1959 Columns, July-December
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Roaming in the Gloaming

With Bob Forrest

Things Material and Immaterial

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July 2, 1959
   Rich men or rahter high salaried men have their problems. Take A. B. Romer, president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. He gets a salary of $100,000 and other compensations of $411,249 making a total of $511,249. Out of this he pays an income tax of $367,261, leaving him a salary of $143,988. W. S. Paley, chairman of Columbia Broadcasting System gets a salary of $327,885, a bonus of $35,584, a total of $363,469. Uncle Same takes out $246,970 leaving Palye $116,499. Broufman of the Seagram Distilling Co. gets $357,933. Uncle Sam’s take is $242,486 and Mr. Broufman had to get along with $155,447 last year.
---    Lard has taken an awful tumble recently. It is now shipped in tank cars. Price is down to 3 1/4 cents a pound. Last year it was 4 1/4 cents a pound.
---    Biggest and best news of the week is the announcement that polio vaccine can now be given in capsules or tablets. No more jabbing with the needle, no more scared kids. The government should appropriate five million dollars and place the capsules in every state, county and hamlet and give them free to everyone. We’re giving free food, free medicine, free everything to people overseas. Give the home folks a break once in a while.
---    Living as we do in the midwest we know little about airplanes. Few of us would believe there are 70,000 private planes in the U.S., besides them there are 22,000 military planes, and only 1,900 commercial planes.
---    Toronto is going after the Pay-As-You-See T.V. in a big way. Five thousand houses will be wired. Coin boxes will be near your set. You pick out the picture you want, drop the necessary coins in the box and the T.V. brings in the picture you want. Instead of going to the theatre, the theatre comes to you.
---    That story of Tommy Banks, the late vice king, about his keeping $300,000 in cash in a trunk in his basement, stretches one’s imagination: he must have had a lot of confidence in the underworld.
---    Here’s a road truck that would be big anywhere. In Queensland, Australia the Mt. Isa mine fields are rich in silver-lead-zinc ore and copper sulphides but they are 1,700 miles from the ocean. Engineers built a real truck to get the heavy machinery to the mine. The truck is 77 feet long. It has 32 rubber wheels on each side. The first load was a 65 ton piece of machinery. It was loaded on the truck at Adelaide. The first 200 miles was on a good highway to Port Augusta, when the 64 rubber tires were removed and it was fitted with railroad car wheels and went 231 miles to Naree. The railroad gage changed there to 2 feet 6 inches, so another set of wheels were fitted for the 540 miles to Alice Springs, the end of the railroad. At Alice Springs the truck put on its rubber tires and made the remaining 720 miles by road. The truck can carry a load of 84 tons; some truck.
---    The biggest rat farm in the world is located at Beltsville, Md. and is owned partly by you. It has at all times over 400 rats in little cages. They are working for you and yours. These 400 rats are test tubes on the food you eat. After 400 hours the rats are killed and dissected. One of the things the doctors found out was that sugar does not help the heart one bit. The two doctors said they would not give their sanctions to the above until other researchers come to the same conclusion. They found too much cholesterol: bad for heart and arteries. The investigation is conducted with federal funds.
---    In the first eight months of 1958 ...[missing]... Journal amounted to $19,565,920. Yet there are some people say advertising does not pay: it certainly pays the Ladies Home Journal.
---    Everybody is interested in Social Security. It went in the red $87 million for the third year in a row and will continue to be in the red until 1963. But don’t worry about it; it has a fund or a balance of over $20 billion if you ever can locate it. Seems as if Uncle Sam has loaned it out to other departments.
---    Listening to a group of old boys cussing the bare legged fashion of today brought back to memory the first real tough show we ever saw. We were green from the country and was in St. Paul and was coaxed to attend what was called the toughest show in town. It was called the Star and Blossomed on east Seventh St. It was so rough that the ladies from Summit Ave. when they had to drive by it would cover up their lorgnettes with their right hand and pinch their nostrils with their left. The wicked show (got to condense) opened with a song and a dance team, then came the shapely girls of the chorus. They did not wear shorts, not even briefs, it was awful. They wore tights buttoned to the neck, ankles and wrists. The tights reminded us of a union suit we have in the basement. They sang well. For an extra attraction each season Billy Watson brought his “Beef Trust,” fifteen females, all had to weigh over 200 pounds. They wore the same type of tights as the girls, but there were more wrinkles in them than in a sun dried prune. In these shows everything was left to the imagination. Of course we could have gone to the Grand and heard Chauncey Olcott sing “Mother McCree.” Those were great days.
---    New auto insurance companies are now doing business. They cut the rates to careful drivers. Say you were paying $145 insurance premium and were a careful driver, you would get a real deduction reaching as low as a premium of $69.30 if you have not had an accident in five years.
---    The British Broadcasting Corp. has developed a system for transmitting T.V. newsfilm under the Atlantic by telephone cable. The new system will allow you to see films processed over them 90 minutes before. Britain has always been ahead of us in T.V. They had it two years before we did; some folks were unkind enough to say that the big movie outfits were trying to smother it.
---    Experts say leaves of a lot of weeds are poisonous so watch what the kids are eating. At times the leaf of the potato plant is poisonous. Let them eat the leaves of the tomato plant, they are never poisonous.
---    The post office department is planning on raising the size and the weight of parcel post packages to go to 70 lbs. and the size is 100 inches. If a law like this goes into effect it would add more to the annual deficit besides putting the Railway Express out of business.
---    You just can’t keep them down. Mrs. Maria Wickland, 43, of Mpls. made quite a record for herself last Saturday night. She got on a bender and did more things with a car than most men. She struck a house, four garages, a trash burner, a boat, a fence and another car; that’s a better record than Babe Ruth’s.
---    Texas is reducing its crude oil flow this month: too much oil on hand. Most Texas oil wells will be permitted to operate nine days in July. Why can’t wheat, corn, etc. be handled the same way?
---    When you read that six Bethlehem Steel Corporation officers are the highest paid in the land ...[missing]...strikes against them in the wage battle with the unions. But let’s not forget the officials gave, or rather paid, Uncle Sam $1,700,025 in income tax. ========================

July 9, 1959
   They grow grass 8 inches tall in 6 days now. Sounds strange but it’s true. The common every day grass that we have is prime only two months in the year: the time when cows give the most richest and nicest milk. Science came in to help out. It made a series of shallow trays, put them in an air tight shed, electrically maintained. James Bagwell of Alpharetta, Georgia, a dairyman has 120 shallow pans. No earth is used, only highly fertilized water. He feeds each cow 10 pounds of the “prime” grass twice a day. Of course he supplements this with silage, etc. The daily production of his herd was raised from 180 gallons a day to over 200. This incubator grass cost $8.00 a ton to raise.
---    There are 18,000 water utilities in the U.S. One out of five is deficient in supply, two out of every five are deficient in transmission capacity, one out of every three has too little pumping capacity. No wonder we have so many big fires.
---    Wondering what became of the passenger cars on abandoned lines, we wrote the traffic manager of the C. & N.W. He said every bit of our equipment is in first class shape and we are replacing older equipment on other lines; when passenger coaches get old they are scrapped. Mr. Steiner said they are trying to get enough passenger business to keep the “400” going, cutting rates to Chicago below that of bus lines. When war, if it ever does, comes troops will have to be moved in make-shift box cars. It takes a lot equipment to move a division. The government is making no move toward retaining passenger cars.
---    Don’t want to scare you but keep your weather eye cocked for tornadoes next month. August has had more tornadoes than any other month. One of them coming after dark, so keep that southwest corner of your cellar free from debris and don’t forget a flash light. Here’s the August story of tornadoes. August 30th, 1928, Austin, killed 5; August 21st 1883, 7 p.m. Rochester, 25 killed; Tyler, August had 37 killed. This one hit at 8 p.m. St. Paul August 20th 1904, three were killed.
---    On the outside front page of the Illustrated London News, a weekly magazine, there are 6 liquor ads. The news ought to know what it is doing. It is 234 years old: that was fifty years before there was a United States.
---    While some folks in Minnesota are worrying over the Soil Bank be glad you don’t live in the southern states. Five million acres of cotton land were unplanted in 1958. Where does all the money come from and how long can it last?
---    To give you some idea of the size of Alaska, it is almost seven times as large as Minnesota. Alaska has 586,400 square miles, Minnesota has 84,068 square miles.
---    The county treasurer of Polk county who stole $39,000 of the tax payers’ money is out on a $5,000 bond. The county will not lose any money he said, as he is bonded. Who pays the premiums on the bonds, the Ethiopians?
---    Minnesota has a lot of different parades and celebrations in a year. It has Aquatennial and Ice Carnival Days, 4th of July, a Dairy Day and others, including Watermelon Day, Sweet Corn Day, Turkey Day, but only one town in the state has a parade and celebration in honor of a dead horse. His fame was nation wide and his big day will be at Savage on August 2nd. The first name of the horse was “Dan.”
---    Ford and Chrysler are pouring it on that rear engine of the Chevrolet. They claim that there is not enough heft in the front end and if anything goes wrong she’ll swing around like Charley’s Sea Queen on the Minnesota River. The Chevie people point to the number of foreign cars with rear end engines.
---    Polio hit Des Moines Iowa for the worst epidemic of the year. Nearly 100 cases have been reported. Indifference of parents to see that the kids get the Salk vaccine are to blame for most of the cases. Three deaths were reported a week ago. “As you sow so shall you reap.”
---    Visiting us last week were Mr. and Mrs. C. Reynolds of Minneapolis and Mrs. Mabel (Moen) Gnadt of Santiago, California. We’ve know the Moens for a long time, can remember when her father and mother were married. The party drove to Hadley in almost a blizzard in a bob sled. Gosh it was cold that day. They sat down in the straw in the bottom of the sled. Mabel left Santiago on a Sunday and arrived in Lake Wilson on Tuesday, driving the entire distance alone. She also told us she was going to be a great grandmother come next September. How old is she? Don’t dare tell, but we were 87 on the 21st and she is exactly 20 years younger than we are. Another thing to her credit is that she has read the Herald ever since she can remember.
---    Senator Humphrey has thrown his hat in the ring as a presidential candidate. Is this on the square or is he just another favorite son for trading purposes?
---    The stell shutdown is of vital interest to every American. It came at a bad time. American made goods are harder to sell than ever. Europe and Japan are gradually closing in on the U.S. markets. You can’t compete with Europe, etc. by raising wages.
---    Americans admire the new champion Swedish prizefighter, but they don’t envy the fruit soups eaten by the Swedes. The Campbell soup outfit thought that they would go well in the U.S. but they turned out to be a complete flop. They won’t sell at any price and Campbells are dumping them in welfare offices, etc. to get rid of them.
---    Those cows of yours are affected ty the weather the same as you are. Keep your cows at 95 and the milk supply gets down to 35 per cent less, says the Wisconsin University. It even puts electric fans in the barn to make bossy forget the heat and quit worrying.
---    Interest on money is going higher. Folks that save and are not getting 3 1/2 percent in federal loan savings banks will soon be getting more. We notice ads from California, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin of federal loan banks that are paying 4 percent, all of which means that if you botrrow money you’ll be paying a higher rate of interest. The 4 percent in federal savings banks is the highest paid for 20 years. Whither are we drifting?
---    The St. Lawrence waterway is certainly saving quite a bit for the business men on the lake ports. Montgomery Ward Co. buys its barbwire in Europe. For instance a shipment of barbwire that costs $49.01 from New York costs $34.45 to Chicago by water. The seaway saves $50.00 on every foreign auto shipped in. Who would ever think that the U.S. would be buying barb wire from the old country.
---    From reading the newspapers every morning one gets the impression that if it were not for the crimes committed by paroled criminals from federal and state prisons and from mental institutions we could get along with half the police we have now.
---    We got a letter from Mrs. Sylvia Kaplan Saturday. She had just finished a trip through Scotland and in the envelope was a spring of heather from “The Bonny Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond.” She left the next day for a 45 day trip to the “Land of the Midnight Sun” on the M-S Bergensfjord. Few women have travelled as widely as Sylvia. She and her late husband Louis started in business in Lake Wilson and ...[missing]... ========================

July 30, 1959
   The war between the savings and loan banks in Miami, Florida is more bitter than the steel strike. These banks are giving away free to new depositors all sorts of things, an 18 piece beverage set, two chairs, clocks, cameras, manicure sets, etc. Odd thing is the gain in deposits of the national mutual savings banks in the first five months of this year fell 59 per cent below last year. Some of the bankers say, “They save until they have a good sized account then pull out their funds and play the stock market.” In Miami the fighting banks used 24 columns in a newspaper there in one day to tell how much better their bank was than the others.
---    Had a letter from Mae Rogde Saturday. The Rogdes were neighbors of ours in Lake Wilson. She wrote they were going on a trip to Europe and they only take 40 pounds. Am not worrying about Mae, she is one of the gals that don’t need a shelf full of bottles and jars of cosmetics, nor are we worrying about Reuben. That chunk of real estate that he has close by the Walt Disney show at Anaheim, California, where they now live will keep two wolves from the door.
---    They had a dinner party for us last week at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ray D. Elias in honor of our 87th birthday. It was a real family affair, Nola coming in from San Francisco, all of which was sincerely appreciated by the old man. These parties have a deeper significance as the years go by.
---    WQAM, a broadcasting station at Miami, Fla., in order to get a little advertising announced that it would pay one cent for every dead mosquito delivered at the station. It certainly was shocked. It received 250,000 and right there and then it went out of the skeeter business. Worrying us is who counted the mosquitoes?
---    Some cities report a shortage in polio vaccine. Manufacturers are going a little slow this year. Last year they had to destroy 18 million doses. You’ll understand now why medicines are high.
---    The county board of Watonwan county is trying out a new weed spray. It not only killed the weeds but killed six cows valued at $1,700 for one farmer. It might be a costly experiment.
---    Visiting us last week were Mr. and Mrs. Al Reha of St. Peter (sorry, Al), on Monday night Mr. and Mrs. Harold Johnson of Shakopee and Mr. and Mrs. Robt. Johnson of Wadena. Bob started in the banking business at Lake Wilson, was a national bank examiner for a while. For the last few years he has been auditor of the Mexical Lumber company, just north of Wadena.
---    A sad accident occurred at the fair grounds near Hallock last week. Some organization was holding auto races. The village marshall went over to help keep the crowd out of danger; while doing this one of the autos skidded, hit and killed him. Sad, but you can’t do much with people these days, they’ve got to be there the firstest. In those auto race accidents the first ones to be sued are the owners of the land where the races were held.
---    Was near a Northwest Air Line office. We stepped in and asked, “How many flights do you have out of Minneapolis each day.” She said about fifty and there are five other plane companies in town. This will give you some idea of the popularity of air travel. A big plane crash holds some back for a day or so, then it is forgotten.
---    Charley and his Sea Scout are now located on the Mississippi river near the University of Minnesota, where people can see it for a quarter. The boat now is no more like the original than a peanut is like a coconut.
---    Congressman Blatnik of Minnesota is on the right track in his fight for better cigarettes. He wants a law that will provide that the amount of nicotine, tar, etc. contained in the cigarette must appear on the wrapper, the same requirement that is made of drugs and food. About half the cigarettes use filters. By the way, what became of Bull Durham, a popular smoke for years. The smoker would take a wrapper, double it up, fill it half full of Bull Durham, pull the string on the bag tight with his teeth, lick the cigarette paper and roll it. What became of it? One time it was popular on advertising boards of the major league baseball parks.
---    Something that has been held impossible for years was made possible when a dentist, Dr. Walker of Toronto, transplanted a tooth from an eleven year old girl into the jaw of a twenty-two year old brother. What next?
---    Those nauseating auto exhaust fumes are on their way out. There is a bill in Congress now that provides that all auto manufacturers must put auto pollution devices on all new cars sold or shipped on interstate commerce. Any congressman that would vote against this bill should be shot at sunrise.
---    The workers in the steel plants are really hurt by the strike: the average pay is over $500 a month.
---    There may be an oversupply of autos in the U.S. As of this date there are 900,000 U.S. cars on hand and there are 100,000 cars of foreign make. Men don’t buy cars when a strike is on.
---    One of the biggest lotteries in the state is run by the Kittson county fair board. They distribute 100,000 registered tickets to the merchants of the county. The prize is an auto. No charge is made for the registered tickets: the merchants give them to you when you buy something. You can one ticket or five thousand. Slickest thing about the drawing is that instead of one drawing they have six drawings, Friday afternoon and evening the same on Saturday. All leading up to the final drawing on Sunday evening. Those six drawings ought to bring in enough extra sales to pay for the auto. The fair association is a private organization.
---    People whose heads get hit the hardest by the heat will be able to find relief next year. A helmet is now being used in many factories that will keep your head cool. It is a light weight fiber head piece. In it is a hermetically sealed cooler which is operated from nearby motorized machinery. The helmet has been so successful that a portable one will soon be in production. Farmers, in fact anyone who works out doors in the heat and glare, can now get relief: and now we can hear whispers, what about the little woman, etc.
---    Some high schools give training to young auto drivers. There should be a class to teach students how to swim. The loss of life from drowning this year is appalling. On the 4th of July week end nationally 171 persons drowned, 50 more than the year before. The highway traffic for the same period was 271 dead, an increase of only one.
---    The Chicago N.W. railroad was in the black last month for the first time in eleven years. That man Heineman has done wonders in putting the road back on its feet.
---    One of the worst features of the St. Lawrence waterway is it is not a year round proposition. November to April will see frozen locks, etc. ========================

August 13, 1959
   Noticed a headline, “Mrs. Nixon sat silent for 6 hours while wives talked.” Please don’t think you made a record. We now men that have sat silent lots longer than that and never got into the paper.
---    Efforts are being made to strike oil in Iowa. Many tries ended in dry holes but the Champlin Oil & Refining Co. in a recent well struck a layer of porous rock similar to oil bearing formations. One good thing about it is that the rock is not far in depth so it does not cost so much to experiment and invest in a real oil company.
---    Castro the Cuban dictator seems to be heartily in favor of small cars. If your car has a $3,500 factory price the tax is $5,000 and the second year the tax on your Cadillac is $3,500. The smaller cars pay only $38.
---    That old friend of yours, Sears Roebuck, has opened a store in Jacksonville, Florida that will surprise everyone. One of the top men said they “Are tired of being spoken of as an overall supply house.” Sears is really feeling its oats. The new joint will have a children’s nursery, an up-to-date tea room, a beauty shop staffed with male operators and the first restaurant in a Sears store, and its line of dresses would bring lots of looks from old customers on the western prairies. There is soft music playing, heavy carpeted floors, air conditioned rooms. One old time official said, “I just hope that the high priced goods will not scare our old customers away.”
---    For you men who wear that little black belt under a drooping layer of excess fat here’s some news for you. Saw where two New York doctors are offering reduced rates for two months for removing all the fat in front of you. What a relief that would be. The doctors just cut four slashes, throw out the fat, then sew you up again. A very simple operation. Or they could put a zipper in for some of you.
---    Next time you call a doctor and talk to him about your ailments and what to do for them, you can look for a bill for $2.00. Why not? You got the same advice as you would from an office call.
---    After our bartender experience of last week we are going to tip-toe into this item. The city of Marshall has had trouble with people breaking the regulations of closing the swimming pool at 9 p.m. We read in one exchange where it stated that the caretaker caught four married women who appeared to be intoxicated swimming in the pool at 2 a.m. Naturally there was some criticism. We can’t help but commend the women. They went there to cool off and to sober up. Suppose they had taken a car instead and went for a wild ride which might had ended in a death. Pity the poor husband sitting at home with the kids thinking: there’s a lot of water gone over the mill dam since he was a boy.
---    Mr. and Mrs. (Bessie Barrows) Fred O. Jones of Portland, Ore. and Mr. and Mrs. (Della Hanson) and William F. Rehbock of Minneapolis visited us one day last week. Bessie is a daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. S. Barrows. Mr. Barrows was county commissioner for 31 years. Mrs. Barrows was the first Gold Star mother in the county. Della is as charming as she was when she lived in Chandler and she still reads the Herald. We gossiped so much we forgot the intense humidity for an hour, but we enjoyed it.
---    There must be a lot of Swedes around Grand Marais. We notice a church up there was having a smorgasbord and the first thing on the menu was “Fruit Soup.” They charge $2.00 for an all you can eat smorgasbord. Campbell, the big soup maker, should get in touch with Grand Marais. They made up several batches of fruit soups but no one in the east would buy them.
---    The polio epidemic at Des Moines is over. It was described by medical men as the worst in the nation. Has that boy or girl of yours had their vaccine?
---    After writing about that Marshall incident we remembered there were ducking stools in the Colonial days. We looked in an old encyclopedia and there it was: “Ducking Stool. A chair in which scolding and vixenish wives were formerly and securely fastened to receive the punishment of being ducked in water.” They had them in those days, too. Some of the poor women were left in too long and never did nag again.
---    In these hectic days of indifference it is refreshing to know that there is still some sentiment left in the world. Over at Savage a “Dan Patch” day is held each year. The Home was started on former Savage property. The kindly and friendly folks who live in Savage cling to the little bit of sentiment and this year they sent over a big bus to the Home asking the folks to be their guests during the parade and entertainment on Sunday Aug. 2nd. Over fifty of the old folks took advantage of Savage hospitality and came home a little tired but happy. Savage does not have a newspaper, but it has a lot of real people.
---    The village of Mapleton was sued for $80,000 recently. A man drunk on Mapleton liquor rammed into another car and killed two girls. The $80,000 suit was brought by their relatives. It came up for a trial one day and after that we could see nothing about it. We wrote the Clerk of Court of Blue Earth county. He answered, “As far as we know the cases are all settled.” That’s the best way to settle these cases. You never can tell what a jury will do.
---    Read a thrilling story in the daily last week how a state board of health doctor requested a check be made of the population of Heron Lake on account of a member of the school staff being a victim of tuberculosis. We hope the check discovers no more victims. Tuberculosis today can’t be the same as consumption was in the early days of Murray County. It was then thought that it ran in certain families. We can remember two deaths in the same family. People paid no more attention to consumption than a lot of other diseases. Murray County had 15 cases of consumption at one time.
---    Wonder what’s the matter with some of our Norwegian lady friends up here who read the daily papers. They want to now a lot of things about National Conventions, etc. ========================

August 20, 1959
   The brewers are turning out a new beer to suit the ladies. The malt has just been too tangy for them so the brewers, ever willing to please, will reduce the amount.
---    Hard to believe but there’s a firm near Bangor, Maine that raises over a million mice a year. Some of them are shipped to all over the world. These mice are used as test tubes for various diseases. They raise hairless mice, pink eyed mice, kinky tailed, curly tailed, short eared mice that quiver, etc. Prices vary. Mice that are used in research on muscular dystrophy bring $8.00 a pair, but some can be bought for 25 cents. The mice are handled with forceps. Mice provide clues in medical research because mice are made up like humans, their tissue and blood are the same. We’ll bet the girls working in the factory wear shorter skirts than grandma did.
---    Texas certainly raised the tax on tobacco. Cigarets were raised three cents making the tax eight cents a package. Cigars and smoking tobacco were upped 25 per cent; never mentioned chewing tobacco or snuff.
---    For those that like to smoke but are afraid of nicotine and tar there is a new cigaret on the market. It is called Vanguards and is made of a vegetable fiber. It is on sale in New York and both cigaret salesmen and lung cancer men are watching closely how the public react to the new weed.
---    We told you two weeks ago about the 200,000 ticket lottery on a car at the Kittson county fair. Sorry, we were wrong. The Hallock Enterprise last week said there were 400,000 registration tickets in the big drum; you’ll have to admit that it was a real lottery. Sander Tueson of Hallock won the Plymouth.
---    Here’s the reason why not only Italy but the rest of Europe is a menace to U.S. manufacturers: at the Fiat auto company, the largest in Italy, workers get $100 a month. In this country auto workers get $100 a week. At the Vauxhall Motor Corp. in England the average is about $175 a month and they work more than 40 hours a week. Since 1950 average hourly wages have risen 52 per cent in some auto plants.
---    You’ll soon see some men carrying a half pint in their hip pocket, but it won’t be whisky. It will be the new instant liquid coffee. It’s years since coffee has been real coffee. The trend has been how many cups you could get out of a pound. Coffee years ago was rugged enough to take the hair off your eyebrows. This new instant liquid coffee will bring back all the joys of coffee drinking.
---    Here’s a new idea on the fox eradication. Game wardens at International Falls dug out a den of foxes with fish nets; they got eleven young ones. They then tagged them and turned them loose. If you shoot one of those tagged foxes you get $30. It is hoped that 50 foxes will be shot or trapped for every tagged one killed.
---    In our humble opinion this third major league baseball talk is pure bunk. We don’t have enough major league talent now. If good players could be had today for love or money the Yanks would buy them. It looks like Casey Stengel’s last season, and he hates to go with a Yankee team as low down in their standing in the league as they are today.
---    Reading an old history book we came across this brief notice: “Aug. 20, 1862. The Lake Shetek settlement in Murray county was wiped out by the Indians. In November of 1863 a train of 140 wagons traveled across the country on its way to Fort Thompson on the Missouri River. In 1864 white trappers spent the winter at Bear Lake. In 1866 Cap Aldrich was the first real settler after the massacre.”
---    Lots of us look on Italy as a decadent nation, one that has no gumption. But we sure are wrong, dead wrong. Italy today is a real competitor of the U.S. steel companies. Here are two jobs the Italians got. New York Power Authority bought 7,000 long tons of steel from an Italian firm, whose bid was $1,371,451. The lowest U.S. bid was Bethlehem Steel Co., whose bid was $2,186,248. On a bid for steel for the Bonnerville Co. of Oregon, the U.S. bid was a million dollars higher than the Italians. Looks like labor is or has killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.
---    Wanting to get the lowdown on this bartender item we wrote the Liquor Control commissioner Jack Puterbaugh. He said the only bartenders case he could recall was the Alden case where the employee was sentenced to a fine of $800 or six months in jail. He was given 2 months to pay his fine. From his letter we find that no bartender has ever served time in jail in Minnesota for selling liquor to minors.
---    Mrs. Geo. Holek of Ellsborough, one of the top rural correspondents in the state, wrote a history of Ellsborough twp. from 1879 to the present date. It has the name of every old settler, tells of their trials and tribulations. She leaves nothing out, not even the faded photos of the early pioneers. She has done the township and Murray county a real service and a challenge to the other townships to do the work before it is too late.
---    You’ll read and hear a lot of queer things these days but this one takes the cake. Here’s one nation plans to trade 80,000 human beings for six ships. Paraguay has greed to admit 80,000 Japs to their country if Japan will build six ships on credit for Paraguay.
---    While we do not hear much about polio out here, it is the worst since 1955. Out of 1,462 cases up to July 15th, 956 were paralytic, last year up to the same time there were 437 paralytic. Has that kid of yours had his 3 shots of Salk vaccine?
---    You get some idea of the shortage of water when you read President Eisenhower’s appeal to congress for a million and a half dollars for constructing a device that would change sea water into fresh water. ========================

August 27, 1959
   Had a trio of former Murray County youngsters. They show you how cities grow at the expense of the country. The first one, Cliff C. Barnard is sales representative for Consolidated Freight Ways, Inc. The Barnards were the settlers in southern Murray County. Then came big smiling Dean A. Gregory, formerly of Lake Wilson and Fulda, who represents the Ad. Seidel & Son Inc., of Chicago. His mother, Mrs. Lucille Groskreutz, a former popular Lake Wilson resident, still lives in Fulda. The next was Bob Kinmore, formerly of Slayton. Bob has a swell job with World Wide Incorporated as buyer. It is a fine outfit, we pass the building every time we go down town. We knew Bob’s grandfather who ran the Chandler Index and later when he ran for clerk of court and won. His name was C. C. Peterson. Mae you should be right down proud of Bob and no doubt you are.
---    This talk about a third major league baseball outfit is pure bunk. Why add a third league when there is not enough first class players for two leagues? If there was, the Yanks would have been after them long ago.
---    Seems strange when you think of it that during all the pros and cons, the heated debates over the sales tax, you never heard a word about the sales tax law that sparked the Revolution and the amount of the sales tax. It was 3 cents a pound. A pretty small amount to crab about. Here in Minnesota the price of smoking tobacco and cigars has been raised 40 per cent in the last two years.
---    Small eggs are really a drug on the Chicago market. They sold last week for 14 cents a pound. The big eggs were bringing 21 cents the pound. We can remember the story in the early days of a farmer on section 42 that bored a hole in a board and all the eggs that would through the hole were taken to market, the big ones were used at home. This pound business would have put the board out of business.
---    When the first U.S. parachute lands its paratroopers, it will have with it two or three of the new army ditch diggers. This machine can dig faster than a badger. It will dig a trench four feet deep in two feet wide, twelve feet long in a minute, that means 720 feet in an hour. That ought to give protection to a lot of men, but what about the poor guys working the machine.
---    Golf is another sport that has put a dent into baseball in the Twin Cities. Years ago, golf was supposed to be an old man’s game with oldsters puttering the ball around to get to the club house to visit with Johnny Walker or John Dewar. All is changed now. It is a young man’s game and there is money in it. Young women are also going into it, both for the sport and for the money.
---    One of the real jokes of the year is DeGaulle of France. He’s no farther ahead than he was a year ago, with the final result of losing Algiers and he’ll never get his 450,000 troops back to France. That takes a year.
---    Air planes are getting bigger. See where there is one on the Brazil line that carries 125 passengers. It takes bigger landing fields and would not be of much value in time of war.
---    It takes two pounds and seven ounces of tobacco to make 1,000 cigarets and the makers are doing right well when they get a tobacco leaf into their grip. Reminds one of the Chicago hog story, nothing left but the grunt. The cigaret people grind the leaf into a powder, sprinkle the powder on a thin coating of some kind of sticky stuff which they manipulate into large sheets of tobacco.
---    If you get into a heated argument with a friend and get nowhere, just write the Mpls. Reference Library. It knows everything and can supply you with answers with the facts. Don’t forget to enclose a self addressed envelope, stamped.
---    Soft coal miners are beginning to feel the effects of the steel strike. The steel people are their second best customers. Coal miners are the highest paid workmen in the U.S. Their hourly wage is $3.26 an hour.
---    A short time ago in an article from the state game and fish dept. was this item, “The cotton tail rabbit ...[jumbled type]... by anyone having a small resident hunting license.” The flesh may be used of course for eating and the pelt may be retained if you wish, but neither the pelt or the flesh can be sold. The reason is that many raisers have cleaned out the rabbits in some sections, thus destroying the rabbit hunting which is becoming more popular each year. This is one good law the legislature passed.
---    Than man Henneman of the Chicago Northwestern is a go getter. He is not putting pull and push locomotives on the commuter trains around Chicago: saves a lot of time in switching.
---    On Tuesday of last week we felt a flush on our face, Katie got the thermometer and sure enough it was 100 degrees, and we did not have an ache or a pain. Katie called the housekeeper Mrs. Trumble, that is how our system works, she called a nurse and in less than five minutes we were in the Infirmary ready for action. The best thing you can have with you in a melee like this is a good pair of buttocks. We had them and we dimly remember Jack Wolfe, the orderly who did the needling. He comes from Ft. Worth, Texas. The infection spot was soon located. We were in the infirmary five days before being turned loose.
   We wish to extend sincere appreciation to Dr. Linner and Supt., Mrs. Brownell and to every one down to the waitresses, who so kindly assisted in getting this old crab back on his feet. We appreciate the fine service more than you realize. ========================

September 3, 1959
   Movie houses seem to be on their way out. Three thousand movies went out of business in 1958. About16,000 movies have closed up in the U.S. by T.V. and the drive ins. Drive ins still hold their popularity.
---    Looks like the blistering July and the sweltering August stemmed the rabies invasion this season. Last year the papers were full of rabies, especially in the north where hundreds of cases were reported. Haven’t seen a one this August. We worry too much about rabies: no human being has ever died from rabies in the state of Minnesota.
---    There is no state in the union, not even Alaska, that is free from Hay Fever, but if you are a sufferer write the Public Inquirer’s Branch, U.S. Public Service, New York 17, N.Y. They’ll tell you the most free spot nearest you.
---    Golf as a sport is certainly on the move. At the present time there are 3,900,000 golfers in the United States. Some of you can remember the day when golfers were pitied, even in Murray county.
---    County papers are full of big headlines, “County Fair, Bigger and Better Than Ever.” We can remember the first fair 47 years ago in Murray County of the present fair association. Girls came to the fair, shy, clinging to their mother’s long skirts and the bashful boys never got more than a few feet from their dad. Today these kids are the Fair. Without the 4-H clubs fairs would wither and die in a year.
---    One good thing about the steel strike, if you want to call it good, is the fact that the strikers are digging deeply into the government’s food surpluses. To Pennsylvania pleas there has already been shipped 25 extra carloads of flour, 10 carloads of dry milk, 9 cars of corn meal and 10 cars of rice, etc.
---    Another August has gone and not a tornado. You’ll be interested to know that Minnesota has never had a tornado after August 31st that took a human life.
---    A record breaking hail storm hit Humboldt in the northern part of the state last week, destroying crops and damaging the roofs of many buildings. One farmer said the hail stones were as large as baseballs. A neighbor of his said he picked up some hail stones that would not go into a coffee cup.
---    Socialized medicine is popular in Great Britain with a lot of people. The cost has now risen to over two million dollars. Eighty per cent of the cost is paid out of the general tax fund. The plan is not popular with the people that pay the taxes. Britain has a population of 55 million.
---    Here’s a problem coming up in many a Minnesota county. Kittson county board levied a one half mill tax for agricultural fair purposes. This amounted to $3,000 and has been given each year to the Kittson county fair association. Last week St. Vincent, twenty miles away from Hallock the county seat, asked the county board for a fourth of the half mill levy for the fair which has been held there for years. The present Kittson county fair is a stock owned outfit. Many a county fair in Minnesota is owned by stock companies.
---    This country can’t afford peace more than it can war. For instance if world peace would come tomorrow, California has 354,000 military men within its borders. Their pay roll is a billion and a half dollars a year. What would happen?
---    This is the time of year when those slick furnace grafters call on you. Don’t listen to them. You have some men you can depend on. If you even let one of those outside slickers touch your furnace, you’re stuck.
---    Who buys all of the foreign cars that come to the country. For the first seven months of this year 342,000 cars were sold--double the amount in the same time last year. Can the auto workers afford to strike? Here’s an odd thing. Ten thousand used foreign cars were shipped into the U.S. Nine thousand were Volkswagens. Who in thunder would buy a second hand European car?
---    And when you speak about taxes, think of Boston. Their property tax rate is now $10.42 per $100 of assessed valuation.
---    Hard to believe that in spite of the growth in the population the per capita use of butter and lard is the lowest in fifty years. More and more people are using margarine. You never see butter advertised in the magazines or newspaper.
---    The old smoke house for hams and bacon have joined the buffaloes. Instead of taking months as it did years ago to cure a ham and smoke it, packers with the assistance of automatic hypodermic needles and hot smoke streams now do the job in 48 hours: a changing world.
---    In the U.S. today eight million farmers feed 175 million people; that’s what comes from modernized machinery.
---    When it comes to coffee we Minnesotans think we are tops. We are far from it in this modern fast moving age. Get a look at a real coffee house. Take the Rubaiyat in Dallas, Texas. One of the famous brands is called Expresso, is a steam brewed Italian style coffee. It is made in gleaming chrome machines that forces live steam through finely ground coffee, condensing in the cup as a boiling hot liquid with the potency of six times normal American coffee. There’s some difference in the price. Expresso sells for 35 cents the cup. Different flavors are added, some as high as $1.252. You’ve got to take your coffee easy, making it a social event. This is a coffee “house” with plenty of decoration and swell furniture. Wonder how one would go in Willmar.
---    Polio has struck Minnesota and as anticipated there is a shortage of vaccine. The medicine men had to destroy millions of vaccine last year: nobody wanted it then. Polio is not a U.S. disease. We noticed a while back when professional football players were taken in the Birmingham, England outbreak.
---    The oddest of the odd stories going the rounds is that about Mrs. Florence Hill, 67, of Denver, Colo. who swallowed a live mouse. She was sleeping in a chair when she heard her dog Boris growl and seeing the mouse she opened her mouth to scream. The mouse jumped in and has not been heard of since. Florence has a fortune in her mouth. Ringlings side show will give her a hundred dollars a day for every repeat performance--next year she can get on the rat circuit. ========================

September 10, 1959
   That new Bendix self powered locomotive is the most powerful thing on earth today. It can pull 735 fully loaded freight cars on a level track, which makes a train seven miles long.
---    Now it’s the barbers turn to do a little boasting. In Chicago they get $2.00 for a hair cut and as high as $1.50 for a shave. In some of the suburban towns near Chicago they get $2.25 for a Saturday haircut. We can remember when Van Buren Smead used to shave us for a thin dime, and on a Sunday morning.
---    Down goes the price of lard. Hogs being shipped this year in the Chicago market are heavier than they were last year. Lean pork gets a higher price than fat pork but most farmers like to see their hogs fat.
---    Can’t help but endorse the mild slap on the wrist given by the Minneapolis Tribune to the late National American Legion convention for allowing race discrimination in the 40-8 branch. Men that are good enough to fight with should be good enough to play with.
---    Years ago everyone had silver dollars in their pockets or purse but you’ll hardly ever see a silver dollar today. The U.S. stopped making them in 1935, but Uncle Sam still has 30 million stored away and you can get all you want.
---    Colored T.V. sets have been hard to sell in this country. One manufacturer, the Admiral Corporation, stopped making them in 1958. Last week they resumed making them. They brought out five 21 inch color TV sets last week.
---    What a shocking indictment of American parents is found in Surgeon General Burney’s report last week. It said 3,413 cases of polio had been reported. Out of that number 2,112 cases had paralysis. The Surgeon General said that a study of the paralytic cases showed that 83 per cent were unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated.
---    Keep away from that silo as much as possible. From Wisconsin to So. Dak. papers are carrying warnings to the farmers that on account of the dry weather corn has a high content of nitrates. Just a few whiffs can damage the lungs permanently and a few more breaths can kill you. Watch out for the kids.
---    More woe. The Whirlpool plant installed more automatic devices this year, and the number of employees was cut from 7,700 to 5,500. The Chrysler Co. is moving its Plymouth plant to a new one at St. Louis in which they will turn out more cars with 3,500 men than they did with 6,000 men in the two plants.
---    Washington, D.C. is in such misery from hoodlumism that one congressman has proposed that one hundred Marines patrol the capitol.
---    Charlie Palquin as yet an unclassified boatman from Mankato and his Sea Queen over which so much fuss was made last summer, were docked at the wharf in Dubuque, Iowa last week. Frankly Charlie is disappointed. At the town about he put out his signs, including the 25 cent one. Only eight people looked at the inside. Mississippi is a great highway and many freaks are to be seen each season. The adventure spirit has about left Charlie, and he said when he got to New Orleans he would sell the Queen and return to Minnesota to fight a divorce case.
---    Medicine manufacturers have developed a new vaccine for infants. It is a four in one vaccine and gives protection from poliomyelitis, diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus, with a series of only four shots. The new vaccine has the O.K. of the U.S. health authorities. Polio is still increasing in the U.S. Last year up to this time there were only 925 paralytic cases. This year the count is 2,100.
---    Over a million seven hundred people went through the Wold Chamberlain airport in Minneapolis last year. No wonder railroads are cutting out trains. The Soo railroad claims that it has lost 94 per cent of its passenger business since 1950.
---    Autoists in Iowa and Nebraska are being offered a new type of insurance this week. Instead of separating insurance of liability on property damage, personal injury, etc. you get a $25,000 policy which covers all three, and it’s cheaper, too.
---    Minneapolis is going to have two professional football games in the fall. The Chicago Cardinals will play the Philadelphia Eagles on Oct. 23rd, and the New York Giants on Nov. 22nd at the Minneapolis baseball park. The games are on Sunday afternoon. The Gophers play at home both Saturdays. So the football fans can have a real feast. Don’t forget to bring your pocketbook. The professional games at the Stadium will be six bucks a seat.
---    Lots of folks don’t know it, but Denver, Colo. is a real rich city: one of the two minting plants of the U.S. is located there with its five billion of gold bullion, about a third of all the gold bullion at Fort Knox. The other mint is located at Philadelphia. Pennies are made of 95 per cent copper and the rest zinc and tin. To give you an idea of how much copper is used, it has 11 carloads, over a million pounds, for the month of September. The sales tax in the various states is a constant drain on the mint.
---    Here’s the flashlight you have been waiting for. It lasts forever. Will burn for ten hours at a stretch. The batteries are rechargeable. Cannot overcharge. Can be charged wherever there is A.C. current. The cost is $6.95.
---    Folks were thrilled by the meeting of Queen Elizabeth and President Eisenhower, showing the closeness of relations between the two nations. Minnesota folks don’t need to go far to see a practical demonstration. This year Labor Day will be celebrated at Fort Frances, Canada, and from across the river will come the bands, the floats and the marching labor units of International Falls. Next year Labor Day will be celebrated at the Falls and the Canuck units and marching groups will come across the Rainy river to help the Americans celebrate.
---    Sears, Roebuck which had a modest birth in Minnesota has now 60 retail stores in Central and So. America. It is now one of the big concerns of the nation.
---    Big insurance companies dealing in hospitals like the Blue Cross are changing their policies a little bit. Those that go to hospitals for two or three days for minor aid will have to pay their own bills. The New York Blue Cross which paid out a billion and a half dollars in benefits was $40 million dollars in the red. Blue Cross units in Atlanta, New Concord, N.H. and Detroit have boosted their rates from 20 to 30 per cent. The Blue Cross is made up of 79 regional associations and each has their own problems. ========================

September 17, 1959
   Norway will not soon forget the summer of 1959. It was the driest on record. It was so dry that there was an acute shortage of water for its huge hydroelectric power plants. It was so bad the government had to buy 10 ships as power plants to keep the cities going.
---    Is the millennium on its way? Eight churches (all of them) in the town of New Richmond, Wis. have banded together to build an old age home. The new F.H.A. plan the News said that “As high as 95 percent can be borrowed from the F.H.A.” The churches backing the plan are the Assembly of God Church, Immaculate Catholic, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, The Federated Church, First Lutheran Church, St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, First Baptist Church and the Emmanuel Evangelical United Brethren. They tell of the beauty of one site. It’s a good idea to look for the comforts before beauty.
---    A lady who has a column in the Suburbanite published in the town in which we live had a paragraph last week headed, “Thoughts While Shaving (my legs).” This town Bloomington is not to be sneezed at. It has a population of over 50,000 spread over 41 sections and does not know what booze is: but it’s coming up this fall. The Minneapolis Stadium is located in our village.
---    The women in Sweden seem to be allergic to airplanes. They just don’t ride them. So the air lines offer to cut the fares 50 percent to all females who will ride the planes inside Sweden.
---    The chicken business is changing. There’s a demand for bigger chickens. People, that is some of them, are tired of these pale anemic broilers of today, born and raised on the assembly line: never having seen an angle worm. The new chicken will be, or rather is, a heavier bird with plump breasts, wide back and thighs like Mae West used to shake, and best of all it will taste like a chicken. One outfit is planning to grow a chicken that will weigh 3 1/2 pounds in six weeks. This chicken business is not for amateurs.
---    The creamery at Hanska after a losing battle for three years has closed. The vote was 60 to 4. The $77,000 assets will be sold as soon as possible to pay the creditors: just another victim of the God called Progress.
---    Things must be looking up in Britain. It repaid the U.S. $250 million, and paid it five years before it was due. It was borrowed to pay the expenses of the foolish attack over the Suez Canal.
---    Following in the footsteps of the hotel and express credit cards the banks have now issued a credit card. All you have to do is to go to into a bank, show your card and borrow $1,000, no fuss, no waiting, no reference--what next.
---    A different kind of a note was added to the already overflowing quiz inquiry. This note came from the F.C. and accused G.M. and the Owens Glass Co. of improper advertising. This opens up a new field. Will a company not be allowed to say it sells the most cigars and razors that are the sharpest, cosmetics that will make you look like a new woman: taking the fizz out of a 7 Up leaves it pretty flat.
---    While the private auto did not hit the bus passenger business as hard as it hit the trains, it certainly jarred the buses a lot. In 1950 the buses carried 336 million passengers, in 1958 only 201 million. The private auto carries 89 per cent of the passengers between cities, leaving the trains, buses, airplanes, helicopters to haul the 11 percent.
---    In spite of the shortage of game this year, dealers in hunting goods report increased sales. More women than ever are taking up hunting which is a grand thing for the girls. In some states the 50 cents a day policy against loss of life or limb is popular.
---    The savings banks that have been riding high of late are at last finding some real competition. The Treasury new 5 per cent notes are getting buyers with funds from the savings and loan customers: it’s a changing world for chickens and money vendors.
---    Don’t give up the ship is the motto of the Missouri Pacific railroad. A new plan offered is a 25 cent ticket to under 12 year olds which will take them to nine big cities. It also gives adults round trip tickets to the same cities for a one way fare. Towns you can go to from St. Louis are San Antonio, St. Louis, Omaha, etc.: you can’t say they’re not trying.
---    Living in a queer world. San Francisco folks invited London folks over for a visit and asked them to bring the old and the new. For the first time in history Lloyds made an exhibit, bringing a replica of the old coffee house where Lloyds started. Lloyds is the most unique firm in the world. It started out insuring ships and branched out insuring everything and anything. It will insure you that you won’t have twins, that your 15 year old daughter won’t have freckles for 6 years, that there won’t be a tornado in your town or that there will not be a half inch of rain at the Murray County Fair next year; if any of these happens they will pay you the entire amount you insured for.
---    The J.D.’s rode again: this time near Butterfield, when they picked up the package of Sunday papers and scattered it high wide and handsome. John Law came along and picked up Terrence Bear, 18 years old. He was fined $25.00, also had to pay for half of the papers which was $24.00. He’s not the only one that got into the newspaper business at the wrong time: many a one did in the early days.
---    Seems odd that the U.S. and Britain have opposite ideas on gambling. In the U.S. if you play poker or shoot craps or even take a bet on a football game, you are headed for the judge. Over in Britain the government encourages gambling and recently it has licensed 200 shops in London where you can make bets. Folks over there bet on football games, horse races and dog races. It won’t be long before Britain has a national lottery.
---    Here’s something to ponder over when you pay your state income tax: there are 50 states and 16 of them have no personal income tax.
---    Whiskey hit the high point at Anoka last week. A J.P. fined David Sam of Onamia $100 for having an open bottle of whisky in his car. We notice he gave a lot of violators jail sentences only: he’s hard boiled.
---    A timely tip comes from Maryland to help get the snow off your sidewalks. Instead of using salt try a chemical fertilizer. It melts the snow and the water will run over the grass which will help make greener grass next spring and won’t rust anything.
---    Too bad that all the time, fuss and inquiry wasted in a quiz investigation could not have been used to discover the cause of the scarceness of doctors in the United States. Every state has a shortage. Over at St. Peter at the state mental hospital there are 2,340 patients and only 8 doctors. How on earth can they ever get along?
---    Poor Stassen. ========================

September 24, 1959
   Like to eat mallards, pheasant and quail? Well you can. You get two hen pheasants all ready for the oven at $2.50 apiece at one place. At another place you can get pheasants and ducks for $2.75 apiece. They have quail but did not give the price. This place is an up-to-date game farm. Has everything. Membership fee is $150. It has dogs for you, cockers, dressing rooms, guides and club house. At the bottom of the letter was “(Membership filled).” The club is limited to 35 members.
---    We’re sick and tired of all the adulation and idol worshiping in the case of Charles Van Doren. Writers praise him and console him because he comes from a long line of culture and intelligence. To us, that makes him more guilty than the man that wears overalls. He knew what perjury was and when caught at it, lied. No so-called upper class has a mortgage on honesty and decency. Chas. Van Doren proves that no matter whether you tie your shoes with pink ribbon or whung leather, most folk seem to have their price: Charley’s was $120,000.
---    And in the aftermath of all this quiz business comes a serious report from a Kentucky surgeon who tells of a “Television Bottom,” a painful muscular affliction still plaguing TV addicts who had bad sitting postures.
---    Hardly a day passes in this race for drugs that new and powerful antibiotics are not added to the list that will make you live longer. The new synthetic penicillin may be on the market in a few days. Biggest of all the new drugs is a Phenargocine, N.I.H. 7519. It beats morphine in relieving pain and you won’t acquire any bad habit. They say this will be out in four months’ time. But don’t try out any of this new stuff until you see your doctor: that’s his business.
---    How would some of you election judges and clerks like to live in Tamura in northern Japan. They have democracy there in a bad way. There are 7050 registered voters and there were 933 candidates for mayor at the last election. They are not quite so sure who was elected and one candidate has asked for a recount.
---    A Greenbush farmer learned something about etiquette on the county roads recently. He was hauling hay with a tractor late one afternoon. Had a flat tire on the trailer, went home for another one. It got dark, couldn’t see so he went home leaving the loaded trailer in the middle of the road. When he went back in the morning all that was left of the trailer and hay was a pile of ashes.
---    In the election in Kentucky for bonuses for all veterans including the Spanish American war, the veterans won out by a 30,000 vote majority. Some of the bonuses will hit $300, the limit. The bonuses can be paid to the widows and next of kin. The bonuses are to be paid from a new sales tax to be passed in January.
---    The Renault auto in France is really worth reading about. It is the sixth in the world in production. It sold 68,090 of its small cars in the U.S. in the first nine months in 1959. The Renault cars have the engine in the rear. Volkswagen is also doing its best to put the working man out of a job. It claims to have sold 83,161 cars and 22,000 trucks in the U.S. up to Oct. 1st.
---    An angle overlooked in the pheasant discussion this fall was the fox. For years the game and fish dept. has contended that bounties on foxes made no difference to the pheasant crop. Looks as if the dept. was right: counties that paid no bounties had just as many birds this fall as those that did.
---    Looks to us like we are playing the wrong game with Castro. He needs our advice, our help and sympathy instead of being shunned and criticised. He just doesn’t seem to know anything but fighting.
---    British magazine publishers of monthly magazines have an interesting plan. If you are interested at all in Britain it should please you. In one yearly subscription you can get the regular monthly copy of twelve different magazines during the year. Good plan.
---    When Oklahoma went wet last September it imposed the highest tax known on liquor: $2.40 a gallon. It struck a gold mine as the state has been raking in a tax of over $500,000 a month.
---    Big game hunters will be interested in this item from the Grand Marais News. Up to noon yesterday it was reported that 352 moose from Canada had been transported back into Canada at Pigeon River. These moose had been shot in Canadian woods, where Minnesota roads were the nearest.
---    How long does nostalgia last? A long time when it comes to Grandma’s remedies. They are still selling Hosteter’s Stomach Bitters, Kickapoo Tonic, Groves Chill Tablets, Sloan’s Liniment, King’s Discovery, Hood’s Sarsaparilla, Chamberlains and the Pinkham medicine that took a female from the cradle to the grave. Remarkable how family tradition looks back. In New York City last spring as a sort of a joke a druggist ran an ad, “Spring is here, get your old time Sulphur and Molasses.” The orders fairly swamped him and were still coming in July. We can remember back in the ‘80’s, young men when they saw black spots, were feverish, had falling of the sox, etc., always went to the store sometimes twice to get a bottle of Electric Bitters, that straightened them out: it was 10 per cent alcohol.
---    The State of Minnesota is the fifth agricultural state in the U.S. The first in 1958 marketings was California, followed by Iowa, Texas and Illinois. Crops were good this year. Prices are away down. How is it all going to end?
---    A rabid football fan in days of your says, “Here I help with the quarterbacking in front of the TV set every Saturday afternoon and we always play better than the other team but we always lose:” how long is the dam going to hold?
---    The cranberry disclosure is going to last longer than you think. It will be talked over at 60 per cent of the Thanksgiving day dinners. Some will not eat the cranberries, it will be imbedded in a lot of kids’ minds. Yes, and some adults who fear and dread cancer are off them for life. One cloud will be you don’t know how many other cranberry raisers have used this same deadly insecticide. ========================

November 26, 1959
   Got a newspaper called the Poughkeepsie New Yorker, N.Y. Rather an odd name for us westerners. They have money raising troubles, not so much sales tax but toll taxes on bridges. They were told a while back that the bridge tolls would last for 25 years. This paper is one of the old ones, having been started in 1785 before George Washington was elected. Two business men, not politicians, whose pictures have been seen by more Americans than any other two men, started business there in a modest way: they are the Smith Bros. of cough drop fame. We asked Mrs. Wimple who was born there and who gave us the paper if she knew them. She said she knew the short whiskered one. She used to see him take his two sales ladies out for a ride Saturday afternoon in his surrey with the fringe on top. Smith Bros. drops had grown, both in quantity and price.
---    If there’s crab grass in your lawn quit worrying. Purdue University has been experimenting with crab grass killers for years and finally hit one. They spread it on 1,000 plots last summer and wiped it out. They must have had a lot of crab grass at Salt Lake City. The Pax Co. out there sold over $2 million of “Pax” in 1959 to kill the crab grass and expects to sell that much next year.
---    The Studebaker Auto Co. is trying to buy the Oliver farm machinery business. In the nine months ending July 31 the Oliver sold $55 million in the U.S. and Canada and the J. J. Case Co. has formed a company to make prefabricated buildings of all kinds.
---    If you are a business firm that uses the T.V. for advertising, go over it with a fine tooth comb. The government is going to regulate it. First thing you know all of the advertising will be off the air and your T.V. will be dead.
---    Things are looking up in the butter end of the dairy business. At least it is off the free list now which makes a lot of difference to your taxes. For instance, take the hospital at Anoka: the superintendent said last week it will mean a $14,000 loss to that institution and the folks who sneered at surplus butter are now cussing because it’s going.
---    The poor and downtrodden who smoke pipe tobacco have friends in the Washington State Supreme Court. The legislature imposed a 25 per cent tax on the wholesale value of tobacco and cigars. The court found the law was faulty: we need a court like that here.
---    If congress would only define what a farmer really is or should be, the farm problem would soon settle itself and there would be a back to the farm movement.
---    Not a doctor, but we saw what we thought was a real idea for folks with heart trouble. Instead of eating three big meals a day, putting the heart gear in high, why not eat 3 small meals a day and amble along in medium.
---    Here’s a tip to cities needing taxes. Denver has a city sales tax of one per cent and it continues to grow as the months go by: here’s one tax where all the money stays at home.
---    A real sensible inquiry has started on the sale of those pep pills for truckers. They are for sale, bootlegged of course, at hundreds of stations; motorists make long drives, buy the pills by the hundreds to keep them awake.
---    Old folks in the U.S. cost the taxpayers a lot of money and the burden is going to increase as the age limit grows longer. The Federal government alone is spending $14 billion a year on old agers and then there is the state, county and towns.
---    There’s a new tire coming out soon that is almost going to revolutionize the tire business. This new tire has a detachable tread: when the tread wears out you buy a new tread and put it on. It will cost around $2.00. An added convenience is that you can put on snow treads. They’re not making them in the U.S. yet. Italy is making them now and Great Britain will in 1960. We’re going to see how they work first.
---    We were over to “Cedric’s” for lunch Friday and thought his friends in Murray county would like to hear of his new venture. The place had been decorated since we were there last, had lots of pictures of modern art and flowers. The ladies: Kate, Marj and Kae were presented with orchids and we cigars. The long luncheon room was crowded, lots more women than men. We had roast sirloin of beef with gravy, french fries, vegetables, rolls, all the butter and coffee you wanted and the cost was $1.35, which did not seem to fit with the luxury atmosphere in which it was served. The dessert if you wanted it came in a two-shelf 4 wheel cart with 40 different kinds of pies and pastries. It was a comfy place to eat, there was no clatter or bustle. The lunch was the best we’ve had yet. (No, we paid cash). Naturally Cedric was not there, but his son Cedric who is really running the place was doing the honors. Here’s the address if you want to drop in: it is 5000 Normandale Road on Highway 100 and west 50th St. in the village of Edina.
---    Have not seen Cedric since he was at the Murray county fair several years ago to M.C. a county amateur contest. It started raining just as the program finished and we sat in the car with him while he did his 10 o’clock stint on the air.
---    The cranberry war is over. It gave a lot of nuts a chance to blow their tops off at a man who was trying to do his duty. If he had not done it the same guys would have been knocking him so as to make the headlines; evidently the cranberry growers are using pretty strong insecticides.
---    The last pro football game held in our village took in $120,000 and that was not enough to pay the bill; we’d hat to have a tag for the one tomorrow. It will be around $140,000.
---    Senator Kefauver is going to investigate the high price of medicine. Why wait and diddle daddle around all winter and end up like McClellan did with Hoffa expectorating in his face. Here we are messing around with T.V. slop while folks are paying these high prices to drug manufacturers (and nobody saying a word).
---    You can’t even be clever these days. One breadmaker claimed on the T.V. that his slice of bread had less calories than the other. It did, the slices were thinner than they were in other loaves, but Uncle Sam did not like the wording and he had to write a new ad.
---    The Hanska school districts voted to consolidate again and a board will be elected within 60 days which will decide the high school question, so says a preacher who is a member of the board, and in fact the only spokesman. If a member of some other faith had been half as active as he...but why bring that up, it’s awful hard for some folks to realize what’s sauce for the goose, etc.
---    Good news for a lot of folks. Congress has always sweetened the Social Security allotment every election year. ========================

December 3, 1959
   Some of you will be interested in how the English ran their TV quiz show last week. The contestant was John Wells, a village school teacher who was trying to double his $1,400 winnings on the Double Your Money show. He was met by a “Security Officer” when he got to London and was under his care at all times. A man from the Encyclopedia Brittanica hands the question, which had been selected the night before independent of the producer, to the M.C. of the show. You can’t stutter much on those English shows as some of the rates on the best time are $3,100 a minute. Over there they call the machines “the Tellys.”
---    We voted by machine Tuesday, not for any candidate, we voted for water and bonds and the Lord knows this fourth city in the state needs water. Twelve thousand homes have no sewer or water connection. In the hurry to get homes they drilled their own wells and every one has his own septic tank, something went amiss and over half of the wells are contaminated. Hence the need for water. They will buy Mississippi River water from Minneapolis.
---    Being so near Canada, Minnesota is interested in its new farm plan. We called it the Brannan plan. They start with hogs. The government will start on January 11th, 1960 in paying the farmers the difference between the average market price and the support price. Some day we may take up this plan.
---    Windom and Cottonwood county were pretty agitated last week when the report came out that out of 22 deaths in June and July 20 were due to cancer and the rate was seven females to one male, and most of the cases were between forty-five and fifty. Doctors are at a loss to know the cause for this increase. An increase of that size and that early age is causing a lot of interest especially among the women of the neighboring counties who are anxious for information.
---    A short time ago a boy got mad at another boy and stabbed him to death with a screwdriver. He was sent to Red Wing. Down there in order to purify him they put him in a boy’s quartet and took them to Austin to sing in a church At the end of the program he wanted to go to the powder room and is still looking for it: are we going clear nutty? The poor boy might have been hunting for another screwdriver.
---    This one is pretty hard to believe: the game warden in Kittson county claims there are 1,000 moose in that county. The editor of the Enterprise is a little more modest and claims only 500. They must be itching for an open moose season. Murray county has 721 square miles. Kittson county 1,124 square miles. It is slap up against the Canadian border. There was an open season for moose in Canada this year which might account for them bunching up in Minnesota.
---    The Christmas season is now on in the east and stores are decorated as they never have been before. One outfit has a mechanical village that cost $100,000 and has 250 animated figures: how do they ever get the kids away from it. If Santa Clause does not come to your town in a helicopter he’s old fashioned.
---    The A & P stores in some localities are pushing the stamp sales. They give stamps good for 3 cents of gasoline with every $2.00 worth of groceries you buy: is this the way to get around the fair price laws?
---    Some folks just can’t stand penicillin. Well, they’ll be happy to know that the Bristol Medical Co. has a new one called Sycillin, was given to 762 patients; only one suffered an allergic reaction and that was a slight rash.
---    A rash of ethics has struck Wisconsin. This time it hit the lawyers of Taylor and Clark counties who all at once found they were committing a deadly ethical sin by having their cards in the local papers, so they withdrew the ads. If we were running a paper over there and one of them had a law suit in the paper we would refer to him as “Mr. John Jones was on the defense side,” or would we--we’d never see another probate notice.
---    One of the worst people for negroes are the folks in South Africa. The white government is ten times worse than it is in our south. But not all the people are with the government. The Johannesburg Times throws jabs and jibes at the government. They have a real candidate for top prize fighters: J. Botha took 3 squads of policemen to put the cuffs on him and then was released the next day: the policeman had no right being on his land. The old English law they have goes on the theory that you have no right to go where you want to if you are a policeman. Up near Bylee Cryp, that’s quite a ways out in the country, a native chief had some trouble in one of his small villages and sent his officers. The negro women in the small place organized and pushed and shoved the guard home. Our heart bleeds for those poor negro men: progress and civilization have arrived. A mighty interesting paper is the Times.
---    Another woman was stabbed to death in a Washington Ave. saloon one night last week. Soon 87 saloons from Washington Ave. will be spewed over the city when Washington Ave. is made over. One place, the Bucket of Blood, has said it will change its name to the Abattoir to keep up with the culture of his new location.
---    The U.S. Health Service is warning you for the last time that if you are afraid of flu get your vaccine shots right now. The Asian type will be here this winter. The new vaccine will protect you against all types of flue: next week may be too late.
---    The real fruit wizard of the world is not a scientist: he’s a South African farmer of Province. He has developed an apple tree that produces fruit every month in the year. The apples are bright yellow and the tree blossoms and bears every month. First you must have the climate. Just think what a city in the U.S. with a conservatory could do if it had one of those trees. Thousands of folks would be glad to pay a quarter and the clippings, apples and apple seed would bring in a tidy sum.
---    The Swedes both in Sweden and Minneapolis made a great to-do over a Swede being the top prize fighter. You never hear the Scots make a fuss because MacMillan is a Scot. That is nothing unusual. When we were nine years old, our father had a gentleman by the name of H. Campbell Bannerman to dinner at our home in Stirling, Scotland. While we had never slept in a George Washington bed we have eaten a dinner with a man who became premier of Great Britain, Sir H. Campbell Bannerman, who became Prime Minister of Great Britain in the days when Britain could be called “Great” Britain. He was a Scot.
---    We had the joy of a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner at the R. D. Elias home. It brought back memories of home and was good from the minute the oven door opened till we had almost finished the gravy and the dressing, absolutely necessary to make a turkey palatable and delectable. ========================

December 10, 1959
   The auto is not as deadly from its hind end as it is from its front end, but it has its potentialities. Monoxide gas is a human killer that should be eradicated. We noticed the Automobile Manufacturers Association is developing a device which will eliminate some of the auto fumes. It is being tested in Los Angeles. Sad thing about so many of the monoxide dead is that they have been quietly wafted into the Land of Gray while they were still telling that “Sweetest Story Every Told.”
---    The Curtis-Wright Company has produced an engine that is an attraction these days. They claim it will produce twice the power of any plant its size because it has only two moving parts. It will be cheaper to operate and cheaper to build. The new engine will be on sale next year.
---    The sales tax must be popular or the people wealthy in Iowa. For the three months ended September 30th, the amount of profit in the state was $17.2 million, an increase of over 7 per cent over the same period in 1958.
---    One of the pitiful things in the recent village elections was the lack of candidates. If ever the small towns needed mayors and councilmen of good business integrity it is now. No use denying it, 90 per cent of the small towns are slipping, but there should be no pushing from the inside. Why not a council of women. We guarantee they will do as well as the men. At least they won’t go to the regular meeting and ask what’s on the list tonight: they’ll each have one.
---    The official holiday season at the Home was a concert by the Richfield Sweet Adelines last Friday night. Mixed with the Christmas sons were old songs so dear. They kindly sang one song in honor of the Roamer, which was deeply appreciated. With the Adelines are the two Koopman girls, formerly of the Fulda area, who were heard at all 4-H doings and concerts. Norma is now Mrs. C. Weck and Wima is now Mrs. Earl Farmer. There are 30 in the group and we can’t remember seeing a prettier, peppier sweeter looking bunch of gals in a long long time.
---    A 91 year old girl of Wells was arrested last week for her third violation of the auto speed law. The last one was for hitting 100 miles an hour on the highway near Mankato. She is now out on a suspended 10 days sentence. The only way to handle birds of this type is to take away their driving license for 60 days and keep jelly fish from acting as justices of the peace on her cases: she must be good looking.
---    Movies are getting a boost and in order to keep the public with them are using rather unusual methods. Take the big movie “Samson and Delilah” show. One New York theatre hired a lady barber on the opening night to give free haircuts to waiting Samsons. The big picture ones that cost money are bringing in more money than the second rate ones.
---    A new anti-cigaret report came out last week from the U.S. government. This one was more stinging than the rest but will do just as much good. A cigaret drunkard is 10 times worse than a whisky drunkard. The booze hounds never are told that they are going to lose their lives or lungs: they are told they are a public nuisance and a disgrace to their folks but whisky drunkards live longer; save your wind talking to a cigaret drunkard.
---    The 40 and 8, an offshoot of the American Legion, refuses to admit colored men into its order. They should have been consistent and passed a resolution which would have forbidden colored men from ever wearing the uniform of Uncle Sam.
---    Those old time farm machine companies make many changes, the International Harvester Company is trying to buy the Solar Air Craft Company.
---    Chas. Polquin, the Sea Scout man from Mankato, was back in the headlines last week, stripped of his foolish pride and cash. He was asking the judge to do something about his divorce terms, which are $2,600 a year for Shirley and the two kids. She also gets half the farm. The $8,000 boat is tied up at New Orleans with no buyers. Fame is fleeting, he could have been better off if he had stuck by Shirley and let South America stay uncivilized.
---    Ford is doing the handsome thing with their dealers on the dead Edsels. The dealers can get a $400 rebate for each 1960 Edsel and give a $300 rebate on every Edsel after Nov. 1959.
---    It’s a little thing but worth a thought. Canadians are buying cattle on the Chicago market and shipping them back home paying the freight rate, with the difference in price between the Canadian dollar and ours.
---    What a wonderful thing is faith. Most of us have it but don’t know it. A doctor recently said the benefit you get from a medicine may depend partly on your confidence in the doctor who gives it. If you are eager to get well and have perfect confidence in your doctor, a sugar pill will sometimes do the trick.
---    The United States Supreme Court must have been reading the Johannesburg Times. It warned policemen in the United States to keep within due bounds and that “you cannot arrest a man as suspicious.” The Fourth Amendment teaches that it is better that the guilty sometimes goes free so that citizens be free from easy arrest.
---    Country has gone wild over savings banks. In New York, N.Y, the hatchery of financial skullduggery, we notice a new savings bank is insured by a Morocco firm.
---    On the black jelly bean which has always been accepted by Uncle Sam as pure, now they must prove they are purer: how can that be done? Another odd thing is why does the government allow the sale of cigarets when one department of the government says they are deadly.
---    Had a real visitor from Lake Wilson. He was Marshall Fowser and we pumped him with so many questions about you folks in Murray County that he was limp. Was sorry to hear of farm conditions and the low price on eggs of 11 cents a dozen. On chickens it is 6 cents a pound, the low price on pork is $9.75 and lamb is $16.50 with old ewes from $2.00 to $6.00. The lowest prices for many years and there seems to be no relief in sight. We certainly enjoyed his visit as we knew just how the old folks were and how the old places looked. The lake is gone and is going to take years for it to come back.
---    Low farm prices are blamed on the Democrats by the Republicans and the Democrats point at Benson. Marshall said it looked unfair to pay steel workers $24.08 a day, enough to buy 400 lbs. of chickens. We did get a pheasant, after all. Marshall brought one to us and Marjorie is doing the cooking and we will do the eating later. ========================

December 17, 1959
   Bingo is not going over so good in Nebraska. A law was passed last winter legalizing the game, the state getting 10 per cent of receipts. The state’s take of the first three months was about $8,500. That isn’t enough to pay expense which is costing the state over $50,000 yearly. Bingo is what the females like at the Home. Just shout the words “Bingo Game” up here and duck, or you’ll be crushed in the rush.
---    Here’s a law suit that will interest every lover of trees and tree owners. Employees of the village of Sleepy Eye by mistake cut down a beautiful elm tree owned by J. Pelizel and the Dispatch says that he is suing the village for $500 damages. He appeared before the council. The council admitted it was cut by mistake and it was willing to let a district court jury decide what the tree was worth.
---    Look for the next legislature to start the movement for the Minnesota legislature to meet every year instead of every two years. Twenty states now have yearly sessions. A law should also be passed that it would in some way stop such a lot of boondoggling. Conservative members in the senate are criticized for following so-called leaders too long.
---    South Africa hates the negro, yet it educates them. Saw where a million kids attended school last year. Every negro must carry a little book with him at all times. It has his name, birthplace, etc. and every man he ever worked for. If he has not got the book he goes to jail.
---    Saw this ad in a Chicago paper. In big type were the words, “Giant 1/2 Gallon Hudson Bay.” According to the TV purists, this ad is all wet. What’s a “Giant” 1/2 gallon? But those who receive one won’t care if the ad was rigged.
---    It costs real money to own your own municipal plant in this day and age. Sleepy Eye voted to retain its plant. The first thing on the list is a new dual power engine. They cost $450,000 installed. The price on the engine like all mechanical devices has shot sky high and there is only half enough in the sinking fund and it looks like it will take a bond issue of $550,000 to keep the plant running.
---    Up in North Dakota when 15 and 18 year olds steal cars and raise heck in general are caught, they are not put on lamb chops or steaks, they are hobbled with a short chair. Down at Red Wing, Minn., they are given a Psalm book and sent out to sing in churches. Isn’t it about time for a change at Red Wing.
---    Our fair city of Bloomington went dry 2 to 1 Tuesday. We sat and watched them vote after supper when the rush was on. They voted on wet or dry, for a mayor and to pick out 3 councilmen. You are allowed three minutes to vote, a lot of them voted in ten seconds.
---    Housewives are being blamed for the low prices on eggs. Getting any kind of a breakfast is not on the household agenda and if she does get up she generally brings in a box of flakes. Bacon and eggs or ham and eggs are unknown; who wants to spend the time to even fry an egg. Years ago egg sandwiches were common: they’re gone. Strange thing is that many a home that raises eggs never has time to cook ‘em, and don’t forget the harm done to the egg market by a man named Kellogg: he has broken up many a home with his breakfast excelsior.
---    Mankato is talking of a detention home for juvenile delinquents: good idea. At present when the “J.D.’s” are caught they are held in the jail, the parents notified and the next day they are heroes at school. A detention home would be a good place for them until they are tried.
---    Hospital beds were upped in Minneapolis last week, which means the state hospitals will have to follow. Scarcity of course is one of the reasons. Top rate in the city hospitals is $31.00 a day; of course there are private hospitals where the rate is over that amount. The federal government aids in the erection of hospitals, why doesn’t it go a little farther and aid nurses to keep them going.
---    This begins to smell like Lutefisk time. Murray county does not consume a tenth of what it used to when the dried Lutefisk came in bales tied with wire and left out on the sidewalks for the dogs to smell at as they went by. In Otter Tail county there were twenty contestants at a feed to see who could eat the most Lutefisk. Rudy Anderson won the prize by eating and inhaling 4 pounds and 3/4 ounces of the stuff.
---    Nothing high-falutin about the language of the California Supreme Court. In a case last week over a fair price on wine, the court held for the “fair” (high) price on wine, as “Cheap wine led to intemperance.”
---    Mayor Morrison of New Orleans, La. won out in the primary election for governor. We think we have hot politicians in Minnesota but they are not in the same class as they are down south. Morrison covered 40,000 miles by plane and auto, made 550 stump speeches and made 75 T.V. appearances. Candy was given to the kids, the ladies got combs, the men cigars and some families sacks of groceries, and Morrison was out stumping for the run-off before the ballots were all counted.
---    There were some pheasants in Murray County. The boys of No. 262 down home sent me a bid to a pheasant dinner. Thanks.
---    On our way home from dinner Sunday Marjorie drove us up Nicollet Ave. It was decked in all its Christmastide glory which seems to be gaudier, no not gaudier, but more beautiful as the years go by. It’s a glittering scintillating show beyond description.
---    If you’re not interested in whether the Christmas card arrives at its destination, put a 3 cent stamp on it. It’s a sort of a dead duck anyway. A card with a 4 cent stamp on it goes places. It can be forwarded five or six times and if the address cannot be found it will come back to you. Millions of 3 cent Christmas cards will be burned this year, or sold a waste paper. Best way to do: send fewer cards and use 4 cent stamps. Don’t forget to put your name and address on the 4 cent envelope.
---    Lard was selling at wholesale in Chicago for 8 cents a pound last week, to keep the picture dull Cuba raised its first crop of soy beans this year. ========================

December 24, 1959
   A healthy Christmas day to you, you can’t be happy if you’re not healthy.
---    Bald headed men will soon be as scarce as the buffalo. Many women are either urging or making their husbands were toupees. Men wear hearing aids, spectacles, false teeth: why not a wig?
---    The trend of crowds of people in the U.S. today reminds us of the days of the Roman coliseums where gladiators fought to the death, sometimes with metal spiked gloves. We don’t seem to know it but we are following them with our pro football. This game is more brutal than any other. Players wear metal helmets and the more brutal the game gets, the bigger the crowd.
---    South Dakota and North Dakota object to our dailies mentioning the storms that filter into Minnesota from the Dakotas: So. Dakota was nicknamed the “Blizzard State” 60 years ago.
---    Congratulations to Edgerton. For years they have had water trouble. Water was full of nitrates. They kept at it doggedly and with Holland persistence until their village is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. Two weeks ago they found both water and ponds. Edgerton is one small town that is not slipping.
---    Twelve hundred U.S. troops are leaving Iceland for good and as usual women are to blame for the troops’ movement. Yankee soldiers have more dollars and know how to spend them better than the Iceland boys do the Kronas and consequently many of the Icelanders have to look at the geysers alone. Iceland is about a third as large as Minnesota. The population of Iceland is only 50,000 larger than Duluth. It has no army, no navy, no forts and no railroads.
---    Moose Lake had a community hospital. It is getting old. No one seemed to care until the state board of health told the hospital officials that it could not renew its license unless improvements were made. Now everybody is on a new hospital committee. Not everybody, one business man in Moose Lake blurted out this remark that will go down in history, “Moose Lake businessmen can’t expect much business from the sick and dying.” A lady published his name in a letter to the editor.
---    Why don’t we ever think of something? A man in the Christmas tree section of Oregon saw in his workshop the trunk of a small tree. He saw a chair leg with the holes in it. He got a brace and started boring holes in the tree trunk, then got some small branches. The result was a first class Christmas tree. The company made 50,000 this season and sold the entire output to Montgomery Ward. Five different size bundles of branches come with each trunk. The trunks are picked up at local saw mills, the branches from the farmers at $20.00 a thousand. Housewives separate the branches into sizes. The trunk is kept from year to year and you can buy the branches each year. The company will have 50,000 of them ready for the 1960 season.
---    The Jews living in Johannesburg, S. Africa, have a pleasing custom. When the Jewish New Year rolls around, we notice they put in a short notice in the Times with the following words, “Bodes, Daniel, Leah and family, wish all their friends happiness for the New Year and well over the ‘Fast’ ”. There were 150 of these cards and naturally the Times is in favor of the custom.
---    The hyphen between F and L will be a little longer in southern Minnesota come next election.
---    Too bad the farmers can’t get together on how to get rid of the surplus which is now worth over $9 billion. Benson could not have bought that much stuff without helping some of them. Three big groups are meeting soon to decide on a plan. Some of the wheat men don’t want to put in any crop this coming year. They want to haul it out of the surplus: doesn’t sound so bad.
---    The man or woman that has been passing checks when they had no funds in the bank, since last week stands in an altogether different spot. Passing small checks had been treated as a misdemeanor. The Supreme Court of Minnesota says passing rubber checks in this state is swindling and swindling is a felony, and a felony can land you in Stillwater.
---    Stephen, a town of a thousand in Marshall county is making frantic efforts to get a doctor. They’ve been working with a foundation center: no results. There’s not enough doctors to go around and a young doctor today wants to be near clinics and hospitals. The old style family doctor who dealt in personality with his medicine is gone.
---    Can’t see where there is so much harm in a member of the U.S. congress giving one of his own boys or one of his nephews a job in Washington, D.C. None of the boys have been arrested so far for violations and it’s a grand education for the kids. --- Mankato may lose its plane service. Stipulation was that Mankato should have at least 150 passengers each month. But the records shows a drop instead of an increase and Mankato may lose its plane.
---    The only bridge in the world across the Atlantic ocean is in Scotland. Clachan Bridge connects the island of Sell to the mainland: so says the Christian Monitor.
---    The best thing to hit the steel mills since the strike started was the fine spell of fall weather. On Lake Superior 100 big boats were still hauling ore last week. Last year at this time not one. One of those ore boats carries 22,000 tons of ore equal to 360 hopper cars.
---    Israel is another country that has well trouble, and good water is scarce. It is getting a New York firm to help them from a new angle. It will freeze sea water into ice crystals and then convert the crystals into fresh water. They say it will cost 40 cents to change 1,000 gallons of water.
---    Hospital beds were upped in Minneapolis last week which means the state will have to follow. Scarcity of nurses is one of the reasons. Top rate in the city hospitals is $31 a day of course there are private hospitals where the rate is over that amount. The federal government aids in the erection of hospitals, why doesn’t it go a little farther and aid nurses to keep them going.
---    For the first time in 1959 Ford edged ahead of the Chevy last week. Ford has made 1,330,000. Dodge’s new Dart is proving popular: over 20,000 selling in November. Buicks were down to 10,000 and DeSotos to 2,950. Of course the strike entered into the above figures. ========================

December 31, 1959
   Would this idea of the state going through the books of industrial companies big and small going to lure many companies to Minnesota.
---    Another real drive is on to see how many foods are affected by poisons. The government has a list of 445 poisons that are used by a large variety of foods and is trying to sift out the real bad ones. Makes one scratch his head: so many ills in the food and people living longer than ever before.
---    Never in the history of Minnesota has two of its top officials been so scathingly rebuked by a court as Gov. Freeman and Atty. General Lord were by the federal court in the Albert Lea strike case. We blame Lord more than Freeman. Lord was supposed to know something about law.
---    Luck was with us again and we were at the Christmas tree festivities Thursday night and the dinner on Friday at the Elias home and came home with so many presents you’d thought we hit the jackpot. Blessed by he that expecteth little for verily he shall not be disappointed.
---    You’ll have to agree that the British are a pretty smart people. Lord Alanbrook was chief of the British staff during World War II and in his book says “General MacArthur was the greatest general and the best strategist the war produced.” Anyone that reads history knows that MacArthur’s drive from Australia to Manila was a masterpiece.
---    If you live in Minnesota here’s something you ought to know about your doctors. “A doctor is not an insurer of a cure or a good result from his treatment or operation.” So said the state supreme court. Not one of them can guarantee a cure, so trust in the Lord and have faith in your physician, they’re both doing their best for you. Quack doctors are the only ones that guarantee a cure, which never comes.
---    Sec’y Benson just out of the hospital is going to make some speeches. He’s going to ask his worst critics among the law makers why they did not change the laws instead of using him for a whipping post. Over in Canada you know the farmers are in the same shape as those the U.S. but they have no Benson to blame it on.
---    Why pick on the drug manufacturing people as to their profits. If is had not been for them we would still be relying on Epsom salts, carbolic acid and sulphur and a lot of us including Senator Kefauver and ourself would have passed away.
---    If congress is to keep on price nosing, look for the auto to come next: it is the closest thing to the American people, next to food.
---    Time was when auto companies tied their dealers in chains. Once the dealer signed a contract they were gone. Remember one auto dealer in Slayton, he was doing real well. His company dumped a bunch of tractors on him and said, “You’ve got to sell them.” He said, “I can’t” and the fight ended with J. K. giving up his contract. We commented on it in the Pilot. Down from St. Paul came two smooth suave young men and proceeded to work on us. We said, “Was it untrue?” “No, but...,” one started to say. We said, “Good Bye.” One left is such a hurry that he left his gloves.
---    Farmers living near Lancaster in the northern part of the state are compelled to move their haystacks to their farmyards. The moose have been eating their hay and wasting more than they ate.
---    The government has ordered a halt in the use of the new live-virus polio vaccine pills. The manufacturer will have to prove the safety of the new vaccine, which is made from living polio virus. It has to be taken in the mouth. Salk’s vaccine is made of dead virus: all Greek to us. Ask your doctor if interested--and who isn’t?
---    Taxes must be real scarce in southwestern Minnesota. Down at Sleepy eye the Dispatch says that game warden Searl was approached by a man with a fox pelt to be O.K. for bounty. Searl looked at the pelt and saw the ears and toes had been clipped so he took Victor Stage of Cobden up before a justice who fined him $100: Victor must have been slightly under the weather.
---    Jealous of the publicity given scientists for their work in the air, another group is making arrangements to go down into the bowels of the earth. The deepest hole yet made in the earth is an oil well in West Texas that is 25,340 feet deep. This new well or hole is going to be six miles deep. The hole is going to be plenty big enough so the scientists will tell about how the world was made. The group ask congress for three million to get organized. It will take around $50 million to get the job finished. The crust on the earth is of various thickness.
---    An orchid for Judge Richardson of Austin. The treasurer of the county went bad to the tune of about $30,000. He was found guilty. His lawyer put up the regular impassioned plea. Put him on probation, let him stay home over Christmas. The judge said, “No,” he had systematically stolen from the treasury while going back and forth to his home, knowing that he was bringing shame to his unborn child but he cared not--that afternoon the prisoner was on his way to St. Cloud. ‘Tis well, we need more judges and justice. We can wipe out probation and suspension.
---    The most important medicine ever discovered in the world is penicillin according to Dr. Alvarez. Penicillin was discovered by Dr. Fleming in London. He was born in Scotland.
---    Had a treat last week. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Johnson of Shakopee had us out to a wild duck dinner which we enjoyed heartily. Harold’s son Robert of Wadena is in the Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis for an operation. Bob used to be with the First National Bank of Lake Wilson. He is married to Miss Karger of Slayton.
---    Folks out here to whom Sears and Ward, the mail order houses, have been doing off and on business for years will be interested in a mail order store at Corsicana, Texas. This company only sells fruit cakes, one kind and it sells $1,750,000 worth. They are all topped with big Texas pecans.
---    Staid old Great Britain has wonderful success with the lottery system for selling bonds. When bond sales lagged she started a lottery. Held drawings every month. Buy a bond and you get a chance. Prizes ranged from $70 to $2,800 and the bonds go like hot cakes.
---    The U.S. housewife is not a neat tidy woman. At least she does not like neat supermarkets. They would rather buy from shelves and counters where the merchandise is all mixed up. That’s what a poll showed. ========================

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