1960 Columns, January - June
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Roaming in the Gloaming

With Bob Forrest

Things Material and Immaterial

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January 7, 1960
  Whatever you do, brother, don’t cut down a tree that does not belong to you. Remember that tree that was cut down by city employees at Sleepy Eye? The district court jury at New Ulm gave Edward Pelzel a verdict of $500 damages for the loss of a tree. Now that a price has been set on Minnesota trees, be careful with your auto--don’t run into your neighbor’s evergreens. ---   Some of the hospitals in the northern part of the state were closed to visitors last week on account of the Flu. ---   Milwaukee has miles of beautiful elm trees. They were attacked by disease. The city doused the trees from head to foot with DDT, result: the trees were saved but the song birds died. It does begin to look like insecticides for weeds will eventually wipe out all feathered life as well as some of the animal life such as moles, mice, etc. I’ll fear the day when the insecticides destroy the angle worm: don’t laugh, think. ---   The worm is turning in the freight hauling line and the railroads are beginning to get some of the lines back. The railroads have been going after and getting the butter business. The roads cut the butter rate from Owatonna to Chicago from 66 cents to 41 cents the hundred. ---   Over in Canada they have a new chemical that kills wild oats, one of the worst weeds Canada has. The name of it before we forget it is 4-chloro-2-butynyl (3-chloro), etc. It should do something. What the nation needs and needs badly is something that will take the wild oats out of the human family. ---   Some states are using a new method to fight icy highways. Instead of waiting until the ice freezes or the snow falls the highway is treated before with a coat of salt. ---   One of the sad things about the farm trouble is that little attention is paid to the one that really needs it, the young fellow who wants to start. You can educate him all you want to but if he has not the means to start with modern equipment, he’s lost. The farmer of today who owns his own farm and has it stocked with modern equipment doesn’t need sympathy, he does not cry himself to sleep. ---   A reader in the city says you did not mention about that top Republican being caught with the national gangsters. We should, as he was caught by mistake, he said. Don’t think that all republicans are saints. There are knaves in the party same as there is in every church, nationality and political party. Fact is, Fall who took his ill gotten gains of $100,000 in bills in a suit case was a republican. ---   You’d hardly believe it but Uncle Sam believes in trading stamps. A new order issued by the General Administration Departments informs buyers whenever anything is bought at a place of business that issues stamps, the stamps must be taken and handed in with the daily report. ---   Don’t forget the raise in parcel postage. It goes into effect February 1st. The raise is 17 percent of the present rate. ---   The cigaret folks are not the largest TV advertisers. In the first nine months of the year (1959) Proctor & Gamble, the soap people, led the pack spending over $2 million, second was Lever company, spending with $36 million, third was Colgates. We must be the cleanest nation on earth. ---   At a recent election the two candidates for mayor of Argyle received 60 votes each. They don’t draw straws: the council decides, but if the council ties then the council decides by lottery. ---   Juvenile Delinquents during the colonial days did not get a chance to go psalm singing. Here is a copy of one of the laws in the Connecticut Code in 1650. “If any man have a stubborn and rebellious sonne of sufficient years and understanding--viz, sixteene yeares of age--which will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother and that when they have chastened him will not harken, such sonne shall be put to death.” ---   Moose Lake whose hospital has been condemned by the state board of health is jammed with hospital meetings and so is the surrounding community on how to raise funds. Some want to bond--some to donate. One of the plans to raise the money is to hire a professional soliciting agency. This plan was used by several hospitals; those professionals know all the questions and all the answers. ---   The State of Michigan which has been bankrupt for a while back has money again. The legislature passed a bill that will raise $40 million. It contains a 5 cent tax on each bottle of beer, a cent on every package of cigarets, a 20 per cent raise on pipe tobacco and cigars, 4 ...[missing] ... with a new car and came home in a pick up. ---   For generations men’s hats have been made from rabbit and hare skins. Australia is poisoning all its rabbits and every country shows a decrease, even the jack rabbit is on the way out. What a graceful animal it was, perched on a big clod of earth full of poise and alertness, it was a native well worth looking at--but alas they’re gone and men’s hats will soon be made from synthetic materials. ---   Had a visit with Herb Reed of Slayton one day last week. He was up here for Mrs. Reed who has been in the Deaconess hospital for some time. He was telling us they were in Vermont last summer. Land of hills and valleys but no visible support. The folks there admit that if it was not for the tourist trade they would starve to death. ---   The storage price for grain paid by Benson is proving a real boon to farmers and others in the grain business. The price paid for storage is 16 cents a bushel a year. We can remember when it took two bushels of oats to bring that much at the Lake Wilson elevators. One of Benson’s greatest critics. They take the hide off him ever so often, draws over 13 million dollars for storing their own grain. Some elevators are building large additions. They say the storage for 3 years will pay for the building. ---   The Big Ten could not have been very Big last fall.
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January 14, 1960
  If ever a player made a home run with the bases loaded it was vice president Nixon when he settled the steel strike last week. It did not have the glamour of a flying circus distributing peace in different parts of the world but it brought peace to his homeland. ---   Chas. Polquin, the bold seaman who made Mankato famous, was back in the news last week. Chas. is in Minneapolis working in a filling station. Getting ready for his divorce case. He has not sold his boat and is going to build a new one for South America in the spring. ---   After all this talk about additives in your food and what housewife isn’t, why not write for “What Consumers Should Know About Food Additives.” It can be had from the Supt. of Documents at Washington, D.C. Be sure and enclose 15 cents. ---   How much does your driver’s automobile liability insurance cover when driving another man’s car? Oklahoma has just decided, that is the supreme court has held, that a policy holder was covered by his insurance in an accident that occurred while he was driving another man’s car. ---   Wisconsin farmers are a little more versatile than they are in Minnesota. The Badgers raise their own mint for their juleps. Last year there were 4,500 acres of mint and it averaged 37 pounds of oil per acre. Only five states produce peppermint oil. ---   Funny world we live in. Here we ship frozen pizza pies to Italy and Belgium ships barbwire to the U.S. and they sell it for $40.00 a ton cheaper than American makers. ---   Those commuters who take the Pennsylvania into New York every day have a new problem. The railroad has upped its daily fare as high as 22 per cent. ---   Don’t know who had it to offer but Humphrey declined to answer the question, “Would you take the position of Vice President?” ---   Oklahoma, the last of the dry states to meet John Barleycorn, is in a heck of a mess and neighboring states are profiting by a price war. Last week a fifth of Jim Beam could be had for $3.88, Johnny Walker Scotch at $5.37 were samples of the cut prices. The laws passed last winter were confusing. You can’t have a sign more than 4 inches high. The Supreme Court of Oklahoma has held that it is unlawful for the state to set the prices on liquor (like Minnesota has in effect now). When two supreme courts disagree, what happens? ---   The Rambler car has third place in the hearts of the Americans. In the year 1959 there were 41,440 Ramblers sold, a wonderful record. Last year Britain sold 56,341 cars in the U.S., an increase of 70 percent on 1958, but it’s got to do better to keep in sight of the Rambler. ---   Here’s where $300,000 of your March of Dimes money is going. Head officials of the March of Dimes are using that much money to test out the polio pills (ones that you take by mouth) effectively. They are what is known as live virus vaccine. ---   The State of Pennsylvania is rolling in the money these days. The late legislature raised the sales tax from 3 cents to 4 cents and cash is coming in at the rate of $30 million a month. Paying more than 45 per cent of the general spending: that law must have been a replacement law. ---   Smog has become so serious in Los Angeles that California has a law that goes into effect next year that provides that all motor vehicles must be equipped with a device that reduces auto exhaust fumes: a pipe will convey the fumes back to the engine where they will be burned. ---   You remember Bert. E. Arnlund, that 17 year old male that murdered his 14 year old boy friend with a screwdriver? He was sent to the “Boys” Training School at Red Wing. The officials there thought he might help save some of the folks at Austin so they sent him with others to sing Psalms to them. The screwdriver artist beat it out of the back door for Minneapolis where he was re-arrested. Bert E. Arnlund graduated noncom laude from the “Boys” School at Red Wing. He pleaded guilty to a charge of carnal knowledge of a 17 year old girl last Tuesday. He’ll get something this time: perhaps seven years. ---   Notice that in Maine, a snow state, a new rubber tread snow tire is gradually taking the place of chains. In the same paper we notice the General Tire and the Firestone are putting out a new rubber tread that will dig the car out of snow. If it fails the driver can have a tow in at the tire companies’ expense. We have our doubts about this guarantee. We’ll bet it is full of Wherebys and When As, Wherefores, etc. Hardly a winter goes by in Minnesota but what even the tow cars get stuck. The guarantee may be good in Florida or Louisiana. ---   Don’t think that the federal food inspection men rolled over and played dead because of that cranberry fuss. Since that time they have seized 500 carloads of food stuff; among the confiscated foods were grain, flour, dried peas, beans, popcorn, frozen seafood, wormy nuts, spoiled tomatoes, canned frozen chicken, etc., even the cherries that sometimes go in cocktails were bad. ---   Here’s the first real honest outspoken blow against cigarets. The York (Penn.) Gazette and Daily will not take any tobacco ads. The Gazette has a circulation of 38,000 and gives as its reason, “It does not wish to encourage anyone to use something which a high authority indicates might prove deeply harmful.” ---   Kefauver is still banging away at the high price of drugs, taking up tranquilizers, antibiotics, etc. It seems to be customary, when anything new gets on the market it hits the top rung: remember the ball point pens. They were sold in Lake Wilson for as high as $15.00. You can get a better pen today for 15 cents. ---   If you use black pepper or white pepper you are going to pay tribute this year to Wung Fong, a Chinaman, who has cornered all the available pepper in the world. A lot of the pepper is grown on vines curled around coffee trees in the far east; the vines are good for five to ten years. Pepper jumped last month, the white pepper to 75 cents a pound and the black pepper to 65 cents a pound. No one is quite sure of the amount of pepper raised, they only know it is shipped in 500 ton lots. Whenever we read about pepper we always think of the days when Joe LaFramboise carried pepper on the books at the fur trading post at Bear Lake in Murray county at 15 cents a pound in 1834. Think of the trip it had from Hong Kong to New Orleans, then up the Mississippi to Fort Snelling and up the Minnesota to St. Peter and from there to Bear Lake by two-wheel cart.
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January 21, 1960
  How neat and trim the Herald looks in its new make up. New type of different styles also goes into the paper that makes it sparkle. The Herald is a mighty fine paper. When someone takes a knock at it, say “Hold on there, just compare the rural coverage of news in it with any other.” The rural correspondents are tops, and for the folks in the back shop that gets your ads, they are real craftsmen, men that stick and really enjoy their work. The lady who unravels our stuff has got to be good, then there is Miss Mame Weber and Paul Higgins, the foundation rocks, and when you mix them all with John David you’ve got a mighty good country newspaper. ---   The State of California is going to take up the smog problem in real earnest at a special session of the legislature in March. Auto fumes are the first thing on the program, but something is going to be done. ---   You never realize how small Delaware is. Congressman Kerr from that state made some remarks about the soil bank the other day that seemed fantastic. He cited a family that divided its farm into six units, collected $165,000 in soil bank payments. Three children under 12 get $50,000 each not to farm units they “own.” The state of Delaware contains 2,057 square miles. St. Louis County in Minnesota has 6,711 square miles, three times as large as Delaware. She was the first of the original twelve states. ---   Large size eggs got an awful crack on the nose last week on the Chicago market. They wholesale for 26 1/2 a dozen, eight cents lower than a year ago and the lowest since 19141. Eggs never seem to stand still. ---   Up in Canada some freight trains have no firemen. Unions fight the new order. Railroad says it was feather bedding. Whatever it is, buses with 40 passengers on board run alongside of the freights with only one driver. ---   We used to think that baseball made the most bitter fights among humans. Wrong again. The town of Moose Lake is fighting for a hospital. There’s an element that’s against it and Chas. F. Wilson in his item against it said in the Moose Lake Journal last week that the city hospital at Cloquet went in the red $137,095 last year. Cloquet has 7,700 people, the same size as Worthington. Evidently nobody paid. ---   Another county treasurer has been arrested for taking $21,000 of the county funds. He is former county treasurer Dorn of Winona county. He is out on $5,000 bail. Seems as if the public examiner should make more visits to the county treasurers office. Times are coming when treasurers bonds are going to be higher. ---   We were not asked to write this item, but are giving it as news about the Weber family to recent generations. the Weber family have been in business continually ever since the county started. Nick was a wagon maker at Currie and helped organize the county. Sensing the need for insurance for the host of farmers moving in, he took up the agency for the Continental Fire Insurance Co. The business prospered and he moved to Slayton. Shortly after coming to Slayton his son Vin took up the newspaper business and became a master craftsman and prospered. He married Elsie Holman, daughter of a prominent pioneer in Leeds township, so the present editor is a true pioneer son of the county. On his father’s death, John David, a young man without the super ability of his father, took over and dire predictions were handed to him freely. But John David gave it his best. Did he succeed? This paper in your hands is the answer. ---   Proctor & Gamble are bringing out a new frying liquid. Tastes like butter, but has no butter. Not advised for spreading. Its name is “Whirl” and will retail for 70 cents. ---   You never knew there were different styles of highways. Wisconsin knows now. It built a 4 land interstate highway, or was the U.S. Anyway they put in a California type highway. Wisconsin says they are going to have a heck of a time removing the snow. There’s no room for snow on California type highways. ---   Any time you want to get a headline in a Minneapolis paper, start a story about a new pro football league headed this way. Professional football seems to have pushed baseball out of the national sport spot. ---   The soil bank has entered the field of religion. In the Pelican Rapids Press we noticed a columnist, who writes with a pastoral leaning, question the morals of those farmers who put their bad land in the soil bank and fertilizer on their good so they’ll have just as much crops. ---   Browsing. Here’s a couple of ads in the Pelican Rapids Press. The J. P. Wallace State Bank. Total assets $3,542,398. Bank premises owned $1. Furniture and fixtures $3,000. Doesn’t take as much machinery as it does a farm. Farmers at Osakis are urged by an ad in the news to plant cucumbers. Best cash crop, no equipment required. Comes in slack season, etc. ---   Dogs are real quality folks at the little town of Isanti. Walfred Wicklund, the village clerk, has a notice in the news saying, “Dog license now due--males $3.00, females $7.50,” and no age mentioned. That ought to keep down the crop of dogs. ---   It has often been stated that soil bank counties have less business. Up in Kittson county the government (The Agricultural Stabilization Committee) built or rather financed the erection of 120 granaries in that county last year. ---   The case of that 15 year Plainview girl who killed her father is something for you younger people to ponder. Some day she is going to get out, they all do, some day the family will move, some day she will marry and some day a five or six year old daughter will come home from school sobbing, “Mommy, why did you shoot your Daddy?” It always happens. It all could have been avoided if the intelligent girl had removed the cartridges. She took time to stick a feather in her hair and shoot twice to be sure. ---   Autos are getting smaller. The G.M. Corp. and the Ford folks are making two door coupes. The Corvair coupe will sell for $1,800. This spring will see a real fight between foreign small cars and home made cars. Altogether, Falcons, Corvair, Valiants will have made over 300,000. ---   Doctors live to a good old age by taking their own medicine. A medical journal says that eighty per cent of the doctors retire at about 72. ---   We notice that Kittson county has 105,000 acres in the soil bank now. That is the county where prairie chickens still roam. Why not make a big refuge for them? Try and bring them back, finest eating ever, except the quail.
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January 28, 1960
  We didn’t know it, but then there is a lot of things we don’t know. Armours, Swift and the rest of the people in the packing business are forbidden by law to handle groceries. In 1920 a law was passed forbidding them to set up stores and sell groceries. Action is being taken to set aside the 1920 law. Another thing about packing houses is there is not one left in Chicago. Swift, Armour and the rest all moved out last summer. They said their plants were so obsolete they could not use them any more. In spite of the plants being gone, the Union stock yards handled more stock than ever. ---   A lot of folks in St. Peter are awful wrathy at their Supt. of Schools and so is the St. Peter Herald. On Jan. 14th it brought its columnist, “The Office Cat,” from its inside pages and gave him the upper left hand corner of the front page where he set up a pillory post, threw the form of the Supt. of schools against it and proceeded to give it a talented raking. He used a lot of long words; when you’re good and made those short, sharp, stubby words get it out of you quicker. It’s the first time we’ve read of a columnist being used in the front line at battle--and here we are 87. ---   Welcome visitors last Sunday were Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Reha of St. Peter. We knew and neighbored with them for 60 years. Fished with Al in Leech and the Gun Flint Trail--memories. Their son Byron is depot agent at Worthington, one of the few left. He has one day at Sioux Falls. ---   Like the looks of Pres. Wilson--looks as if he liked football. ---   How much do you pay a month on that car of yours? The average man in the U.S. pays a down payment of 30 percent and $80.00 a month for 32 months. ---   “Seven Up” is a pretty short and snappy trade mark and year after year imitators try to get near it with a new drink. Here’s some that tried last year--Jump Up, Bottom Up, Que Up, Near Up and Way Up. But the U.S. Registry office in Washington, D.C. turned them down. ---   Gone are the days of Shakespeare, Hamlet and all sort of tragedy, including Uncle Tom’s Cabin. You never hear of them any more. Folks are living in a lighter strata than they used to. We want to be entertained, not instructed or informed. Another change noted: in some places the folks are leaving the TV for the theater. ---   The Honolulu Star Bulletin at the top right hand corner says, “Note: Oahu subscribers--if your paper has not been delivered week days by 5:30 p.m., Saturdays by 2 p.m. and Sundays by 7 a.m. please call the circulation department 57-911.” Even over here we’d call that service. But Honolulu is no place to be drunk on Christmas Day. Besides bread and tea you get lima beans and a cold gray floor: fancy serving tea for breakfast in an American jail. ---   Two Lester Prairie, McLeod County business men had a lot of sport during the coon season. They’d drive into a patch of woods alongside of a cornfield and unload 4 dogs and equipment. These dogs are really trained. They have three sets of barks. When the dogs hit the ground they start for a scent, they won’t trail a rabbit, skunk or deer, only raccoon. When they hit one and tree it, they set up a “tree” bark that says, “I’ve treed a coon,” the hunter comes with torch light and gun and shoots the coon. The “tree barking,” baying and barking, together with the running from tree to tree, create a lot of sport and excitement. One time this season the dogs treed four coons on the same tree. They took 85 raccoons. We tasted our first raccoon at the B. M. Low home in the Bear Lake Woods, in the ‘80’s. Didn’t taste so bad, but it was a little greasy. Could still wipe our fingers on our hair two days after. ---   Dear political patriots. If you would like to see the politicians save the country at your national convention the way is open for you to blend with and listen to the greats. The democrat convention comes first on July 11th at Los Angeles. If you want a ticket to see and hear the doings, write the chairman of the Democrat party in your state and tell him you are for it, first and last and put in a check for $600 and ask could you get me a ticket to be a spectator at the national convention. The Republicans can follow the same procedure only this year it takes $1,000 and it will be in San Francisco in July. Few of us on the lower five ever see a national convention. ---   Mankato petitioners who wanted the public examiners to make a complete examination of the city officers of Mankato for the past six years are not going to have their wish. Public Examiner Vercellio says that the city has been examined by Public Accountants every year and that the expense would be high. Sensibly, he asks the politicians to pick out any specific section of the city’s business they want examined and they’ll go through it. You can only go back three years in criminal actions. Mankato has a larger population than Murray County. ---   Your Uncle Sam is buying butter again. The market started slipping for the first time in five months and a lot of schools and institutions will be getting free butter again. The government has purchased over 80 million pounds in the last ten months. ---   Yep, we read ads. Here’s an item we read in the New Richmond News. It was taken from an ad of a lumber company selling “Obsolete Merchandise: “902 lbs. 4 penny nails $2.70.” Almost half a ton. Another: “80 lbs. 1 1/2 inch roofing nails $2.40.” ---   In a few years every one will be carrying a little vaccination book in their pocket or purse. It would be nice to have them all in a bunch when you want to look one up. ---   Is this meant to be sarcastic? “Women can never be as successful as men. They have no wives to advise them.” ---   Fast airplanes are playing havoc with fast ocean passenger ships just as they did to the top passenger trains. Last year was the poorest year for passenger ships on the Atlantic in several years. They carried 884,000 passengers, the planes 1,600,000.
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February 4, 1960
  Every time you send stamps in a letter to some firm they decrease in value. Especially is this so if sent to places like New York. If you would send two sheets of 4’s to Macy, what would they do with them? They use meter postage machines. They have to sell them. They can’t take them to the post office and sell them as the law forbids the P.O. dept. from buying back or exchanging any stamps or stamped envelopes it sells. There’s a firm in New York that will buy your stamps in $25.00 lots at a discount of 6 per cent. ---   Is suburban Minneapolis beginning to pinch the down town in business places? Looks like it from the ad sponsored by the Downtown Council of Minneapolis, which seems to have “all” the downtown business men back of it. They are getting out one of those old time limerick contests, you supply the last line. If you win you and your spouse can eat, drink, dance and sleep to your hearts’ content in downtown Minneapolis. No doubt but what Downtown is feeling the squeeze. Take Southdale, the market place on the prairie. You can buy anything there you can in Downtown. Folks drive in 100 miles to do their shopping, have lunch and then drive home. As a sample of the way business is going, take liquor for instance. Richfield, a little suburb of 8,000 sells a million dollars in bottle goods a year. Why people drive out, get their liquor and beat it. Who wants to drive downtown and hunt a parking place? ---   A modest block of salt was the basis for a suit in Brown county district court last week. A farmer bought a block of Swift salt, he claimed there was metal in the salt that caused his cattle to lose weight. When the case came up at New Ulm it did not go to trial as Swift settled it. ---   The coming political campaign is starting the wheels in the political badge and button factories. Back in 1956 over 100 million badges and 200 million campaign buttons were used. We remember well the first buttons used by a Murray county candidate. It read, “Whatever you do vote for Stine.” He was running for clerk of courts. Any of you old timers remember the button? ---   Gov. Freeman says now, “I will not veto a bill for a sales tax.” What made this wonderful change in sentiment? ---   Take off your hat to the humble soy bean: its price is higher than the Federal support price. ---   No matter what political party you may belong to it’s hard for you to remember anyone more modest than Nixon has been over the part he took in ending the prolonged steel strike. If some of those guys out on the hustings had been in his place they’d have blazed every cedar post from Honolulu to Maine. ---   The U.S. Printing office at Washington advertised “What You Should Know About Food Additives.” Send 15 cents in coins, no stamps. We did, expecting to find a list of foods that had poison in them. We got beautifully stung. It is a booklet of generalities. Here’s a sample. The law specifically states that “no additive may be permitted in any amount if the tests show that it produces cancer when fed to man or animals.” And it specifies that only the smallest amount necessary to produce the intended effect may be permitted. ---   A doctor who has a column has a good idea for those who have headaches, and who doesn’t? People with the average type of headache should take aspirins, etc. before or just when the headache starts. Most folks wait too long and get the full effects of the headache. Put out the fire before it starts blazing. When you feel one coming on throw a bunch of aspirins in your mouth and forget it. ---   Just to be a little different, the town of Carlton will have a starlight fishing derby and the lake will be gaily decorated. We can imaging lots of things more pleasing and entertaining than fishing at night with a 10 below temperature and a strong wind sweeping across the ice. How young does a guy have to be to enjoy that stuff without a soap stone? ---   First a block of salt and now it’s a Shadow that is the cause of a law suit. Seems odd to sue a “Shadow” but that’s what happened in Miami Beach. One of the plushest hotels on the Beach built a 14 story addition last summer. When it was done it was found that the addition cast its shadow over the competitor’s swimming pool and cabana for a long period each afternoon. The aggrieved went to the supreme court about it but got nowhere, and the Shadow is still there, but it does not matter right now as they are shaking from the cold down there instead of swimming. ---   A new periodical called “Mother-to-be” will soon be on the news stands. It only comes out twice a year but at that, as there are 4,000,000 expected in this year it ought to get a goodly number of subscribers: what about one, “Fathers-to-Be,” sometimes he has trials and tribulations. ---   Less postage stamps are being printed by the U.S. government each year and you’ll never guess why. You’ve noticed packages, letters and papers with a rubber stamp imprint on them. They come from the postage stamp meters and today metered mail accounts for as much revenue for the P.O. Dept. as all the stamped envelopes and stamps combined. ---   Thousands of new users are buying postage meters. You just throw on your mail, pull a lever and it’s weighed and stamped. The makers, Pitney-Bowes say they sell lots of machines to firms that use less than a dollar a day in stamps: automatic and no pilfering. ---   Nothing stands still these days. Piggyback and box-car methods of shipping autos are on the way out. Ford shipped eight Thunderbirds and Lincolns on a triple deck flat car from Detroit to the west coast. The new car is 53 1/2 feet long and will also hold 15 Falcons. ---   When one looks at the well filled medicine chests in the homes of today and thinks back to grandma’s day cabinet, they wonder how they ever came to have any ancestors. ---   Just when all or nearly all of the railroads are using diesel electric power locomotives out come the Germans with a new diesel engine that does not use electricity. The new unit eliminates electricity in favor of hydraulic transmission, whatever that is. Anyway the Denver and Rio Grande has bought three 4,000 h.p. units at a cost of over 1 million dollars. Looks so, just as soon as everything gets settled, somebody comes along and upsets everything.
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February 11, 1960
  A blizzard of eggs hit the U.S. in 1959 and clogged all inlets and outlets and set experts working on some new commercial use for eggs. Prices are the lowest in 19 years. The principal reason for the slump is that Americans don’t like eggs any more. In 1945 we were eating eggs at the rate of 405 per capita. Last year we ate 354 per capita. In 1945 hens only laid 152 eggs, now with science helping they lay over two hundred. Humphrey has a bill to control the farm flocks: that won’t help much. Stop the big commercial outfits and you can help solve the problem. Women of course are being blamed for the drop in consumption: they just haven’t got the time. The job comes first. ---   Up at Osakis they still believe that old fashioned winters are possible. A committee last week was canvassing the village for storm homes for the rural children who get stranded when a big snow storm hits that section. ---   See where more hats are being thrown into the republican ring. What ring? Where is it? If the republicans really want to be in the campaign next fall, they should be starting. It’s not going to be any pink tea or silk stocking affair, but real work. Main issue in the rural districts is Benson. You’ve got to decide which side you’re on and stick to it. You’re either for him or against him. You’ve got to have a working organization, one that cries when it gets beat or put the horse back in the barn. ---   Here’s what we call a snappy come back. One of those investigating committee men at Washington was going over the Miltown tranquilizer people with a fine tooth comb--asked, why didn’t Miltown advertisements inform the public that the drug can cause addiction if used improperly. Dr. Berg came back with, “You don’t put a warning on a beer bottle.” Beer and whisky can be addictive (habit forming). ---   The greatest of all automobile manufacturers the world has ever seen was Henry Ford. He designed the car himself (model “T”), made 15 million of them and painted them all black. ---   Dorn, former county treasurer of Winona county who stole $21,000 from the county is mad, hopping mad. He says, “Some say I invested in Wall St., others say I drank it up. All lies and I’m going to take the lie test to prove it.” If it wasn’t gambling or drinking you don’t need a Sherlock Holmes to tell you where the money went: some men have young ideas at 82. ---   Talking about the shortage in the pheasant crop, Dick’s Dug Out in the Lakefield Standard brings out the common house cat as one of the worst enemies of the young pheasants. He’s right, how many times at night when driving along a country road you see the two yellow spots in the fields. It’s a cat a long ways from home and she isn’t hunting grasshoppers. ---   Don’t worry about a shortage in timber. Glass fiber is rapidly taking the place of wood in building boats, not only boats but ships as well. One of the larger ones is a forty foot sloop called the Bounty and sells for $29,000. ---   Death in airplane crashes in the U.S. in 1959 hit the staggering number of 37,800 and over a million passengers injured. Really shocking feature is that there were over 800 killed than there were the year before. Folks look beyond the number of miles traveled to the death figures on the score board. ---   If Benson has his way he’s going to keep foreign bees and foreign beef from the U.S. market this year. Some foreign bees have a dread disease and we have plenty of beef of our own. ---   See a report from Roseau county which stated that Roseau county had over 25 per cent of its land in the Soil Bank: that means a chunk of land bigger than Pipestone county. ---   Many old time families in Albert Lea and some new, now wish the packing plant had never come to Albert Lea. Today it is a town full of rancor, hate and distrust. The old time neighborly feeling is gone. One hears but little talk and when they do it is in a low voice. Some of the rural sections live in the dread of an organization resembling the Ku Klux Klan. ---   Chas. Polquin, the Mankato sea captain has been in a hospital here with a bad back and a divorce suit on his hands and failing nerves. Charley should know Minnesota divorce laws instead of majoring in South American geography. We hear that the Sea Scout sunk to the bottom of the Mississippi at New Orleans, a sad ending. ---   When it comes to hospital care be glad you live in Minnesota. We have 203 hospitals in the state with 32,796 beds and one of the first in its class is the Murray County Memorial hospital at Slayton. Iowa has only 125 hospitals with 21,109 beds. Wisconsin has 195 hospitals with 30,000 beds. Both of these states exceed Minnesota’s population. ---   The humble potato is certainly making its way in the world. Potatoes are no packaged in 36 different forms, starting with instant mashed to stuffed baked potatoes. A new one on the way is the hashed brown. None of them reach the real potato flavor which comes only when they are boiled with their jackets on. ---   An remember there’s nothing in the law that would prevent Ike from being elected Vice President. Down in Louisiana they have a one term governor law. Long who was governor ran as Lieutenant Governor but did not get enough votes. ---   Lloyds of London they say issue insurance policies on everything, so we are going to get one that will protect us from good friends that get irked over certain items in this column. We ran across a certain item originating in the supreme court which to us was odd, rare and unusual. In this column we quoted several times from the daily press and some from the court’s decision. There was no thought of malice or spite, just an item and we regret if it caused anyone a great amount of annoyance. We get out a thousand items in this column each year and there is the possibility that all are not perfect. ---   Some Minneapolis folks don’t like our idea of a fading down town: two years ago Sears, Roebuck asked for permission to start a shopping center east of the State Capitol. Seventy-nine down town business men of St. Paul signed a petition to keep them out: trouble is, a city block is just as long as it was 40 years ago and the string of autos is 80 times longer.
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February 18, 1960
  Wonder what became of Coya Knutson, the congress woman who helped Kefauver carry Minnesota. Two years ago this time, things were warming up. You never see a word about her in the papers, or Andrew either. ---   Afraid of fire in your house? Here’s just what you’ve been looking for. This fire alarm system is wired in every room in the house, basement too, and when there is excessive heat in any one room off goes the alarm. Be a grand thing for the folks who sleep downstairs and the kids upstairs. Total cost of installing system is about $80.00. If you build a home in Quincy, Mass., one ordinance says you must install one of these alarms. ---   Biologists and wardens from the Rainy Lake region met last week and told of a new scientific way to get foxes and wolves. A Canadian told of anew way to get foxes. First he gets a squeaky mouse then he gets a tape recorder and fills the tape with squeaks, takes it to the edge of the brush where foxes have been seen. Builds a blind for himself, then starts the tape recorder. Inquisitive foxes start looking for the mouse. Gets out in the open--man in blind with gun stops him cold. ---   Two liquor men in Wisconsin were having a little rivalry in sales. One of them advertised at so much a fifth, for the same price the other fellow advertised his a four fifths a quart. Which would you buy? The fifth has 23 and 3.5 oz. and there are 32 ounces in a quart. The four fifths of the quart has 25 and three fifths ounces. ---   A new device that costs $1.99 and can be installed by yourself is having quite a sale. The new gadget will effectively remove the fumes from your auto engine. Auto manufacturers have equipped all California autos with a device to eradicate the fumes. It costs $150.00 extra. ---   If you have insurance against robbery, raise your hands high when a man sticks a gun your back or front. The policy, even if it does not say so, protects you, so decided the Supreme Court of New Jersey. ---   An ominous bill was introduced in congress last week. It was presented by Rep. Forand of Rhode Island. The bill provides for paid up hospital and medical benefits for persons 65 and over on the Social Security rolls. If the bill passes, the next House will have one for sixty. There are enough Social Security members in the U.S. to pass any kind of a medical law. Social Security members will be given an increase by this congress. ---   Don’t throw this newspaper away or burn it. Scientists have discovered that newspapers are about the same as hay. They contain 90 percent cellulose. Denmark, Norway and Sweden have been feeding newspapers to cattle for years. At last a place for the Sunday editions. The papers are soaked and made into pellets with a medicated base. ---   You may not believe in all this talk about nuclear and gas attacks, but Don. S. Two, a Wisconsin farmer near Albany does. He just finished a “fall out” shelter, it cost him over $1,500. It is an underground reinforced concrete box 13 x 15 feet with a 12 inch thick ceiling slab. A 15 foot tunnel connects it to his cellar. When the nuclear fights start, the Trows will crawl into their cave and let the rest of the world go by. Trow said it would also make an ideal tornado cellar. ---   Those darn Germans and their inventions. A new one is a ball point pen that unfurls its own paper as it writes. We’ve got to see one. Seems as if Germany is keener minded than she was under Hitler. ---   The exposure of Aldrich, the top air commission member by the Federal revenue department caused a real furor up here. Why do men able and accomplished do such things? Not only the crime but living with it for year after year, knowing full well they will be caught is another of the mysteries of life. ---   The first paper we read today had an account of a crime in Stirling. This man was a member of the County Council. Am giving you the item so you can see how a criminal jury works over there. “By a majority verdict at Stirling Sheriff Court on Monday, a jury of eight men and seven women found William Paterson Rhend, a member of the Stirling County Council and a Justice of the Peace guilty of three charges of fraud involving three hundred pounds. He was given six months to give the accused time to return the money, etc.” How do you like the plan of a Scot jury? No one man can hang the jury. ---   You men are not wearing as many suits of clothes as your dad did. Wearing a suit of blue serge that every man wore thirty years ago is gone forever. We buy extra coats of many colors, and we buy slacks by the million. Last year the total was 92 million. The average business man does not wear suits, just a jacket of some kind and no vest. ---   The passenger air plane companies were jarred by accidents which really hurt future passenger service. At least right now there is a 7 per cent of empty seats. If these accidents continue you are going to see a definite drop. “If those darned newspapers would only quite spreading air plane crashes on the font page it wouldn’t be so bad. They scare some people.” ---   Fish houses on Mille Lac Lake reached a total of 4,295. Quite a village. Last year there were 3,760. Ice fishing is a real winter sport in Minnesota. How can the summer fisherman expect to get the limit? ---   Here’s the latest in polio circles. Live polio vaccine has been given to 400 new born infants at New York’s Bellevue Hospital during the last two months and all are well. The medics are trying to find out if they can immunize the children for life. ---   A columnist in the Ridgecrest (Calif.) Independent had this in his story last week. Papers say that out of a million flu cases in Los Angeles there were only 127 deaths. Eighty per cent of the cases were 65 or older which will not alarm the welfare agencies. ---   Fifteen hundred people attended the big fish derby last week at Rainy Lake, one of the top fishing border lakes. The largest wall eye taken weighed 2 lbs. 14 ounces. Largest northern was 4 lbs. and 4 ounces. The big fish never seem to be present at these derbies. The sponsors of the event did real well, its share was $2,400.
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February 25, 1960
  Here’s an item for your folks that want a doctor. “Dr. R. W. Shin started practice in Howard Lake last Monday. He is located in the old Dr. Thomas building”--Howard Lake Herald. Why not write the mayor at Howard Lake or better still drive up there. Howard Lake is in Wright county. It has a population of 931. ---   Among the cars the Falcon is doing right well. It is in third place with 66,800 cars made in 1960. ---   A reader asks, “How can newspapers fatten cattle?” The bacteria in a cow’s stomach break down the newspapers into a digestible form of starch. ---   Where to end our declining years is a problem that grows each year. You can always get a place if you have money. An accountant in New York with a little foresight bought an old age policy for $46,000 and he and his wife are enjoying their declining years in a cottage on the beach at LaJolla, Calif. They have a two bed cottage, all meals, medical services and laundry. He is 76. How about hospital? The Methodist church is in the old age business extensively. It now operates over 90 “homes” for the aged and some of them are pretty elaborate affairs. ---   Chrysler went in the red in 1959 for a total of $5,400,000, but that was not as bad as the year before. In 1958 the company had a loss of over thirty million. How can it keep going with losses like this? ---   The first case of polio in 1960 in the U.S. struck the village of Maple Lake in Minnesota. The victim was a 7 year old boy. None of the family of ten children had ever had any Salk vaccine shots. Some day there will be a law to send parents of this type to jail--and then again, maybe they did not have the money for the shots. ---   We humbly and gratefully bow our head in thanks to the Masons of Murrayland for a beautiful bouquet of red, red roses. You’ll never know what a wonderful shot in the arm they give to one that was. Wore one in my lapel to supper that night and a pretty waitress from another table came over and said, “What a pretty rose and how sweet it smells.” She was right, dead right. ---   Here’s a new one, a Mankato petit jury threatened to go on a strike or walk out. There are a lot of cases on the Blue Earth county calendar. The judge ended the revolt by saying at the end of thirty days service they could go home and he would get a new jury. ---   Here’s something about cancer that every one should know. “If we eliminate from our lives everything that causes cancer in animals, mankind would be reduced to sitting around in the dark, naked and hungry,” that’s what President Carney of the Eli Lilly & Co. says. Even sunlight, milk and eggs have caused cancer in test animals under special conditions. ---   Folks that live near the ocean need never go thirsty. The government says that salt water can be turned into fresh water, one dollar for a thousand gallons. Five different methods were used and all came out with fresh water. ---   The worm turneth and instead of the county treasurer that robbed, it was an auditor whose sole duty was to keep things straight. Leland Hodgson, a public accountant for two service liquor clubs at Grand Rapids, Minn., made an awful mess of things. When the sheriff arrested him he had taken more than $9,000 American Legion funds and about the same amount from the V.F.W, over $18,000 in all. ---   Here’s a new one to us. Up at Howard Lake they have a “constable of election,” they paid him $12.00 for work on election day; that’s a relic. There was not one woman on the election board. ---   Phyllis, who writes a column in the Bloomington Suburbanite has an agile and cultured mind; at its best when she is shaving her legs. She wrote about her two kids that had strayed, she called the police and they were talking it over, where to go, etc. She wrote “As we osmosed through the screen.” That word “osmosed” downed us, does it you? So we went downstairs to see Mr. Webster, he says “Osmosis--in physics the impulse or tendency of fluids to pass through the partitions and mix or become diffused through each other: the phenomenon attending the passage of fluids or gases through a porous septum.” Ain’t culture grand? ---   Lampreys, the dread of every fisherman in Minnesota, are now in state waters. Dick Fors while fishing in Moose Lake one day last week caught a large sized bass and to it was attached a lamprey that was 12 inches long. Question now is how many lakes are infested with this parasite? ---   That boy of yours is not going to be so hard on shoes. A new plastic sole is on the market and is selling like hot cakes. The president of the company said, “If the soles wear out in six months we will not only give you new soles but a new pair of shoes.” ---   This must be the last story about Charley Polquin who with his boat the Sea Scout made Mankato famous. He said last week he had given up attempts to contest the divorce and that he was leaving Minneapolis to start life anew. This won’t be the last of Charley: he does love the spotlight. ---   The council of Bloomington, the village we live in, does business in a big way. Last week it OK’ed a $13 million water and sewer project for this year. The $13 million is to be used in constructing 102 miles of water mains and 71 miles of sewer mains. For years the residents have drilled their own wells and constructed their own septic tanks. Water has become contaminated. Several thousand homes are affected by the new ordinance. ---   The new Volkswagen truck is going over just as good as the auto. It is a real challenge to U.S. trucks. It is three inches shorter than standard half ton trucks, yet carries 835 pounds more. It is said that it costs only half as much to run: homely looking things, lots shorter and stubbier, yet they are real competition. ---   Bridges, 8,000 of them are too low allow ballistic missiles to pass under, and it’s going to cost a pretty penny to change them; experts say the total cost will be over a billion dollars. ---   What on earth is the U.S. government going to do with the eggs. It has bought over four million dollars of dried eggs since January 15th and no market in sight. Why not use them for feed for hogs and cattle.
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March 3, 1960
  There are three counties in Minnesota that have no townships hence no town boards. One of them is Koochiching county, that has a larger population than Murray. Off and on, there has been a movement by those who believe in centralized government to abolish the townships. We hope this day does not come. The annual town board meeting is the one spot in the year when the farmers can get together and plan for their future. ---   Here’s a new one on the Friday night give aways. The San Antonio Light of Texas has the left hand corner of the front page filled with serial numbers, etc. of U.S. currency, of bills that have been distributed around the city. Bills run all the way from $10.00 to $100.00. An additional bonus of $10.00 will be given you if you are a subscriber to the Light. Eleven prominent business places are in on the deal. Foreign cars seem to do well in San Antonio, among them the Renault. They cost $1,450.00--pay half down and your payments are $29.00 a month. Ad says 4 door, 5 passengers and 43 miles to the gallon. ---   The lassies who just love stiff petticoats can be happy once more. There’s a new spray out that will make the most bedraggled worn out petticoats take on a new life. ---   That bird you see flying by you has a higher degree in some things than you do. How do they find their way back to the north when spring comes? You say they fly by instinct. Seven swallows were taken from Bremen, Germany to England and were released. Five of them found their way back to their nests in Bremen. ---   Dr. Salk the polio man says this country is not moving fast enough in developing flu vaccines. He says there are six different strains of the flu and that vaccine is the best promise of preventing flu epidemics. ---   Bronko Nagurski, Sr., who brought more fame to Minnesota as an athlete than any other man, will take over the operations of the Pure Service Center in International Falls, his home town on March 1st. After March 1st, it will be known as Nagurski’s Pure Service Center. Bronko will do a thriving business during the tourist season. Bronko also has a fine farm on the outskirts of town. ---   Several drug firms are meddling with penicillin trying to improve it. The Squibbs & Sons seem to be changing things all around. Their new tailor made Chemipen is a penicillin that does not need the needle. It can be taken in tablets or in liquid form. They are cooperating with the Beacher outfit in England. What the folks are interested in, are the new versions going to be cheaper than the original? ---   If the abolishing of the Personal Property tax ever had a champion it was Robert Hodapp, chairman of the Blue Earth county board. He was for it but the rest were dead against it. He asked one of them to make a motion to abolish it, not one moved. Then he called the vice chairman in the chair and he made the motion. He asked for someone to second it, all they did was to look. So Robert took the chair again with head bowed. Since the above was typed the city council of Mankato is begging the county board to change its mind. ---   Just who was to blame for the accident that wiped out the lives of a Waseca woman and her five children last September will be settled at the next term of district court. In the article giving the news there was also this item, “Waseca Council to Ask Rail Commission to Limit Train Speed.” Why didn’t they do that a year ago? Mr. Zimmerman is suing for $115,000. ---   The Merit auto insurance plan don’t work exactly as planned. If that daughter gets a ticket for passing a red light or if the little woman takes the car, gets a dent in the fender, has it fixed so you don’t notice it, you’re stuck just the same. down at Austin, Texas the father of the girl is fighting the case. In Texas, Merit rating is mandatory and it is the only auto insurance available and all companies must off the same coverage at the same price. ---   Another calamity is going to strike the U.S. this summer. There are not enough chartered planes to carry all the people who want to go sightseeing across the ocean. Of course they can take the high class planes with Champagne, etc. A group chartered a plane last summer, the round trip cost was only $250. ---   Here’s a booklet every family should have, “Making Household Fabrics Flame Resistant.” You can get it from the government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. It only costs a nickel and it might save a kid’s life: you never can tell. ---   Up at Detroit Lakes the county commissioners of Becker county and the officers of the county fair board are talking over the sale of the fairgrounds or of just a part. The county board feels that part of the fairgrounds would make fine building sites and would bring in some money to the county which is evidently hard up. ---   The makers of a Canadian Menthol Cigaret do not put the menthol in the cigaret: they just drop the menthol in the container and let it seep in. ---   As a bait to doctors, Stephen is raising $50,000 to build a clinic which is expected to attract one or two doctors. They have a big thermometer on Main St. that reached $47,000 last week. Now if they will only give the doctor free housing for a year, they might have a chance. Stephen has a population of 877. ---   How many parts are there in your auto? Guess, now don’t look. There are 5,000 parts in a Volkswagen sedan and a New York dealer has every part in stock, so says an ad in the New Yorker. (We suppose the parts include tacks, etc.) ---   Very few counties in Minnesota abolished the personal property tax. Most counties felt that the tax would have to be placed on some other item. The personal property tax is a good thing. Many a man will have to pay $2.00 or $3.00 that would not be paying anything. Isn’t it worth $2.00 to have the privilege to criticize and crab at the village council once in a while. If you don’t pay any taxes you are not a stockholder in your village. ---   Here’s part of an article we clipped. It reads, “On the Plate Land a youngster told the magistrate that his mother had threatened to cut his throat, a father who starves his children because they got on his nerves.” There was paragraph after paragraph along the same line. It was not taken from a U.S. paper but from “Personality,” a magazine published at Bloemfontein, South Africa: brutality seems to be spreading. ---   Besides being the big social event of the winter they are really a big charity show for the community. We refer to those fish derbies. The one at Moose Lake brought in over a thousand dollars, which goes into the Cancer and Heart funds. Quite a lift.
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March 10, 1960
  That lamprey we had in our last week’s column was a fresh water lamprey and local experts in Carlton county say that they do no damage. What was it doing stuck on a big bass? The book says: “Lampreys--certain eel like fishes who attach themselves to other fishes and rasp a hole in the flesh with their horny teeth so that they can suck the blood of the victim.” Who is right? We’ll admit too that we know little about the love life of a bass or a lamprey. ---   Farmers and ranchers must have a lot of yearlings on hand. The number of veal calves that went to market last year was the lowest in 45 years. ---   Politics furnishes deep and early graves sometimes. Take Coya Knutson, the congresswoman from the ninth district. She ignored her husband, would not even visit him at her home in Oklee. In spite of Kefauver helping her, she was defeated. Of late Coya has ended her meteor-like existence and has been living in New York, where she is assisting in getting out movies for kids. Faithful Andy is back in the old home in Oklee, a village of 494. ---   The State Bar (legal) Association of Wisconsin is certainly liberal with other people’s money. It recently issued a bulletin and sent it to every lawyer in the state saying they would have to charge $18.00 an hour if they expect to make a decent living. There are lawyers and lawyers, some of them would be worth the price and you’ve known some that weren’t. Then we notice the lawyers in St. Croix county are petitioning the county board where to build the new county jail. The law is being heard from in Wisconsin. ---   Suppose one of the youngsters, yes your little man or even yourself would take poison accidentally. What would you do? The car was gone; you lived 15 miles from a doctor or hospital. It might happen once and that is all. The American Medical Association is entitled to an orchid for this. Anyone who will send in their name to the American Medical Association Committee on Toxicology, 555 No. Dearborn St., Chicago, Ill. will get free, full instructions on a card just what to do in cases of accidental poisoning. ---   Wasn’t there a compulsory vaccination law during the smallpox days? If so, the same kind of a law should be used in the polio vaccine. Every large family should come under the watchful eye of the Welfare Board who should see that all the kids are vaccinate. It might be a big saving to the county. We had in mind that family of ten at Maple Lake: not one ever had a shot. ---   A short time ago, Rep. Forand of New Jersey introduced a bill in congress providing for many changes in Social Security. We said it looked ominous. We were not the only one, as the St. Peter, Minn. Chamber of Commerce by a majority vote went on record last week as being against the measure, but not all the members wanted to kill it. ---   That old saying “Crime Does Not Pay” is pure bunk, says one of the noted criminologists. He said, “It is one of the best paying professions.” With the ease in which they have been gathering mink coats in Minneapolis of late, we think he is right. Murder evidently is part of the calendar that pays. There were 8,182 murders in the U.S. in 1958. What per cent of the criminals were arrested and how many are serving time? ---   Notice where one northern Minnesota town put in a sewage disposal plant but did not tell the garages and filling stations not to run their old grease and oils in the sewage line: the result is the plant is dead and will be until spring. ---   The corn harvest of broken bones, etc. in 1959 was not as bad as it has been. There were 62 fingers lost, 9 hands, three legs and 2 arms and two people were killed. ---   A few months ago the Supt. of schools in St. Peter was anything but popular. Lots of the folks did not like him, even the school faculty signed a petition against him and the St. Peter Herald called in its “Office Cat,” its ace pitcher of words who took the hid off the poor Supt. artistically and culturally. Last week the board re-hired Supt. Hordgorge for another year. Nothing furnished a town with as much good gossip as internal school trouble and every youngster is greeted with, “What happened in school today?” when he gets home. ---   Spring must be just around the corner: see where a man is selling suckers at $12.00 a hundred near Brownsville. ---   Tax withholding by employers is one method that is spreading. Georgia is the latest bringing the total up to nineteen. ---   The Germans have a new auto that will float like a boat or go on wheels. The price is $3,000. We could not use it on many Minnesota prairie lakes: too much mud. ---   Alexandria has a “sales tax” on liquor that is paying out real well. The Municipal liquor store had a net profit of $90,000 last year, which added to a reserve surplus of $105,000 gives them something for a rainy day. ---   How many pennies have you got around the house? If you have a bunch, get them in circulation. The sales tax in many of the states has drained the state dry. The mints are working day and night on pennies, other coins like half dollars for instance are on a 60 per cent basis. Pennies are so scarce in the East that one Federal Bank Reserve had to ration them. By the first of June the mints will have 1,700,000,000 bright shiny pennies in circulation. ---   Quaker Oats have a new advertising idea. It has put 25 million free tickets in its cereal packages to the movie, “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.”
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March 17, 1960
  There’s a new pill out now that really should revolutionize the world. One of them will keep you from getting angry for a whole day. Besides being good to curb tempers it also helps to relieve the pain of angina pectoris and will help stop epileptic attacks. It improves your judgment and thinking and has been tested by 20,000 people. You’ve got to get it by a doctor’s prescription. A hundred of them should be given with every marriage license. Hold on a minute. The name of the drug is methaminodiazeporide. Give the “Happy Pill” a try and surprise the natives. ---   Good Housekeeping says that “Some TV advertisers submit programs to us for criticism.” Who gives Good Housekeeping the authority to criticize ads and TV programs? ---   The most popular smoking tobacco is Prince Albert and the most popular chewing tobacco is Days Work. Hard for the present generation to realize that Murray county and every other county was swamped with the juice from chewing tobacco. It would come seven or eight butts nailed together. In the average winter the snow on each side of the sidewalk was coffee colored. Every place in town had spittoons, from the depot to the hotel with its shiny 11 inch copper ones. Every office in the court house had a couple. We remember seeing ones along side of the district judge’s chair while he was holding court. The homes had hand decorated ones, they were called cuspidors. This item is written to remind old timers that all at once chewing tobacco, without any campaign for cancer or heartburn, quietly folded its wings and left. Will the same thing happen to cigarets? ---   The up to the minute Herald has added color to its pages. The Herald as always had class, now it has the color too. How many towns in the state twice the size of Slayton are as aggressive as the one you are now reading. ---   And don’t forget to celebrate the birthday of a famous Scot. His name is St. Patrick. All early encyclopedias say that he was born near what is now called Kirkpatrick, thirty miles from where the Roamer first saw daylight. ---   The city council of Mankato tried for two hours to get the county commissioners of Blue Earth county to change their minds on the personal tax assessment one day last week, but the commissioners would not budge, so if you have personal property in Mankao or in the country it is going to be taxed. ---   Folks in Minnesota towns just love to gamble. In many lakes in the central part of the state at this time of year you will see an old auto or pick up perched on the ice on the nearby lake. You are to guess at what time it will disappear through the ice, and buy a ticket for a dollar and in the book write down your guess. Some towns offer $100 for first prize and $50.00 for second. ---   The Senate should lay off their family differences for a while and do something for the people: they have plenty of time to pass a bill compelling all auto manufacturers to equip their cars with equipment that will eradicate all fumes from the auto exhaust; it’s got to come sometime, why not now? ---   Take about socialized medicine in Britain, we’ve got that beat right now in social security. Here’s an example. A working man started taking Social Security in 1937. He is going to quit this year and take is easy as he is now 65. He and his wife draw $178 a month. He paid in $2,292 in taxes. If he lives the average life of man the government will give him over $30,000. You’re in Social Security so you see what you have coming. Where is all this money coming from, you wonder: so do we. ---   School Supts. in the Minnesota Valley region have a hectic time this year. Over at Elmore the board unanimously fired Melville Skoog who has been there since 1956. He was fired the week before last and last week he was unanimously rehired: and there wasn’t a woman on the school board. ---   Minimum wages will be raised from $1.00 to $1.25 an hour? If they are raised it’s going to make a lot of difference to the buying public: a twenty-five cent increase is quite a chunk. ---   Several life insurance companies are now writing cancer insurance. If you start paying $4.00 a month on Dad’s life when he is 33 years old, the company will pay $3,000 a year of family medical benefits. ---   No, they have not gone nutty: just a passing fancy. The people of Oregon are paying $3.95 for a family of three crickets in a little earthen house, as household good luck pets--we’ve seen times when we listed them as pests. ---   The annual census at Mud Lake National Wild Life Refuge in Red Lake was taken on Feb. 11-12. The number of deer counted was 805 and the number of moose was 110, second highest number since 1950. The deer number has been topped five times. Counting is done by planes when there is snow on the ground. ---   Can you start that new car of yours by pushing? Some of the new make have to be pulled, not pushed. Look at your manual right now: don’t put it off. ---   Frank Gardner of Currie has something that is worrying him that started us worrying too. Frank writes: “I saw an ad for ‘All Meat Wieners,’ 3 lbs. 99 cents, so I bought some. The enclosed label says, ‘Ingredients: beef, water, pork stomachs, beef lips, pork snouts, pork, pork fat, non-fat dry milk, salt, corn syrup solids, spices, flavorings and sodium nitrite.’ Wonder what wieners are like that are not ‘All meat.’” Our worry is what became of the cats? ---   We keep getting more and more amazed at the village of Bloomington. Where we live. According to the state tax commissioners the value of the village is set at $234,147,392 and we haven’t seen as much sidewalk here as there is in Lake Wilson. ---   Murray County has been lucky with its water supply in the villages. Some towns have ill luck. Take the village of Pelican Rapids, the water in its well is full of iron which rusts sinks, cooking utensils, chinaware, clothes, etc. The engineer said the village could not afford to build a softening plant. “It is much cheaper for all concerned to have individual softeners to treat water that is desired as soft water.” ---   Rose Hanson who has a column in the Moose Lake paper said last week, “There are 55 widows in Moose Lake.” Think what a powerful group they would be if banded together as a Widow’s Club for Humanity. There are so many little acts of charity they could do each year in Moose Lake. Give it a try, girls. You’d be surprised how you would make many a home a little happier.
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March 24, 1960
  If you are a shopper read this. “Federal marketing specialists found Boston super markets sold more mayonnaise when it was displayed on the lower shelves of a five shelf case than in any other way tested. this arrangement beat out displays on the top shelf and three lowest shelves, and even on all five shelves. In four-shelf tests, the remaining shelf carried other salad dressings, oils and spreads. No explanation was found for the shoppers’ preference.” Shoppers are funny also. ---   Robert E. Lee got a real setback at St. James last week. Robert is a check passer and has been warned and warned. He won’t need them any more as Judge Mason gave him a straight sentence of 8 years at St. Cloud and there was no suspension or probation. The county attorney said, “I think the check boys will sit up and take notice, eight years is a long long time.” ---   Honeywell of Minneapolis have developed devices that are making it mighty hard for burglars to make a dishonest living. One of the devices in a store will register an alarm if there is a sound made at night. They also have devices that will take your picture if you try to come in a door or window at night. ---   Some social drinkers object to being fined $100 for having an open bottle of liquor in their car. That’s mild, brother, when compared with the planes. If you take a drink out of your own bottle on some lines, the fine is $1,000. ---   See where a VFW post has started a movement to have the resident section display the flag on holidays. Good idea. There’s another item about the Legion using the entire receipts from a fish derby in fixing up and buying new equipment for the kids’ playgrounds. It’s little projects like this that make a community jell. ---   The electric autos are back again with the coming of spring. One of the makers claims he has orders for 60 cars. They cost over $3,000 but they have a range of only 60 miles. Experts are working on more powerful batteries. They say it costs only one cent a mile to operate them. Page Ed. Lagerbauer of the Northern States at Pipestone and hear him point out how many things you can do for a penny. ---   If people are funny, voters are funnier. Was looking at the Osakis Review, saw some of two election returns. In one township there was not a name on the ticket. What did the voters do? They started writing in names, 176 in all. In Leslie township there were only two names on the ballot. There were no write-in votes. Gordon township elected three women, Mrs. Johnson, treasurer; Mrs. Willard Johnson was elected J.P. for 2 years with 25; and Mrs. Lillian Anderson was elected with 3 votes for Justice for one year. Married men had better walk prudently in that township for the next two years. ---   Cigar dealers are starting to worry about the tobacco crop in Cuba. Will the Castro government allow all of it to be shipped. The Cuban tobacco is the best in the world, but don’t forget Brazil and the Java and Sumatra sections. ---   The State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. is the largest in the world. Policies written in 1959 amounted to over $458 million. Second on the list was Sears, Roebuck with the All State Insurance Co. There are over 46 million autos in the U.S. and State Farm Mutual has policies on over 5 million. ---   The British made Hillman car is equipped with a new automatic shift. We don’t get it but some of you will. The transmission contains finely ground iron filings which are changed into a solid mass by electromagnetism. U.S. autos use oil and turbine gears. The Hillman sells for less than $2,000. The Hollanders have a car coming to the U.S. soon that will be about the same price as the Hillman. ---   Why doesn’t congress pass a bill that will take care of the wheat surplus? The government now has on hand over a billion bushels of wheat. What’s going to become of the empty storage buildings some day? ---   There are only three states that do not have a cigaret tax. They are Oregon, North Carolina and Colorado. Virginia put a 3 cent tax on them this year. Vermont passed a 2 cent sales tax. There are 38 states that have the sales tax and 12 that don’t. ---   A turkey merger last week gave Minnesota the largest turkey outfit in the world. It was brought about by the merging of the Faribo Turkeys, Inc. with the Minn. Turkey Growers Inc. of Madelia. It will have a capacity of fifty million pounds a year. the turkey is an odd crop. California and Minnesota are 1-2 in birds: one is what you would call a moderate state and Minnesota gets chilly at times. ---   We do wish Ike would use his powers of smiling persuasion on Cuba. She lies right at our feet but she gets little attention from the U.S. Seems all the American capital in Cuba was against Castro and you can’t expect Castro to receive them with open arms. ---   Notice while we were reading Paul Hubbard’s (former Hollandite) Ridgecrest Independent, California, on the rim of the desert that an employee announced that he had seen the first robin of the season. Temps for 3 preceding days were 83, 81, 78; how hot does it get in July. ---   Got a copy of the Western Gazette, a weekly newspaper published at Sommerset, England, It was founded in 1736, has a circulation of over 75,000 and it is right up to date, the pictures on the front page shows the old gasworks being torn down to make a parking lot. Like the Scotch papers, it did not carry a grocery ad but was full to the brim with other advertising. The almshouses were being modernized: they were built in 1580, four hundred years ago. It has a “Personal” column and we thought this item might interest some old batch. “Widow wishes to meet a person of integrity to play Canasta occasionally.” Thank you Percy Stuckey for the Gazette. P.S. The word integrity means, “Soundness of moral character.” ---   More and more fried grasshoppers are eaten in the U.S., and why not. They are a clean “beastie” feeding on the fruit of the soil and have been eaten for the last two thousand years. People who have eaten or rather swallowed raw oysters, about the most revolting thing on earth, should not criticize those that eat fried grasshoppers. You fry them crisp in butter, then peel off the wings, head and legs and start eating. They have a delicious flavor. In Leviticus 11-22 it reads, “Even these of them ye may eat, the locust, the beetle, the bald locust and the grasshopper after his kind.” Not a word about oysters or shrimp. ---   Had a visit from Phil Flannery (Lake Wilson) and Eddie Jensen (Hadley) of St. Paul last week. There’s a touch of romance in Phil’s call. We played Cupid for Phil and a girl named Mary Ryan who was visiting at the John Mihin home. We introduced them in the old Lake Wilson store and it took. Besides that, Phil worked with me in the P.O. for thirty years and we had lots to talk about, even if didn’t either of us hear too well. The Flannerys are staying with their daughters in St. Paul. Sorry to know that Mary could not make the trip.
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March 31, 1960
  Fastest growing project in the state is the Nursing Homes for the Aged. It must be a paying proposition. The firm that owns the one at Osseo has just finished one at Hopkins. The one at Osseo has 133 beds: over three times the size of the Murray County Memorial hospital. They are not cheap affairs, everything modern. Two men applied at Anoka for permission to build a home of 44 beds at a cost of over $160,000. ---   Duck hunters are getting fewer. Last year the drop in Duck Stamp sales was 23 per cent, which means that every fourth hunter of ‘58 hung up his gun. The canvasback and the redhead are getting scarcer and scarcer. ---   The new egg king of the Minnesota Valley is Richard Bushard who lives at Gibbon, and he won the title in three months. At every show he entered he copped first with the best dozen eggs, and sometimes there were fifty competitors. He has a flock of Ghostley hens, never heard of them. Chickens we were interested in were Plymouth Rock and Rhode Island Reds; that was in the days when chickens wore hips. ---   The shouting and the tumult dies and all the praise worthy adjectives have been used and there remains a clean cool group of basketball players from Edgerton, who had everything and did it right. Congratulations to our neighboring town. ---   A hundred men who live in Illinois but work just across the river in St. Louis are taxed on their wages of 1 per cent by the city of St. Louis: is this right or wrong in your opinion? ---   What do you think of the badger as a fur bearer? Years ago they brought around half a dollar. Madame Fashion looked at them kindly this spring and now they are worth ten dollars. The New York paper quotes Minnesota red fox pelts at $4.50, twice as high as last year. Odd thing, we’ve been watching that column for two or three years. It always mentions Minnesota red foxes. Don’t Wisconsin, North Dakota or South Dakota have red foxes? ---   Can you guess the name of the state with the lowest tax rate? It is Arkansas in spite of all the money spent under Gov. Faubus. Alabama is second. They should not have as high a rate as Minnesota. We noticed two townships in Anoka county, one voted $2,000 and the other $3,500 for snow removal. ---   We scan quite a few rural papers from every section of the state each week and we can assure you that the future crop of pheasant looks good: have read of only one item where the birds needed food or shelter. ---   The total number of idle acres this season will be over 30 million. The soil bank is popular when the crop yields are low. Farmers on the average received $11 an acre. Besides Eisenhower likes the soil bank and he has a plan that will have 60 million acres in the bank by 1963. The present law expires December 31st and some business men want to be heard: lumber men and farm machine men say it is hurting their business. ---   A lot of hot air and advertising in that Kid Cann case. Fancy making him put up bail for $100,000, then fine him $2,500 and two years in jail. That is making a mountain out of a mole hill. ---   “Let’s abolish capital punishment” is the cry. Why? Because it has not stopped murder? Pretty flimsy arguments. Why not abolish forgery, robbing, drunken driving, or beating your wife. There are laws against them. ---   Suppose you had a nice business or a good farm in Murray county. You get a chance to make more money in another state. You decided to make the change and when you were all ready to go, in steps the law and says, “You can’t go, we need you in Murray county.” That’s just exactly what is happening to the “Woodmen of the World” in Omaha, Neb. The company wants to move. It has a pay roll of $2 million dollars. Quite a lot of politics there. Naturally, all of the employees could not move, so the governor is trying to prevent the change. If Russia had done this we would have called it Communism. Is the company going to a state where taxes are lower? The governor of Georgia can tell you more about it: there is a public examiner for Georgia looking over the books. ---   Wasn’t last week’s Herald a pippin? Talk about county newspapers: it outshone them all as a sample of creative modern journalism at its very best. Why not send your copy to friends outside the state? Vin was able to make type talk. He left a son that is able to make type talk in two colors, blend and harmonize. When we set ads fifty years ago the type in our ads looked as if it was tired and wanted to lean on something. The type in the Herald doesn’t lean on anything. It talks to you. ---   If you had been in Chicago and watched the St. Patrick’s Day parade, you would have seen the new auto from Ireland, the Shamrock. ---   When you read about heavy snow storms in the East, don’t forget that Minnesota did not fare so badly. Up in Cook county and part of Lake county it reached 30 inches for a period of time. ---   This German built Volkswagen seems to be always in the news. Some reason for it may be that the West German government owns the Volkswagen plant. It wants to find the oldest Volkswagen now in the U.S. The German government will give him the 500,000th Volkswagen imported to the U.S. ---   The area around Fridley is planning on a 100 bed hospital at a cost of $1,875,000. There was a meeting held for the purpose of how to raise the funds. In the group was a representative of a company whose sole business is to solicit funds, either in cash or in pledges. Said he was almost sure the area would yield over $500,000. Americans are big hearted. ---   Lots of us don’t know it but this country is lousy with money. The luxurious ship the United States has had 200 more passengers in Europe than it had a year ago. The Coronia, a Cunard liner, is carrying 150 more people than it did a year ago. This trip takes you around the world and the fares run all the way from $2,875 to $28,000 (some spread). The bulk of the tourists pay $5,000 a day. ---   The F.T.C. commission stuck one of those long hat pins in the balloon blown up by Ted Bates about the Life cigaret. Uncle Sam said that Life did not absorb any more tars and nicotine than any other cigaret. Slowly but surely the government is running down those disciples of Annanias.
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April 7, 1960
  New medicines continue to flood the country and it’s a smart M.D. that can keep up with all of them. In New York the city council is going to appoint a committee to select drugs for use by the 21 hospitals in the city: some sense to that move. ---   The United Cancer Society is a pretty snooty outfit. The City of Detroit Lakes sent it a check for $500.00 as a result of a drive. Back came the check. “This organization will do its own driving.” It should have been polite and cashed the check, kept the money and given the Detroit Lakes bunch a suspended sentence for busting some ethical rule. ---   An 18 year old Thief River Falls girl had a real experience last week. She attended a party in Norden township; met a guy there. It was an all night affair and at 6 a.m. he pulled out a paring knife and without saying a word started carving Jane DeLap. Some of the party folks interfered and the young man with the knife, Daryl Peterson, started sawing away at his own throat, just missing the jugular vein. Notice ads offering to rent tuxedos, etc. The way the knife is being used in so many of these social events there’s a great opening for a man that could rent suits of steel armor. ---   The one thing that never goes down is the price of hospital beds. Today if you want a room by yourself in Minneapolis hospitals it will cost you $29.00 a day. Add doctors’ fees, etc. and it costs you a thousand dollars a month, makes one shudder doesn’t it? ---   See where the Fosston high school had the lowest record of cost per pupil in Polk county last year. The cost was $238. How does this compare with your school? Sometimes comparisons are odious and sometimes they are helpful. ---   Here’s an innovation in cigaret circles. A company in West Virginia is putting out 5 new brands to be sold exclusively by mail. It has a freak cigaret, one that lights when you scratch it on the box--what next? ---   Had a letter from Frank Garner of Currie. Frank was appointed chairman of the Cancer Drive in Currie. Don’t know whether we’re butting into the ad dept. but perhaps the means justifies sometimes. Frank, says if you’ll present 6 labels from “Breast of Tuna” he will give you a check for $1.00 for the Cancer Fund. ---   You’ve seen gas wars when the price went down for a few days. Here’s a razor blade war, something we’ve never heard of before. A dealer in Jamestown, N.Y. is advertising 63 injector blades for $1.25. Usual price about $5.00. This one has been on for some time. ---   One big tire outfit foresees the day will soon be here when tube tires will join the old honking horn. ---   Some day a law will be passed compelling these charitable organizations that make drives for funds in Minnesota to file financial statements with the Sec’y of State. That includes heart, cancer and all the rest of them. A copy of this statement could be available to anyone for a dime. It would be interesting to know where your dollar goes--that is how much of it really goes to charity. ---   All this segregation argument is going to end just where it started. You’re not going to get the negroes and whites to mix. For white is white and black is black and never the twain shall mix. Over in Liberia, Africa is the only all negro republic government in the world. A white man is not allowed to vote or to own any real estate. This republic was found by freed American slaves. It is about half the size of Minnesota and has a population of 2,700,000. Liberia is on the west coast of Africa. ---   Did you get your $110 refund check from the income tax department? Four million and a half refund checks have already been sent out. Why so many refund checks? Evidently taxpayers wanted to be on the safe side. This pitiless publicity seems to have had its effect. ---   Another big airplane crash is going to hurt some air lines. This Indiana one hurt all of them. One outfit said “Not as much as we expected.” Here’s what hurt: some companies are notifying their representatives to travel by surface as much as possible up to 600 miles. ---   Had a visit, a brief one, from Mr. and Mrs. Vic Born and daughter Marge last Sunday. We had our things on all ready to go to a birthday dinner for our son-in-law R. D. Elias and our talk had to be short and it was short but enjoyable. The Borns are a fine family to have in any town. ---   Anoka is the first county to hire a county Predator Control agent. Anoka’s soil is not quite as rich as Murray’s and they have a large number of poultry raisers. Fox and mink have taken a heavy toll, hence the all year professional trapper. They got the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service interested and it furnished 300 traps and scent material. ---   Too much snow caused a lot of damage in the east and too little snow caused damage to some of our northern counties. Co. Engineer Chard in Kittson county says highways are beginning to heave and cause chunks of highway to pop out, caused by too much frost. In the town of Hallock there have been several large water mains that cracked off as neatly at the joint as if done with a saw. The damage was due to the heaving of the ground and not by frost: what caused the heaving? ---   A group of Texans at Fort Worth were talking about their state and its needs. One shouted, “All we need is more cool fresh water and a better class of citizens.” A meek slim man in the corner piped up with, “That’s all Hell needs.” ---   See where the Great Northern R.R. is constructing a 110 mile crude oil pipeline in North Dakota. It will cost over three million dollars and will carry crude oil from Bottineau county to Minot. Good move, if it didn’t do it, someone else would. ---   Talk about compact cars, the British manufacturers will have one out this year that will make the other compact auto dealers starve. They say it is the car to end all compactness. It is 4 ft. 6 inches high and about the same in width and only 10 feet long. The engineer said, “We sat four people down and built a car around them.” Free of chrome. Nothing fancy except the price. This new overgrown scooter sells for $1,300 in this country. Some buyers get the European cars because of the saving in gas. Another British manufacturer has a convertible compact car and that’s what American youth has been looking for. ---   Mankato, or rather a bunch of petitioners, is liable to run short of money. The petition asked the state to look over the books. Two examiners have been there 48 days. One examiner gets $32 a day and the other $40. They get their hotel room, free mileage to the city hall and transportation home every week end, but no valet. Three thousand dollars was appropriated but they are past the $4,800 mark and the end is not in sight.
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April 14, 1960
  Read an article the other day about a boy hero which reminded us of the boy hero of the Indian Massacre at Lake Shetek on Aug. 20, 1862. His name was Merton Eastlick. He was eleven years old, saw his father shot and killed, his mother wounded and captured and his two brothers butchered, leaving Merton and his fifteen month old brother.
  After the massacre Merton helped a wounded settler who told him what direction to go. Merton put the fifteen month old brother on his back and started across the trackless prairie for New Ulm. They ate prairie berries and grass. He shouted to the wolves at night to keep them away. He met some fleeing settlers along the way, but for five days Merton carried his little brother on his back. He was a skeleton when found having only had some dried cheese to eat.
  Don’t you think Merton is entitled to a plaque which could be placed near the monument? Here’s a chance for some patriotic organization. ---   A lot of you will be interested in the change in the Standard Oil Company. It is going to expand to all the states and eventually sell its products under one brand name. Today Standard gas is sold in 37 states and under five different names. ---A 17 year old high school student of Bigfork had just as much of a thrill as if he had been a member of one of the state basketball teams. He was laying out a trap line for beaver, heard a snarl and out of the den came a 200 pound she bear, who had been awakened too early from her hibernation and she was “loaded for bear.” The student took one swipe at her, hurt her badly and she quit, then died. Bigfork is in Itasca county. The lad’s name was Thomas Smith. Pioneer thrills are still to be had in Minnesota. ---   This is red fox time. We noticed that up in Kittson county they have prairie wolves. In the first two months of the year the number of pelts increased over last year. Foxes were plentiful, there being 312. Prairie wolves draw a good bounty. $375 was paid for 15 wolves. What is a prairie wolf? ---   The Gillette Razor Company spreads out like an octopus. Besides making razors and blades it also has the Paper Mate Pen Company. It also makes a deodorant, “Right Guard,” and will introduce a lot of new toilet articles. Their laboratories are making a new cough syrup called Thorexine, shows that these big outfits don’t put all their eggs in one basket. ---   Here’s an angle in the old age deal that you have not thought of. Had an old friend who used to live in Murray county call on us recently. He said, “I’m past 65 and was laid off. Can’t get a job. Our Social Security is about enough to give us a modest living. What am I to do?” We told him that down where he was raised men were working that were over 75 years old. He’s just a little bitter and said, “My vote is for sale to the highest bidder.” ---   Water, good water is precious. Pelican Rapids, suffering from too much iron in the water, is digging up $68,000 for equipment to take out the iron--up at Emerson we see two towns across the border are willing to lay pipe lines for water, but they can’t find enough water. ---   The gasoline price war at Moorhead is the worst in history. One dealer reached the peak last week when he offered all comers all the gas they wanted if they would only pay the federal tax. Competition is not always the life of trade--in some it is death. ---   There’s a new flower pot out that will gladden the hearts of every flower raiser. The flowers you want to buy are in a pot of peat moss and wood pulp and a little fertilizer. Dig a hole and put water in it--that’s all. Gets away from pounding the old clay pot to get the roots loose. ---   This is real news, that is if you use snuff. The U.S. Tobacco Co. now peddles its snoose in wafer form. Instead of pulling out the lower lip and dropping in the powder you drop a wafer. This is the first change made in the form of snuff for over four hundred years. ---   Chas. Polquin, hero of the Minnesota River, Discoverer of Mankato and a friend of a thousand gravel bars, is in the news again. He has gone to New Orleans to try and raise his boat, the Sea Scout. It is at the bottom of the Mississippi. ---   The movement of the Woodmen of the World Society from Omaha, Neb. seems to have stalled. This is a big outfit, has over 500,000 policy holders and has a fund of over $230 million to take care of them. It is the second largest business in Nebraska. You’d think when an outfit of this size was leaving the “People’s Opinion” column would be full of dissension, but not a one. The city council last week urged them not to move. While it’s not good to have the outfit leave, the state can’t afford to establish this precedent. Taxes have something to do with it. Omaha is in a bad way. It put a second wheel tax on autos last week. ---   Don’t get the idea that all the whites in Africa are back of the present government. It has bitter opposition from the National party, through the Johannesburg Times. The present government policy has been to crush the black man. Today the government says, “Our enemies have isolated them.” Their best friends are leaving them. The Verwoerd government is reaping the whirlwind. ---   City rooters, contrary to all the feelings of a couple of decades ago, have changed. County boys and girls are jeered at, humiliated and called hayseeds. The team that comes from the smallest town gets the applause and boosting. In the Home here everyone was for the Edgerton team, of course they picked a classy number and they had no more idea where Edgerton was located than Timbucktoo. ---   An orchid for Dr. R. Pierson of Slayton for the starting of his stables of high bred and well trained horses. Not every man likes dogs but every one of us loves to look at a high stepping well groomed horse. The stable will be one of the show places in the county and will be an inspiration to every Saddle Club in Southwestern Minnesota. ---   Gaylord comes into the high court of basketball tournaments and disputes Edgerton’s claim to be the smallest village to win the championship. Gaylord had a population of only 782 when it won the championship in 1924. Here’s some of the scores: Gaylord 21, Austin 12; Gaylord 13, Gilbert 0--what did they play with in those days, bowling balls or common balls?
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April 21, 1960
  Was looking up how the various countries handled the “birth” announcements.” The U.S. and Scotland both say, “Born to Mr. and Mrs. John Jones, a son.” In England the notice reads, “Born to Jenny Jones, wife of John Jones: a son,” and just then we ran across this one. We clipped it from the Johannesburg, South Africa Times. They have a lot of originality. Here it is.
   ”PINTO--Rose-Marie Mercis--Third smart daughter for Concelcao and Adriane and sister to Linda and Charmaine. Arrived at the Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital on Monday, January 18, 1960 at 1:50 p.m. weighing 6 lb. 3 1/2 oz. Grateful thanks to everyone at the Queen Victoria. May God Bless them. Deo. Gratias.” ---   This is the city where Premier Verwoerd was shot and badly wounded last week while delivering an address. We will tell you something about the customs. Folks in Johannesburg are sentimental. In the issue we have there are three solid columns of “Memorials;” many of them have verses of poetry. If you lack a verse the Times will give you a book. Another unusual custom: when one dies and is buried, you will see in the Times soon: “The unveiling of the tomb stone in loving memory of so and so will be held and you are invited to attend.” In addition to golden and silver weddings they have Pearl, 30th, and Ruby, 40th. ---   Johannesburg has a population of over a million people. It lacks the colored population like Cape Town. The women over there seem to be a trifle younger than ours, judging from the ads in the Personal column. “Refined, attractive lady seeks companionship, age group 52-55, interests travel, music and dancing.” The second item above this one in the Personal column reads: “Prepared to die? P.O. Box 62, Mayfair.” ---   Lung cancer doesn’t halt cigaret production. American makers say in 10 years they’ll be selling as many cigarets abroad as they do at home. Old Gold is the popular one in the Philippines. They have had a factory since 1952. ---   When you come to paint the house or even the garage this year, shop around for paint. There’s a new one out that contains a germicide that will keep off the bugs, etc. for a year. ---   The Supreme Court killed the fair trade law last week--it should. Why should you give the manufacturers all the gravy. But brother Dell, why do you give the state the sole right to set the minimum price on liquor. What’s sauce for the goose, etc. ---   Over in Shakopee the board fired a teacher but did not give him any reason. The teacher is suing. This is the day when you’ve got to handle the teachers with kid gloves. ---   Get ready for seat belts in your auto. A bill if it becomes law in New York provides that all autos must have belts by June 1st, 1961. They must be two inches wide. ---   When you start abusing Benson please don’t forget the wonderful part he has played in keeping hundreds of Americans from starving to death. Fourteen billion pounds of food surpluses have been distributed to the needy and you with the white shirt as well we have all partaken of Mr. Benson’s surpluses. If you have a youngster going to school, he helps put away the food surplus. Hard to believe that in this land of luxury the needy consumed $1,326,400,000 of government food. ---   Need a doctor to locate in your town? See Sears Roebuck--not exactly the company but the Sears Foundation. It is assisting small towns to get doctors. Last year it had letters from 976 towns under 4,000 population asking for aid. Dr. Wiggins of the C.M.E. says there is only one way a small town can get a doctor, that is to have an attractive place to live. ---   The compact car is not a fad in the U.S. It seems to be here to stay and next year even smaller cars will be on the market. They are making a real dent on foreign compacts. The Falcon led the pack in March with 39,420, topping the Rambler--it had 37,205. ---   A new bridge table will soon be on the market for the sole purpose to stop players from cheating. After the cards are dealt, they lay on the table untouched until the cross boards are raised. The boards are two feet high and are to prevent partners from seeing each other until the bidding is finished, then the boards are removed. Professional and amateur players, when they bid, “Every little movement has a meaning of its own.” They tell one another just what they have. You don’t know a pair in your town but what use some sort of signs. ---   There’s a new type of hog in Canada. It is a blend of Chester White, Landrace and Yorkshire breeds, the work of the Canadian experimental station. This new type must have something. At the winter fair at Brandon, Manitoba last week some of the sows of this new breed sold for $400. The name of the new breed is LaCombes. Is it a fad? Or does it have more meat than fat? ---   The U.S. is not the only place where people go nuts over athletics. Over in England a soccer football player was sold for 35,000 pounds. A pound is worth $2.80 in our money. ---   The Capitol Airplane Co. is in a bad way. Its money box is nearly empty and it went before the C.A.B board and asked that it be given a $12,490,000 annual subsidy immediately. The board turned down the request. The plane company had a lost of $1,757,360 in 1959 and it lost four million in the first two months of 1960. Those air crashes hurt worse than the plane people will admit. ---   Latest thing in new drugs is Vincalenkablastine, an awful name but it helps in treating leukemia. It comes from a pink flower plant which is found in the tropics. ---   Out of season perhaps, an icy sidewalk in the village of Anoka cost the village $6500. The accident occurred in 1957, went to the supreme court and back. Moral: if you can’t get the ice off with a shovel, smother it with salt. It seems the public has the best of the suite to begin with, as few sidewalks are ever in perfect condition. ---   The W.O.W. Life Insurance squabble is now coming to a head: it must be, as the Omaha Bee had 2 columns about it. There is no doubt but part of the organization will be moved. Nevada officials won’t let it do business in that state. There will be a full dress investigation by the state insurance department of Nebraska. ---   The air lines that fly the Electra planes have been notified by the government to cut down the speed until the examination of the two crashed planes has been completed. Seven different air companies use the Electras. Before the end of the year there will be over 300 Electras in service. ---   Just happened to notice that the village council of our “Magic City” has just bough a swell new water tower. It will be 175 feet high, cost over $300,000 and will hold 1,500,000 gallons. It will be finished by October, 1960. Bloomington is also advertising for bids on 1,000 water meters.
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April 28, 1960
  There are only two country schools left in Le Sueur County and naturally the county commissioners hated to hire a county superintendent of schools. It asked the attorney general and he said it was O.K. to hire some nearby village superintendent of schools. So it made arrangements with the school board at Montgomery for the supt. of schools in that village to do the work. ---   Over in Wisconsin the fluoridation of the water is at its height. Five cities defeated the suggestion last week and New Richmond went for it. Gillette that had it discontinued fluoridation. But what interested us was we saw in the New Richmond Times where seven doctors O.K.’d the project, we also found out that New Richmond has less than 8,000 people and it occurred to us that seven was a lot of doctors for a town that size, and one might be induced to move. ---   Deer are too plentiful near Nicollet. They are a menace to life and limb. Three cars have hit deer, some of them were badly damaged. The state game and fish department should take steps to clean out the excess deer in that vicinity. There’s liable to be a serious accident and the department will get a lot of criticism. Generally the state will neither pay your auto damage or give you the dead deer. ---   The biggest mystery story in southwestern Minnesota for the year 1960 is still unsolved. It concerns the kidnapping of Raymond Hartlitz, a rural mail carrier at St. James. He was found bound and gagged after a disappearance of 40 hours. He claims he was hit from behind while driving his car. Harlitz has not filed a complaint yet and it is doubtful if he will. ---   The Omaha Woodmen of the World was sued for $25 million last week. The lawyer who is doing the suing says that the organization has too much money which was collected illegally from the policy holders. One week the company does not have enough money and now this bird says it has too much. He claims it has $41 million in an unsigned reserve. Not a word about the company leaving the state. ---   The work of a thousand men at a Peterborough, N.H. factory in a day is so little that it can be carried in a sack. The factory makes ball bearings. It works three shifts a day. The military is the plant’s best customer. They go into the satellite probes. It is a most particular plant to work in as some of the bearings are so small they will go through the eye of a needle. Assemblers wear finger shields as a drop of perspiration could start a corrosion. On some of the smallest bearings a pound cost $139,000. ---   This Minnesota carpet bagging invasion to the south to aid the negro in getting a place to sit while in a restaurant and the right to go to school with whites, makes us tired. Say the negroes get their wishes, what difference will it make to anybody. Another thing, Mr. Olson, did the south send us any missionaries when we were suffering from juvenile delinquency? He got what he went after: cheap publicity. ---   The South African government is urging immigrants from Europe to settle there. They are in too much of a hurry: wait ‘til you get your dead buried and the place tidied up. ---   One of the real fireworks at the coming national convention is going to be the old age problem. There are 17 million aged people in the U.S. and they all have votes, that’s a slug of votes and some party leaders on both sides are beginning to scratch their heads and the way it looks now the present congress is going to pass measures that will help the aged. The law will help both Social Security members and non members. ---   “Some of the large cigars are coming out soon in a manufactured wrapper. This type wrapper has been used on the little cigars for a year,” so says the General Cigar Co. that makes the White Owl, Robt. Burns, Van Dyck, etc. Using the new type wrapper will cut down the cost 50 percent in that department. We are supposed to be a cigar smoking nation, but we’re not. Denmark tops the list with a per capita consumption of 200. Holland comes next with 125, West Germany 93 and the U.S. 27. ---   No airplane has ever gone through the rigid testing as the Electra, the type that crashed. On two different sections of a So. California desert, two sets of experts are giving them the Agony Trail. Top aces are throwing the planes up, down, sideways and every twist and turn in an effort to find out the weakness. Should a defect be found experts say it would cost at least a million dollars to rectify in each plane. The Electra turbo power plants are made by the Allison division of General Motors. ---   Last July the gymnasium at the Kennedy high school collapsed. Fortunately there was no one in at the time. Litigation was started by the school board. It was one of those glued rafter buildings. The board sued the insurance company. It said storms were not to blame but faulty construction. Seems like the two companies got together and offered the Kennedy school board $25,000--the board took it. ---   Denver settled her water problem. It bored a twenty-three mile tunnel through the Rocky Mountains to get a sufficient supply. Strange thing, all the snow falls on the other side of the mountain. The tunnel which is over ten feet high will be lined with concrete. The job will be finished by 1962. Another water item: some Pelican Rapids citizens objected to paying $68,000 to take the iron out of the water, so the council is putting a 2 inch test drill in the old well to go until it strikes good water. ---   Doctors are getting scarcer and will be for years unless something is done. The University of Chicago school of medicine took 200 high school students through a tour of its facilities last week. Lots of folks who don’t know anything about it think it takes too long to make a doctor. ---   The Congress should take a stiffer interest in this shortage of doctors. There should be schools at several important population centers. Courses in medicine should be offered to any young man or woman that is interested. There should be no fee and his or her board and room should be free. Even the clothing should be furnished to the student and if necessary some expense money--sounds odd, but at West Point and Annapolis we are doing those things for young men whose sole aim is to kill “the mostest people, furstest.” P.S. We Wanted to include that every student must repay the government when able.
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May 5, 1960
  All our life we’ve been led to believe that American ad writers had the best line of hot air and bombastic adjectives in the world--was sad when we read this one from an English paper: “The Heavenly New Rayburn Regent. Never was one cooker with so many blessings rolled into one you’ll notice the deep cooked splendid flavor--plenty of hot water for baths and domestic uses and your kitchen so warm and cosy. The oven keeps a steady all round heat. Taste the deeper flavor of delicious meals cooked this solid fuel way.” And so it goes on and on; at the end we find just a common soft coal range. ---   The census figures made many changes, some for the worse. Over in New Richmond, Wisconsin where they thought they had eight thousand the census man brought in figures of 3,300. Two months ago the town was sporting seven doctors. If they have not moved recently there are now seven doctors for a population of 3,300. Who said doctors were scarce. ---   A plane crashed over Lake Michigan last Friday--six men were killed. It got a place in the Tribune away down in a corner as if it had the smallpox. Accidents of only six deaths tend to jar the public. ---   The Wisconsin game and fish department are seining wall eyed pike. A local group has contended that there are not enough female pike in Cedar Lake. Whenever there is an insufficient number of any species the department brings in fish needed to keep the fish life balanced. ---   The county fair season has started. The fair board of Kittson county is advertising for prices on every kind of cars to be raffled off at the county fair. ---   The mystery about the kidnapping of the St. James mail carrier is still unsolved and will be until Habitz, the victim, comes clean. When men or women attack men to kidnap them they take everything they have. They took nothing from Habitz. He still has his watch and the billfold with $15.00. Habitz could settle this whole thing himself by giving the name of the woman. Did you ever stop to think there might have been two women in the case? ---   Many county officials are watching with interest Anoka’s new method of eradicating predatory animals. There are many turkey farms, chicken farms and egg farms, besides some wild game farms. The farmers claim they lost over $40,000 by predatory animals last year. The county hired a year round predatory trapper (professional) at $320.00 a month. We wrote the county auditor as to his pay and what became of the pelts. He said the trapper was getting $320.00 a month, but I should write county agent Swanson about the pelts. Mr. Swanson said that when the county was paying the trapper the county got the pelts and when the Wild Life Service was paying the trapper the pelts went to the federal government. Mr. Swanson says besides being after fox, wildcats, tame cats, stray dogs, coon, rats and skunks around the farmers’ buildings, all the poultry farmers are assisting in the work. It will be interesting what the harvest will be. ---   The Irish, the real Irish, scored a real hit last week. They had the first freighter into the Duluth Harbor this spring. It is taking back a cargo of corn. It took five days to make the trip from Montreal. ---   We just can’t believe this. Kentucky has become the 6th state to make voting machines mandatory: what would they do with voting machines in the hill country? ---   Short time ago we mentioned that over in So. Africa they were making fish powder. We have different fish here. We are specializing in fish oil. We get large quantities of fish oil from Menhaden. European oleo margarine makers want it real bad. They can get it for 7 cents a pound. Last year we shipped 150 million pounds. Wonder how they desmell the fish oil. ---   Three Madelia youths placed an obscene note in a rural mailbox. They were caught at it and had to pay a $10 fine: a good thing to leave alone is a rural mail box. ---   Science is now butting into the ocean passengers. Most of the steamship lines are now run by weather experts. A lot of the ships are paying $115.00 for weather charts to steer them away from bad weather. ---   The U.S. Senate unit votes 8 to 7 parity for wheat: a lot of folks think that Benson set all parities. By the way, what has become of Benson? ---   When the “Cedric” restaurant opened on Normandale Road a while back, we went over to lunch. Cedric’s son Cedric was in charge. A short time after, we noticed in its ad that there was a new manager. Last week we noticed in the Bloomington Sun that Cedric Adams, Jr. had made an application to operate a drive-in restaurant. The council by a 4 to 1 vote turned it down. There was a petition of 26 residents against it. They just don’t want a drive-in in that locality. ---   Towns that have a bus line don’t need to worry about the American Express. The Greyhound bus line is handling express on all its lines. ---   Still grasping for more money the Michigan legislature gave the people of the state a chance to raise the sales tax from 3 to 4 cents. ---   Here’s an ad from the Pelican Rapids Record that looks strange: “Some quack grass and sweet clover hay for sale.” If a farmer had been seen hauling a load of quack grass on a western Murray county road fifty years ago, he would have been sent to the pen. ---   The census has come and gone and the village in which we live is now 4th in population in the state, having 50,237. We folks in Bloomington are arguing whether to buy Mississippi river water from Minneapolis or dig our own wells. We would have an expense of a million to hook up to Minneapolis. But what’s a million, we have 30 crews of men tearing up the streets for the mains. The thought here now is to let the $10 million contract to one outfit, figuring we can get a 10 per cent discount. ---   Mrs. Norton, who was born in 1806 wrote a poem; the first line was “A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,” and they are still dying. Those Algerians are tough. It is the only country that ever made Uncle Sam’s soldiers and sailors bow the knee.
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May 12, 1960
  The doctors and newspaper men of Wisconsin after three years of study have published a guide concerning the relationship between the two when it comes to news items. One of the things pointed out, that under Wisconsin law only physicians, osteopaths and dentists have the unrestricted use of the title “Dr.” or doctor. ---   Just how does royalty, British at that, creep into the sentiment of American women. Ten times more women watched Friday than they would have at a sister of Mrs. Eisenhower. The present family is pretty much Scot. The Queen Mother and the Roamer were born in adjoining shires. ---   If you have a leaking basement your troubles are over, that is if you use a new chemical called Cyanamid. This new chemical turns water into a jelly. At the public demonstration they took water and the new chemical, shook the mess four times and you had a water jello. ---   Fifty-seven tons of bullheads have been taken from Tetonka, near Waterville. More than 572,000 game fish were added. A new project is being formed to secure easements, take out two dams to make an eight mile shore line. Two lakes are to be joined, etc. Are you listening, Lake Shetek, some day a generation will come to Murray county that will do the same thing for you. Have patience. ---   Visiting with us for a while Sunday were two former Lake Wilson neighbors: Mrs. Al (Ada Oberg) Jentz of Slayton and Miss Emmy Anderson of Minneapolis. Emmy was assistant cashier of the Lake Wilson Bank for years and is now with the Federal Reserve bank up here. ---   Was reading in an old country paper where one woman started to talk on woman’s hair as her crowning glory. “Could be,” said one woman, “But it’s the cheapest hair on the market.” Horse hair is the highest in price. They also took up Austria’s new law which made parents liable up to 6 months’ imprisonment for the delinquency of their children. Looks like a pretty stiff sentence to us: suppose they had six children. ---   No Latin was taught in the Murray county schools when we came here in 1883. Naturally we were lost when we ran across this word. Over in London a writ claiming damage for alleged enticement has been served on Lady Zuma Cummins, a 22 year old heiress, daughter of the fourth daughter of the Earl of Londonsbourough. It was issued on behalf of a farmer’s wife who claims that Lady Zuma had wrongfully enticed away and harboured her husband, Peter Freckenham, depriving her of his CONSORTIUM. ---   You’ve hear of the shot that went round the world. It was not to even be compared with the shot that the U.S. Supreme court took at the farmer cooperatives in Minnesota and other states. It said, and for once the court was unanimous, a farm co-op violates the anti-trust laws if it lessens competition by trying to monopolize the market. ---   To that handy snack of yours this summer comes a new number, known as the chicken frankfurter. Why not go a real step forward by making chicken links after the style of the wiener. They would go like hot cakes and hit the top spot at picnics. ---   The country has gone stark mad on the trading stamp again. This year stamps are big business. Enough have been gathered to get a new school bus, another lot of stamps went to buy a new fire engine at St. Lawrence, Ohio: it cost $18,000. The stamps are gathered by groups. The St. Lawrence outfit accumulated 6,000 books A lot of work but they like it. ---   There’s going to be more waste paper blowing around the streets and alleys. Old newspapers are down to $13 a ton and that’s paper tops. Waste paper only brings $6.00 a ton and some of the big business houses in Chicago pay from $6.00 a ton up to get their waste paper hauled away. ---   Some of the small towns are going nutty because they have lost five or six in population, forgetting that quality is what they need, not quantity. This quality stuff is what adds pep to your town or village. They are the birds that are first to aid in anything that will help and develop your home town, even if they don’t get all the gravy. In the old days when the census came round and it wasn’t going good the census men would go out to the cemetery and get enough names. ---   There’s a new organization out that is what the hog raisers have been looking for. Its headquarters is at Cowing, Iowa and when you sign up you really sign up, as the company will tell you when to sell and when not to sell. They plan to have pickets with hearts as gentle as some of the union labor toughies and they say if you want better prices for your hogs, join up. ---   And for those that take the North Shore Drive here’s an item from the Grand Marais Herald: “Tempest and Joy Benson came down from Saganaga Lake Tuesday to bring in Art Madsen who has been ill. Ice is unsafe. they brought Art to Chikwauk by dog sled.” ---   Coffee drinking is one custom that never grows old and more and more coffee is drunk as the years go by. This year’s roastings are seven million bags ahead of last year and the people are drinking the best blends. Still it does not seem to make much difference what kind of coffee you drink or how strong, some will swear by it and others at it. It’s all a habit: if you start drinking it bitter you just keep at it. ---   Sportsmen in the northern part of the state are shouting for a raise in the fishing license. If they want an increase in the fishing license up there let them have it. They have a chance to get fish sometime. Don’t raise the license in the southern part of the state where the fishing is 90 per cent bullheads. The agitators want to raise the family resident fee from $2.00 to $3.50, which is too darn much for a mess of bullheads, when you can get a bunch big enough to clean. What we really need is a dollar family license on bullheads. ---   The vote for a Junior College at Fairmont was defeated by less than 400 votes. Farmers who have been hit heavy in consolidated areas are blamed. You can’t blame the farmers in some consolidated districts not taking on another load, there’s got to be an end to just what a farmer can stand.
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May 19, 1960
  The employees of the Mankato brewery plant have taken over operation of the brewery. Owners felt that the big breweries are crowding them too much and the outlook was dark. If all the Mankato beer drinkers would stick by the home plant it would be different, but again the big breweries bring in pro football and big league baseball and the beer drinker is between love and duty. ---   See where a young fellow two years ago drank all his skin could hold, got into the car and had an accident. He sued for damage and the supreme court of Minnesota unanimously held if you want to go out and get drunk, then get hurt, you must pay the fiddler. ---   On the echoes of Princess Margaret’s wedding brought wedding memories back to us. Back in the old days at Lake Wilson we united eight couples in wedlock while were J.P. Will tell you about some of them. First one was of Harry Lloyd to Nelly Sprague, daughter of the auctioneer. Then there were a few when John Law officiated as best man. We remember one happy wedding. He was a bartender in the saloon at Lake Wilson and sent to Denmark for his bride and were they happy. He had the license and a silver dollar. She did not understand English. We did not understand Dane. The groom said he would just tap her on one shin when to say “I do.” The groom got excited and had one shin black and blue before we stopped. Won’t forget our last wedding. We were called for--went to the home, there were no smiles there, we made the dollar and left. The couple left the vicinity and shortly afterwards the groom was arrested for her murder. The body was found in the bath with many welts. The groom was found not guilty. Another of the couples we wed died in an insane asylum. Living in a small town had as many complexes as a big one. ---   The Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. has a new surgical tape on the market. This tape is transparent, allowing the doctors to inspect wounds without removing the adhesive tape. It will also help the mother who has a bunch of kids and some of them are always in trouble. Ma can look at the wound and if does not look healthy she can take the kid to the doctor. ---   Congress should spend the next month in raising funds for the care of the aged. The way this has snowballed is wonderful. Both parties are after the aged vote. The real spot will be at the convention when the platform comes up. What a real chance for some orator. Remember William Jennings Bryan with his “Thou shalt not crucify mankind on a cross of gold,” etc. ---   Had a visit from Mrs. M. Otteson of New Richmond, Wis. one day last week. She was formerly Miss Marjorie Baker of Slayton and used to help us in the Sec’y’s office at the county fair. She was over to see her aunt Mrs. William Lattimore, one of the early residents of Slayton. Marjorie was telling us that four of the grandsons of the late John H. Low live in New Richmond. John was the first settler in Western Murray county and was a member of the first county board. ---   Cancer has been found in a new source. It has been found in the air above 115 U.S. cities. It seems to come mainly from the burning and distilling of fuels. The item said that the average city dweller inhales air that is 15 times more polluted with benzopyrenes than the air breathed by the rural dweller. ---   The village of Lake Bronson had a new type fishing contest. It is not held at Lake Bronson but at Lake of the Woods, 90 miles away, on June first. You must register by May 21 if you want to go. Only 100 will be taken and you must be at Lake Bronson at 6 a.m. if you want to go. There is a 50 cent registration fee and you must be over 18. The business men feed you and supply the boats and take you to the lake--not a bad deal. ---   Oregon has a welfare plan all its own. If you are on welfare and able to work, supervisors will find you some sort of a job. They even find jobs for the able bodied females. In one county they were put to work cleaning up the local cemetery. If you are able to do some sort of work and you balk, a doctor is called. If he finds you O.K. you either work or go without your groceries. Oregon uses the welfare help for brush work on the highways, part time janitors and on recreation projects. ---   The Minnesota pheasant is what you’d call a “Home” bird and pretty prolific in Fraser township in Martin county. This township was chosen for study. Game biologists took 776 ...[missing]...that young birds were shot first and the pheasant was always within a mile of where he was branded. ---   What a fine job John Silvernale of Currie and Mrs. Eva Roberts of Slayton have done in keeping interest alive in the Murray County Historical Society and they are entitled to the thanks of every citizen. They are planning on a big celebration to observe the Massacre of 1863. Help them. ---   We were over to Elias’ for Mothers Day. While there we visited with Kae, our oldest granddaughter. She is a nurse at St. Barnabas Hospital. She said the nurses’ salary would be raised $10.00 a month starting June 1st. If there are 5,000 nurses in Mpls. getting a raise of $120.00 a year, one wonders where all the money comes from. ---   See where one town to the north of us is building a Sunset Home for the Aged. The word Sunset should not be used. Nor should you build the Home near a lake or woods for the scenic beauty. When you get past eighty, sunsets are not interesting. You want company, you want to talk to somebody. Build the Home for the Aged just inside the outskirts of the village which will supply you with the most patrons. Build on a good highway so the Home will not be isolated. It will encourage friends to come and see the residents. Lots of the old friends will bring cookies, etc. and stay for a short visit. The easier the Home is to get to, the more company they’ll have. A ten minute visit means more than 100 American Beauties to the aged. ---   The U.S. official that orders this plane spying over Russia should get his head examined. It looks like one sure way to start a war. ---   We notice that Mrs. Rose Thorburn of Marshall is a candidate for the office of chairwoman in the Republican Party in Minnesota. Mrs. Thorburn is a former resident of Murray county and we would like to see her win. She is a lady of ability and energy in every sense of the word. Her father, the late Geo. H. Woodgate of Slayton, was for years one of Murray county’s outstanding business men. ---   Mr. and Mrs. Harold Johnson of Shakopee took us out for a ride Wednesday afternoon around the environs of St. Paul. Harold was driving his new Falcon of which he is very proud, and I don’t blame him.
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May 26, 1960
  The rates of the rural hospitals continue to rise the same as they do in the cities. At Karlslide there were a total of 1,136 patients last year. The average cost per patient a day rose from $18.24 in 1958 to $19.68 in 1959. ---   Natural gas is coming into Minnesota from Canada and from No. Dakota and Montana, and many Minnesota towns are out fighting for it. Nothing cheap about it. One town voted on bonds for $310,000 to establish, construct and operate a gas distributing plant to buy gas at wholesale and distribute natural gas in the town. Three counties down North Dakota and Montana are bringing in natural gas. Fighting tooth and nail against the oncoming natural gas are the gas and oil men of three counties. They attend all gas meetings and tell the audience that fuel oil gives the cheapest heat, and so on. ---   We’ve talked about natural gas so much in the past that a lot of us thought all you had to do was to drive a pipe into a gas field and strike a match at the top end. Far from that, when natural gas comes to the top it is a mess. It is a mixture of natural gas, gasoline, acid gases, water and other compounds which easily eat through steel piping and it takes a lot of work to get it to market. ---   Over for the Grand Chapter meeting last week were Mrs. Dorothy Bergman of Slayton and Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Harmsen of Lake Wilson. For comeliness that is the ladies stood away up near the top. Vincent was in a different class and we spoke of the things that are and the things that were. ---   All this war talk has begun to seep into New York and many auxiliary plants are being installed throughout the city from art galleries to homes. A bomb that would knock out electricity in a certain section would destroy everything nearby--even those heavy vault doors in the banks would be stalled. Most of the auxiliary units are Diesels. General Motors made over 3,000 of this type last year. Some supermarkets have auxiliary engines. ---   It’s hard to believe what mosquitoes can do besides stinging you. She can vibrate her wings 300 times a second and fly 100 inches a second, almost six miles an hour. For years the thought of controlling the mosquito was only talked about, now there are few towns of any size that do not have sprinklers and sprayers that help make life more pleasant. ---   Marshall county, a big soil bank county, lost nearly two thousand in population. Kittson county, another heavy soil bank county, drops 1,355. Soil banks evidently are a detriment to a county. ---   One of the real big Sunday editions is that of the New York Times. The average Sunday Times weighs 5 pounds and sometimes reaches six pounds. The Times comes to its mail subscribers in jackets made of heavy plastic which will not tear or rip. Would hate to be a paper boy with 60 subscribers when six inches of snow covered the ground of a Sunday morning. ---   There was a big fish contest at Midway along the north shore drive last week. Five Grand Marais and Duluth boys ganged up, got a stick of dynamite, blasted the biggest hole in the river, picked out the biggest fish and took in the show. They found a warden waiting for them. The justice said $100 fine or 90 days in jail, no suspended sentence. ---   Here’s something you don’t read about every day. The town of International Falls is not satisfied with its municipal liquor store. A petition signed by 281 names was presented to the council asking for a vote on the issue. The election will be held on June 8th. The opponents of the municipal liquor store plan on seeking for 5 on-sale licenses at $2,500 each as well as a number of “off-sale” places. ---   Swift, the packer, is bringing tender meat to your table. Their treated pot roast will be just as tender as the usual costly prime ribs of beef. How do they do it? A glass full of enzyme is injected into the animal a few minutes before it is slaughtered. Swift is injecting the enzyme in a thousand head of cattle a week at plants at Ocala, Fla. and St. Joseph, Mo. It’s charging five cents a pound more for the treated beef: think of the amount of tender steak there will be on a critter. Hope it’s true, but we have our doubts. ---   We don’t see many helicopters out here, but they are increasing in use by the airplane companies. Getting from the landing field to the down town is quite a problem--it takes 45 minutes by car. The helicopter does it in seven minutes. ---   See where the Milwaukee road is asking for a consolidation of depot agents. In the proposed list Chandler will lose its agent. The number of agents is to be cut in half. ---   We’re a sort of indifferent bunch, we Americans. Half of the people in the U.S. have never had a shot of polio vaccine. Four out of ten children have not had three shots. There’s lots of the Salk vaccine on hand so get busy. ---   Men can’t be too careful these days. Over at Hudson, Wis., Mrs. Beverly Gensler, 22 years old, is charged with murdering her husband. He came in from the field for dinner, but there was no dinner ready. Like every other American husband he started expressing his opinion and said he was going to leave. She ran back to the house for the shotgun and shot and killed her loving husband, making a hole in his left side. She pushed him over on the seat and drove to a neighbor. This is a kindly warning to men. If your meals aren’t ready, start singing “Let me call you sweetheart.” ---   Beer is up a cent a bottle in Ohio and Michigan and the Schlitz Brewing Co. of Milwaukee says “We are watching and will not doubt follow,” which means the raise will be general in the midwest. ---   What makes an auto spring out ahead of the pack? Take the Falcon, this year it has taken a real lead. How do so many people know about it, by reading or by word of mouth, or by a salesman? There were 153,718 Falcons delivered to purchasers in the first 3 months. Ford said it expected to make 600,000 this year. ---   They play football for keeps in Brazil where there are stadiums that hold 150,000 spectators. They really must be hot headed down there as there is a nine foot ditch full of water between the spectators and the players. ---   That was a bitter report the census man handed the proud city of Minneapolis. Minneapolis does not have as many people as it did twenty years ago. Her loss will help assuage the feelings of many towns and counties: misery loves company. Forty thousand is a lot of people to lose in 10 years.
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June 2, 1960
  The tornado days are here again and the federal government will aid the state and local authorities in issuing warnings. What’s our record been in the past? We have only had one in the month of June and that at Anoka on June 18, 1939, killing nine persons. We have never had a tornado in the month of July. August has the record with four. There has not been a tornado of record in Minnesota for 21 years. To be on the safe side, clean out that southwest corner in your basement. ---   Down at Ames college in Iowa, a mighty good school, they have an electronic machine. The following question was placed in the machine: “What would it cost the government to idle enough land to control production and keep farm prices from falling below certain levels?” Answer: at a cost of 1.5 billion dollars a year, enough land could be retired from use to cut production of wheat and corn sharply, bring an end to the piling up of surpluses, and permit grain surpluses to be reduced to manageable levels by 1970. Price of wheat could be held at $1.50 a bushel, corn and $1.30 a bushel. Livestock prices would be firmed too. ---   The Ford company made an announcement last week that will make the “Steel” boys look up. Ford claims it has developed a new process of making steel that cuts by one-half or more the time it takes to make a ton of steel in an open hearth. Than means more unemployed. ---   There’s a mink farm at Fosston that is what one would call a going concern. Its largest building is 42 x 88; another a freezer that holds 400 tons of rough fish. Mr. Larson says that with normal production he should have 7,000 young minks this season. Wonder how many coats that will make? Larson buys his rough fish from the Red Lake Indians. ---   The first load of wheat of the 1960 crop was sold in San Antonio, Texas on May 9. Down there in Texas there are Minnesota combines that will follow the harvest until they reach their own fields in northern Minnesota. Years ago squads of men followed the harvest but that era has gone. Kansas is now the No. 1 wheat state. ---   Floods in southern Minnesota have not halted the U.S. in its search for more water. The Interior Dept. opened bids Tuesday on a million gallon a day plant at Freeport, Texas, to convert sea water to fresh water. ---   The Soil Bank must be on its way out, at least Congress does not seem interested and is letting it die. Critics say it takes in all the poor land. At the present time there are over twenty-eight million acres in the bank and it will take three years to unravel. ---   Hawley, a village of about 1,000 people, voted last week to build a pipe line five miles long to connect with a natural gas main. There must be money in natural gas. ---   It’s really hard to understand the difference between Minnesota people and the people in Wisconsin. Saw two supermarket ads. They both read, “Open 8 A.M. to 9 P.M. 6 Days, Sundays 9 A.M. to 6 P.M.” And every hamlet and city has its liquor store going full blast on Sunday. The Sabbath is almost unknown in Wisconsin. ---   At the end of 1958 there were seventy million registered motor vehicles in the U.S. Of this number there were 59 million passenger cars. California has over seven million motor vehicles registered. Then followed New York, Texas and Pennsylvania. ---   The meanest man in Minnesota lives in Mahnomen. Already he has poisoned over 40 dogs. There was so much bitter feeling that the council called in the state crime bureau. What they need is someone from the mental hospital. A man that would kill that many dogs is not right mentally. ---   Listen to this: the Plumbers Union of Chicago, which has about 10,000 members, has agreed to outlaw the coffee break. It figures that the money saved will enable the contractors to make over three million dollars a year, enough to give them the raise they have been asking for. It is grand to see them work in unity. ---   Here’s a new name for the home of the aged. “This is your invitation to a quarter million dollar investment, incorporated and locally financed. Senior Citizens’ Home. Home for 44 guests. Twenty-four hour nursing service. Bed patients welcome, excellent food service,” and its name is “Glenhaven.” It is not in Minnesota. ---   Some people express surprise at the exceptional growth of Slayton. We are one, but we have not been in Slayton for over three years. Business men and professional men working hand in hand have given Slayton a steady growth, one that will not wither. We first saw Slayton in 1883. There was only a big hotel building, the park, and a wide, wide street, for which the late S. O. Morse should get the credit. ---   Compact cars are beginning to give the government and some taxpayers something to think about. The new compact cars don’t use as much gas, consequently the less gas used, the less taxes we get and it’s no insignificant amount either. A Chevy official speculates that compacts may cut seven billion gallons off the 83 billion that might have been consumed in 1960 if all cars were full size. ---   What’s happened to the new drugs that would cure almost everything? Since Senator Kefauver got on high priced drugs, you never hear or see a word. ---   Noticed a bank ad in northern Minnesota. “Sheep have over the years been one of the top money crops. Today sheep will return more per dollar of investment than any other class of livestock.” ---   It’s nice to know just how you stand once in a while. As of December 1959 the national debt of the U.S. reached a new high of $846 billion. ---   Census Jots. The rural population in the ninth congressional district has shrunk 20,000 in the last decade. This is the district that Coya Knutson fought for and lost two years ago. The twenty thousand shrink was in the rural district. ---   The lamprey, the deadly eel-like fish that was going to clean up the lake trout in Lake Superior has been stopped cold. The lamprey spawn at the mouth of a stream or river. Thirty-nine streams have been treated with a new chemical “lamprocide” on the U.S. side of Lake Superior with wonderful success.
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June 9, 1960
  Worse than the corn picker season is the power lawn mower season which opened a couple of weeks ago. While it is not as big as the corn picker, the power mower took a toll of 68,000 fingers and toes last year. Running a power mower is no job for kids. ---   Our officials can learn a lot from the highway officials at San Antonio, Texas. Up here when a nut goes on an auto spree and is chased by officers for miles when more infractions are made, he generally is charged with “reckless driving.” Down in San Antonio when officers start chasing one of those guys and every time he crashes a red light or makes a wrong turn it is jotted down and when the guy appears in court he is handed a complete statement. One autoist was fined $1,100 for a night’s berserk with his auto, and then went to jail at $3.00 a day to pay off the fine. ---   Minneapolis is still feeling the effect of losing 40,000 in population. It is only allowed to issue one saloon license for every 5,000 people so there goes 8 licenses out the window. ---   Remember when trading stamps were called a flash in the pan by some merchants? Don’t worry, they’re here to stay. The Sperry & Hutchinson Green Stamp Co. is having its premium catalog printed. It consists of 30 million copies. If put in a pile it would reach up 200 times higher than the Empire State building. ---   A reader asks what does it cost to live in a home for the aged? Got a booklet yesterday. If you can take care of yourself, walking about, alert, $160 a month--1,920 a year for room by yourself with toilet, food and laundry. This does not include medicine, doctor, etc. You get a bill at the end of the month for them. Depending on your condition, the prices range from $160 to $20. We notice that H. R. Lexvold, a former president of the First National Bank of Lake Wilson is treasurer of the home. ---   Talk about bowling alleys--there is a 112 bowling alley center in Edison N.J. It is so large that mechanics use bicycles on a little roadway when they keep check on the automatic pin setters. ---   When we were younger and took out life insurance we had to go before a doctor for an examination. Today if you are under 30 you don’t need an examination, that is if you only want $25,000 insurance or less. ---   We mentioned last week about the young husband who was shot to death because he wouldn’t eat a scrambled egg sandwich. His widow is in jail at Hudson, Wis., and does she cost the people money. The law in Wisconsin says as long as she is in custody in the county jail a matron must be awake and on duty. That calls for 3 matrons and a relief woman, all of which costs the county $40.00 a day. You can’t get bail on a first degree murder charge. ---   Coca-Cola dealers and that includes Coke, Pepsi-Cola, Royal Cola, etc., will soon come to you in tin cans. The east has been supplied with tin cans for several months. The handling of empty bottles, washing, etc., is expensive: a can is thrown away. The Coca-Cola bottle lives to a ripe old age. It goes back to be refilled 36 times. ---   Don’t some of those so-called experts go astray sometimes: one said the other day that we are producing alcoholics at the rate of 1,200 a day, adding that while the Democrat and Republican parties may be popular, the cocktail party still has the edge in popularity. ---   Some of the plane companies are still complaining. There has been a downturn, which with a heavy debt has pushed the Capitol line right up to the doors of bankruptcy. We never could see how so many plane lines could exist. ---   A friend sends us a copy of the Port Elizabeth Post. Smartest looking African paper we have seen. Seems odd that we go so far for this item, but we’ve never seen it before: “Johannesburg--The tyres of a car would last longer if more rain fell, said Mr. G. J. Greenfield, a tyre expert. He addressed the Road Passenger Transport Association’s conference in Germiston. The bus operator got only 1,000 miles or so for each millimetre of treadwear in South Africa, but with the identical tyres in Manchester, England, for instance, the bus company got 3,000 miles. Manchester had a high rainfall. ‘Water is the best lubricant for rubber, and tyres wear slowly in wet weather,’ said Mr. Greenfield. He added that motorists got longer tyre mileages on gravel roads than on tarmac, because the little pebbles acted as roller bearings.” ---   If straws show the way the wind blows, this one will make you scratch your head. The U.S. is keeping its big bombers in the air night and day. They are fueled in the air so that they can always be ready--for what? Huge B52 bombers cruise the Sub-Arctic at all times. They are fueled by a giant tanker plane. We’ll need more taxes to keep them going and to replace. ---   The horse race held at Willow River two weeks ago between two horses was ruled out, says the Moose Lake Gazette. That’s about the only sport we had in Murray county around 50 years ago. There was a pony or two that could run. The two men who kept the sport amoving were Frank Weck and Ed Holmen. They saw that things were kept going. Lots of slickers those days that came through the county dragging a dilapidated skinny pony, but oh how it could run. Frank looked after the ponies and Ed looked after those who liked foot racing. Ed had one, he lived at Avoca. Any of you old folks at Avoca remember Bob Johnson? ---   There is one law suit--damages by changes in highways, that always seems to hit a “fair minded jury.” How can such a difference exist sometimes? Dean and Margie Mueur of Mankato appealed from the appraiser’s award on their lot. They took it to court. The appraisers had awarded them $100, the jury last week gave them $6,000. ---   Someone kindly sent us a copy of the London Times. We read it but will be darned if will advertise in the personal column. The charge for announcements is 18 shillings and six pence per line--a shilling is worth 14 cents. ---   This U.S. is suffering from a deluge of oil. There’s oil everywhere but not much of a market. Too much foreign oil, and too much U.S. oil. Texas for instance can’t sell enough oil to pay the taxes--a drop of $5 million since last year and officials say a sales tax or an income tax is the only answer. Here’s the story in a nutshell. In the last four years oil supply has increased 921,000 barrels a day--the demand is 401,000 barrels a day.
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June 16, 1960
  The retreat of the whites in Africa is on. It is starting in the Belgian Congo. The former colony will soon be a black republic or a mad house. Bad blood exists between white and black, and woe betide the white woman left there after June 30th. ---   The Standard Oil Agent at Stephen keeps up with the times. He has installed an electronic device, and no matter when you order gas or oil it is on records, so if he happens to be out your order is still recorded for him. ---   Where juvenile delinquency sticks out like a sore thumb is in automobile thefts. Over 380,000 autos were stolen in the U.S. last year and 80 percent of them were stolen by boys, yes and sometimes girls. Too many drivers leave their keys in the car, just an invitation. When an official sees a car parked with the keys in it, the officer should either remove the keys or give the driver a chance to tell it to the judge. ---   Coming to see us Monday was Bill Jacobson of Minneapolis and Mr. and Mrs. John Wilcoxen of Slayton. Bill was Slayton’s No. 1 baseball fan for years, and still loves to go, but he is getting too old for night games. Mrs. Wilcoxen didn’t need to knock. She didn’t used to when we were a patient at the Murray County Memorial several years ago, and she was in charge of the tube that went down our left nostril. It was a kind of a ticklish proposition, what a nice nurse she was. ---   Looking over a preliminary census report it looks as if climate has a lot to do with the changes. The ten big cities to increase were all in the south with the exception of Denver and Milwaukee. Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, N.J. and Portland all went down. In the up cities increasing were San Diego, gained 212,097, San Antonio 176,000, Tampa 145,000, etc. ---   Gasoline still floods the country, we might say the world. Half the new homes and business places are being equipped to burn natural gas instead of fuel oil, and the fuel oil has only increased 1 per cent a year while natural gas has increased 6 per cent a year. ---   Most popular electrical appliance on the market today is the dish washer. General Motors has one called “The Portable.” That’s what we were once. Katie would never wash--she always dried, and when we had eggs, many and many a time the forks were held up to the window light, and bang, they came into the dish water again. The world does move. ---   A man was driving down one of the Bloomington streets last week. A policeman hailed him and asked to see his driver’s license. The man who was an attorney from Eden Prairie refused. He was arrested and pled not guilty. He said the law had no right to demand to see his license as he had violated no law or there was nothing the matter with his car. He is carrying it to the State Supreme Court. A Florida court held that a license was a privilege and he did not have to show it. The U.S. Supreme court has held that “whether it is a right or a privilege the law cannot be capriciously curtailed.” ---   Was wondering the other day about the cost of living in different sections. So we looked at prices in the Ridgecrest Independent published on the rim of the California desert and the Hallock Enterprise on the rim of Canada. Took two staples, 3 lbs. ground beef in California cost $1.17, in Hallock $1.29. Coffee two pounds tin any brand--Hallock $1.39, Ridgecrest $1.37. Pretty close, as the Ridgecrest was a super. The Independent had an article you don’t see advertised in the north. “Crown Prince Horse Meat 14 oz. package, 6 for $1.00.” The Independent editor is Paul Hubbard who ran the Holland Advocate and taught the Ruthton brass band in the days gone by. ---   Our youngest granddaughter, Peggy Jean graduated from the Washburn High School in Minneapolis last night, but you never would have known it: there were 588 in the graduating class. ---   We notice that 13 iron mines in the northern part of the state say their taxes are too high, never heard of the mine companies starving or going broke, sometimes the going is pretty tough for the miners’ families. ---   One of the leaders in the anticrime department is J. Edgar Hoover. He has come out flat footed for the death penalty in cases of murder and rape. He says it is a deterrent to many crimes and he is in a position to know. ---   Minnesota seems to be doing its bit increase the surplus of gasoline. Ada in Norman county is one of the headquarters for Canadian natural gas. Ada has already received 243 rail cars of pipe to be used by the company and there’s more to come. The pipe is 39 feet in length and 24 inches in diameter. The pipe is welded to another pipe, then stacked in the fair grounds. Many towns in that section have voted to handle the natural gas, New York Mills, Lake Park, Argyle and Perham. ---   The county treasurer of Kittson county got his books all balled up and resigned. A new treasurer was selected. Mr. Gamble, the county treasurer, was not short but just didn’t like his office. ---   A grandson of the late Mr. and Mrs. N. C. Choruslemen [Christensen?] of Lake Wilson has a wonderful record with Washburn High as a baseball pitcher. His name is Les Stream and he shut out St. Teck in a one hit game for the State Championship last week. Les is Margaret’s son. ---   Something hit Sears & Roebuck last May. For the last 20 months it has been doing real well. Business dropped 3 percent. The weather is accused of the drop: you never get so big that bad luck can’t reach you. ---   “Will least any new car,” says an ad in a Chicago paper. “Brand new Falcon $2.00 a day.” ---   Best news for the farmer for many a day, pork has come back to its place in the sun. At Chicago last week packers were paying $18 a hundred. Come next month port will raise at least $2 a hundred, making the price $20, the highest price since 1958. ---   Following suite of several country towns, the gas price war struck the cities last week. Regular brands in the cities were down to 22.9 a gallon. There’s a big difference between country towns’ gas war and a city war. In the country generally only two or three towns are in the war, and customers come from far and near. Nothing can be more foolish than these wars. Those bargain hunters will never come near the place again and we have never heard of those outside customers ever presenting the dealer with a golden cuspidor. ---   Good-bye to the stray dog and good-bye to the nuisance dog. Their days are numbered. There’s a gun shaped like a tommy gun called the Cap-Chur gun, which shoots a small retrievable barreled syringe filled with a sleeping compound and a Madelia policeman is getting dogs at 30 yards for a nap. He looks them over. If they are bad, they wake ... [rest missing].
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June 23, 1960
  The Northwestern passenger train that runs through Balaton is on its way out. The trains run between Mankato and Rapid City, So. Dak. The trains will continue in service until the I.C.C. meets. But that date has not been announced yet. ---   Two old friends, and they really are old friends, visited us last week. They are Mrs. Ellen (Halborstad) Cook of Heron Lake and Mrs. Lena (Halborstad) Clauson of Hadley. They used to baby sit with our two oldest children. That was when Lake Wilson had 8 kerosene street lamps and Harry Lloyd got $8 a month for being the lamp lighter. We certainly enjoyed their visit. ---   Did you see where Russel Krcheuz, who lived on Stevens Avenue, hit his woman, not wife, with a floor lamp. It made her mad and she ran to the kitchen for a knife and stabbed him to death. Evidently he hit her with the wrong end of the lamp. ---   Sears, Roebuck got in a hassle with the State of Iowa a while back. It claimed that the merchandise in their many catalog stores should be assessed in Chicago, Illinois instead of towns in which they were located. The Supreme Court told Sears to pay taxes where the catalog stores are located. ---   If your believe in fluoridating your drinking water, don’t be discouraged if they vote it down in your town. If you want your water fluoridated all you have to do is go to your drug store for a bottle of Les-Cave. It is a fluid preparation and a few drops does the work. You’ll need a doctor’s prescription to get it. ---   A popular magazine has made a survey of what really becomes of their trading stamps. Some paid their baby sitters in stamps. One lady gives them as prizes in bridge games. What wonderful poker chips they would make: noiseless. ---   While the village of Detroit Lakes sits along side of one of the most beautiful lakes in the state, she’s not taking any chances on drinking water. Last week workmen started the construction of a million gallon storage tank. ---   Our oldest daughter, Lieut. Col. Nola Forrest RTD came in from San Francisco, Calif. last week and visited at the home of her sister, Mrs. Ray D. Elias until Sunday, when she left on a 40 day trip to Europe. She is taking one of those 6 hour jet planes. After her European visit she goes to Copenhagen and Scotland and naturally she will visit Stirling, where we first saw the light of day. ---   No matter what you raise, from cows to cotton you can make a success of your business if you will only use the Cling Peach method. It is absolutely guaranteed. California has a record breaking crop of Cling peaches, estimated at 700,000 tons, and the growers, the canners and state officials met to decide just how many Cling peaches should be shaken from the trees. They decided a 10 percent then everybody in the trade knows what he’s doing. ---   Four new compact cars will appear on the market next fall. The Ford, Chevrolet and Plymouth are not doing so well. Compacts now number 26 percent of all the cars made which is bound to have its effect on the gas market. Mr. Romney of the American Motors says, “Compact cars will account for 50 percent of the sales by 1961.” ---   Vernon Center in Blue Earth county has a real mystery on its hands. Land is going down. Three weeks ago Ray Outhoudt who farms on the outskirts of the village noticed a crack had developed in his land along the river bank. At that time it was a hundred feet long and ten feet deep. It is now 80 yards long, 20 feet deep and 18 yards wide, it is getting worse every day. Some residents have a theory that there is a huge vein of quicksand underneath. ---   Those 258 voters at International Falls who wanted to drive out the municipal liquor store got an awful beating. The totals being: for the municipal store 1,152, for the private saloons 558, and there were pages of ads in the daily Journal telling of the benefits of the private saloons. Citizens would rather have it home operated even if it was not making so much money. ---   The National Tea Co. has a packing plant at Fergus Falls, but it only buys cattle and hogs. It wants choice beef up to 925 lbs. Prices are radioed Monday to Friday by KBMW. No sheep, calves, bulls or cows are bought. What does a Tea Company want with a packing plant in Minnesota? ---   While we’re talking about natural gas coming in to Minnesota, look at what’s already here. The Warren Sheaf says, “The water well at the Burr farm near here gives off natural gas as well as water. Gas can be lighted at the well casing. This gas caused an explosion last week and Henry Burr was badly injured.” Does this well indicate that Minnesota is in the gas belt? ---   Took a look at the minutes of the International Falls Municipal court yesterday. This first case was new to us, “Jack Green, permitting dogs to run at large, $5.00 or two days.” They can be tough up there. Marguerite Eva Holm got one too much under her belt and tried to drive a car; the police nabbed her. She can either pay $100.00 in cash or do her fancy work in the city jail for the next 30 days. ---   Moose are the aristocracy of the wild animals in Minnesota. Game wardens near Two Harbors heard a story about two men trying to sell a moose calf. On the trail they went and ended with 2 young men being arrested with moose meat in their possession. The law breakers were taken before a justice at Two Harbors who fined them $500.00. The calf was taken back into the woods, but it is doubtful if it can survive. But what a fine these two young men got.
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June 30, 1960
  The A & P, biggest chain store super market in the U.S. has not been doing so well: too much competition. President Buerger, when asked about trading stamps said, “Trading stamps are a drag on civilization. You pay for them through the nose and don’t you forget it.” The company opened 1,000 new stores in the last five years. There was one woman stockholder there that shook the rafters. Mrs. David said, “I got up before eight, sat here ever since without a bit to eat. When it is over, your directors go to some swell restaurant and the company pays for it. Where do we go?” There’s a lot of democracy in the east--mixing market baskets and millionaires. ---   Omaha, Neb. is in a bad way for ready cash and the council is putting a levy on autos and trucks to raise $500,000. They want to use it to fix up the streets. ---   Kenya in Africa is keeping Brazil awake at nights. Kenya has gone into raising coffee and it does well there. The outlook is so good that the World Bank has loaned it six million dollars. Can’t blame Brazil. At present, on June 15th there were nearly 70,000,000 132 pound bags of coffee on hand, enough to last the world for a year and a half. Brazil wants the prices to stay up. ---   Girls and some married women who use lipstick will have to carry a certificate in their handbag hereafter. The federal government last week forbade the use of 14 different colors. The outlawed colors are mostly light shades of orange and red. These are dangerous days for the young single men and a few married, once in a while. ---   Some day California will be the outstanding state in the nation. It has farm land that is high in fertility--the San Joaquin Valley alone produces more farm wealth than 46 of the other states put together. ---   Teaching is one of the top professions when you reach the top. Dr. Rufus Putman, Supt. of Schools in Minneapolis, gets a salary of $28,000. ---   Being close to Wisconsin we always read anything about their fish. The game and fish dept. boom-shocks some of their lakes and then mark some of the fish. A while back they boom-shocked Cedar Lake. In 8 hours of bomb-shocking they captured a total of 1,782 male wall eyes and 150 females. This proportion is normal and the fish were in first class condition. There must be a lot of jealous fights about mating time. ---   One of the phrases we like to roll under our tongue is “Behind the Iron Curtain, are we any better off.” After the Japanese episode, it would have been interesting news to read the comments of the governments and read the headlines of the leading newspapers in the world. ---   New machines and gadgets are cutting down land labor in the rural districts. Two farms have made tomato pickers. They do fairly well, but the growers want a tough tomato that ripens its fruit at the same time. If the picker proves to be successful it will cut hand labor on the tomato crop from 27 million hours to 2 million hours. ---   Saw an item about anchovies the other day. There is something odd about them. They are a small kind of a herring caught off the coast of Portugal and thousands of Americans love them for their snappy flavor; odd thing about them is they must age for four months or more before they can be packed in tins. ---   That kitchen of yours may become obsolete some day. Two Chicago restaurants have discarded kitchens for deep freezers. The Bellringers restaurant has added 12 different meat dishes, 20 casseroles and 5 hot sandwiches to its menu. Their deep freezers are filled, not with the old style 2 oz. of old turkey, some green peas, etc., which is outmoded. New items are being added daily to the cold freezers and the restaurant’s popularity grows. ---   Suppose you’re tired of turkey, but here is one that is just a little different. The West Central Turkey Plant at Pelican Rapids sold $5,000,000 of turkey meat last year. It employs 180 people, has just built a $20,000 cafeteria and it paid $267,181.04 in wages. A juicy plum for any town. ---   Do you know what “Oil of Wintergreen” is? Deadly. Might be well to know and where to keep it. A 17 year old Crookston boy had a stomach ache, went to the medicine chest, opened a bottle, it smelled like peppermint; he took a long swallow, then found it was “Oil of Wintergreen.” He died in the Crookston hospital in convulsions. Seems more than strange that so few people know that it is “poison.” ---   You can see how big a village we live in is, by reading that it employs 498 teachers and by June 9th all but 26 had been hired. ---   If you’re going to camp out this summer better take some of the new poison ivy pills with you. They are called Aqua Ivy tablets. You can get them at nearly every drug store. The tablets are safe for children--nothing is more distressing or disgusting than a dose of poison ivy. ---   Americans are odd. Some of us won’t eat certain foods because of their looks, yet everybody eats a sort of an angle worm, with a shell and whiskers, called the shrimp. The demand for the shrimp is so great that 50 different countries are kept busing supplying us with shrimp. We get away with 242 million pounds a year and some of them come from Japan, Peru, Korea, etc. 75 percent of our rural people won’t eat mutton, which comes from one of the cleanest animals on earth. ---   If you are looking for an economical event for your gala day this year, why not try a “Pea Soup Day.” We know a town that has a “Pea Soup Day” every year and they go over big. The champion was Tom Walters, 18. He won by consuming 13 five ounce bowls in five minutes. They had a regular program with the soup. Miss Sharon was selected as “Pea Queen.” Three hundred gallons of the pea soup was consumed. ---   Here’s something that will make lady smokers Stop, Look and Listen. The fight on lung cancer seems to have died down. A specialist in mouth cancer warns women to go slow and at the first symptoms of cancer, little white spots, etc., see your doctor at once. ---   Another doctor left Minnesota recently. He was the only physician in Lamberton. Dr. John Sturgis has practiced there for three years and goes to join a clinic. It’s got so you can’t get a doctor unless you have a hospital. The day of the old family doctor has flown. ---   The University of Southern California is starting a shopping center. The budget for the year is $22 million and the tuition fees only read $11 million. Looks like a lot of money for tuition, don’t it?
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