he wants.
---    Pin a dozen orchids on Jack Putterbach, state Liquor Commissioner. He told the Minneapolis officials to clean up its liquor mess and tighten control of it. If it did not, he would use his legal authority and prescribe a set of rules for the city of Minneapolis.
---    If you get a chance, take another shot of polio vaccine. You’re not out of danger yet says Dr. Salk. By the way, why continue to raise so much money for polio. More children die from measles than from polio. Deaths from polio in ‘57 were 220. In 1955 410 kids died from whooping cough, and a side note: 16,300 people committed suicide that year.
---    From the Irish Digest, Dublin: A waitress came to work proudly wearing an engagement ring. An elder colleague wished the girl every happiness. “But let me offer you some advice,” said the older woman. “Don’t give him his own way too much. Demand your rights. When I got married I insisted that my husband give up smoking and drinking.” “And he did?” asked the young waitress with awe. “I don’t know,” admitted her advisor, “I haven’t seen him for 20 years.”
---    Wonder why Gov. Freeman did not use his budget speech during the campaign. People would have known what they were voting for.
---    Had a pleasant visit last Sunday afternoon from Mr. and Mrs. Harman of Minneapolis. Mrs. Harman formerly was a nurse in the Home hospital in Slayton and while there assisted in the care of Mrs. Forrest who was there with two fractured wrists, but that was years ago. Genevieve’s dad John O’Connell did the first landscaping on the court house grounds at Slayton. He also lives in Minneapolis. Mr. O’Connell formerly lived in Dovray township.
---    Notice they are still arguing over the seining of Lake Shetek. If the policy of the state game and fish department is to seine rough fish from lakes it should adhere to that policy. You can’t hold a sort of a primary election over the seining of every lake. The crying need to Lake Shetek now is a two foot higher water level. During the last four years groups of resorters have built homes, some them like the beautiful Speers home strictly modern with double garages. They were lured to Maple Island (Keely Cure) by the scenic beauty and charm. Lake Shetek in Murray County is the beauty spot in Southwestern Minnesota and more and more resorters are coming every year. The legislature is in session and perhaps Murray County folks will be able to get a start in raising the water level. Now is the time to do it. ========================

February 5, 1959
   There are only five states in the union that do not tax cigarets. The rest of the states have taxes on them running from 2 cents in Missouri and Arizona to 8 cents in Montana and Louisiana. What will the tax be in Minnesota when the legislature adjourns? Twenty-two states are expecting to boost their cigaret tax this winter. Cigarets are like “likker”: when you’ve got to have them, price is no object.
---    There’s a new razor out now that ought to sell. It is called the “Thorens Review Razor,” instead of using electric current it uses a precision spring motor that operates the head at 3000 rpm. With it you can shave anywhere any time. The price is $17.50. It is made in Switzerland.
---    We know now why the polio workers are asking for additional funds. They are going to need them. There were more paralytic polio cases in 1956 than there were a year ago. Detroit had a third more. Some authorities claim that people just neglect to see that their kids are not vaccinated at the right time. Why not make a chart out of a white piece of paper, put the kids’ names on it and when they had the last shot. Paste it on the kitchen wall, never mind the looks, the worse it looks the more you will look at it. If you and your husband are under forty it is a must for both of you. Don’t wait, see your doctor tomorrow. Better be safe than be sad.
---    For years down in our section, Windom in Cottonwood county has been held in high esteem. It is one of the very few county seats that does not have a liquor store. But many of its former friends were really saddened a while back to hear that the Boy Scouts movement had come to a halt because of a lack of adult help. Made us think of an item we had read three days before where one of the southern states had a law whereby when a juvenile was convicted of vandalism, the mother or the father had to serve out the sentence in the county jail. The two Boy Scout troops in Windom were sponsored by two churches.
---    Other countries have their own customs. Was reading the Montreal Star, largest paper in Canada. In the birth announcement column, the words “Both well” appeared in 90 per cent of the notices. “In memoriam” notices of deaths in the family crowds 4 columns of this 44 page paper. Most of them contain appropriate verses of poetry. The cost is 30 cents a line, some of them have 14 lines making a total of $4.30. “P.S.” The Star will furnish on request a booklet containing appropriate verses. We noticed that memoriam went back to 1939.
---    Next thing on the program is an auto without wheels. Don’t laugh now. Fifty years ago we used to shoot off 25 cent rockets on the 4th of July. That same force pushed an airplane across the country in four hours, top speed 700 miles an hour. One of the wheelless autos was on display at the Auto Show. The vehicle is operated by a jet of compressed air which will hold the scooter and its passenger a fraction of an inch above the ground while it moves in any direction. Ford is doing the research work.
---    Best news for coffee drinkers in ten years. The bottom has gone out of the Brazilian coffee market. The Santos grade is now wholesaling at 41 cents a pound and you can now buy it for later delivery in New York at 32 cents a pound. Brazil is just raising too much coffee. If they want better prices they will have to dump eight million bags in the ocean.
---    He was one of those quiet boys that had a morbid view of life, so his parents were sending him by train to visit relatives. They told him to put his name on a card and put it in his pocket. He did so beginning with “In case of an accident, this was Johnny Smith.”
---    Some merchants still claim it does not pay to advertise, at least they act that way. Listen to this. The Ladies Home Journal has just closed the book on the March issue of 1959 and the total amount of advertising comes to $3,233,445. The Coca Cola folks must have got mad at something back in 1954 as it quit advertising: they are back in the March issue.
---    It might interest you to know that the first state to proclaim Lincoln’s birthday a holiday was Minnesota. Gov. Dave Clough signed a bill on Feb. 12th, 1895. Minnesota was the first state to offer Lincoln troops at the start of the Civil War.
---    Business is about as bitter as war. The P. Lorillard Co. is paying chain stores for favored spots on their shelves for their cigarets. It pays $10.00 a year for level eye places for its merchandise. Business is a real science.
---    By the way, we forgot to tell you that at the Chicago Auto Show 17 U.S. made cars were shown and 32 foreign makes. Will there come a time when the U.S. will bar foreign cars?
---    The New York Giants baseball team did not do so bad in moving to San Francisco. It doubled the attendance of the year before. Giant stock is a good buy. Last year (1958) stock sold for $165. Now it is $400 a share.
---    With Edgerton drilling test holes for new wells and Murray County lakes going bone dry, we can say the state is dry at both ends. The Minnesota county bordering on Canada dug 200 ponds last year to conserve water. The federal government paid for 80 percent of the work on the ponds. It’s been drier there than this before in Murray county. One fall during the steam thresher days, old John who hauled water for the Sabin & Gilfillan outfit had to drive his team over six miles to get a tank of water. Creeks and lakes were dry. Sometimes threshing outfits were halted for hours. We now, we were cutting bands then.
---    The South Dakota senate approved a bill compelling a skull and cross bones sign to be placed on every package of cigarets, but still retains the tax because it needs the money: not very consistent. What are they going to put on the booze they sell. Liquor kills more people in a year than cigarets. You never heard of a man beating his wife to death with a package of Camels.
---    Up here where we live the weather this winter so far has been mild and the snowfall has been limited to ten inches. Some parts of Minnesota have had bitter cold weather. Up at Hallock two main water mains froze up and burst: odd thing about it was there was a blanket of three feet of snow on top. Must have had a real cold spell.
---    Farmer is going to be against farmer in the legislature when the oleo bill comes up. It’s going to be the soybean farmer against the man with the milk cows.
---    Here’s a car pool problem that was settled by the Ohio Supreme Court. A group of mothers took turns in driving the kids to school. One mother had an accident and the parents of a child injured sued for damages. The court ruled that the car pool was a “definite business arrangement.” The children transported were “passengers” and not “guests.” A “passenger” to collect damages need only show that the driver failed to take reasonable precaution. A guest must prove willful misconduct or gross negligence--a hard thing to do. Why not buy some accident insurance? ========================

February 12, 1959
   Send an orchid to the school board at Kearney, N.J. The board said last September that students cannot return to school until they have been vaccinated for polio. A sensible regulation. The objectors say polio vaccine has not proved 100 per cent effective. Neither are the parents. The Salk vaccine is the best preventive known and every youngster should be vaccinated or kept out of school.
---    A strike over wages at a nursing home in Minneapolis resulted in the closing of the home. Some of the pickets tried to stop the ambulance from taking bed ridden patients out of the deserted home: and we called the Sioux Indians brutal.
---    At the rate the legislature has been working, there will be two special sessions.
---    No wonder Minnesota people go to Canada to fish in the summer. Every lake in Minnesota is open for fishing in the winter and many towns have fishing derbies or contests. One community had an outfit bore 500 holes in the ice so the fishermen would not have to lose a minute. The pheasant, the duck, the partridge have rest periods, but not the fish. They can be caught day or night almost the year round, that’s how we get the saying, “You poor fish.”
---    The tumult and the shouting died, but what became of Andy Knutson. Is he still in the dog house?
---    The lower house in South Dakota made a mistake when it killed that Cross Bones and Skull stamp on each package of cigarets. It would have more than doubled the number of cigarets sold. Every state in the union would have bought some and millions of cigaret smokers would have bought them for the unusual ad. A carton of the cigarets would have made a real Christmas gift.
---    Stop and read this one. The tax rate in the village of Lake Bronson, in school district No. 253, is 365.98 mills according to the Bronson budget. In the same issue we saw where a farmer had corn for sale in shock in field, and that is snug up against Canada. We remember here in Murray county when we had to stoop to pick the flint corn. We never really knew anything about corn until the Iowa farmers started moving in. Continuing on the tax issue, the editor of the Lake Region Farmer at Alexandria said “Personal property tax on an old 14 foot wooden boat is $7.00 a year and on the front page were these lines: “Numerous Alexandria dwellers were heard to vow they were going to sell out and move into the country.” And thus the tax story goes.
---    That Marie Torre, the woman reporter who went to jail for ten days is another neurotic person who craves the middle of the spot light. But she sent a breathless New York public to bed happy and contented when she told them she had taken her “panties and brassiere” to jail with her. Nice of her to mention fact as we did not know she wore panties.
---    South Dakota’s plunge into the realness of freak advertising reminds us that So. Dakota is one state that sells raw alcohol, the deadliest liquor of all, by the bottle at retail. Over in Minnesota you hardly even dare to speak the name of alcohol. You can have any kind of poison in your possession, but alcohol even in a 2 oz. bottle will put you behind the bars.
---    The men of Switzerland, assisted by some strong minded females, denied the women of Switzerland the right to vote at a recent election. ‘Tis well. Giving women the right to vote has not brought much good to the world, except to Swanson and the other concerns that make those frozen dinners, etc. Last year being campaign year, there were over 100 million frozen dinners, 400 million frozen pot pies, and 75 million fruit pies eaten. You just can’t save the country and cook at the same time.
---    Maine has made the first dent in the concrete highway turnpikes by having one constructed out of asphalt on a crushed rock base. The savings in the initial price will pay for all maintenance costs for 40 years and for riding comfort it beats concrete.
---    The legislature, or perhaps the committee studying the problem of raising the age of auto drivers, should listen to what happened at the police school at St. Peter last week. Fifty-one of the police officers from nearby villages and towns were in favor of raising the age limit to 18 years and the other 24 had various suggestions.
---    Gov. Freeman should cancel all outside dates and confine himself to the legislature. Those little dates tend to cause tension. Spit on your hands, Orville, take a handful of tranquilizers, and get in there and pitch. Don’t dodge anything and don’t ask anyone to do it. It’s your job and it may turn out better than you think. Remember, Governor, if you had cut taxes 20 percent there wouldn’t be room enough on your left breast for you to pin all the medals.
---    Minneapolis is not the only city in the basketball pro league that has financial troubles. Five of the top league teams are in the red. Basketball hits only for a spell, that is when you have a winning team. Detroit team plays to a thousand or less sometimes, while it takes $300,000 to run it a year. The Minneapolis Lakers are trying to move to some spot on the west coast. Pro football has the real spotlight in the sports world. Crowds will sit and shiver in near zero weather to see the games. Just why the South does not have pro football games during the winter is hard to realize. Why towns like New Orleans, Miami, Dallas, Houston etc. don’t organize is hard to understand; beside the local interest there is always the tourist trade and don’t forget the TV rights in winter time.
---    Time makes wonderful changes, doesn’t it? Years ago the trucks put the railroads almost out of business, now the shoe is on the other foot and the railroads are putting a lot of trucks out of business. They take the trailer end of the truck, load it on a flat car; some roads have box cars made to hold trailers. They call it piggy backing. Sears Roebuck saved $100,000 last year in using this method on mdse. distributed from Chicago to Denver.
---    Some of your folks who live ten years more, if the Russians let you live, will see some wonderful changes in airplanes. Ten companies are at work now on a plane that will raise straight up and land anywhere; that will be a blow to the cement makers: no more runways.
---    The threatened raise by State and Uncle Sam on gasoline has raised hopes for an electric auto. They won’t be practical for long runs but for gadding about town and delivery work they would be handy. A California firm is getting out one in March that will run 70 miles before you have to recharge the batteries. The car sells for $2,300 and can be towed in just as easily as a gasoline operated car.
---    Whether the law, climate or taxes we don’t know, but the movement of business plants to the southern states continues. Was surprised to learn that two of the largest dairy outfits in Wisconsin moved bag and baggage to South Carolina. Reason given was milder climate, saves feed and wages down there are about a half or less than in a northern state. ========================

February 19, 1959
   So the Ku Klux Klan, or rather its ideals, rides on the icy wastes of Lake Shetek. The placing of sickles and other old machinery on the lake so that the nets of the rough fish seiner would be destroyed, is typical of the Klan. It could have been a paid job. If so, the agents should have been sent t St. Paul with a couple of sticks of dynamite to blow up the conservation dept. It is the responsible party, not Plut the contractor. The gang that did the dirty work could just as well have gone to Plut’s home and stolen $300.00 It takes “brave” men to do work like that under the cover of darkness--and here we belly ached the year round about juvenile delinquency.
---    Federal aid brought tragedy to several northern Minnesota towns that put in waterworks with W.P.A. aid years ago. The workmanship was poor. The floor of the trenches was uneven at times so a saw horse was made out of 2 x 4’s and the sides and bottom filled in with clay. The 2 x 4’s rotted out, the mains became uneven. The frost pressure came then came the cracks. In some places the corporation cocks were hammered in and the threads stripped. Stephen, up to the first of January had 12 water mains crack, other villages smaller amounts. The worst hit was Warren, the town that paid $645,000 for a water pipe line 8 miles long, had so many breaks the new big reservoir was emptied and the town was without water for several days. The winter of ‘58 and ‘59 will long be remembered in some sections of Minnesota.
---    Either the folks at International Falls do not have thermometers or don’t believe them. At the U.S. weather station 377 calls were received in one day inquiring about the temperature. It was 36 below that day.
---    You can’t tell anything about who manufactures the most autos. That is regulated by the unions. We noticed where 25,000 Chrysler employees had been laid off on account of a strike at the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co.
---    Just finished reading the story of Marv and Persa Lawrence of the Heron Lake News, of their trip to Cree Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada. If you are a fisherman, don’t read it. Your teeth will water so badly you’ll be drowned. Fancy throwing back 15 pound Northerns; three of them catching two tons of fish in a day and threw them back. The most of the Northerns weighed around twenty pounds. The Lawrence’s have caught more big fish than any other two people in the state. we fished for over fifty years and the biggest Northern we ever took was out on Hortons Lake near Longville. It weighed 14 pounds.
---    When the Unions closed an old folks nursing home in Minneapolis we noticed two of the patients were taken to the General and the rate was $32.00 a day. Rates like that no doubt would keep the Murray County Memorial Hospital out of the red. Hospitals are a public service institution and must have their ups and downs. The hospital would be in the black if three mangled bodies with broken backs, legs and arms would arrive daily for treatment. But who wants that? See there is going to be a male administrator, which will not cure the ills. We had a male administrator, remember. Sex does not make any difference when the business does not come in. We in a way should thank God for the healthful conditions of the people in the county. The heck of it is, a hospital is like a doctor, we spend year after year in good health and never go near him but when we get sick we get mad when he is not on the other end when we call him. The same is true of a hospital.
---    A bill has been introduced in the Nebraska legislature giving the voters the opportunity to decide whether they want a 2 cent sales tax. The proceeds, however, will go to the school fund.
---    The employees of the village of Baudette that joined a union last year have announced their withdrawal from the county, state and village union. They were not suited with union bargaining.
---    There is a case against the town of Mapleton on the Blue Earth County docket. It is the one case that counties dread, “selling too much liquor to a man who got involved in an auto wreck.” There used to be an old time saloon keeper who let his drunks lay around and sleep until closing time. Then he would load them all in a sort of bus and start the team. He had a hand bell and would ring it at some homes. The woman would open the upstairs window. He would ask, “Is this Mrs. Duncan?” If she answered “Yes,” he would say, “Please come down and pick out your man.” That saloon keeper had no lawsuits.
---    A bill has been introduced in the North Dakota legislature to raise the truck limit from 50 to 60 feet. When three of those big trucks would come in a row, both passing and meeting them would be a problem for the driver with a timid heart.
---    Even the impeccable Wall St. Journal gets it on the knuckles once in a while. It had an editorial a while back criticizing our foreign policy. It said a $500,000 saw mill is still in the crates at Iran because it could not handle the heavy teak logs. The Journal said, “Who Goofed?” E. B. Foss came back and said there are not teak wood within 1,800 miles of Iran. Teak logs are small. It grows in the wet countries like Burma, Siam, etc. Besides, Foss said, all teak trees are girdled so that they can dry out. The Journal did not answer, but we learned a lot about teak.
---    U.S. tobacco is finding plenty of competition in the world markets. Brazil is getting in the game, the Hollanders with their East Indies tobacco are butting in to South Africa, down where the Boers live, raising a lot of tobacco. Red China is making a real dent. It raises the cheapest tobacco in the world. Had a package of the South African tobacco last week, made in Johannesburg, South Africa by the Orient Kallesberg Tobacco Co. We looked for a heavy tobacco but this brand was light, perfumed and a little aromatic. The following note was in the package so you can easily tell what is in it. “Die Tabak in hierdie pakkie Is’n Sonderlinge Memmel van die Keurigste Flaaftbak en is Gewantborg om Soet en Mellig te rook.”
---    A decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court last week surprised ninety-five per cent of the people. No justice of the peace, no municipal judge or district judge, not even the supreme court has the authority to revoke or even suspend any auto driver’s license, drunk or sober. The only one who has the power to issue, suspend or revoke an auto driver’s license is the state highway commissioner.
---    We always felt sorry for the guy that was the judge in the prettiest baby contest, but his job was nothing to that of the judge at the egg show at Gibbon. There were 150 entries in the best dozen of eggs class: just where does one start?
---    Folks in the east are demanding a 3 cent cup of coffee which is still going down. Coffee for delivery in February is being sold at 23 cents. December coffee can be bought at 30 cents. Remember this: coffee is the green state, has to be roasted, ground and then put in a fancy can before you get it. We remember back in the early days when Arbuckles, Lion, etc., sold for eleven cents a pound: it came in paper containers. ========================

February 26, 1959
   Minnesota is one of the seven states that cooperate with the federal income tax department. So be sure you have the same totals for both income tax sheets. If the examiner sees anything out of the way in your federal income tax sheet, he writes the Minnesota tax division and it sends a copy of your Minnesota sheet to Washington, D.C.
---    Some day you’re going to see a movement for a high tariff law. Shipments of almost every kind of merchandise is growing by leaps and bounds. Just take barb wire, for instance. In 1951 the shipments were 3 per cent. It rose to 5 per cent in 1957. No wonder we have so many unemployed.
---    Some folks don’t like Manhattan cocktails and some don’t like Martinis, but there is one coming and soon that we’ll all be glad to take. It will be a cold cocktail, a vaccine containing over 95 different viruses that will cure all colds, from those that lead to T.B. to a runny nose.
---    The pari-mutuel bill is before the legislature this week and it behooves baseball fans in St. Paul and Minneapolis to get on the ball. When pari-mutuel horse racing starts, baseball attendance will drop. Pari-mutuel is merely making gambling legal. We would rather see the state operate a lottery: the overhead would not be as heavy.
---    The water problem still bothers one northern Minnesota town. One town had a broken main and a crew of men worked a week and were unable to locate it. New electric appliances were used but failed to locate the break. The crew anticipated it would take another week. On the break end, there are 12 families that have been without water for two weeks. Some towns are just dreading how wide spread the W.P.A. workmanship extends.
---    Uncle Sam has an unusual form of crop insurance. He gives you a lot of discounts such as 5 per cent if you pay cash, etc. If you pay your insurance for seven years you get a 30 percent discount the 8th year.
---    Featherbedding is caused by unions compelling railroads to carry on the payroll men that are not needed, such as a fireman on the diesel engines. Unions claim that they’ve got to have them in case something happens. Bunk! A Greyhound bus driver encounters more hazards in a city block than a locomotive engineer does in a hundred miles.
---    In her column in the Moose Lake Star Mrs. Ruth Hanson writes, “We are truly sorry that we have had no response for another one or two families to help out so that all the boys who want to become Boy Scouts can have the opportunity.” Is Boy Scouting losing its interest with the older folks? An orchid to the Moose Lake American Legion. It took over one of the Dens.
---    You remember Kenya in Africa and its brutal slaying of the white settlers by the Mau Mau. Everything has been lovely for several years and the black women were back in the kitchen. All once came over the grapevine that the black hired help had been buying up all the rat poison in Kenya and the story was that on a given date they were to feed it to the white families; and the white women are now doing their own kitchen work.
---    California is the wettest state in the Union. It has 600,000 alcoholics and not all of them are men. Two thirds of the alcoholics started drinking when of high school age. Sixteen per cent of all fatal auto accidents were caused by drunken drivers. There someone pipes up with, “Look how much tax money the liquor trade pays to taxes.” Roger Babcock, economist, says “It costs the American people $20.00 for every $1.00 received from the liquor business.” In case you did not know it, California is now the second state in population, with 13,651,500; New York is first with 16,095,000, yet California has more alcoholics than New York.
---    For the second year in succession Anheuser-Busch Co. has nosed out the Schmidt Brewing Co. in the beer race. Hamm’s Brewing Co. comes in eighth.
---    The fox bounty law is up again. To date the score in 25 counties have discontinued the payment of fox bounties. Twelve counties have reduced the bounty, the remaining counties are paying from $6.00 down on foxes. We noticed a Wisconsin man was arrested for getting a bounty in Minnesota on a fox killed in Wisconsin. A game warden says, “It is surprising how fast a dead fox can travel.”
---    The champion gopher trapper in Minnesota is Adam Bondale of Ulen. His record up to date is 11,000. Biggest day was 53, biggest month 640. Time was when Murray county was lousy with gophers. Some of you can remember your snaring days. We remember carrying countless pails of water that never drowned a gopher.
---    Over in St. Paul folks are pondering on charging admission to the Como Park Zoo. It has been THE show place of St. Paul for years, but the operating costs as in everything else has gone beyond expectation. Why not charge admission? You have to pay a dollar to get into the State Parks.
---    The U.S. auto manufacturers auto take a tumble to themselves. Last year 22,000 foreign autos invaded the home market. In January this year 40,000 cars came in, in the month of January.
---    Says “Bill,” “The game and fish department should be shot for allowing Fish Derbies. The biggest and best fish are taken and they are full of eggs. It’s a crime.” You’re right, Bill. They had one up and Rainy Lake and the fish taken out lowered the water in the lake less than three feet. Here are the results. The largest fish caught was a 4 lb. 12 oz. Northern. The most fish caught was won by a man that got two 2 lb. 12 oz. northerns, only one perch was caught. The top prize went to 10 year old Karen Johnson. He hooked the only wall eye and it weighed exactly 4 oz. Twelve hundred people attended the derby on one of the best fishing lakes in Minnesota.
---    Texas has gone a step farther than most states. The new bill which Gov. Freeman should eye provided that all unclaimed accounts in banks, insurance companies, oil companies and other lines would become the property of the state after seven years.
---    We still hear grumblings and rumblings about the members of the legislature voting themselves an expense account of $1,234 if you lived in the rural districts and $850 if you live in the cities. Singly it does not look so bad, but when you put them all together it comes to quite a slug, being around $350,000. Some of the members of both bodies should walk over to Gov. Freeman’s office and beg his pardon for calling him a spendthrift. Heard of one man who used to live in a district north of the Twin Cities say, “If the man who was elected had told the voters that he was going to vote for $12 a day for expenses, he never would have been elected because he would never have been nominated.”
---    Mid-southwest Minnesota has a large dead T.V. zone. Cities in it seem to be New Ulm, Mankato, Fairmont, Sleepy Eye, etc. A new effort is being tried, this time by the Watonwan Television Improvement Association. (St. James is the county seat of Watonwan County). There are over 2,500 T.V. sets in the area that have more snow in them than there is on the ground. The new company plans to erect the new tower near Godahl which will give the area as good service as Minneapolis. They plan to have Channels 4, 5, 9 and 11. Membership is $50, and then what it costs to change your act over. Mankato says it will have its Channel 12 station going this summer. New Ulm is still striving to put up a station so there should be relief soon, if too many cooks don’t spoil the broth.
---    Some cities have an ordinance making it a crime to leave your car key in the car. One woman failed to do this. A man stepped in the car and away he went, but he hit another car injuring the occupants who are suing the lady for a good-sized sum, for damages caused by her negligence in leaving the key in the car: how would you vote on this one?
---    One can’t really afford to be deaf this day and age. The Dahlberg drug co. will sell you a Twin Optic Ear Model for $713.00, and they pay the freight.
---    If any man in the U.S. has earned a rest it is John Foster Dulles and he should be, we’ll say, relieved from his office. No man will ever get well at his age brooding and worrying over the world’ trials and troubles. ========================

March 5, 1959
   Here’s something queer in state laws. A freight train leaves St. Paul daily for the west. At the South Dakota line it takes on another brakeman. When it comes to Montana the excess brakeman gets off, but when the train nears the state of Washington a third brakeman is added. Queer but true.
---    It is doubtful if you will see many of the electric autos in Murray county. They cost around $3,000 and can run 100 miles on batteries that can be recharged at home, cam make 56 miles an hour but the ground has to be level. It cannot make the Buffalo Ridge west of Lake Wilson, has not enough power; would be all right in Slayton but a joke in Hadley or Chandler: going up a hill puts too much strain on the batteries.
---    Up at Moose Lake in one of the best fishing districts in the state a fishing derby was held recently. Eleven hundred tickets were sold at a dollar apiece, and 500 holes were drilled in the ice. The ice was 30 inches thick. The first prize, a 5 1/2 H.P. motor, was won by L. Rudebeck for catching the heaviest fish: he caught a 3 1/2 pound sucker. Second heaviest fish prize went to Mrs. Fules, it was a Northern Pike and weighed one pound and one half ounce. Third heaviest was a perch that weighed one pound. Getting closer to home we are no better. Ray Smith and Burton Fowser, two top fishermen in western Murray county, we saw in the Pilot entered a derby at Lake Yankton. The two of them caught one five inch bullhead. They have it mounted but both want it to hang over their fireplace. Justice Nett will probably have to decide who caught the fish.
---    The state of North Dakota is an odd one. You can’t have a parking meter in any town. The law says “No Meters.” If a Minnesota contractor wants to bid on a road job, his bid must be 25 percent higher than the North Dakota bidder; South Dakota has the same kind of a law. A bill will be passed at this session in Minnesota that the Dakota bidders must raise their bids 2 percent if they get a job here. Here’s another odd thing about North Dakota that isn’t so bad. The Pelican Rapids Enterprise had this item about taxes: on an adjusted gross income in North Dakota of $13,204 you pay $236 state income tax, in Minnesota it is $472. A $6,387 income in Minnesota pays a tax of $98.89. In North Dakota the tax is $37.95. It is an odd state, isn’t it?
---    Had a nice visit with Don and Mrs. Weck last Sunday. They had been visiting at Drexels and drove over. We remember one fine service Don and the rest of the hospital board did the county. It was in the formative period of the hospital and the board traveled hundreds of miles gathering valuable data for the county commissioners. Mrs. Weck had not been at the Home before and was surprised at the comforts. While here they visited Rev. Husted, a former Presbyterian pastor at Slayton.
---    In Le Seuer county there were 111 foxes that drew bounty in January. Last year there were 217. In 1957 bounty was paid on 196 adult foxes and 145 cubs. In 1956 there were 281 adult foxes and 244 cub bounties paid. In this county it seems as if the more you trap the more there will be next year.
---    Whiskey in any shape, from a cocktail to a shot of straight whiskey, is better for old people than milk, said a speaker last week before the California Medical Society. The speaker, who took his future in his hands, also said that milk contained too much calcium. Bad for elderly folks. He said milk was good for young cows and young humans but not for old agers. The speaker was Felix Kolb, researcher at the University of California. He ended up with “Alcohol if you are going to use it is not the best, but it is a better item in the diet of oldsters than milk.” That may be true, but don’t start drinking now. Whiskey has caused more trouble and pain than arthritis.
---    It looks as if the Watonwan (St. James) TV association has the pole in the TV race in south central Minnesota: total amount collected last week was over $60,000.
---    Pungent, according to the dictionary, means “Acrid, sharp and biting.” Here’s all three in a few words. A woman was being interviewed on a TV book review program. The announcer said with a smile, “Your husband must be quite a book worm.” Without batting an eye, she replied, “Oh no, just an ordinary one.”
---    Oil tankers are now being used to carry grain to Europe. They carry 36,000 tons of grain. Haul it to Antwerp for $4.35 a ton. It takes 18 days to make the trip and when the boat arrives the grain is pumped out; but we never stop to think what will become of those small ships put out of business.
---    Here’s the kind of company to work for A Brooklyn company gives a $400 annual raise to each of its employees for each new baby. Add to that the $600.00 federal reduction and both Pa and Ma can say, “Welcome Stranger.”
---    Pretty soon you will see the picture of a woman on a whiskey bottle. For years the whiskey dealers said it would be poor taste. Times and tastes make many a change and you soon see a picture of “The Lady of Distinction” ogling at you when you tip the bottle up for a shot: “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
---    Some cities do not allow trailer camps, they say they depreciate the price of real estate and the kids jam the schools. Trailers are growing. Last year some were 60 feet long and 10 feet wide. Custom made trailers made today have three to four bedrooms and are modern throughout. They cost $13,500, but the family car don’t move them. It takes a specially designed tow truck when you want to move to another town.
---    The worst subsidy given the farmer is the Soil Bank. This plan is strangling out the life of many a small town as well as crimping business in the larger ones in a county. Take Kittson county for instance: that county today has 96,000 acres in the Soil Bank, broken down means 616 quarters will not raise crops this year or next. Six hundred and fifty farmers joined the Soil Bank in 1959. You can see what that means to the small town: the farm machinery man, the man that sells gas and oil, the lumber man, the electric appliance man and every other line of endeavor. Some of the men leave their farms and work in the cities. Kittson County had a population of 9,649 in the last census. The population of the towns is 3,810. It is a good deal larger than Murray county, but it has lots more waste land than we do. For comparison, Sibley county has only 8 farmers in the 1959 Soil Bank. In Kittson county the farmers get $12.50 an acre, they don’t worry about drouth, hail, army beetle or naval worm.
---    We notice some of the country newspapers held a poll on the Daylight Saving law. The poll did not arouse much enthusiasm. Out of 127 votes, only 19 were in favor of it. ---The Minnesota Tax Payers association says Minnesota taxes on personal property are $32.00 higher than the national average. The next paper tells how mad some St. Paul taxpayers are. Three years ago their summer cottages on a Wisconsin lake were $87.00. This spring they hit $237.00. ---- Here’s a tip to Minnesota’s legislature and Gov. Freeman. A measure has been introduced in the Georgia legislature to put a 2 cent tax on bottles of soft drinks. Georgia is the birth place of Coca Cola.
---    Why not let the voters decide on the presidential primary law and the Daylight Savings law. We believe the voters would favor the Presidential law. Let the people rule. ========================

March 12, 1959
   Last week there was an item in this column about a medical man saying that milk was injurious to old agers on account of the amount of calcium in it, at which a number of people disagreed. Now comes Dr. Alvares, a former Mayo Clinic adviser who says, “Good old fashioned coffee is one of the best of the brain stimulants.” From the number of cups of coffee drunk in Minnesota during the last sixty years, Minnesota must be the brainiest state in the nation.
---    Revolting tax payers in the state of Washington are going hog wild against any increase in taxes, saying they will not ask any additional service from the state. The movement “took” from the start, and thousands of letters have poured in on the legislature and the governor. It is a non-partisan movement and thousands of petitions are being signed throughout the state: best thing for the legislature to do is to fold up and go home.
---    A Tulsa bank tried out a new check plan. It printed its checks on post cards, thought it would save its customers 3 cents. It did, but some of the postal folks got too nosy and knew too much about the neighbors’ financial affairs. So it is seldom used now.
---    Going to the mail box in Minnesota must be a hazardous job. A housekeeper in Minneapolis sued her employer for damages for slipping on the icy spots while returning with the mail. The jury gave her $10,000 damages. His lawyer tried to get the verdict set aside, but failed. He took it to the Minnesota Supreme Court and every member of that body voted in favor of the defendant. The evidence showed that the housekeeper took a safe way to the box but took a chance on the short cut to the house across the icy spots. “The longest way round is the safest way home.” Remember this when you come to an icy spot on the sidewalk. It is up to you to seek the safe way.
---    The trading stamp business is on the way out. Some wanted to pass a law to prohibit the trading stamp, it is better to go this way. In the final analysis the consumer pays in the end.
---    A reader asks, are the farmers the only ones receiving subsides? No, of course not, and yet no group is more entitled to it than the farmer. It was the farmer who built this country, not the butcher, blacksmith, tailor, barber, editor or banker. It was the farmer who led the way, ever searching for more land they moved farther and farther west. Took the brunt of brutal Indian attacks, but they still kept moving and when they had a section developed the villagers moved in. Always on the move the farmer kept on developing until the central west had been won by farmers.
  Our own county of Murray is a striking example. Farmers were here when they had to drive oxen 75 miles to New Ulm for supplies. They also had to go east and work in the harvest fields and in the pineries to get money for real necessities of life. Of course there are crabs among the farmers the same as in the newspaper business, of which we are one. We wish we had space and the ability to give them their full credit.
  But it was subsidies we wanted to talk about. There are business subsidies; mail subsidies 6 billion, business reconversion payments 43 billion, to maritime organizations 3 billion to air lines $614 million, a total of over 56 billion dollars. Fourteen magazines from Look, Saturday Evening Post down to the Coronet receive subsides of nearly 40 million dollars yearly. This comes in the difference of the cost of handling and the price they pay. Then there are little things like the luxury liner, “The United States;” the government subsidy on her was 40 million dollars. Another thing, the Commodity Credit Corporation farm priced support program losses from 1900 to January 1958 have cost the taxpayers less than subsidies to business, through postal deficits alone from 1946 to 1956. And don’t forget the high tariff days of McKinley. It was a subsidy that brought billions to the industrial east. Mark Hanna and his cohorts carried the election with the slogan, “A Full Dinner Pail.”
---    The Watonwan county TV outfit reached its goal for subscriptions. The advantage in the St. James TV station is that it will have 4 channels, something needed in baseball and for fall programs at world series dates. ---When we drive down to Minneapolis, we pass through a part of Richfield, a 17,000 suburb of the city. This town has a real record. It has an off ale municipal liquor store that sold $1,241,303 of merchandise in 1957 and the net profit was $273,780 and going down to the small places, Longville with a population of 116 made a net profit of $14,773, that was in 1957.
---    Had a card from Mr. and Mrs. Fred Freer and Mrs. A. W. Cook of Heron Lake who were spending a short vacation at Hot Springs, Ark. The ladies are sisters and former Lake Wilson residents. Mrs. Cook (Ellen Halbostad) became interested in hospital work in her home town several years ago. The city council turned over the running of the city hospital to a board of competent women and men and Ellen is a member. She had been chairman of this group which had done a wonderful job. The women on the board are in touch at all times with qualified and willing helpers who can be had when needed and when the crisis is over they return to their homes. The hospital has been in the black lots more times than it has been in the red. Ellen used to baby sit for us in the old days at Lake Wilson.
---    The city of Detroit, Mich is also experiencing hard times. There are 190,000 workers without jobs and strikes and a little depression paints a dull future. The number of people drawing food is double that of a year ago. One person in every ten in the city’s 203,000 is eating surplus government food. The city ran out of money and the state can’t hel0p much It is trying to raise the income tax and raise the sales tax from 2 to 4 cents. There are worse places to live than Minnesota.
---    The representative from Big Stone county has introduced a bill in the legislature to limit the holdings of the Hutterites in Minnesota. They have a colony in the county that now has 2,200 acres. The Hutterites must be the best farmers in the county. They work hard and intelligently. Over in South Dakota they shocked everyone by moving in on land that a white man could not live on and made it blossom like a rose. If you have a farm close by a Hutterite colony it is worth real money as the colony expands. They live unto themselves, have their own religion, pay their taxes and obey the laws, yet they are to be curbed in the land of the free. Another thing, there is no juvenile delinquency among the Hutterites.
---    Here’s one hard to believe. Veal liver was selling in Minneapolis last week for $1.29 the pound. ========================

March 19, 1959
   Texas is another state that is having a hard time deciding where to get new taxes. One proposal is to ax all airplane tickets, trading stamps and advertising. Why advertising? Why not plumbing, lawyering, horse shoeing, tailoring, golfing, etc. Idaho ended its tax raising problem by passing a $10.00 head tax on every person that pays an income tax in that state.
---    We had a real feast last Tuesday evening. It was a feast of male singing voices. Seventy of the Chanters of Zurah Temple came over from Minneapolis and gave us a real concert. Seventy rich and clear, harmonizing in a program including songs you love, and climaxing in “Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory Of The Coming Of The Lord,” comes only once in a lifetime.
---    Marching in Washington demanding more jobs is starting at the wrong end. No use creating new jobs and leaving the door open to inventors who bring out labor saving machinery. It seems that 90 percent of the inventions are devise for the sole purpose of saving human labor.
---    Water mains were still busting in several towns in northern Minnesota last week. Some say those many frost breaks are due to the extremely dry fall in 1958. Huge cracks were made in the gravel in some sections. We remember in the ‘80’s when the ground was so dry that the crack was four to five inches wide.
---    What do you know about a sales tax anyway, asks a reader. Not much, brother, but when over half of the states have it, it must have some value. Strange thing is, if it is as terrible a tax raising source as some Minnesotans claim why don’t some of the 33 states repeal the law?
---    Dick writing in his dug out in the Lakefield Standard commented sadly on the drop in interest in basketball spirit in the last two years. Some time back someone wrote, “It’s not who wins, it’s how you play the game that count.” That sentiment is as much out of style as the bustle. The slogan today in any American sport is, “We don’t care how you play, even if rules and regulations are fractured, but you’ve got to win.”
---    Whether you like Harold Stassen or not, you can’t help admiring his ambition. He will be a candidate for the office of mayor of Philadelphia. We remember the day he came to the courthouse at Slayton in his one man campaign for Governor. He went from office to office extending greetings. His remarks were short and to the point. No one can say that Stassen did not make a good governor.
---    It’s coming to the point where it will be cheaper to die than to go to the hospital. We don’t know anything about it out here. In the fully equipped Massachusetts General Hospital the daily cost of a patient ten years ago was $10.60, today it is $35.47. Why? Because you get better service, more new medication, more specialists with high wages. We can remember the day when nurses at the Home hospital got $30.00 a month.
---    A fifteen year old Montgomery boy took an auto, drove through several stop signs. He had no license, but he hit an electric light pole and then a garage, was arrested and was back in school the next day. The last part doesn’t sound good to a lot of people.
---    The most widely used drug today next to aspirin are the tranquilizers. One scientist says there are forty different kinds on the market. The most popular is the Miltown. This drug quiets the nerves and relieves tension and may be a tax payer’s friend. Southern California was planning a $30 million hospital for mental cases but the job is being held up: many mental cases are being cured by the tranquilizers. A new drug called Mavsilan is being used in cases of severe depression. There’s another drug that will curb the amount of sleep needed. One doctor said he used it last summer and was able to cut down his sleep from six hours to three hours. This drug should be called the Daylight Savings pill, but don’t try any of them until you talk it over with your doctor. He knows more about you than you do yourself.
---    The General Cigar Company is coming out with a new stunt. Mail it an empty cigaret package and they will send you in return a package of Robert Burns cigarets.
---    Shakopee, one of the wettest towns in the state may have a real battle soon. The town is wringing wet, has five saloons, three off sale places in drug stores and three clubs, and many of the citizens would like to see a municipal saloon. They look with envious eyes at a couple of towns north of them. Richfield, with its $273,780 profit and Edina with its $135,073 profit on their liquor stores, and wonder why they can’t do the same. It would take a load of their taxes they say.
---    We had the pleasure of a visit with Mr. and Mrs. Herman Oldewurtel of Holland, and Mrs. Lizzie Priebe of Slayton. Herman, a former Murray county boy, is now a county commissioner in Pipestone county has a keen insight of the county affairs. He was telling us that the old Indian school buildings are being used as an Old Folks Home and has a total of 30 residents, and Lizzie who we’ve known ever since the year one, looked spry and happy at 76.
---    How quick one can drop out of sight. Four months ago Coya Knutson was on the front page of the dailies, now it’s never. Coya must have a job in Washington, D.C. as she still lives there, while good old faithful Andrew is back running the hotel at Oklee, at least he was last week. Oklee is in Red Lake county and the population is 494.
---    Making fresh water out of sea water will be here in a couple of years by a new process that will cut the cost. That will be all right for cities near the sea, but it won’t help water conditions in inland sections. Uncle Same should make arrangements with Canada for the surplus water in Great Slave Lake, Athebaska Lake and Lake Winnipeg, and make an artificial river through the U.S. to the Rio Grande. It would cost money of course, but figure up the amount of money we give now to foreign nations and then visualize the amount of water that could be sold to cities, commercial outfits and farmers along the way down.
---    The Mainettes are real angry at the Uncle Ben’s Rice Company. It claims that its rice satisfies the appetite for potatoes and is 20 per cent less fattening. It pays to advertise.
---    Here’s that real law suite again. The little village of Watson in Chippewa county with a population of 284 has been sued by Mrs. Josie Lund, age 70, for $100,000. She suffered injuries in an accident and claims that Alden Sumden who drove the car had been drinking too heavy in the Watson liquor store.
---    We are really sorry to see the presidential primary law go Remember how the Minnesota voters spelled the name Eisenhower with stubby lead pencils? Those men and women helped elect a president of the United States. A chance that coming voters will not enjoy. In the democrat primary Kefauver swept the state with Coya helping him, then paid the penalty last fall. The bosses are back in the saddle again.
---    Your senator, Joe Vadheim of Tyler, has been leading the fight against a Daylight Savings law and it looks as if he is going to win; March 13th. ========================

March 26, 1959
   Saw quite a discussion in Russel’s column in the Mankato Press about which was the basic unit in the home, the family or the individuals. In 99 1/2 percent the basic unit in the home is--Her.
---    The Big Three: G.M., Ford and Chrysler made a bad guess on the small car question. Last year 383,000 small imported cars were sold and dealers say that 500,000 will be sold this year, while mechanics walk the streets of the hall of congress looking for work.
---    From the Texas Denver-Harbor News you can see how other folks live. California celery 6 cents a bunch. One ad, “Hair Cutting 75 cents.” Folgers Coffee 65 cents a pound, fresh cabbage 3 cents the pound, oranges 6 cents a pound. Carrots, bananas and turnip tops 6 cents a pound, fresh calves liver 49 cents a pound, jowls 25 cents, fat dressed old hens $1.25, freshwater catfish (large bullheads) 85 cents a pound, large No. 1 eggs 47 cents and Joe’s Beauty Shop will give you a Rayette Masterpiece for $15.60; and by the way they have a poll tax, you must pay or you don’t vote.
---    Instead of buying new cars a lot of the city folks are renting autos. In Chicago you can rent a Ford for $10 a day and pay 10 cents for every mile you drive. A Cadillac will cost you $15 a day and 14 cents a mile. If you want to go on a vacation for a week, it is an ideal plan and they say they wave insurance costs and parking costs. Some of them don’t use a car much except on weekends. They claim they save a thousand dollars a year.
---    The time is here right now to take some of that defense money and buy vaccines with it, see that everyone is vaccinated free of charge. Today four out of seven Americans and that includes half of the children under six have no vaccine protection. We should protect ourselves against enemies at home as well as abroad. War does not leave its victims in worse shape than paralysis.
---    One of the real oddities of the year is the winter weather we are experiencing. The roads have never been closed on account of snow and we have not had what you would call a real cold day all winter. We have missed all those heavy snowstorms; of course there’s lots of time yet. Nineteen busses call here every week day and not one has been late.
---    Like the name of some of the 4-H clubs in Isanti county: Braham Lively Lasses, Braham Northern Lights, Bloomington Buccaneers.
---    While Southern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa were looking at seven foot snow drifts on March 22nd, Houston, Texas was looking at the first flower parade on water. The background of this colorful group of boats gaily decorated with flowers were the San Jacinto Monument and bans of azaleas and camelias. What a wonderful country we live in.
---    Some of you are going to live to see the day when a bald headed man will be a rarity. When a man loses his eyesight he gets specs, when his hearing falters he gets an aid. If he loses a leg or an arm he gets wooden ones. His teeth are replaced by better ones than he had, and look the number of men that get a new woman after diplomatic relations fail. But we shyly hesitate about a wig. You see more wigs now than you ever did, but you don’t know it. One firm in California employs over a hundred people making wigs. You gals who hate to see that young husband going bald write to Max Factor, Hollywood, California. He will send you a self measuring kit. It includes measuring tape, soft pencil, pliable wire and all the necessary directions. Don’t worry what the public says. That fine old grandma of yours used to wear, some of them, a huge bustle; folks knew it was not her own but she wore it until the Model T came in and she could not get into the back seat. The House of Feder, New York sold a million dollars worth of wigs last year. Factor sold over two million.
---    Nevada has the smallest capital in the U.S. Chief industry is gambling. The state collected $8,400,000 from “gaming,” they call it, and over ten million in a sales tax. The four main gaming games are roulette, craps, Keno and twenty-one. Surprisingly poker is not mentioned. All the professional gamblers must be licensed. There are some voters against gaming and the laws are going to be tightened this winter, starting with the fingerprinting of 8,000 dealers. Gaming is not confined to Las Vegas, nearly every town of any size can accommodate you when you get the urge. The welcome sign is always out.
---    In the same paper where it stated that the Radisson Hotel bars were closed for 10 days because some of the employees sold beer to minor “university students” was an item from Oklahoma. This state is dry but not bone dry. The wet and dry election comes up next month. The University of Oklahoma Club scheduled a debate on the west and dry question but had to cancel it: no student offered to take the dry side.
---    We noticed an item in an exchange that Minot, N.D. has eight to ten feet of snow remain on the ground. It is the heaviest snow fall on record in that section. Keeping the roads open must have cost a lot of money this winter.
---    Had an interesting visit with Paul Harmsen, Master, and Jay York, Sec’y of my home town lodge at Lake Wilson, who were up here attending the Grand Lodge. We talked of the things that were and the things of today. Paul also visited his grandmother, Mrs. Gene Meyers. They were accompanied by Don Meyers of St. Paul, a son of Mrs. Meyers. A very good time we had.
---    Do you know how the Sioux, Chippewas, etc. came to be known as Indians? If you do your memory goes back a long ways. When Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Gunnani on October 12, 1492 he thought he had landed on the East Indies so he called the natives Indian and the name spread to all of North America. He named the island San Salvador.
---    Which is right? Over here we call it the sales tax. The London Daily Mail calls it the purchase tax. A lot of folks say they are both wrong.
---    This winter was a cold one in spots, but never as cold for the traveler as the early day winters. The hotels were of wood and not even back plastered, rooms had no carpets, the windows rattled, there was no insulation of any kind, no heat and all the plumbing there was you could hold in your hand. Ninety per cent of the men slept in their underwear, some of them heavy as horse blankets, some carried newspapers, they spread them out under the sheets to keep out the cold. Temperatures went to near zero sometimes. Remember one man at the old Park Hotel overslept one morning (this a fact) dressed in a hurry and ran downstairs with his suitcase in one hand and the big pitcher that stood in the wash basin in the other, gave the clerk a dollar for the room and a dollar for the pitcher and rushed to the depot: he had dropped his false teeth in the pitcher the night before and the water had frozen solid.
---    Had a letter from Don Pattinson who spent the winter in Florida; he will soon be on his way home. He says the winter this year was free from cold and excessive rains. Walt Lowe and Mary were over to see him last week. They are leaving soon for Phoenix, Ariz. where they will visit his brother Tom for a few weeks. Don sees Mrs. Frank Reaney and her daughter Ihla and family, often. Has visited the Emil Minders several times. Emil is still supervising engineer on the 5 million dollar school house. His wife Helen is much better in health this winter. He also said the colored question is seething. a negro can go into any store in Lakeland and spend his money, but he can’t eat, sit or assemble in recreational areas with the whites. ========================

April 2,l959
   The new administrator of the Memorial Hospital, LeRoy Anderson, seems to be a young man with a lot of energy and tact which he can use to good advantage in the hospital problem. LeRoy, why not take the hospital to the county by giving talks to the Farm Bureau, Farmers Union, study clubs, Auxiliary, etc. Prepare a set of charts showing every detail of the hospital administration, also get charts of fees of similarly equipped hospitals in this section of the state. You’ll be surprised how much interest you will create. Don’t be afraid to advertise your hospital. The best advertised business in the state of Minnesota is the Mayo Clinic. Put your heart in it, LeRoy. Folks want to know why the hospital doesn’t tick.
---    Eggs are too plentiful this spring. The quality eggs in Chicago last week were 33 cents a dozen, twelve cents under a year ago. Another farm product that is away down is potatoes. There was no frost in Florida this winter to help them out.
---    Iver Holland, Murray County old timer, made us a brief visit last Friday. We were in the assessing game for several years. Iver moved to Minneapolis some time ago. Then he moved back to Slayton a year ago. He’s lucky to get back home. You can buy all the comforts in the world but not happiness. Happiness is where the heart strings are.
---    The pari-mutuel horse race betting bill was recommended for passage by the house committee last week. The proponents of the bill were frank in saying that it was not for the sport of the thing but the amount of money the state would receive in profits from the bettors. This being true, why not a state wide lottery. It would bring in twenty dollars to the pari-mutuel one. Tickets could be sold by the county auditors using the same system as it used over selling hunting and fishing licenses.
---    Cheer up folks, there are five states lots worse off than the North Star State. They are Michigan, Washington, California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Governor Furcola of Mass. says “We’re at the end of the line.” Most worse off is Michigan. Gov. Williams says, “We won’t have funds to pay our employees this summer.” Detroit is the most worse off of any city in the country. Its cupboard is intensely bare. Why doesn’t the city council ask General Motors or Ford for a loan of a hundred million dollars. They made their billions there. These states are bad off, they haven’t even didies: we’re only down to our B.V.D.’s in Minnesota.
---    You remember reading about Moses striking the rock and lo the water flowed. They are still getting water in Israel by artificial means. The rain maker in Israel is Samuel Jaffe, director of its artificial rain division. How does he work? First of all you must have clouds. When they appear he phones 8 generators. “Start the furnace going.” White smoke of silver iodide rises to the sky, inducing the formation of icicles and causing the clouds to yield rain. But remember you must have clouds.
---    The villages of Arco and Tyler received state wide publicity at the state basketball tournament. A girl from each town was arrested for shoplifting. There is no grouping shoplifting. That’s deliberate. Poor girls, they got a stinging that will cling to them for years and just think the superintendent of their schools was notified not to let them attend another state basketball tournament.
---    It’s really refreshing to see so many people say a kind word for the Hutterites whose only crime seems to be that they work hard and have their children attend their own church schools. Lots of churches in Minnesota have their own schools and colleges. Why not the Hutterites? Of course they never can be real Americans: they don’t have juvenile delinquency, don’t drink whiskey, don’t play Bingo or don’t smoke cigarettes.
---    Wish some bright newspaper man who knows would write a condensed story about this Berlin crisis. Tell us how and when it started and how we got fenced in. Eighty per cent of the people don’t know what it’s all about.
---    And speaking of tobacco, “B.C.”, before cigarettes, tobacco was legal tender in some sections of Virginia. It was good as gold; in Hampton, Virginia tithes to the church were paid in tobacco for nearly fifty years (1723-71), total amount raised each year was around 70,000 pounds. Preachers were paid 250 pounds a sermon. The vestry book shows that Mr. Barlow was paid 3,590 pounds of tobacco for 17 sermons, while the minister received 10,000 pounds of tobacco per annum. That church is the Episcopal church of today. Fancy getting five tons of tobacco a year. The folks in England were eager to get it. Instead of flower beds, most folks in Virginia grew tobacco in their front lawns.
---    The town of Roseau has a fish Derby Day at Lake of the Woods. It drew a mob: over 3,000 people. Folks that got there at 8 a.m. were not able to get a hole until 3 p.m. One of the reasons may have been that the ice on Lake of the Woods is 4 feet 5 inches thick. Might be a good idea to take your skates with you next June.
---    Here’s grand news for you gals. There’s a new auto body out now that can’t dent. It’s made of Plaskon with glass fiber reinforced. The body is easier to keep clean and it does not corrode. That will save you getting a swell supper for that man of yours, the days you dent the car.
---    When it comes to taxes on the much abused cigaret, New York leads. The tax there is now 14 cents a package: looks unfair to us, and we don’t smoke the filthy things. More men and women should smoke pipes. You get “thought in the early morning, solace in times of woe, peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere your eyelids close,” and worries about lung cancer are gone.
---    A steel strike this summer may plunge us into a war: our war seem to come when times are bad and they’ll be bad if the mills strike.
---    Talking to a tax payer this week from Murray County. Of course the hospital problem came up. He said it went in the red for about a dollar for every one in the county, and he added, “I’ll be glad to pay it. It is insurance that you will have a place to go when the emergency comes.” That remark brought something back to us w had read a couple of weeks ago. In a town not 100 miles from Slayton, the basketball team went stale and the athletic department ended up with a deficit of $1,200. The school board assumed the debt and there was no beefing. The town has a population of over 1,600.
---    Noticed that fifty students in Minneapolis, when they had finished taking their examinations went to a 3.2 spot to celebrate. Someone heard the noise and phoned the police. The rounded up the bunch. If one of the daily papers had published the names of the students on its front page it would have had more effect on juvenile delinquency than hiring ten extra policemen. Folks in the middle class hate this kind of publicity.
---    Here’s another thing that aids unemployment in the auto line. Five years ago the U.S. exported 5 times as many cars as it imported. This year the ratio will be exactly reversed. ========================

April 9, 1959
   If you are partly deaf you may get a kick out of this item. We read in a London paper, “As three rather deaf men motored out of town, the old Ford rattled so badly that hearing was rather difficult. The driver asked the man next to him, “Its this Wembley Street?” “No,” he replied, “It’s Thursday.” “So am I,” said the man in the back seat. “Let’s stop and get a pot of tea. I’m thirsty too.”
---    Take your hat off to the board of education of Albert Lea. It’s not going to have a flat 5 per cent or a 10 per cent increase in teachers’ wages. They are not going to get any increase unless they are worth it. The automatic increase of so much to all teachers is a thing of the past. It is as foolish as the seniority rule, which is full of holes and incompetence.
---    London had a pretty good idea for the tourists. It has a Go-as-you-please ticket. It costs you $3.50, you use it for seven consecutive days of unlimited travel in the subways, buses and the trolley buses.
---    Had a letter from Henry Anderson of Lake Wilson, who is visiting his sister Helen at Hammond, Wis. He said they took the high roads so did not get a chance to call. Henry is one of our outstanding citizens. Was interested in R.E.A., banking and many township jobs. Always reliable. He has lived in Chanarambie township for 60 years. Helen’s daughter Ruth is a linotype operator at the West Publishing Company of St. Paul. Henry’s daughter Margaret is with her dad. They drove to Glenwood City, Wis. to visit H. R. Lexvold and Roy Meyers, former Lake Wilson bankers. They are now in the banking business in Glenwood and their friends in western Murray County will be glad to know they are doing well.
---    Don’t forget that April 15th is the dead line on your income tax returns. Better mail it in the forenoon. If you mail it late in the afternoon you will not escape the dead line. Your letter must be post marked April 15th.
---    The solid south may be in a mess when it comes to public schools, but the way business is moving in is a caution. The south gained 1,158 plants in 1957 and in the depression year of 1958 it gained 255 new plants, and every one of these plants employs 25 or more persons. There must be a reason.
---    If you are looking for a cheap vacation this year go to Britain. You can rent a Ford car there for 5 pounds a week, that is $14.00 in our money. It will be at the dock for you when your steamer arrives. Prices include insurance and free mileage. Top prices are 17 pounds during August. They have motel cars over there. Wonder why we don’t have them. They sleep four people. Complete cooking and eating facilities are built in. You have no motel worries, but you must drive on the wrong side of the road.
---    The Sears Roebuck financial empire had a slight jolt a while back. The company owns the All State Insurance Company. Some New York insurance man had a bill written up that would forbid mail order stores and retail stores from selling insurance; strange to say it passed the lower assembly, but was killed in the state senate.
---    Here’s a new device that may help save some lives. It’s an anti-sleep button that fits in the car: when the driver’s head starts to nod after a long siege of driving, the little device starts shrieking until the head straightens up.
---    Over at New Richmond, Wis. the city election will be held next week. On the same day in another building a school election will be held. The city election opens at 9:30 and closes at 5:30. One school director is to be elected and the polls are open from 9:30 to 5:30. Some difference between the school election laws in Minnesota.
---    If you are a teetotaler you can get cheaper fire insurance now. We knew there was one on autos, this is the first one on buildings.
---    In the Boston Globe last week we noticed that Gov. Furcolo was urging and begging the Assembly to pass a sales tax law and tax commissioner Capeless was saying it was the only way out of their tax situation. He said they could expect $120 million from a retail sales tax. They are in a bad way. We also noticed a couple of ads in the Globe. One said New York dressed 18 pound turkeys, 29 cents a pound. The other said roasted chicken all cooked and stuffed 49 cents a pound.
---    The North Dakota legislature extended the 2 percent sales tax until June 1961; they must like it up there.
---    Time was when the real deadly part of footwear was the toe of a man’s boot. Like everything else it has changed to a woman’s shoe--not the toe but the heel. Stop looking at the legs and watch the heel. A hundred and fifty pound woman with narrow high heels, if she steps on you, her heel will exert a pressure of 2,500 pounds the square inch. Better be safe than sorry, have them take their shoes off before they nestle in your lap.
---    Highest priced auto in the world today is made right here in the U.S. It is the Chrysler Limousine and is listed at $15,750. The next highest is the Cadillac four door hard top. It is listed at $13,240. Highest priced car in Europe is the Rolls-Royce sedan. It comes at $12,530.
---    A Japanese auto appeared on the market last week; this ought to increase the unemployment line. Will we have to go back to the days of high tariffs?
---    What the Minnesota legislature will do is unpredictable. When the big jam comes, you won’t know the measures that become laws.
---    Down at Mankato a group of boys bought one of those bombs used for eradicating moles, gophers, etc. They opened the storm door of a home, lit the fuse, then shut the storm door and ran. The lady hearing the noise went the door, opened it and the fumes knocked her cold. She had to be taken to the hospital. One of the boys is 13 years old. Up at Moses Lake there is a new pattern of devilishment. Property owners arose one morning and found that during the night some one or two had clipped 6 inches from the top of their Colorado Blue Spruces, firs, and other ornamental shrubbery, of which the owners were so proud--what next?
---    We lay the blame of 80 per cent of juvenile delinquency squarely at the feet of the mothers. The mothers of today dominate 98 per cent of the husbands. They should lay off the old man for a while and start dominating their sons and daughters.
---    Chas. Peliquin of Mankato with his box boat, the Sea Scout, was a daily diet for home folks last summer and they’ll be surprised to know that up to this date he had gotten as far as two miles down the Minnesota River, where he is in the “banking” business again. He spent all winter studying about South America when he ought to have been looking after the equipment. The power he uses now gives him no control over the boat. Another thing: he can’t back up his boat, has no power for that. Better wait till fall Charley, and have a race with a satellite. When the Scout jammed into the bank, it turned around and is now headed up stream. ========================

April 16, 1959
   The “wet” wets had a real battle at Shakopee with the medium wets, and they won out by a big majority; a municipal saloon is as far away from Shakopee now as Jupiter.
---    Years ago Minnesota had a poll tax or head tax. You either had to pay a dollar or work on the roads or streets. It was discontinued in the ‘30’s. Nebraska still has a head tax of $3.50. Minnesota’s tax applied only to men but the Nebraska tax applies to everyone between 21 and 59 (last year the limit was 49).
---    Visiting us Thursday afternoon was Mr. L. Zimmerman of Kasota, a grand daughter of C. W. Slayton who founded the village of Slayton. Her father was Ted Humble, who had the first lumber yard in Lake Wilson, and later depot agent at Dundee for 15 years. Also calling was Mrs. Betty Jacobson of Minneapolis, a daughter of the late Dr. L. A. Williams of Slayton. It was a busy afternoon for us but we liked it.
---    Notice in an exchange that a small country school in Isanti county just twenty miles north of St. Paul hired a man at $1.25 an hour to sit in the school room and maintain order among unruly pupils.
---    The Minnesota State board of health is a step or more behind the Wisconsin dept. Wisconsin has an x-ray bus or truck that makes the state and takes x-rays of all adults, free. This is one of Wisconsin’s methods of combating T.B. You only have to take off your outer clothing. Reports on the x-rays will be sent to you in 30 days. An x-ray picture will show the disease long before symptoms appear. The slogan on the bus reads, “Stop T.B. before it stops you.” Why can’t Minnesota have an x-ray T.B. bus?
---    District courts in Minnesota and Wisconsin have decided that it is O.K. to trounce students when they start being unruly. So send your kids to school when you can’t handle them yourself.
---    We evidently erred on the thickness of the ice in Lake of the Woods a while back. Kittson County Enterprise said last week that the ice on Lake of the Woods is from 52 inches to 5 feet and 2 inches in places. River ice in many streams is frozen to the bottom. Ice should be cheap up there this summer.
---    There’s a scarcity of ghost writers in Washington, D.C. Ghost writers are the men and women who write speeches for the President, senators, representatives, Army, Navy and heads of bureaus. The ghost writers are a class that know how to make words and phrases talk. A senator does not have time to write speeches any more than the rest of the top hats, so they call in their ghost writer. Tells him what he stands for and what he is against and the writer clothes them. There are 150 ghost writers in Washington now and a university in Washington will have a course for ghost writers in the fall.
---    The Teamsters Union is trying to unionize nurses and hospital employees. The hospitals are already in the red and if nurses and workers unionize they will be redder. Prices on rooms will zoom and the Blue Cross would have to up its premiums. One truck loaded with oxygen was stopped by pickets. Many people will die. or could we say be murdered. on account of lack of medicine.
---    Bay City, Mich. is in the same state as Detroit claims it has solved its transportation problems by buying Volkswagen and Thames busses. “Only a drop in the bucket,” you say. The Scots have an old saying, “Many a mickle makes a muckle.”
---    Farmers must be getting a good price for hides these days. Tanners and shoemakers are paying 75 per cent more for hides than they did a year ago.
---    Auto tires are not giving the service they did years ago. Increase in speed, quick stops and starts have been hard on the tires. Fourteen inch tires wear out faster than the 15 inch size.
---    Babies now have their own hotels. Westfield, N.J. has its “Lullaby” that boards infants up to a year old. The prices look pretty stiff: for keeping the baby from 5:00 p.m. to 8 a.m. are $5.00. If the folks wanted a week’s vacation they would care for the infant for $40.00 Ma has to bring the formula and the diapers.
---    Some eastern cities have had to widen their bus seats two inches. Wish the Twin City bus would follow. Last fall we came back from Minneapolis on the bus, only seat available was that with a fat lady who had never heard of slenderizing treatments, part of the time we were in her lap and rest of the time we were on the floor.
---    Medical scientists in Saskatchewan, Canada have produced a drug to fight alcoholism which induces hallucinations and then the psychiatrist goes to work on the mind. Some of you folks still remember the hypnotist that traveled with shows. He would call kids and some grownups on the stage and hypnotize them. Make them do anything he wanted. Why couldn’t he do the same thing with drinkers. Get them under and then start making them hate liquor. Up in Canada the report is that 50 per cent of the extreme cases have been cured. What a blessing it would be to humanity. The name of the drug is lycergic acid diethyl amide.
---    You now can buy a rebuilt picture tube for the TV set for $15.00 less than a new one. There are 55 million TV sets in the U.S.
---    Honestly now, did you or can you ever remember anything that has gone completely out of mind and sight as the segregation question. Armed troops, marching feet, bombs, governors and riots have vanished.
---    Short fat men who look as if they had a tumor out in front and some big fat men who are in the same plight can now rejoice: the vest is on its way back. A keen eyed observer who watches the TV set tells me she has seen men on the screen of late wearing a vest. Besides being a good gravy catcher they also cover that dimple above the tumor.
---    Saw a storm kit that interested me. It contained a hat cover, raincoat and rubbers. It was dress up suit cover. We thought what a boon it would be for fishermen. Remember the day when they were biting good and it started to rain? Here is your complete outfit made out of Goodyear Vinyl film in textured Gun Metal finish. Comes in covered case, you can throw it below the seat, costs $5.98. Complete rain insurance. The rubbers are sturdy and stretchable.
---    Young men in the Ivy League who have been taking Juvenile Delinquency, although it is not on the curriculum, are doing their schools a lot of damage. Forty students of Yale were arrested for raising heck, at the same time a committee was trying to raise $110 million for new buildings, and it hurt.
---    Minnesota folks are concerned in the iron mines in the Lake Superior region for more reasons than one. They will be surprised to learn that fifteen years ago it supplied more than 80 per cent of all iron ore consumed in the United States. The same region supplied only 60 per cent of the ore needed last year. This is not due to a depression, but to competition from Canada and Venezuela. Their ore is a high grade quality ore and it costs less to produce it. Last year foreign ore accounted for 21 per cent of the ore used in the United States. Other sections that produce ore are Alabama, New York and Texas. In the lengthy article not once was the word incentive used. ========================

April 23, 1959
   Saw a piece in the paper that said if a man could hold his breath for 30 seconds his heart wasn’t in such bad shape. Shucks, that’s nothing. We’ve seen men stand still, eyes wide open and mouth closed when the wife would start her tirade. Talk about 30 seconds: they were petrified for 3 minutes.
---    After we wrote to them about the Isanti County school last week that needed a policeman to keep order, we thought we would write the County Supt. and see if it was true so we wrote a letter and addressed it to the County Supt. of schools of Isanti county and enclosed a stamped envelope. Either the supt. did not get it or it got lost as we have not heard a word.
---    Can a state collect income tax from you if you do not live in the state. Many men live in New Hampshire but are employed in Boston. Massachusetts says it can collect taxes and put New Hampshire workers in jail that do not pay income to Massachusetts. New Hampshire is fighting for its citizens.
---    Iowa raised the cigaret tax from 3 to 4 cents and lowered the smoking age from 21 to 18.
---    In north centre and further north the hospitals were community affairs. Village and county residents organized community hospitals. Ran across an article of the annual meeting of the Pelican Valley Hospital. It will interest some of you It was more of a social event than a business one. The minutes of the last annual meeting were read and approved. Then the sophomore trio sang. The auditor read the financial statement. There were no questions. The president gave his report. The have a membership of 928 and $9,500 was paid on outstanding notes. There were 735 patients during the year. Then two boys sang “Red Wing.” Then the Auxiliary told what they had done, and it had done a lot including canned goods, and that was all. There was not a word mentioned about the operative expenses and they all seemed happy.
---    One of the hardest things to do is to write about what bills will be passed by the legislature.
---    In two years the American people will be regimented in the size of envelopes used in mailing letters, etc. After July 1st, 1961 the smallest envelope you will be allowed to use is 3 x 5 inches. Those cute little cards about “It’s a Boy” will go in the wastebasket and also those long ones. It costs too much time and money to handle them.
---    When you talk about gasoline wars think of Talinkina, Texas. State and federal taxes are 9 cents a gallon, but at one time it hit 7.9 cents a gallon. Tight buyers were filling their cars then siphoning out the gas in cars and then going back for more. The war only lasted a day, but the dealers sold ten times the usual amount.
---    The cost in auto insurance is going higher and higher. No wonder, fixing a windshield in 1949 would cost you $37.00. In 1959 the cost goes as high as $147.00 on some cars. Every gadget and every curve or fin means higher insurance and repair bills. Juries on accident cases seem to have the old fashioned idea, “soak the company,” forgetting in the final analysis they will have to help pay it if they own a car. Minneapolis is one of the few cities that is not raising insurance rates this year.
---    Odd isn’t it that the states don’t get together on a national tax law on autos. At the present time 17 states now charge a flat fee, seven on horsepower, and most of the rest use the weight method; nine states are trying to raise registration fees this spring.
---    The last we heard of Charley’s Sea Scout was that it was stranded on a 300 foot gravel bar and he was going to use dynamite. The Scout will pass down the river a mile away from us. Charley should have copied the first steamboats that plied the Minnesota river 100 years ago. They ran from St. Paul to Fort Ridgley. Here was the ad in the St. Peter Courier June 3, 1857. “The Midora, fine light packed and fast running, will run during the entire season between St. Paul and Fort Ridgley. The Midora draws only 14 inches of water. (Charley’s boat draws 36 inches.) A rival steam boat, Equator on the same run, in its ad said it could run on a heavy dew.
---    Here’s something that is going to make a lot of females stand up and take notice. Scientists say there is a substance in cigarets that may cause a person to grow older. This comes from one of the biggest gatherings of scientists: wrinkles and lung trouble are not a very pleasing combination.
---    The American people are willing to believe their doctors except on one thing: vitamins. The National Medical Association and a score of State Associations have stated that the average food for humans consisting of meat, bread, vegetables, etc. furnishes all the vitamins needed except in extreme cases. There is hardly a family in which some one does not use vitamins. The alluring and seducing ads of the vitamin peddlers are just too much to resist and we look wisely at the vitamin bottle that tells us of drugs we never heard of before or since. We do not know what the weight is or what it is for but we keep on taking them. One thing we are suspicious of is the line, “you can’t take too many, they won’t hurt.” That was not true of all medicine--we remember one called Castor Oil.
---    If music has charms to soothe the savage beast, then there is not a real mean male or female up where we live. Last week Thursday we had the classy Roosevelt group of a hundred voices and they were good, and Sunday afternoon we had the Minnesota University Alumni band: a bunch of former members of the band who loved music and still play for their own enjoyment and for the pleasure of others.
---    This is maple sugar time up north. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. The biggest “sugar bush” is on the Chippewa reservation near Grand Portage. It is said to contain 600,000 trees. Farmers in the east are selling maple syrup for $7.00 a gallon: cold weather kept down the flow of sap. Syrup may go to $10 the gallon.
---    Here’s another angle to human nature. A Boston grocery store filled a lot of baskets with canned goods, marked “Your choice for a dime.” They went like hot cakes. They were all taken from the shelves that morning, where they were labeled ten cents.
---    Here’s a couple of orchids for an eye specialist. He suggests for better safety and for more comfort in driving that all concrete roads be tinted green with yellow dividing lines. On a blistering hot day, driving against the sun on white pavements is worse than irritating.
---    The Minnesota lower house ok’d a bill for a drunk test for drivers. Rep. Podgorsiki of St. Paul voted against the measure, asserting that when people are drinking they are more careful about driving. According to his theory, if every driver was drunk there would be no accidents. ========================

April 30, 1959
   Here is a story worth reading. It’s about people like you and me and what people can do. Forty years ago Kittson county up near the border was forty miles from a hospital. Trains were the method used to get seriously ill people to a hospital. Someone called a meeting. It was well attended. Officers were elected and solicitors put to work. They worked the county like a fine tooth comb getting all the way from $2,000 to $1.00. With the proceeds they built the Kittson County Memorial Hospital in 1921. This unit was used until last year when it was sold to the county as a Home for the Aged. A new modern hospital of 34 beds was completed last year and business started booming. It has been averaging a 30 bed load and sometimes as high as 45. In a letter President Ward said, “We chard $10.00 a bed in double rooms and $14.00 for a single room, and the administrator gets $7,000 a year. There is an auxiliary of over 500 members. They made all the drapes, etc. for the new hospital, also do the mending and sewing.” That’s what people can do when they want to. The county board appropriated $10,000 to the first hospital in 1921 and $5,000 to the new one last year. Murray County has 14,000 people. Kittson County has 9,000.
---    That county treasurer commissioner at Redwood Falls is an interesting character. He is a polio victim. He stole $25,000 from the county, gave $2,500 to his assistant who quit. How could a polio cripple spend $25,000 in any town without it being noticeable. Did more people in Redwood Falls receive money gifts from Ricbel? Who in a spirit of levity said, “The people are not out a cent. The bonding company will pay.” Bonding companies don’t pay anything. Other counties pay so much in premiums every year to pay for the thefts of crooked county officers.
---    Part of the longest pipeline in the world runs through Marshall County in this state and the county is not sorry about it. The assessed valuation for crossing seven townships was $333,318 and the pumping station at the Viking plant, etc. was assessed at $336,391. Quite a lift to any county.
---    Good news for the kids, in fact for everybody. The crop of seedless watermelons this year is bigger and better than ever: will be about 5 million tons.
---    Here’s a law that needs changing. If a county officer embezzles money from your county and it is not discovered until 3 years after he leaves the office, he cannot be punished in any way. Where was the state board of examiners for 4 years in the Redwood Falls case?
---    We’ve read all spring about grass fires and how they were damaging the undergrowth. It wasn’t thus in the early days. We lived in western Murray county in the real prairie days when fires would burn for days, some falls they would come over the Buffalo Ridge, started by a Milwaukee locomotive, and whipped by a stiff southwest wind. They jumped the Omaha tracks between Lake Wilson and Woodstock and then started for where we lived north of Lake Wilson. It was the duty of every settler to see that there were fire breaks around their homes, hay stacks, etc. So the fires you’ve read about did no damage, but they were beautiful at night. Every settler helped the fire along, for they knew that cows would starve eating the dried grass and a few green spears in spring. Most of all, settlers wanted the grass or their hay land burned. It was pretty hard for a wobbly geared champion mower to get very far in 2 feet of dry and down hay. For back firing we used sulphur matches, any of you remember them. Their fumes would choke an ox, but the prairie was beautiful in the spring.
---    What has this Volkswagen got that none of the rest has? You always see this name popping up somewhere. Did G.M. and Ford get caught without any bachelor buttons on the small car business. We see the King Cattle ranch in Texas has just bought two Volkswagen buses for fence riding patrols.
---    Canada is putting in a free hospital plan for its people, which will cost with the new hospitals three billion dollars. Of course it isn’t exactly free. We notice where a factory had is deducted at $4.20 a month for hospital insurance. The cost of the doctors’ or surgeons’ fees must be paid by the patient, but all hospital care is free. Of course if you a little uppity and crave a private room you’d pay for it, if not ordered by the doctor. The expense of running the hospital will be taken care of by special taxes. A grandfather on a Social Security check of $55.00 a month gets coverage for $2.10 a month, but a grandma, bless her, with no support but old age security pension, she is automatically covered and pays no premium. Hospital business is getting to be big business.
---    The St. Lawrence waterway is not going to help Detroit any. Special auto ferries are being built in Europe. The cost of the ocean haul from Liverpool to Chicago is about the same as the freight from New York to Chicago. Think of the many cities on the Great Lakes and the savings: no truck or freight rates from New York.
---    The sheer brutality, cruelty and torture of two Wisconsin young women last week equaled the savagery of the Sioux squaws at their worst. Those two young women from Madison, Mrs. Barbara Barry, 18 and a fifteen year old girl had it in for a 17 year old girl over boy friends. They shoved her in a car, the got Ronald Etheridge 2, a “man” to drive them to a lonely spot where the girls dragged the 17 year old from the car; they beat her and kicked her, slapped and scratched her after stripping her stark naked, when they were tired out they threw her into the lake. Then they drove back to town. The water was not deep in the lake. Mrs. Barry got 90 days in jail for her part in the beating and the 15 year old was committed to juvenile court. Able and brutal in her fighting she was still a juvenile. The “man” who sat and watched the beating got 30 days in jail. How low can men get?
---    We notice some county editors in Wisconsin are receiving a reserved seat ticket for a Milwaukee Brave baseball game. When he makes the trip he will write a little story about it. Not a bad advertising deal for the Braves.
---    Mrs. Fred Gass of Lake Wilson, Mrs. Fred Reubsam and Thomas Rule of Minneapolis visited with us Tuesday forenoon. Vera was on her way home from a visit with her son, Dr. Clinton Gass of DePaul University, Green Castle, Ind. and daughter, Mrs. Chloris Harmsen of Detroit, Mich. Clinton is advancing steadily in his profession. He was recently appointed state chairman of the Northwestern advisory committee established under the National Defense act of 1958. Mrs. Louisa Reubsam is an old resident of western Murray, living for a while in Bear Lake Woods. Tom is a son in law of Mrs. Reubsam.
---    Flu has broken out in northern Minnesota. In International Falls 500 pupils were absent, some hospitalized. Three of the teachers were also absent. This is the flu that was expected last winter. ========================

May 7, 1959
   With all its faults Minnesota never passed as dumb a law as Wisconsin did last year. It was so booze crazy that it passed a bill that made the state collect all liquor bills over a month old. Hotels as well as saloons who were behind on their liquor bills were called on by the Wisconsin Beverage Tax Division. Penalty for not paying is the loss of the license. Why not collect bills for grocers, plumbers, printers, doctors or anybody else?
---    The average woman would rather look good than be healthy. The U.S. Government tells them that 17 colors used in 90 per cent of all lip stick brands are unsafe. Again we would like to know who are the colors unhealthy for, the man or the woman?
---    For several years the country has been flooded with credit cards. You could charge everything from meals to plane rides. The charge was 7 per cent. The worm finally turned and a Royce club is now out with the opposite proposal. It is a restaurant card good at restaurants and if you pay cash you get a 10 per cent discount. The members of the Royce club pay $5.00 annual dues.
---    If you want to make a tent for the Boy Scout friend of yours, write the Army. It has enough duck on hand to cover 36 sections of land. It was bought during the Korean war but never used.
---    They must be having good times in Ohio: the sales tax jumped 33 per cent in the first week of April over a year ago. Louisiana did even better than Ohio in her state tax collections. Receipts jumped 27 per cent for the first quarter over last year. Some states must be enjoying a little prosperity.
---    White, branded a year ago as a criminal, is about the second most powerful man in the U.S. today: this is the land of opportunity.
---    Norwegians and those of Norwegian descent in Minnesota have been busy for months collecting cancelled postage stamps, any kind and from any nation. They ship them to Norway where girls put them in small packages and sell them to stamp collectors. The proceeds go to the children’s’ “Tubfirm” tuberculosis hospitals in Norway. Fifteen large sacks of cancelled stamps were sent last year by the Sons of Norway lodges. You can send some, the address is Neysben, Norway. Leave a little fringe of white paper around the stamp.
---    Don’t think that Minnesota is the only state that has woes over the Daylight saving Time. In Kentucky only two cities, Louisville and Fort Knox go on D.S.T., the rest of the state clings to Standard. Ohio is another split state. Akron, Cleveland and Youngstown are D.S.T. while Columbus and Cincinnati and the rest of the state are on Standard. Eighteen states have it in some form, no southern state has made a move for D.S.T.
---    There is the start of a real race in the auto line this season. Up to today the figures are Chevrolet 587,266, Fords 531,927. The Studebaker has made the largest gain. Last year up to this time they had made 11,422, up to the same period this year 64,271. Rambler did right well too, 1958 54,366, this year 127,714.
---    The Reynolds Aluminum Plant at the St. Lawrence river dam is the largest plant to get power. It is starting an innovation in handling aluminum. When it gets started it will furnish molten aluminum in crucibles to the nearby Chevrolet Company foundry, which is nearly finished and the story is that the metal will be used to make engines for the small Chevrolet car that Chevrolet folks are to get out this fall. The aluminum manufactured from bauxite is shipped in from Texas and Arkansas by freight.
---    And speaking of subsidies, the U.S. Government gives 3 helicopter passenger lines five million dollars a year: that should pay for a lot of gas.
---    We picked this out of Tit Bits, a London weekly. You might want to prove something by it. “Another marriage investigator in America calculates that the chances of a man marrying a girl with whom he went to school are only 1 in 70” nowadays. He also found out that for every wife who deserts her husband one thousand husbands walk out and disappear. Five per cent of marriages in the United States today are the result of mutual courtship, but in twenty per cent of the cases the man courts the woman while in the other 75 percent the woman chases the man, says the investigator.
---    The Moses-Saunders dam is the name of the large dam across the river St. Lawrence at Wasena, New York. It is 3,200 feet long and with every modern device has cut down the price of electricity. The big power plant can produce electricity for 4.3 mills a kilowatt.
---    Murray County had a real Russian Crisis at one time. It was called the Russian Thistle, a weed round in shape, gray, sometimes to 4 feet high. It had sharp spikes about an inch long and when of age was a nasty thing to handle. The crepe hangers said horses would have to wear leather boots and humans leather gloves. It created quite a scare. We remember seeing County Commissioner J. A. Paulson of Hadley with a crew of men in a cut in the wagon road between Lake Wilson and Hadley, demolishing it cautiously, and burning it. That was in the fall of 1889. Where it came from no one knows but it was gone in two years. When it was green the cattle liked it.
---    What about that youngster of yours. Has he had his third polio shot? Until he or she has had 3 shots they are not immune. Don’t put it off. You know how you would feel if they became polio victims, who would be to blame, not the youngster.
---    Had a visit from Gus Koyn, a Slayton old timer and his daughter, son in law and grandson of Minneapolis whom he was visiting. Gus was one of the first in Slayton that had a car to rent and we used to get it at county fair time 35 years ago to visit every town in the county with fair bills, so we had lots to talk about.
---    Chas. Polquin and his Sea Scout have made exactly 3 miles on the Minnesota river in the past six weeks and are still on a gravel bar. He should either start a river resort or learn how to play solitaire.
---    There’s a new tire coming out that will end flats. It is made of rubber foam material and they say it stands up for wear and give comfortable riding: won’t that be a blessing!
---    The Canadians shipped 4,900,000 lbs. of pork in various sorts to the U.S. the first quarter of the year. Canadian pork brings a better price than American pork. It is leaner than the local meat and that is what a lot folks want.
---    Here’s a car we’ve never heard of before. It is called Volvo and is manufactured in Sweden. The company plans to boost the number of cars shipped to the U.S. 90 percent over last year.
---    Jeering and trying to humiliate the Supreme Court of your state does not help develop good citizenship.
---    Had a letter yesterday from our daughter, Nola, who lives in San Francisco. It said that she just entertained Misses Mame and Gertrude Weber of Slayton and Mrs. Margaret (Weber) Weldon, who lives near San Francisco, at a lunch at Treasure Island. We know they had a good time. ========================

May 14, 1959
   The coming small auto has the Big Three brass hats in a daze. Frankly they say they are stumped. They would like to know if the small car craze is going to last. If so will a sale of the small auto of their make hurt the sale of a higher priced auto of their make, and worst of all is the price. A spokesman for the Chevrolet people said their small car will be $25.00 higher than the average priced low car from abroad.
---    After winning out in the liquor election in Oklahoma the west are fighting among themselves. The governor has recommended a tax of $3.50 a gallon. Some officials say it is too high and residents would go across the state line for their bottled goods. In Missouri the tax is 80 cents a gallon. Looks like the governor is going to be disappointed in his anticipated tax increase from liquor.
---    Mr. and Mrs. Frank Christie were over from Shakopee Tuesday for a short enjoyable visit. Frank was the depot agent at Hadley in the long ago and Ellen used to help gather news for the Hadley page in the Lake Wilson Pilot. The Christies spent the winter with their son at Los Angeles, California. Frank and Supt. Hodgson of the “Home” were neighbors in North Dakota.
---    Clare Booth Luce is not going to Brazil because of the natural tendency of most women to be poor winners. After she had been endorsed by a splendid majority she took a crack at Senator Morse when she should have kept still.
---    While bank robbing of the Dillinger type is out of date, banks are being robbed worse than ever by a quiet type of a bandit that goes up to the teller, demanding money “or else.” This is the fastest growing occupation in the United States. Last year there were 418 bank holdups: in 1957 there were only 278.
---    Ezra Benson came near getting a real dent to his prestige on that R.E.A. measure: four democrats helped uphold President Eisenhower’s veto. Anyway it showed that Benson is not overly popular in congress.
---    This country is going to have an army of unemployed, not like Coxey’s but a force of high class machinists. Unions are beginning to worry about a loss of dues. The substitution of electronics and mechanical devices are taking the place of lots in the women workers, as well as the men. We can remember the day in Murray county, whenever other farmers had a hired hand they got as high as $30.00 a month. Once in a while today you will see a farmer with a hired man, but he has 8 times as much land as was farmed by the same help in the early days.
---    This had been a bad spring for the bees, few blossoms are on the trees up here. Minnesota is second in honey in the U.S. When it comes to activity the bees have us all beaten. A bee must fly 40,000 miles to produce a pound of honey. As the bee only lives 8 weeks, it never is able to make a pound, so another bee finishes the job.
---    This section had enjoyed copious rains the past week.
---    Santos Brazilian coffee is selling wholesale in New York for 14 1/2 cents less than it did a year ago. Brazil is picking her new crop which will be 4,000,000 bags more than last year. They are just raising too much coffee. A leading broker said coffee is the lowest it has been in ten years and will still go lower.
---    While most auto drivers are aware of the dimming of the lights in some states when passing a car there may be a few that don’t get out of the state often. Most states have laws that forbid the passing of a car ahead of you at night, unless you dim your lights for at least 200 feet. Three fourths of the states have this law now.
---    There’s a new tranquilizer out, said to be 10 times more potent than the others. It is called Trifluoperazine and is ten times more effective than Chlorpromazine, could be, but we’ll stick to Milltown for a while yet.
---    Delaware has a whipping law for robbers. If you are arrested and found guilty you get 40 lashes. The law has been on the statute for some time but enforced for 7 years. The legislature passed a law last week to make it mandatory and it is up to the Governor. If the governor signs the bill it will be interesting to note what effect it will have on juvenile delinquency.
---    It we were the editor of a city daily we would put weather news on the front page. More people talk about the weather than anything else. First thing you hear in the morning, “It looks like rain,” or “It looks like a fine day” or “It’s going to be cloudy today.” Put the weather on the front page in plain English instead of having to stand on our head to read charts and such to tell us who “It” is.
---    The St. Lawrence seaway should help corn raisers in the midwest and that includes Minnesota. The rate from Chicago to Rotterdam is 24 cents a bushel now, before the new canal opened it was 32 cents.
---    Drove down town Sunday to attend birthday parties for our granddaughters Kae and Peggy Jean at the R. D. Elias home. This section was parched last Sunday; reminded us of the late summer of 1886. We were going on 14 and ran a herd of cattle. Only 145 that year. Got a dollar a head. Then there were no pastures--no fences. Rain failed to come and by late summer, water was gone with the exception of Bear Lake five miles from our home. There was not a furrow broken between our place and the lake. So we got up early in the morning, drove the cattle to Bear Lake then home to a late supper. That was a dry fall.
---    We herded cattle for several years in our teens. In fact “Cattle Herding” was our Alma Mater. When we came here in 1883 our Dad brought box after box of books. Herding cattle is a lonesome job. So we started reading. Had a leather school bag and day after day we would read and read. We had all of Sir Walter Scott, Dickens and Thackery etc. We choose them. With Scott we got romance and history from Ivanhoe to the Fair Maid of Perth; from Dickens we got natural human nature, from Scrooge to David Copperfield, including Mr. Pickwick. Thackery gave us Vanity Fair and Becky Sharp. He was a cynic, and youth and a cynic don’t blend. We had a set of Encyclopedia (Chamberlain’s), pretty hefty sized volume. We took one out. The pony turned his head quick, the book fell to the ground and split open. We graduated that night. We also had three months at the old school in Lake Wilson. Two teachers and 6 classes in the same room, and that completed our education, so if you see our English going away at times, just be grateful you had the opportunity to get a good education.
---    Seldom have we heard a legislature as bitterly criticised as the one of 1959. They meet adjourn and meet again ditto. The amount time spent on DST was enough to pass all the laws needed. ========================

May 21, 1959
   There’s a lot of whiskey drunk in Minnesota. Five cents on every fifth of whiskey consumed in the state brings in a total of $2,100,000. Whiskey carries the lead when it comes to taxes. An ounce of alcohol in whiskey is taxed six times higher than it is in strong beer. According to a bill before the legislature tobacco and cigars will be raised 20 percent. We’re going to move to Texas. It is the one state that does not tax cigars.
---    An attractive dress makes men turn their heads, so does an attractive package add to its contents in sale value. The Quaker Oats people were selling a package containing ingredients for the loaf of bread in a plastic bag with a zipper and a pregreased aluminum pan. The demonstrator opens the package, pulls down the zipper, breaks an egg in to mix the ingredients. Then pours it into the pan and shoves it in the oven. Actual time was one minute. The old way beating the egg etc. took 20 minutes. Time saved 19 minutes. The new package and the time saved will make it pretty popular.
---    The dam must have gone out of Lake of the Woods last winter as the water is six feet lower than it was last winter. Boat docks are high and dry and cannot be used and the resorts are in a bad way. The big paper mills at International Falls on the Rainy River are holding back a good head of water: they get the first chance.
---    One of the manufacturers of some of those new Instant food junk said, “Women will pay any price so they can stay out of the kitchen.” We don’t believe that. We know a lot of women who like to cook.
---    The Home fairly bulged at the seams last Thursday. The Annual State Convention of the O.E.S. was in session in Minneapolis and the delegates decided to come out to dinner. The officers came in their formals with the floating effect, reminding us of the hoop skirt days. Everybody was dressed up in their Sunday best and smiles, and it was a gala affair for “the girls.” Over 800 dinners were served. Among those attending from Murray County was a delegation from Slayton Chapter O.E.S. No. 62 who presented Mrs. Forrest with a 50 year pin. In the delegation were Mr. and Mrs. Carl Dickson and Mrs. Dorothy Bergman. Mrs. Bergman is Associate Matron and Mr. Dickson is Worthy Patron. Former residents of Murray County, we also met Mrs. Rose (Woodgate) Thorburn of Marshall and Mrs. Jane (Doonen) Tropel of Balaton. It was a big day for the Roamer.
---    Most baseball lovers saw and read the story of a baseball curving in the Minneapolis Star one day last week. Doing the curving was Miller pitcher Stub Stablefield. Stub is married to a former Murray County girl, Janetta Gayle, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Herman Oldewurtel. Gayle was born in the Home hospital at Slayton. Her parents now live at Holland. Stub, who is an Aurelia, Iowa boy used to pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals and is now retiring from baseball.
---    You’ll never guess what nation raises the most hogs: it is Red China. An expert says they raise one third of the 477 million total. Didn’t eating pork start in China? They kept them as a sort of religious pet the story went. One of the hog pens caught fire and in trying to rescue the hogs a Chinaman grabbed a half burnt hog with his right hand, stuck his hand in his mouth It tasted good and he tried to rescue more half burned hogs and the tasted good, too. Hog pen fires were soon starting every day and soon “Roast Pork” was on the bill-of-fare: that was thousands of years ago.
---    If you are going to build this year you will have lumber prices up. Green Fir two-by-fours have gone to $80.00 a thousand feet, up $8.00 since April and $21.00 higher than a year ago.
---    Some of our readers we know will be interested in what farms rent for in the old country. Back in Stirling, we notice in the Journal where a farmer was trying to get his rent lowered. The farm was owned by the town. It had been given to the town by a man named Cowane some time ago. The renter was paying nine pounds an acre which equals $25 in our money. Among other things he said was that the ditches are getting pretty old. They were built 200 years ago. The clerk got out the original document and said some of the Councilmen of Stirling signed with an X as they were unable to write. The date on the document was 1633, thirteen years after the Pilgrims landed in this country. No wonder the ditches were not working. The town named a street after Mr. Cowane. Many a town in Minnesota would name a greet after the person who would give a farm for some public service.
---    D. Karl Holezschub, a judge of the juvenile court at Darmstadt, Germany, has a new method of punishing juvenile offenders found guilty of reckless driving in which someone is hurt. He sends him to the emergency ward in the hospital where the victim is being treated and has him sit at the bedside for an hour for several days. It gives the reckless driver time to do a little thinking.
---    Charley Poliquin got an idea from the item we had in this column about the Sea Scout drawing 3 feet of water, and started lightening the load last week. He was throwing out asphalt ballast pipes and water pumps, etc. and has now made 5 1/2 miles from Mankato.
---    Visiting us last Tuesday were Mrs. Pauline Alanson of Balaton and Miss Leah Low of Omaha, Neb. They are descendants of the second family to settle in western Murray County. Their grandfather B. M. Low spent the winter of 1865 trapping in the vicinity of Bear Lake. He returned in 1866 and took up a claim in the woods. He was a Captain in the Union Army during the Civil War. The girls are nieces of ours and how we did enjoy their visit.
---    The most deadly weapon in the world today is not a machine gun, bomb, cannon, etc. It is that auto you drive. Since 1889 it has killed over a million people, more lives than were lost in all our wars: the auto is always loaded.
---    The A & P Stores, Daddy of all chain stores, reports increased earnings. The meeting last week was the first time the public shareholders had the right to vote. Before that it was a family affair. IT sold over 5 million dollars worth of mdse., the earnings were $54 million. It opened 227 stores, closed 172 stores in poor locations. It is now operating 4,252 stores: some outfit.
---    Of all things, “Life,” outstanding magazine in the United States is reducing its news stand price from 25 cents to 19 cents. ========================

September 17, 1959
   Pardon so much about “us” this week, but it is an even that comes only once in a life time. We had our day: the 60th anniversary of our marriage last Sunday afternoon at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ray Elias. We got there a little early which gave us time to see and appreciate the beautiful baskets of flowers. Two were from organizations, the Eastern Star of Slayton and the Masons of Pipestone. It was grand to have these floral offerings, when you are living, a dandelion will suffice when one is called hence. We opened promptly at 2 o’clock and from then on there was a continuous stream of callers. Folks we knew in days gone by and are still our friends. They also saw friends we had not seen for years. We are grateful to them for their gifts, flowers and their presence that afternoon. We must not forget the group of ladies and gentlemen from the Home who came to congratulate us and join in the festivities. We wish we could list all the names but we have not the space. One we would like to mention is Mrs. Winnie Campbell who for years filled this column. Besides a smile Winnie also wore a cast on her right leg. It was a big day for the women, these wedding anniversaries are dear to the heart of every female. Men are used sort of for window dressing. We had to wear a coat, sit in the same chair and had to keep our mouths closed when they were taking pictures. We are humbly grateful to Mrs. Ted Hill (former Grace Meyer of Slayton) and our daughter, Nola, who helped sponsor the event, and our daughter, Marjorie, furnished her home. Yes, there were plenty of refreshments served but the punch was spikeless. Those from a distance were Mrs. Emma Fisher (a sister of Mrs. Forrest) from Portland, Ore., Robert our youngest grandson and his wife Janet from Columbus, Ohio and Miss Leah Low, our niece from Omaha.
---    We had as dinner guests at the Home on Labor Day Mrs. Kittie Forrest and Miss Ring of Pipestone. Mr. and Mrs. Lee Hosmer and Mrs. Margaret Lentz of Lake Wilson. Mrs. Hosmer and Mrs. Lentz are sisters of ours.
---    On Saturday at the dinner hour Supt. Hodgson called up the two of us and presented us with a beautiful big wedding cake from the Home. It was about all Katie could carry.
---    Mrs. Emma Fisher (a former Murray county school teacher) left for home by plane at 11:30 Tuesday night. Nola, who we are going to miss, left for San Francisco at 12:30 the same night by plane to see the Giants win the National League, and we are getting back to normal again.
---    To the 256 people who sent cards, won’t you accept this little item as a card of thanks as it is a physical impossibility for us to answer personally.
---    Why does Congress want to stick its nose into major baseball? It is the grandest institution for boys in the world. No matter how poor you are or what your color may be or lack in college degrees you may have, there’s a place in basketball for you if you can fill the bill. If you show signs of being a star while you are in high school, some of the teams sometimes give bonuses of $40,000 to lads that have never seen a major league game. Know any corporation in the U.S. that will do that? It has a pension fund of hundreds of thousands of dollars which players participate in when they reach 50 after they had been in the major league baseball, we think it is 5 years. Some baseball players receive a higher salary than two thirds of the bank presidents in the U.S. Let baseball alone, Mr. Congressman, and if you must investigate try the prize fighting outfits.
---    In a nationwide survey Northern Minnesota comes first on the list of being the most free from pollen that irritates and encourages hay fever. Grand Marais is now the capitol of the most free hay fever spot in the U.S.
---    Our typist, Mrs. Laura McDonald, is leaving on a month’s vacation and we will have a new one next week, a bright cheery faced girl who cannot walk a step but goes all over in a wheel chair. Miss Bailey, who will take over, is 87 years old; it shows that even if your are old, you can do things if you want to.
---    We are going through the most dreadful period I Minnesota history. Down at the Red Wing training school for boys there are nine boys in murderers row. These boys range in age from 10 to 16 years. Five of these boys killed their parents or other relatives. The other four killed people while they were out vandalizing. Shocking isn’t it, yet no one seems interested in this record. We’re living in an age of indifference to anything and everything.
---    Only three states so far have reported smaller tax collection in 1959 than they did in 1958. The states are Minnesota, Nebraska, and Oregon.
---    If you like Minnesota wild rice, and who doesn’t, you’ll take smaller helpings this year. Heavy rains and winds kept down the yield. Last year wild rice sold at $1.90 a pound. This fall it will be $2.50.
---    The drouth certainly hit So. Dak. hard. It was the worst since 1936. Farmers over there are going to need a lot of help.
---    Noticed this item, it might be of interest to you. An insurance salesman was trying to sell a woman a policy, was getting nowhere. So he asked her, “What is the maximum of your husband’s policy?” She didn’t get it. Finally he asked her, “What would you get if your husband should die?” She pondered a bit and then said, “A parrot.”
---    That Volkswagen auto you hear so much about has only four cylinders, has 36 horsepower, length 160 inches, 59 inches high and uses 15 inch wheels, but they sell in the U.S.
---    A device for the detection of liquor on the breath of the drunken driver is being used successfully. Here’s a hint to some inventive genius. Make a device that will record the sober human breath. Make it about the size of a small mirror. The device is to be used by the gals before they leave their bedroom. You take up the device and blow into it and the needle on the gadget will register either good, fair, or offensive. Have the Listerine bottle handy, and if that doesn’t do the trick see a doctor. Many a lady has an offensive breath, but her best friends won’t tell her. The inventor should make one for men, big men who sport bow ties and are a cross between Beau Brummel and Casanova. Some of them have an odor which if spread on the south forty would increase the yield of the soy beans 30 percent. Graduating from the St. Barnabas School of nurses were two former Murray County girls, one was Connie Smith, whose father, Wallie Smith and two aunties, Mrs. Robt. Smith and Mrs. Harold Smith, were there for the ceremonies. The other graduate was our granddaughter Kae Elias. Kae was given a special award of $25.00 for excelling in her work in pediatrics. ========================

June 4, 1959
   If you have a farm hold on to it. Farms climbed to a new high in 1958. The total value of farms in the U.S. is $123 billion. The increase in price was 8 per cent over a year ago. If your farm is worth $200 an acre it did well while you were asleep. It earned in value $16.00 an acre.
---    Few people have any conception of the amount paid for advertising by some of the big firms. Take the Montgomery Ward catalogues. They have been coming to your house for generations. The company has a contract with the W. F. Hall printing company of Chicago to print all their catalogues for the next ten years: total cost over $100 million dollars.
---    The auto industry and freight loadings in car load lots hit the high peak last week. Car loadings were 24 per cent over the like period a year ago, and yet the streets are lined with men looking for work. What?
---    Have often wondered why the mother of the engaged young lady puts the notice in the paper; is it a sort of warning to the other young women to “Keep off the grass.” Why don’t men put in the notices? If they did they would be short and sweet, “Ichabod Roe announces he will marry Abigail Peabody, just as soon as he gets a new car.”
---    Can you imagine a field of wheat stretching from Slayton to Pipestone? That’s what there is on the Campbell wheat farm in Montana. In the spring, tractors plow and seed 1,000 acres a day. Last year 52 combines reaped a harvest of 700,000 bushels in 14 days, which was needed in this country as much as we need two Hoffas.
---    Second class mail rides to Mankato from Minneapolis in the very latest style. The P.O. Dept. fills a truck with mail, hauls it on a flat car, and the mail goes piggy back to Mankato where the P.O. Dept. has a truck engine end and it is hauled to the Post Offices. No railroad hands have touched the mail.
---    Another former Murray County youngster attained a fine position. His name is Owen Stubben. Owen is a son of Zeila Bondhus Stubben. The T. T. Bondhus family was one of the most prominent in Western Murray County in the early days. Zeila died when Owen and his brother were quite young and they were raised by Grandma Bondhus at Lake Wilson, and what a grand grandmother she was. Owen was a member of Lake Wilson graduating class of 1935. He then attended the university and then received his master’s degree in hospital administration. He recently returned from the Philippines where he had been engaged in administration work. Last week he was appointed administrator of the Glen Lake sanitorium in Minneapolis at a salary of $20,400.00 a year: there always seems to be room at the top. Congratulations.
---    Besides being Minnesota’s outstanding sand bar sailor, Charley of the Sea Scout is pushing Ananias. He’s been arrested four times in a month. His boat sale like everything else was a fizzle. He wanted $2,500 and the top bid was $1,700, so he’s on his way to South America again.
---    The youngsters were getting home from a camping trip. One fond mother said to her son, “Did you get home sick?” “Nope,” he answered, “But some of the boys that had dogs did.”
---    If you were a doting mother and lived in Christchurch, New Zealand and your only daughter whom you had been worrying about, told you that she was engaged, naturally you would write it up and take it down to the Press office, and hand it to the young lady, who would read it and hand it back, saying “Both parties must come here and sign the blank.” A proud father can’t call up the Press and say, “Just got an 8 lb. boy.” It won’t get in the paper unless it is authenticated by the doctor.
---    The Greyhound Bus line has increased profits the past quarter. No wonder, they have picked up everyone who had no railroad cars to ride in. Passenger trains don’t bring much money and we look for the N.W. that runs through Balaton to go within a year. Chambers of Commerce can’t very well urge commissions to keep trains running when they won’t patronize them. The March Greyhound quarter was the best in 12 years.
---    If the ordinary ham writer had written this little item, no one would have turned their head, but when Henry Ford II said it at the annual meeting of the company we all perk up our heads. Henry said, “Nobody can say when a new scientific breakthrough will result in a radical change in automotive design. It could come sooner than any of us imagine.”
---    Accessories in your car makes all the difference in the world to the amount of gas used. If you use power steering, air conditioning and automatic transmission, you’ll get 14.77 miles per gallon of gas at 45 miles speed. Take them off and you’ll get 20.3 miles.
---    Notice that when one state has a law that provides that when a person wins $500 or more in any kind of a contest or drawing, they must pay $25 to the county treasury at once, not wait until April 15th.
---    Here’s what farmers have been looking for. At the big gas show at Tulsa, Okla. a French manufacturer had a new truck engine on display. It will deliver 20 percent more power than the average motors and will run on unrefined crude oil, kerosene or whale oil.
---    Breeze, a detergent is having a contest this month and the first prize will be the woman’s height in dollar bills.
---    The new planes are a real headache for the armed forces. They are accused of breaking show windows, breaking TV tubes and even causing hens to lay eggs the size of marbles. The supersonic booms are what is causing the most damage. When conditions are right or rather wrong, they can break a window at 8,000 feet.
---    And when you talk about hospitals going in the hole, just think of the Mount Sinai hospital in Manhattan. It went $1,872,000 in the red last year.
---    Another thing done in New Zealand contrary to our custom is birth notices. Here we say a boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. So and So. Down Under half of them read, “Born to Margaret and Jim Overton--a son. Both well.”
---    If you want to start a factory, go to Ireland. They’ll give you their shirts if you’ll only come. Ireland’s economy is based on private enterprise, labor is plentiful, transport and power facilities excellent. Ireland also offers free grants for factories, no tax on export profits, no capital gain tax, no purchase tax and no sales tax, 100 per cent exemption for ten years on export profits and 35 years if your factory is at Shannon Airport. They must need factories.
---    Here’s a brand new stunt to increase business. A Safeway super market in New York has installed 12 washing machines in their stores. Customers can get their clothes washed free while they shop--what next? ========================

June 11, 1959
   This unfortunate accident should be read by some golf players. Ed McMillan, administrator for the hospital at Hallock is a real golf enthusiast. He was teaching his 12 year old daughter how to swing a club. A younger daughter had been watching so she grabbed a golf club and said, “See Daddy, I know how to swing a club,” and swung it. At this moment McMillan turned his head and the iron the club his him square in the eye, smashing it. The eye was removed at the Descotious Hospital at Grand Forks, N.D. that same afternoon. One can’t be too careful: am sorry for the poor kid.
---    This item is for the ladies. Mrs. Gerald Barnstone of St. Laurent, Canada, had a grandmother that had two sets of twins. Had a mother who was a twin and had a set of twins. Came the day when Mrs. Barnstone began to worry. She asked a brother to obtain a $4,000 policy for her from Lloyds of London against her having twins. Six months before her time was up Mrs. Barnstone backed out of the policy. The brokers said, “No,” and demanded the $340 premium. They went to court and the judge said that Lloyds had never issued the policy so dismissed the suit, according to the Montreal Star. This item is published so that you know what it will cost you to get a $4,000 policy against your having twins. Oh yes, Mrs. Barnstone eventually gave birth to a single child.
---    This is the end for the Sea Scout and Charley. Last year the Centennial committee built a stern wheeler show boat. It made two trips, not far down the river, and was planning on repeating this summer. New regulations issued by the Coast Guard last January prevent moving of the show boat. The boat does not meet requirements for river travel under the new regulations. So the Sea Queen can dander along the Minnesota but when it hits the Mississippi, she’s a gone goose.
---    Farmers in Minnesota who raise live stock take a lot of pride in their animals, so do the 4-H Club members with their rubbing and scrubbing, but they don’t have the intense pride that the farmer do in far off India. Near Bombay there is an annual parade of the outstanding bulls. It has been held for years. This year there was a bitter argument. Three brothers, their father was a village officer, claimed the right to lead the parade. Sixteen others objected and the fight ended with the sixteen beating the three brothers to death with staves. On May 20th, Judge M. V. Rayo of Bombay sentenced the 16 stave men to death! We never found out what bull led the parade.
---    Some Mankato folks are irked. Every time the town selects a “Miss Mankato” she happens to be a student at the Mankato State College and lives in some small town or on a farm: where else would you expect to find them?
---    Eighty-six years come tomorrow, swarms of Rocky Mountain locusts spread into 16 counties in southwest Minnesota, including Murray County. They covered the country like a blanket, devastating the crops. They kept coming the next year. Farmers were without money to buy groceries or pay their taxes. All you had to do was to go before the county board and swear on account of the locusts you could not pay your taxes and they were marked paid. The locusts or grasshoppers started coming in 1873 and came every year until August 11th 1877, leaving as mysteriously as they came.
---    A green aphid infestation is ruining the crops in several counties in the southwest part of the state. Near Sleepy Eye the damage is estimated at over a million and a half. Farmers are busy replanting with soybeans and corn. Some means will be found to combat the disease, they always have. We remember Creeping Jenny in Murray Co. It was going to take everything in the county; it didn’t. That was when Cliff Schrader was county agent. What a grand guy he was. We can see him wading through the snow with groceries for the struggling farmers in a dry belt that year in the four western townships.
---    The Freeport Sulphur Co. is bringing in a sulphur well seven miles from land that costs over $30 million. It is 2,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico. Sulphur means more to Murray County and other farm counties than you think: a third of the sulphur produced in the U.S. goes into fertilizers.
---    Tourist resorts and hotels in New Hampshire are hopping mad at their lower house. It recently passed a bill providing for a 5 percent special sales tax on meals and lodgers, but it omitted the local folks from tax. The bill is now in the Senate. No one would dare to introduce a bill of this type in Minnesota.
---    Hanging over the country at the present time is a dark cloud called the steel strike. What do we know about it? Nothing. We have never seen the wage scale published. All we know is the workers want a 10 cents an hour raise, which the steel companies claim will raise the price so high that it will be hard to compete with foreign competition.
---    There’s a lot of luck connected with a baseball game. You’ll notice that the losers hit the ball right into their opponents’ mitts while the winners always hit two feet away from the other players. Life is a good deal like that. By the way don’t sell the Yanks too short, they’re not a cellar team.
---    The banks in Illinois had a real scrap in the legislature of that state last week. Two big Chicago banks tried to get a bill through the legislature that would allow branch banking. The county banks were against it and the fight became so bitter that the bill was withdrawn.
---    Voters at LeCentre by a majority of 17 voted a $680,000 bond for an addition to the high school. Six hundred eligible voters were not interested enough to cast their vote; but some squawked when the returns came in.
---    The Lockheed Air people offered a portable nuclear power plant for sale last Friday. They claim it could provide heat and light for 2,000 homes. This new unit weighs 150 tons. The price was not given. Will this nuclear ever be used in trucks and autos?
---    Some of the railroads in the south are trying to keep their passenger business. One road has cut its fares 20 per cent, others give free coffee in the forenoon and afternoon, others orange juice and some free lunch. In one city the employees of the railroad are out hustling for business. They’ve got to do something. One examiner for the Interstate Commerce Commission said last week the way things are going, passenger service will disappear within ten years.
---    The Travelers Insurance Co., the largest writer of casualty insurance in the country, is going to try out a new auto insurance plan which will give reduced rates to those that hold careful driving records. The new plan is going to be tried out in four states and Minnesota is one of the four. ========================

1958            Home            July-December 1959