1960 Columns, July - December
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Roaming in the Gloaming

With Bob Forrest

Things Material and Immaterial

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July 7, 1960
  Blue Earth county and the city of Mankato are wrestling over a problem that is going to interest many a county in the state soon. Mankato says the county has not been redistricted since 1873 and as Mankato has 30 percent of the population it is entitled to more representation on the board of county commissioners. ---   Saw a picture of General MacArthur in an eastern magazine yesterday. He was wearing a big broad sash. It was the Order of the Rising Sun, one of Japan’s highest awards. It was for his postwar service to the county he defeated. Besides being a statesman, in our own book he is our greatest general since U. S. Grant of the civil war. ---   That Kenney Foundation scandal in Minneapolis last week really jarred the charitable world. In one way the charitable organizations had it coming. They never took the public into their confidence. Hard working solicitors seldom could ever give you any information. What the giving public wants to know is what part of their dollar is spent for polio patients and all other kinds of diseases. Every solicitor should have with them a financial statement for the past year. In a way the scandal is a good thing as no doubt it will start some legislation next winter. ---   Latest ad which is going over good is a tile in the floor. They bring in, that is in some stores, a hundred dollars a year. ---   Big shots like the folks of the lower five, like to get their picture in the papers. They are merely window dressing and never attend a meeting of the organization to which they were elected. This Kenney fracas has taught some of them a bitter lesson. ---   Wonder if our female sex know that we did import over two million dollars worth of corsets and brassieres from Hong Kong in 1959. Look at the trademark when you buy. ---   There are only five cities in the U.S. that have over a million people. They are New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Detroit. With the exception of Los Angeles they all lost in population. ---   If the number of people who are trying to keep with or bypass the Joneses increases, it will be hard to find an empty cell in some cities. The Burns Detective Agency is in the lie detector business, taking in the supermarkets, banks, etc. The employees are called one by one: the results were shocking. In one supermarket they found that 80 percent of the employees admitted taking either goods or cash. The employees, that is 70 percent, had been taking from $2 up from a Chicago bank. One wise manager, when his report came in just under 80 percent never said a word, but took another test in six months and it was 3 percent. They knew another 80 percent record would be the end. Some employees would not take the test and left. One supermarket store claimed it was losing a million dollars a year in thefts. ---   Pelican Rapids wants to vote on a municipal saloon and wrote to the attorney general if they could vote on it at a special election. He said, “No, you will have to wait until the general election, and added “Fergus Falls is the only place that can vote on the liquor problem at a special election in Otter Tail County.” ---   The old age movement and medical care, etc. has started a lot of folks wondering what an annuity of a $1,000 will cost when they retire. If you are 65 and want an annuity that stops when you die it will cost $12,120. For an income of a $1,000 when you reach 65, if bought at age 35 will cost $312 a year. ---   Being a member of the New York City police is a job not to be sneezed at. They get $6,500 a year and the ladies who take care of the parking meters get $3,000. ---   After this when you buy a chicken at the butcher shop you’ll find that it is stamped U.S. grad and there’s going to be more meat on the breast. ---   Several years ago we joined the “Shrinking Violets,” a group that had one viewpoint--to reduce the fish population in Lake Shetek and do it socially. With the assistance of Chas. Durgin it was a success and many afternoons we spent there, and were we pleased when the three remaining members, Louis Ostergaard, Ed. Engebretson and Charley drove up on Monday and spent the day with us. Talk about the women being gabbers. We outshone all of them in recalling the days when we caught them and didn’t, and Charley was always there to clean the bullheads. Oh, we do thank the three of you. Men who have fished together for years have a lot to talk about. ---   The Kenny Foundation disclosures brought back memories. We well remember the day when Sister Kenny came over to the Capitol to tell about her method of treating polio. The house of representatives refused to hear her, but the senate gave her the opportunity. She was waiting in the senate chamber at noon--no one paying any attention to her. Being a newspaper man, we went over and talked with her. She was not what you would call charming. The deep lines in her face told of her hard work. She told of the Australian bush far from civilization and how all nurses were called “Sisters.” She started to talk polio but it was all Greek to us as well as a lot of people. No one at that time ever dreamed what wonderful things her method would do for crippled children of Minnesota! She was a diamond in the rough. ---   Harvesting is over in Oklahoma. Farmers down there don’t go in for high priced machinery. Custom combine cutters come in and do the cutting, etc. They even bring their trucks to haul the grain. It can’t cost much to start farming in Oklahoma. ---   Hold everything, boys. Here’s the very latest in autos. It is the model T of 1960. It is half the size and runs and handles like the first one. Has a speed of 15 miles an hour--wonder if it has the rattles. The first model T was made exactly 50 years ago. ---   Two weeks ago we read a bank ad saying, “Sheep was always a paying crop.” Last week lambs brought the lowest price on the Chicago market at this time of the year since 1946. Lams brought $21.50, five dollars below last year: it just don’t pay to be a prophet.
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July 14, 1960
  Science is not stopped on account of political friction between countries. Scientists in Japan ...[pied type]... and the U.S. are just as close as X. The U.S. scientists have been increasingly aware of what may be gained by utilizing Asian knowledge of the field known as solid state physics. ---   There’s a new fork truck lift out that is going to change things a little. It is made by the Clark people and will lift a load of 35 tons. Ford got five of them to handle hot steel slabs, some of them weighing 25,000 pounds. ---   They seem to have a different opinion on personal injury accidents in the old country than we do here. The manager of the Golden Lion Hotel at Stirling had a lioness rug with the head attached in his office. He had two lady visitors who stayed two hours, one came back for a menu; she had left and tripped over the lioness’ head and fractured bones in a shoulder. She sued for 1,150 pounds and a jury by a vote of 10 to 2 voted to dismiss the case. She said the head was hidden, but his lawyer said, “She should have looked where she was going,” and he won. ---   Compact cars are beginning to cause worry for the steel folks. They say it takes the same amount of steel to make two standard cars as it does three compacts. Who even thought two years ago they were make such a stir in the machine world. Story right now is that compacts will account for 35 per cent of cars in 1961. If the compact flair keeps up, many a state will have to change its revenue laws. ---   When you’re around ninety, an English bishop says, “It isn’t sense to perform expensive operations to prolong life.” If he’s referring to families he’s right, when the money comes from relatives who had saved it to put their children through college. ---   A gas war that has existed at St. James for the last two years came to an end last week. Prices had been 2 and 3 cents lower; now they are back to the regular rates. ---   Kentucky has injected something new into its 3 percent sales tax, something that has never been tried before. Kentucky folks who go across the state line to do their purchasing will be met with barricaded roads and state police who will search your car and collect taxes on the merchandise you bought in adjoining states. ---   From an exchange we note that Wisconsin has a law forbidding the transportation of beer and a minor in the same car; at least one driver lost his license for doing it. Other items in the same column were R. O. Medke $204 for nigh time speeding over 100 mph, D. Johnson $79 failure to have car under control, and this kindly one: Lary Delar had his license suspended for 30 days for inattentive driving. ---   Colorado is one state that seems to like taxes. It has a 2 per cent sales tax and there’s a movement on now for a law that would allow counties and towns to have a 2 percent tax of their own. ---   And here’s a real cigaret tax: Vermont has a sales tax of seven cents a package, so you can’t blame the folks along the border for hopping across to New Hampshire where the tax is only three cents. ---   The country is doing more thinking than ever before. One company is the Los Angeles Planning and Research Co., whose employees do nothing else but think. Rooms are thick carpeted from wall to wall. What they are trying to do is to out-think the other fellow and get their thoughts into action first. ---   Former congresswoman Coya Knutson, crutch for Kefauver in Minnesota, is back in the news again. She says she will run this year. Notice she is at Oklee now: where is Andy? ---   A few days ago we had a visit from Aggie May MacNamara, now Mrs. Joe Weicherding of Fulda, a long time friend of the family. She must be, for she said that we taught her to play bridge. Don’t believe it, Ag. Where are your tournament prizes? With Aggie was her sister Ria, a teacher in the Minneapolis schools, who lives with her brother Don, once a real popular young man in Slayton. He is still with the Chevrolet people. ---   Aluminum got a setback. All big auto companies are sticking to steel engines. They also made a big bid to sell the auto companies bumpers, but failed. ---   The line down the middle of the concrete highway is doing such a good job in helping traffic that a white line is being painted on the edge of the pavement. It prevents accidents and keeps the turf in better shape. Ohio has nearly 15,000 miles of painted edge lines. ---   The deep freezer is playing a big part in cutting down the home work. A bakery in Nevada is not sending frozen bread to New York and Hawaii. The company says in ten years all bread will be boxed and frozen. ---   The nuclear power over which so much has been said isn’t going far in Britain. Coal is much cheaper and Britain has many coal miners and besides it has a lot of surplus coal. The miners are urging for a tax on fuel oil. Nuclear power costs 25 per cent more than coal. ---   The highway commissioners of Michigan take a slap at compact cars. They say they are a hazard on the highway: passing zones are made for standard cars; headlights are closer together making it harder for other drivers to judge at night, etc., and they don’t use as much gas as the standards. ---   Do you know the names of the five biggest business concerns in the U.S.? Here they are: General Motors $11,233,057,000; Standard Oil of New Jersey $7,910,659,000; Ford Motor Co. $5,356,871,000; General Electric Co. $4,349,509,000 and United States Steel Corp. $3,643,040,000. ---   The jail at St. James must have no empty cells. Heading a roving beer party last week was a twenty year old girl. She was found guilty on two accounts, 30 days for buying beer for a minor and (we don’t get this one) 15 days for buying it as a minor. The Justice suspended the sentence. Why not get a fine from some of the girlish offenders? When juveniles day after day read of those suspended sentences they just itch to break the law. ---   During the year ended June 20th, five hundred billion cigarets were manufactured in the U.S., a gain of 4 percent over a year ago, and you never hear about lung cancer any more.
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July 21, 1960
  The Minnesota Supreme court unanimously gave District Judge Mason of Mankato an awful verbal spanking last week for sending a man to jail when he had no jurisdiction in the case. The man has served some time at Stillwater and will no doubt ask the state to pay his claim, or does that come out of the judge’s bond? It should. Why should the tax payers pay for a judge’s mistake? ---   Compacts furnished a lot of items for the papers. This time it is a finance company: it says they have forced the used car prices down, causing it to lose up to $400.00 on some trades. It is the low price that attracts the buyer. One said it is easier to pay installments on the compacts. ---   The Historical Society of Norman county had an interesting booth at the county fair last week. It has a large room. Four years ago a parlor of 1890 was presented, next year the old country store, an old-time kitchen came next, this year an old school room. The people of the county bring in the articles. About 2,000 signed the visitors book this year. ---   Had a very pleasant visit with Rev. Dallas Johnson and his mother last Sunday afternoon. Formerly of Slayton, he is now at Glen Lake. ---   What a lot of power there is in a one cent tax on a package of cigarets in Illinois. A one cent tax was placed on cigarets in that state last August to pay a bonus to the veterans of the Korean War. It ended the job in June. ---   Say what you want to, conditions are not what they were a year ago. Steel, supposed to be the thermometer of the business world, was at its lowest since July 5, 1949. ---   For the first time in U.S. history people living on farms have dropped to less than 10 percent. No wonder. A man living in town has a half section five miles out. All he needs is cars to haul the gas to the tractors: farming ain’t just what it used to be. ---   The school board of Thorpe has contracted with Jelco Inc. to haul the kids to school. Here are the rates per mile. For the first year 29 cents a mile, 30 cents for the second y ear and 31 cents for the third year. Cost per pupil $76.50 a year or $8.50 a month. How do those figures compare with yours? ---   After throwing Belgium out of the copper business, Africa is now on its way to ruin Brazil. Uganda green coffee is being sold for 16 cents a pound on the New York market. This bean is not used for instant coffee. It sold for 32 cents a year ago. The Santos, a Brazilian coffee, is selling for 30 cents. Instant coffee continues to increase in popularity. ---   Over in Cottonwood county, Mrs. Lewis Minon has filed for the office of representative. Incumbent is Sam Franz of Mountain Lake. ---   We’ve lost our interest in natural gas. Work was started last week on the 24 inch pipeline out of Ada, but the line does not go south, it’s aiming east. ---   What a terrific wind that was that visited Slayton and vicinity, and what a pitiful picture that was in the Pioneer Press of the fair grandstand--pitiful to us who spent so many years in and about what was the finest grandstand in Southwestern Minnesota. Fortunately no lives were lost. ---   So far this year only three people have died from polio in Minnesota. Among them a Duluth man aged 49. He never had a polio shot in his life. ---   Visiting us Sunday night were Eunice and Al Reha of St. Peter: 50 years our neighbors. The women talked about Lake Wilson, the men about fishing: a good time was had by all. ---   One of the real mysteries to the baseball fans in Murray county is how the village the size of Hadley maintained a baseball team for 80 years and they’ve been darned good teams. The present one with Doug Johnson at the helm is no exception. Hadley has won more games than all the other teams in the county put together and has been in more tournament games. It is too bad that Hadley isn’t a little larger. It could have a Gala Day and the main event could be a reunion of the boys who won games for Hadley down through the years. When Hadley started, baseball was in its infancy. Umpires knew but little about the game, as rules were few. There were no mitts, shin guards, gloves or masks. One of the rules we remember was--the batter could ask for a low ball or a high ball. ---   A law was signed in Wisconsin last week that’s going to make a lot of people awful mad. The law briefly says, “All territory in Wisconsin must be in a high school district by 1962:” that’s telling them. ---   A softball player is suing the city of Marshall for $5,000 and this little item may be of interest to some tows. A Russell team was playing on the Marshall diamond. One of the Russell players was chasing a fly ball and ran slap bang into a parked car injuring an eye. Evidently the car was parked on the playing field and Marshall is being blamed because it owns the land. If you own land that the public uses, see an insurance man. ---   The mayor of Waseca is going to pay for painting a lady’s house. The town has a mosquito abatement ordinance and the lady claimed that the spray had speckled her white house. Graciously the mayor said, “Have it painted and give me the bill.” She did. But the council would not stand for it as the sprayer abatement man said that the spray does not affect white houses,” so the mayor got stuck for $26.50. ---   There’s a new trading stamp out. The merchants of Hackensack, N.Y. give their customers “parking” stamps bought from the city to help shoppers pay for leaving cars on municipal lots and to keep shoppers from going to the close by shopping centers. ---   Don’t squeeze this man Castro too hard--what would happen if he stopped the shipment of tobacco? It wouldn’t hurt the cigaret smokers, but what a growling from the cigar smokers. ---   Mayville, N.D. has a new 100 x 50 roller skating rink. The skating surface is a plastic material over concrete: we’d need 2 inch spikes to stay upright on that one. ---   If you want fried potatoes or hash brown potatoes while on a fishing or hunting trip, or even in the home, Pillsbury will have them for you. The company purchased the Red River Potato outfit at Grand Forks and the potatoes will be under the Pillsbury name. ---   While we’re up there, East Grand Forks is holding meetings to change the name of the town--it’s too long. There was a time when it could be called Sodom and be telling the truth. A dry North Dakota “watered” there, and many a harvest hand was rolled of his season’s wages the night they hit the town. We were there over 60 years ago and everything they shouldn’t have they had.
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July 28, 1960
  Two years ago some folks shed tears because one county was persecuting the Hutterites on account of their strange religion. How they wore their hair long and wide rimmed hats and cared not for the rest of the world. All they wanted was to live a simple life, etc. Times change and the Hutterites now lead as degenerate a life as the white people. They imported 80 cases of strong beer from South Dakota last week and before the sheriff broke in on the conclave they had consumed 18 cases of beer: these poor downtrodden Hutterites. ---   Visiting us last week were Mrs. Ruth Nelson of Huntington Beach, Calif., wife of Rev. A. M. Nelson who for years was a pastor at Lake Wilson, and her daughter Ruth and family and other relatives. Another visitor was Mrs. Dorothy Moran of Minneapolis. She is a sister of Mel Risting of Slayton. Rev. Nelson, who is retired, suffers from heart trouble. ---   We celebrated our 88th birthday last week at a family dinner party at the R. D. Elias home. Who ever thought 60 years ago that one would live to 88. In those days folks died about fifty-seven or sixty. We’ve got a lot to thank God for. ---   Poor Brazil. It is making coffee into soap, fertilizer and oil. It still has a surplus of 50 million bags of 132 pounds and the surplus is growing: it’s worse than wheat. ---   Out of Washington, D.C. comes the air news of years. If you are a member of any group that can fill the plane you can fly to London or Paris for $111.00 and back home for $111.00. The air company sells every seat but if some are vacant those going on the trip must pay for the empties. ---   Norman county is forming a Walking Blood Bank. Every family whatever race or creed are members. If you don’t have a member of your family suitable, you are urged to get a substitute. Here’s the idea. The Ada hospital is now affiliated with the Minneapolis War Memorial Blood Bank and has just ended a seven day course in taking blood. The plan is for Norman county to raise its own blood: not a bad idea. ---   St. Louis county is trying an experiment with people on the relief roll. It is asking them to do some work for the city for the money they receive. St. Louis county has 520 men and 88 women on relief. If a man or woman receives aid from a county and won’t help a little he’s not very hungry or willing. ---   The British have developed an instant beer. All you do is put a teaspoon full of the powder in a glass, pour in ice cold water and you have a cold foaming drink. Lipton is trying to develop an Instant Tea, same as Instant Coffee, then they remembered the line on the tea package that said it “should be steeped for 3 minutes.” ---   This is about the time of year when a smooth looking guy knocks at your door and tells you he wants to look at your furnace. There will be no charge. Set the dog on him, don’t let him in the basement. Trust your home furnace folks, they have a lot to do, don’t put it off. ---   The Netherlands government has a hard time keeping commercials out of the TV systems. They just don’t want them. Neither does Belgium or Denmark, but they come in just the same from ships on the ocean, just outside the three mile limit: a country can’t live without them. They are part of our education. ---   The furnaces in northern Minnesota have a busy time the year around. The average temperature in Kittson county is 38.8 for the last 24 years. The editor of the Enterprise says, “This may seem low to many people, but the facts are we have a few days of hot weather, we have 6 months of cold weather with at least 3 months of the year often below freezing constantly. It is this long cold period that brings our average temperature down so low.” ---   A big outdoor advertising company is going to fill the bill boards of enlargements of copies of famous pictures, such as “Little Boy Blue,” “Mona Lisa,” etc. Drivers have enough to do without gazing at art galleries. ---   Girdles are going to be drug on the market. Mead-Johnson are doing a lot of business with its new “Drink a Meal.” At least they have sold over $25 million so far. The new liquid is called Metrocal. The claim is made that eight ounces of Metrocal mixed with water contains 900 calories which will satisfy your appetites and you will lose a half pound of fat a day. The makers wanted $1.50 for a day’s supply to which dealers kicked and got it down to 89 cents a day’s supply. Large stores in the east are selling a lot of it. ---   Coya Knutson is back in the headlines again. At a 4th of July gala day at Oklee she said she would run again. What caused Coya a lot of annoyance two years ago was her husband’s letter asking her not to run. She said Andy would not butt in this campaign. She said she was against “Bossism.” Just where does Andy stand on that? ---   You may live to see the day when minors will not be allowed to run power lawn mowers. We used to rave about corn pickers, but the power mower has that beat. Just think, there have been 80,000 accidents this year, that is 12 per cent over last year. If the injury rate increases, you may see a law to forbid its use by minors. Can’t do it, you say: Minnesota did it against fireworks. ---   The Shakopee board did not rehire a male school teacher because his methods were not right. The teacher sued and Judge Haverling upheld him and he’s going back to Shakopee to teach. It’s harder to roll quicksilver uphill than it is to fire a teacher. Notice that Marshall had to make a change. For years the board had hired only single female teachers. Could not get enough spinsters so it had to hire three married women, who will not be rehired when single teachers are available: that’s what the board thinks now. ---   Florida is bothered by sharks and the county where Miami is located has hired a helicopter to patrol the beaches. If sharks are seen, a warning goes over the broadcasting system. Maybe poor publicity but it may be the means of saving lives.
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August 4, 1960
  Back in May the bartenders of a municipal liquor store sold liquor after hours. The store came up for trial last week before Judge Mason at Mankato. He ordered it closed for 30 days, then suspended all but 5 days and the store was closed July 22nd to July 26th. What common sense is there in suspending part of every sentence he makes? ---   The J.C.’s of St. Peter worked over the autos on the streets one day last week and found 56 cars with defects. That was a drive worthwhile. ---   Here are some new magic meals for the ladies. The meat is dehydrated, then frozen dry. You can take the steak or chicken, wrap them up in paper and put them on the pantry shelf. Folks like Lipton can now put chunks of chicken or beef in their dry soups. The makers say the process does not hurt the flavor. ---   The parcel post rate between here and New York is 35 cents a pound. The airplane freight rate between New York and Hamburg is 36 cents a pound. ---   Seen a lot of baseball games in our life but never have seen an outfielder thrown out of a game for dancing up and down in the outfield. Ted Williams was at bat. Piersal in the outfield started prancing around in the outfield. Ted objected, saying it obscured his batting vision (300 feet away) and in the hassle Piersal was thrown out of the game so Baby Williams could bat. ---   Some day soon you’ll see a movement for a high tariff. Foreign outfits keep pouring in goods, for instance 668,000 autos came in 1959, tires a million, 470,000 typewriters, shoes $13 million, 15,000 tractors, 13,000 combines: just a sample and men here walking the streets looking for jobs. ---   We don’t know what folic acid is, but if there’s too much of it in your vitamin tablets you’ll need a prescription to get them. ---   California passed a law requiring that every car in the state must have some kind of a smog device by the year 1961. What is smog? It is a gas from unburned gasoline or hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. ---   There are more crooks in the food package business than there are in jail. An examination of the weights of packaged foods found 22 per cent in over 100,000 packages were lacking in weight. Don’t blame your grocer. He hates short packages worse than you do. ---   Iron ore in Minnesota has its trend like everything else and the trend now is towards the cheaper ore. Taconite pellets are in favor now. It’s quite a job to get them. Here’s an item that will tell about it clear and better than we can. “At Hoyt Lakes, huge piercing machine plunge jets of flame into the flint-hard formations of ore-bearing rock called taconite. Explosives are inserted into the holes and the taconite is blasted into chunks. The chunks move by rail car to a crusher, where an iron pestle weighing 500 tons breaks them into small sizes before other devices reduce them to talcum-powder fineness. The powdery black iron is then easily pulled out with magnets and rolled into pellets, in a revolving drum. As the marble-sized pellets drop through a huge furnace, temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit fire them to extreme hardness.” ---   The most popular cigaret in the U.S. is the old reliable Camel. Second best is not Lucky Strike but Pall Mall. There were over 62 billion Camels made last year; and you never hear a word now about lung cancer. ---   Nature is sometimes tough on the game birds and waterfowl. Out at Whitney, Nebraska, a hail storm killed 129 pelicans, 75 ducks and a blue heron. ---   Down in New Prague, a town of around 2,000 in LeSueur County, every citizen is carrying a Roberts Rules of Order in his hip pocket. New Prague has a charter and has rules and regulations galore which conflict. Things got so hot the mayor resigned. He said, among other things, the upper council gave him a list of 19 items on how to run the police department, etc., so he up and quit; so did the chief of police. ---   Mankato had a Ladies Day recently. Mary Lou Zieman of Fairmont was charged with having consumed liquor while under age. She paid a fine of $35. Virginia L. Ehorch of Fairmont also paid a $35 fine for consuming liquor while under age. Mrs. Carl Schmitz of Brewster was driving too fast, put up $10 bail but did not come back. Better in the long run for the town to get a little cash than give suspended sentences. ---   Here’s an item for the ladies of Norsk origin. You remember Annie Marie, the little Norwegian girl that worked for the Rockefellers and then married Steven Rockefeller. She has a baby boy. ---   Sears Roebuck got themselves in a jam when they fired 262 employees, mostly clerks. An international boycott was started against the firm last week. Big business never lacks for trouble. ---   Two youths, Byron Ray and Franklin Goodmendson, were arrested for breaking into a store at Bronson. They were found guilty and the district judge sentenced them to St. Cloud on a one to five year sentence with no suspension until they have served a year. That’s sense. ---   Three girls were walking down the highway one night last week. A car drove up behind them and stopped. There were four young men in it. The girls got in near Detroit Lakes. The driver let the boys off, then started for his home when one of the girls pulled a revolver, stuck it at the head of the driver, made him get out and they drove away in the car, but not for long. They are now in the county jail at Fergus Falls. What’s this world coming to, anyway.
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August 11, 1960
  It’s time for the males in Minnesota to meet and ask for equal franchise with the females in criminal cases. For instance a man and wife just hate their neighbor, so they murder him. They were sent to prison for life. The man goes to Stillwater with its clanging gates, armed guards, sentinels on the walls, every step they take is watched and they are locked up like wild animals at night. The woman is taken to Shakopee where there are not rows of cells, no fences around the beautiful building. This woman that went in for life can get out in seventeen years. The prisoners wear no uniform. They work in the fields and gardens, can furnish their own room, and any light work they can do they are supposed to do. Being an inmate at Shakopee means that you are retired from circulation for the length of your sentence. A former employee tells us that women who commit murders make the best inmates. One inmate put life this way, “We can’t go down town.” It is a Paradise for females in Minnesota from 18 up that have sneered at the law. ---   The Murray Co. Fair Assn. will hold its 16th annual fair on September 18-19-20, says a premium book of the year 1899. It was held on the fair grounds west of town. We read it carefully, but none of the officials, superintendents are with us yet with the exception of Miss Orie Fowler (Mrs. W. W. Baker), who was superintendent of Class S Discretionary. She was in charge of keeping track of all articles omitted from the list and awarding them prizes. Oddest line we saw in the premium list was in Dr. Lowe’s and it read, “Pursue the Practice of Medicine in All Its Branches.” ---   Omaha, the hog market of the world is still wallowing in debt. The council put a levy of $5 on every auto to fix up the streets, which have been in bad shape for years. ---   Wonder if beauty contests didn’t start in Murray County. There was one in 1899 when Geo. H. Woodgate gave a prize for the handsomest lady at the Murray County fair in 1899. That’s the first beauty contest we can remember. ---   Here’s a new one from Pelican Rapids. Light ends of milk powder escape in the exhaust system and float all over town, settling on auto windows, homes, and store windows for distance of six blocks, to the annoyance of the folks who like clean windows. ---   Down at Mankato the district judge was roasted by the Minnesota Supreme Court for sending a man to jail illegally. He sent him to jail because he was a habitual criminal. You can’t send anyone to prison for being a habitual criminal. There’s no penalty in being one in Minnesota or any place else. But he was not the only judge. Ramsey County judges, right under the nose of the supreme court, sent 8 men to Stillwater on the same charge. If any of the top bracket read the papers, why didn’t one of them get down from his lofty pedestal and tell the county judge, In the final analysis, supreme court judges are of the same clay as the rest of us and should do more assisting and less criticizing. ---   Eastern dailies are carrying page ads for the big TV companies extolling their programs, adding more people read the news on the N.B.C. network than anywhere else. ---   On August 11, 1858, the Chicago Land Society helped found the city of New Ulm and sent many immigrants to the new town. Lawyers and preachers were not admitted as members in the new colony. ---   Remember, it is no more of a crime to be a habitual criminal in Minnesota than it is to be a habitual golf player. ---   Just because you say you feel good that does not mean you are well. An expert says that nine out of ten people have something the matter with them. ---   Down in Blue Earth County a justice fined a man $25 for furnishing the beer for minors: a man can afford that if he gets one or two parties a week. ---   The Japanese are pushing the U.S. radio makers. Last year 500,000 radios came into this country. How long will it be before we have a high tariff wall? ---   A woman walked down the streets in Duluth, saw the picture of a young lady smoking a cigaret on a bill board. She kept right on walking until she got to the police station. The law prohibiting this kind of ad was passed in 1931 and the fine is $25 a day. The P.T.A. was at its tops in 1931 when they got the council to pass it. ---   Garlic is going to be stronger this year. California alone will raise 45 million pounds. And it is going to be cheaper--Benson might give it a little lift, or is it strong enough? ---   Compact cars are still popular. Ford says half of its output next year will be economy cars, and Ford and a lot of others are going to be stuck with standard cars. (We quote Ford so often because its publicity agency is more voluble than the GM’s.) ---   In a boys school in Denny, Scotland, some of the boys tore things up and printed obscenities everywhere. The county school man was called. He called on the boys to confess--no one answered and here’s the punishment he gave the entire school. No more swimming, no participation in school activities, no football, and no games. Two boys came in the next day and confessed. ---   You know how opinions differ when it comes to appraisals in highway condemnation proceedings. This one is tops. The road went through a motel and trailer court in South Bend township in Blue Earth County. The original appraisal was $46,400. Both sides turned it down and went to law. The jury gave the Turtle Brothers $88,297, double the amount of the original appraisal. Looks as if it would pay the highway department to get a jury to do the job in the first place. ---   The game and fish department is poisoning eight northern Minnesota lakes. None of them are very large and the smallest is Lake Margaret, near Outing--it has 12 1/2 acres; but they all have too many stunted perch and sunfish: never said a word about stunted bullheads. Would like to see the department keep pouring in feed to one of those northern lakes as an experiment. Sometime soon you’ll have to. If you put plenty of feed in a lake it will be able to support twice as many fish.
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August 18, 1960
  Odd, isn’t it. The Polk County Fair, just across the line, offers the highest premium to draft horses. The top prize in the horse pulling contest is $300. ---   Our regular typist is gone for a month. Typists are as scarce at the Home as hens’ teeth, so we have to rely on Peggy Jean. Granddaughters are a necessity in this day and age. ---   Sorry to see Clint Johnson leave the Herald. He was a good man anywhere in the shop. Good luck to you, Clint. ---   Last year was the biggest deer season in history. A total of 105,000 were taken. Might as well give you the rest: pheasants 890,000, ruffled grouse 416,769, sharp tailed grouse 44,965, squirrels 300,000, rabbits and hare 391,000, raccoons 25,620, fox 34,325, muskrat 93,620, mink 42,200 and beaver 19,400. ---   Not only are aspirins good for humans but they are mighty good to help maintain T.V. programs. They are the biggest advertisers on the network. Here’s how they run: Anacin, Bayer Aspirin, Dristan, One A Day Vitamins, Pall Malls, Winstons, Phillies cigars, Chesterfields, Kents, Colgate tooth paste, Tide, Texaco, Viceroy and L and M’s. That is the way they stood after the 1st quarter in 1960. ---   If you have any old vests look them up and start wearing them. They are coming back this fall, at least the suit makers are adding vests to 90 per cent of the suits. There will be some that are reversible--one side for soup and the other gravy. ---   The big Chrysler Auto Company, like all the rest, has an auxiliary. They make sewing machines for Sears Roebuck. Just the machines, no woodwork. ---   Your measles troubles will soon be over. A new vaccine has been tested on 400 children in Massachusetts, Colorado and Connecticut, with wonderful results. The new vaccine expects to be on the market late this fall. ---   Ford will have a new grease bearing that will be sealed in with a brand new lubricant that is good on cars from 15,000 to 100,000 miles. The one year car owners will never need a grease job. ---   July ran true to form and didn’t have a tornado in Minnesota. This month, August, has had more tornadoes than all the rest of the months put together. ---   Evidently Uncle Sam feels he is not getting all the income tax money he’s entitled to. The income tax department will add a force of 2,000 probers. They will investigate the tax of 200,000 who have never been probed before. ---   Today, August 18, 1862, was the date of the opening of Indian outbreak. James Lynd, a trader of Redwood, was the first man killed. Two days later the settlement at Shetek was wiped out. ---   Here’s going to be New Jersey’s gesture for the aged. Home owners over 65 years of age will get an exemption of $800 of assessed valuation, if a new bill passes. Good law. ---   Big business has its looters as well as the small ones. The Chrysler auto officials fired its president, William C. Newberg, after he returned $324,000 that belonged to the company. ---   If you don’t like the name of the town you live in, change it. By a majority of one, East Grand Forks will have a new name. That’s going to take some time: everybody has a favorite name. ---   Up at the Kittson County Fair a man was robbed of $4,000 by gypsy fortune tellers. They had a permit or license from the fair association. Now we hear the question, “Is the fair association liable for permitting a bunch of thieves on the grounds?” ---   A town in North Dakota said it was 108 degrees up there one day during the recent heat wave, and that figure was the same on the California desert at Ridgecrest. Fact is, for a week steady, it averaged 108 degrees in the shade. Odd, isn’t it, that the north and south U.S. would have the same reading. ---   Big league baseball clubs need help financially as well as those in the small league. Kansas City, in the American League, has had poor attendance and the owner threatened to take the team to another city. But the business rallied and agreed to buy 65,800 tickets to the home games this season. Keeping up with the Joneses costs a lot of money. ---   Movies are not going so good: that is, the common run of the mill stuff. Big shows go like wildfire. The “Ten Commandments,” that cost $13 million, has already taken in $44 million. What intrigued us was the salary paid Liz Taylor making just one film. Paper said it was $720,000. How do they figure the income tax on that amount? ---   There are more farm women in some sections that have jobs outside of their homes. At Princeton the Fingerhut Company, which produces auto seat covers, burned to the ground. It had 300 employees and some of the women are driving to Gaylord, where there is another Fingerhut Company, but what a job. Sixty miles one way. They come down on the bus, work their stint, then back to Princeton when they get through. To show you how the women want to work, one drives 43 miles to Princeton to catch the bus. One woman said, “Some of us spend about as much time on the bus as we do at work.” One woman that boarded the bus said she had seven children and had to work. All that woman has to do is to go to her welfare board and she knows it just as well as you do. ---   Visiting us last week were Mr. and Mrs. Burton Fowser of Lake Wilson. We’ve know Burton and Leola all their lives. Burton, a No. 1 fisherman, said fishing in Murray county is dead; nearest spot is Glenwood.
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August 25, 1960
  Polio is one disease that never stays dead. It has broken out again in Rhode Island. So far there have been 79 cases and five deaths. This outbreak has the federal experts puzzled. ---   One of the interesting things to watch is the laying of the natural gas pipes. The one being laid in Norman County has galvanized iron pipes 22 feet 6 inches long. The trench is 6 feet deep and 6 feet wide. The pipes have to be welded and bent according to the contour of the land. Dope of some kind is used over the joints. The machine does not damage the highways. It has a big auger that goes underneath the road and makes a tunnel and two sections of pipe are pushed through. This contract is for 155 miles in Minnesota. ---   There’s a new car being made in Denver that some of you young guys would like. It is called the Bo-Car. It is not cheap and it costs from $8,000 to $9,000, but here is what it can do: some models will reach 200 miles an hour. Mr. Carnes says the Bo-Car will do 60 miles an hour from a dead stop in 4 seconds and can go from zero to 100 miles an hour in 19 seconds. They expect to manufacture 300 cars next year. Some parts from Buick, Corvette, and Chevrolet are used in the Bo-Car. ---   The city of Ada has a new dog ordinance which curtails their activity quite a lot. First the dog must have a rabies vaccination once a year and then it has to be leashed the year round. ---   Iowa is sitting pretty. While a lot of states are scraping the bottom of the barrel, Iowa has a surplus of $63 million. ---   When you talk about wet towns, Springfield in Brown County takes the cake. At the present time it has 14 drinking places, 5 on sale places, seven off sale and two liquor clubs. ---   The village of Gary, with a population of about 400, has a speedway and a grandstand that will seat 600. Here is the way it is operated. The drivers receive 50 per cent of the gate money. This is divided among the auto drivers in accordance with their placing in the races. Business is good and the owners plan on enlarging the grandstand and they will build a concrete crash wall in front of the stands. (Some sense to that.) ---   Pelican Rapids has plenty of water but it’s full of iron. That spoils clothes, dishes and fixtures. Last year the movement was on for everybody to supply their own filter plants; that failed. The council has taken bids on a municipal plant. The plant will cost $100,000 and for years to come the operation of the filtering plant. ---   Sunday night we had two young professional men visiting us. They were Walter Richardson, Superintendent of Schools at North St. Paul, and Dr. Robert Richardson of St. Paul, sons of the late Dr. and Mrs. W. E. Richardson of Slayton whom we knew real well. ---   The testing of an auto is an important one, says a Chrysler official. Some parts that cost little can be tremendously expensive. There is a small part in the engine which costs only two cents to make and less than that to install on the assembly line, but it will cost you $100 to tear the engine down if something goes wrong with it. ---   Lake Superior is said to be the largest fresh water lake in the world. It is 400 miles long. If you find it hard to visualize 400 miles on the water, just remember that the state of Minnesota is 406 miles long. ---   You seldom hear of a company as reliable as the Chrysler being robbed so systematically. The disclosure came with the president paying back over $300,000. In a law suit the directors are accused of doing the same thing. Stockholders bringing the suite say they all had the same plan. When one got to be a director he looked over the list where the parts were bought. He bought majority interest in the firm and raised the price of the part. The suit mentions not only past and present officials but 15 of the company’s suppliers. ---   Saw a page ad in a Chicago paper that will make fuel oil dealers, natural gas men, and even coal dealers stop and read. It was of few words: “Planning to build a new home? Now cool and heat your entire home without flame, soot, or fuss! All new electric heat pump delivers perfect indoor climate the year round. Commonwealth Edison Public Service Company.” ---   Our sincere sympathy goes to the families in the neighboring village of Wilmont, who lost their mothers in one of the most tragic accidents of recent years. ---   To some of you girls who love to tread the Primrose Path and sometime get up before a justice for taking too much, which someday you will bitterly regret. Most of you will straighten up and take your place in society, get married, have a family and someday that little flaxen haired 6 year old will come running home from school with tears in her eyes saying, “They say my mother was a drunkard.” There will be gossips ‘til the end of the world. ---   The sea coast of the U.S. has a lot of inquisitive men with scientific instruments trying to extract the salt from the sea water. The one at Freeport is doing a good job. That town has been getting its water by railroad tanks. No wonder water is scarce in the U.S. It takes 240,000 gallons of water to get out a ton of newsprint, and 80,000 gallons of water for every ton of steel. In New York state there is a real water shortage. In one town if the officers find you have a leaky faucet you get arrested. Nothing new in extracting the salt from sea water. Britain has been doing that for years along the Arabian gulf. The U.S. has 23 states that are on salt water. ---   We’re inclined to be a one track minded people. Every state is water crazy but you never see a word about reservoirs, either concrete or earth. They could be used to good advantage, for some day the floods will come: they always do. ---   Just an item for the kids on the farm. A ten year old boy was messing around a combine, got both hands caught. One hand had to be amputated as bones were visibly puncturing the flesh. That was up at Radium, Minnesota. ---   Ladies: here’s what “They” will be wearing soon. Green dyed raccoon coats and Somali leopard jackets. Others include lavender dyed rabbit coats at $225.00 and jaguar coats for $995.
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September 1, 1960
  If you want to borrow $1,000 just be glad you live in the U.S. Chile charges 15 percent interest, Brazil 12 per cent, Mexico 10 per cent, Greece 10 per cent, France 7 1/4 per cent, Italy 7 1/2, Japan 9 per cent, Germany 8 1/2 per cent, Denmark 7 1/2 per cent, Britain 6 1/2 per cent, Sweden 6 1/2 per cent, Canada 5 3/4 percent, Belgium 6 per cent, U.S. 5 per cent, Netherlands 4 1/2 percent, Switzerland 4 1/2 per cent. ---   Some sections of the Red River Valley hit the jackpot. Jim Bernath who lives near Humbold had oats that went 90 bushels to the acre. He had an entire quarter section in oats. Farms are big in that section. ---   Hold your hats, boys, here’s a real pipeline. It starts in Alberta, Canada and delivers natural gas to San Francisco. The California Commission which ok’ed the project says it will cost over $340 million. Looks like Canada is supplying the U.S. with all its natural gas. ---   A justice of the peace at St. James sent a man to jail for beating his wife. Later he heard her in her tantrums, so he went over and released the brow beaten man. Neighbors were aghast. A justice of the peace is the only one that can release you: that is, if he put you in. Of course, there are intricate ways of getting you out, but the justice of the peace only needs to say the word. If you’re going to jail keep on good terms with the justice of the peace. ---   Big and little officials took part in the looting of the Chrysler Company. The man who bought the supplies for the janitors had a job as “consultant” with a company that sold supplies to the Chrysler Company. Isn’t there a law that will stop this kind of thievery. ---   A new finger print device is changing all the cumbersome methods of taking prints. The new one is only 4 to 6 inches but it does the work. ---   Seems odd in a town the size of Mankato to have the barber shops closed every Monday. The shops will be open every day from Tuesday on, from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. There are 27 barbers in Mankato. ---   Down in Omaha, Nebraska, the taxes never seem to go down. The tax levy for 1961 is $64.86 on a thousand dollars of valuation. ---   When you hear them sing “way down South in the Land of Cotton,” just remember that cotton, like everything, is changing. Over a fifth of the cotton crop will come from California, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada this year. ---   Robert Banks, former mayor of St. James, has taken over the job of city superintendent at $500 a month. They are having a rough time over at St. James. City politics are boiling. One man threatens to start suit against Banks as soon as he gets his first check. ---   Over in Britain there was a seamen’s strike. The committee agreed on a scale with the owners. The rank and file were dissatisfied with the arrangement and struck against its own committee, causing a lot of annoyance to thousands of tourists who wanted to get back to the States. Nearly 100 ships in all were unable to move. ---   The rather fleshy woman sent a note to her new neighbor, saying, “Won’t you please wear that red dress and sit in the sun for a little while? I want my husband to get the lawn mowed.” ---   We don’t hear much about oleomargarine as we did fifteen years ago when the family that used it was a traitor to the dairy industry. The oil from the soy bean enters into the manufacture of oleomargine, makes some difference. Wisconsin, the top dairy state, still imposes a 15 cent tax on colored oleo. Wholesale dealers will pay $500 in some states and retailers $25.00. Most states let down the bar. Only Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, Utah and the Dakotas have laws against the yellow peril. ---   Is coffee drinking slipping? We notice that the drinking of black tea increased ten million pounds last year. When we came to Murray county and you asked for tea at the stores, you got green tea. ---   There’s been quite a rise in the price of Ford cars in the last ten years. The top Ford ten years ago cost you $1,620. Today the top Ford will cost you $2,700 in Detroit. ---   Our oldest daughter, Lt. Col. Nola Forrest, Ret., is visiting here and is stopping with her sister, Mrs. Ray Elias. Nola spent the summer in Europe and also visited friends and relatives in Denmark, England and Scotland. ---   If you are a farmer you can get a refund of federal gasoline tax paid on gas used on your farm. The county agent has a booklet, “Farmers’ Gas Tax Refunds,” ask him for one. ---   Africa is a land of mystery. Several months ago South Africa was laying the dead Negroes out in windrows and forcing the rest to work. You never hear from them any more, but the whites are beginning to realize that those that live by the sword will die by the sword. ---   The Standard Oil Co. of Indiana is trying out a new stunt. It evidently wants to know whether motorists buy Standard gas because of its quality or its handiness. It had three stations in Fairfield, Iowa, it closed up two. In Vincennes, Indiana it had nine, now it only has one. In Maton, Illinois it had five, now it has two. ---   Negroes in and around Philadelphia used the boycott weapon on the Philadelphia Bakery and kept it there until the company agreed to increase its force of colored men and women. ---   Women auto drivers in London, England must be good substantial drivers. A big insurance company took 10 per cent off all premiums of women between the ages of 21 and 50. A spokesman said, “Women have fewer accidents, take fewer chances, drive more slowly, and are less inclined to drink while on a long journey.” ---   It costs $400 to raise a baby until it’s a year old. We can remember when babies cost $2 in cash for the first year. Most the baby’s clothes had been worn by earlier members of the family. ---   Here’s the thing that is hurting most in the Belgian Congo. The 86,000 Belgians who are on the road out, earned salaries that totaled over $229 million dollars. ---   Some of those Murray County soy beans have a long way to go before they reach their final destination. First they will go to the Honeymead Product Company at Mankato, where they are processed into oil. Then it is shipped in big tanks to Louisiana or New Orleans, where it will be transferred to a huge sea tanker and shipped to Spain. Here’s what will give you some idea of the size of the soy bean crop. The 51st train load, train load mind you, was shipped out of Mankato last week by the government of Spain for salad oil, at 12 1/2 cents a pound. ---   For those folks that are always carping about the high price of medicine, please don’t forget to mention that the price of antibiotics was cut 15 percent last week by 4 different drug makers. An antibiotic is the stuff they punch into you when infection sets in. ---   A couple of weeks ago the American Dental Journal, very outspokenly said that a toothpaste called Crest was the best in the land. What happened? The Crest people thought the public would be tearing the doors down to get it. They didn’t Crest had to put in page ads calling attention to what the American Dental Journal said.
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September, 8, 1960
  Here’s something new for the hunters and it is new. A shotgun with the barrels made out of fiber glass. The barrel is not all glass. It has a thin tube of steel on which the glass is fused. The gun is lighter, the barrels won’t rust, and the barrel has double the bursting strength of steel. ---   We had a very important caller to see us last Thursday. His name is Cameron Forrest and he is our only great grandson. His mother, Mrs. James Forrest of Denver, Colo., was with him. Jimmy came in Saturday. On Saturday we had Mr. and Mrs. Robt. III Forrest of Columbus, Ohio, where he is attending the University. Bob was one of the students who got one of the keys at the U. of M. last year. ---   What we want to know is who got the trading stamps on all your groceries that were taken by the people that could see no harm in it.
   Some of the state institutions in the rural districts are involved in the grocery dividing. Grand juries in some counties will not doubt get nosy. The people would like to know who got the groceries they paid for. Did any of them go to the janitors or the chambermaids? ---   There’s a new device out that makes one wonder. This one can read your handwriting. The post office department in Washington, D.C. will start next month testing a new machine that will read the addresses on envelopes at the rate of 10,000 per hour. The device will separate them into the 40 major destinations. All the mail cannot be distributed out of the 40 points, so the machine puts them in a case where they will be distributed by hand. ---   Suppose you had liability insurance on the car; your daughter was riding with you, you had an accident, she was hurt. Could you collect accident insurance on her? The New Jersey Supreme Court says no. The Court said it would be prejudicial to true family life. Court added that when insurance is involved, there is a strong possibility of collusion among the parties. ---   Tearing down an eight story brick building is a real problem. A big iron ball at the end of a crane is used to pound them to bits. A new method is being tried out. It cuts down the noise. It’s called “powder-lancing,” a way of cutting through concrete with heat. With this new method concrete can be melted. The heat must be terrific. ---   If you are known as a small business man and need a little help, why not write the Small Business Administration at (25) Washington, D.C. It will interesting for you to know just how it helps. ---   We notice Dr. and Mrs. R. F. Pierson were named as winners at the State Fair last week in the “Fine Saddle Horse” section. A nice way to advertise their home town of Slayton. ---   Al Worthington, a former Miller, was bought last week by the White Sox. Al pitched in Murray County while the “Money League” was operating. He married one of the Reusse girls of Fulda. ---   The action of Turnbladh in discharging Riggs was timely and wise. Wardens of a state penitentiary are like ... [rest missing] ---   And last week the Treasurer for the Society of the Blind was short over $30,000 and in the next column was the suite of over $3 million that a client got away with. Some folks are going to be leery in giving to charity. Can you blame them? ---   Village councils and boards of education in southwest Minnesota should keep an eye on the city of St. Peter, county seat of Nicollet County. The mayor of St. Peter asked the members of the board of education to meet with the council to discuss matters of mutual interest, in which they often overlap. Here’s a good sensible idea. The two boards can talk things over and come to a better understanding. Worth trying. ---   Roseau is a good place for ducks this season. A census taken July 1st revealed 110 waterfowl broods. Last year there were only 92 broods at the same time. It is estimated that there are over 3,000 young ducks near Roseau at the present time. ---   Clothing dealers throughout the country are pretty happy this fall. The blue denim craze among school boys, and girls too, is over. ---   The Press of Pelican Rapids is what one would call straight-laced. It knows no ridicule or banter. So this item should be interesting. You can hardly tell which side he’s on. “A week ago Tuesday night a series of events in the village led to the exchange of several shots among the Pelican and Frazee boys. The trouble started when a village youth was roughed up by two Frazee boys. Soon a total of 13 other boys rallied to the support of the aggrieved one, and two carloads of boys started in pursuit of the Frazee men. During the chase a shot was fired by a Pelican youth, and subsequently when the Frazee men pulled into their own home they came out with a gun each and peppered the Pelican boys, who had to turn and run for their lives.” ---   A new vending machine is out. When you put your money in the slot out comes a carton of Pepsi Cola. They have them in the East now. ---   Ulen is building a clinic. A doctor has promised to locate there this year. The new doctor is Dr. Gertrude Saxman of Moorhead. And if she comes, a former resident will start a drugstore. So there is joy in Ulen. ---   St. Peter is going to put its police under Civil Service. The usual motion to blanket in the present force was made but Mayor Gault objected, saying “Why not ‘screen’ them the same as the rest. Let’s not freeze anyone in a job.”
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September 15, 1960
  Here’s an interesting auto item: in 1955 Claus Hemmingson of Keansburg, N.Y. bought his wife a new auto for Mother’s Day. In so doing, it’s now evident he also bought a flock of problems for many auto companies. Ten days and 468 miles after she first got behind the wheel, Mrs. Hemmingson’s shiny sedan veered sharply off the road into a brick wall. She was severely injured. She sued both the dealer and the manufacturers. New Jersey courts held there was no proof either the company had been negligent in making or servicing the car, but awarded the Hemmingsons $30,000 anyway. Their reasoning: despite the lack of evidence of negligence something obviously went wrong with the auto’s steering gear and the manufacturer and its dealer must pay for the damage the car caused. The verdict which was upheld by the state Supreme Court is one of the most important and far reaching. ---   When you see a woman’s name in the paper for some crime, remember the men are to blame. Women were a pretty decent bunch until 1920 when the men gave them the right to vote, then they stumbled. We wrote the warden at Stillwater (B.G.--before grocery days). The answer was there were only six wicked women and they were turned over to the Shakopee Reformatory in 1920. That six of 1920 has grown to 67 in 1960. If the male prisoners at Stillwater had increased at the same rate, Minnesota would have eleven penitentiaries. ---   August passed without a cyclone. There has never been a tornado in Minnesota in September or the remaining months. ---   The state put on the biggest campaign in history against auto violators on Labor Day and the days following, with good results. What’s the use of making this campaign when you have J.P.’s that have no conception of the laws or penalties. It would be a good stunt for the Highway Department to have an official meet with the Justices of the Peace once a year in each county and explain the law to them and advise them as to penalties, etc. ---   Uncle Sam used to be called a pretty shrewd hoss trader. Those days are gone. He gave Laos $286 million, $140 apiece for every soul there, and yet they broke away from the U.S. ---   One of those oil tankers that runs from Beaumont, Texas to Philadelphia carried 10,540,000 gallons of crude oil. It is carried in 30 separate tanks. The tanker shipping costs under 2 cents a barrel per 100 miles. Less than it would cost by pipeline. ---   How in thunder can they afford to run autos in France. Gasoline costs 73 cents a gallon, but at that the auto is throttling business in Europe owing the shortage of good roads. Some of our cities think they are jammed. In London sometimes it takes a truck 20 hours to get to the City’s congested docks. A German road man says things are so bad that the time is coming that you’ll have to get permission to take a trip. In East Germany gas is 55 cents a gallon. Last year 13,356 died on German highways, a third as many as in the U.S. and it has only one eighth as many autos. ---   See where Stassen is in the news again. He is now practicing law in Philadelphia. When he ran for mayor his opponents accused him of failing to pay city wage taxes from 1953 to 1958. He says he was not a legal resident. Anyway he paid the taxes, with the exception of 1953 which with the consent of the board as a test case. He is not running for office this year. ---   Down in Kansas the sales tax does not affect all the newspapers, only the Sunday edition of the Kansas City Star. There are 36 states that have sales taxes; only 5 tax newspapers. They are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Oklahoma and West Virginia. Remember folks, 36 of the states have a state tax and so do many cities and even counties. In West Virginia the sales tax hits newspaper stand sales if they are over five cents. ---   This is hard to believe, but the U.S. is shipping in dead horses from Argentina to process and can for that dog and cat of yours. The Argentina folks are just beginning to worry, as it has only a fifth of the horses it had five years ago. Pet meat packers are looking for cheap red meat and it won’t be long until you see canned whale, jack rabbit, kangaroo, etc. ---   We know there is a lot of Murray County folks who would have liked to attend the 6th annual Threshing Bee held near East Grand Forks September 9-10-11. You would have seen a Minnesota Giant Steamer born in 1882, a 1915 Bull Tractor, an 1898 Gelser Separator, hand fed with straw, a hand-powered threshing machine made in Norway and in operation. None of these events really hit the foundation, which is the old horse-powered threshing machine. We learned to cut on one of them back in 1884. ---   When an auto stops at a station in Bonham, Texas the attendant says, “Please put down your window.” He shoves in an air conditioner hose and holds it there until the temperature is down to seventy, which takes exactly 30 seconds. A bright idea. ---   Twenty-five years ago the wise ones had the horses follow the buffalo into the land of the sunset. The opposite happened, and there were more horses at the State Fair than ever. There were so many of them that it was a hard job of judging. There were over 1,300 entered. The love of horses is still strong in the hearts of thousands of people and it’s a good place to put your love.
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September 22, 1960
  Do you like mushrooms? If you would like to raise your own, just write Chun King at Duluth. He will sell you real mushroom soil. Chung is the maker of many Chinese delicacies. ---   Up at International Falls a Ray trapper is serving ninety days in jail for taking a beaver out of season. He did not have the $100 fine. In Minneapolis a drunk can drive his car endangering the lives of many people and he draws a fine of $100. An odd sense of values. ---   Any of you farmers ever heard of a wheat crop like this? A seventeen acre field belonging to John Brodenike went 71 bushels to the acre. The field was just across the line near Pembina, No. Dak. ---   This is for village councils. Mrs. C. Koeschel of Mankato is suing the city for $12,500 for injuries she received when she stumbled on a sidewalk covered with crushed rock, gravel and other debris. In Scotland the jury would say, “She should have looked where she was going.” ---   In the northern part of the state one candidate made his campaign on the Daylight Saving law. He said the present house members voted for it, which was denied and proved by the house journal. ---   Lightning does strike more than once in the same place. Up near Lengby, Pete Pearson had a cow killed by lightning last week; that was the third time a cow had been killed by lightning in that pasture. ---   If you teach school in the city of New York you must be finger printed. They just want to know if there is any possibility of a criminal background, and if applicant is the same one that took the examination. ---   The Woodmen of the World, a $220 million fraternal organization of Omaha, is back in the news. This time Insurance Commissioner Grubbs is asking the attorney general to interfere. He said the officers are battling among themselves and dissipating the cash by raising their salaries. It is a big outfit. Besides having policies in Murray county, it also has camps in Latin America. In 1959 the traveling expenses of the officers was $85,668. Don’t worry about your policy. The company has a $41 million surplus. ---   There’s grand news for everybody, even those with false teeth. The Illinois University has perfected sweet corn until it is now forty percent sweeter and will stay that way after cooking for two days at room temperature. The corn of today loses its sweetens. ---   The office of County Commissioner in the first district in Blue Earth County had ten candidates for the job at the primary. There must be gold in that district. ---   Things are not doing so well for the moonshiners down in the tobacco chewing belt. The federal dicks have raided so many of them that the moonshine is at the record breaking price of $6.00 a gallon--too high for their regular customers. ---   Hospital beds continue on the up and up . In New York the American Hospital Assn. figures it costs an average of $31.16 a day to keep each patient. The most important expense is labor, which takes 65 per cent. There are now 5,800 hospitals in the U.S. ---   See where two well educated and trusted young men who have some code secrets have moved to Russia with them. Just two men traitors. The Security Chief is under fire for not doing a better job of screening the traitors. Pinkerton said a while back--screen every man in the company from president down--none of them are above being tempted. ---   The Kenny foundation has a new board of directors. Every one of them should be bonded as a token to the public that they are really interested in the work. Too many big name men like to have their name a little bigger if it does not take their time or money. ---   Auto tire makers are in a real battle for business and you will get your tires for less money than you did a year ago. The largest tire manufacturer is the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Sears has butted in to the tire business and it is the third largest seller. Wards is fourth, Firestone stores are second in retail sales. ---   An unspoiled milk will soon be on the market. Men in the laboratories are taking fresh milk and sterilizing it by heating with steam. The 300 degree steam kills all bacteria--and sterilizes it so that the milk will keep for 10 years. Worse drawback is you can’t use glass bottles. The milk can be kept on the shelf in home or store in plastic bottles. ---   The entrance of frozen bread is making things easier for consumer and dealer and should bring down the price 2 cents a loaf. A lot of bakeries are shipping their bread frozen. It may develop into an all day bakery--no night work. ---   The worst blow about the high price of medicine came from Admiral Knickerbocker. He buys a lot of medicine for the U.S. Services, said he preferred to buy American but once saved the tax payers $1,900,000 by buying medicine from Italy and Denmark. ---   The tumult and shouting does in the Minnesota’s grocery business but one thing you do hear is about this man Hursh. Why did he have all the grocery information for a year before he started his crusade? He seems to have more power than two Caesars. He accuses when he wants to, and fires anybody he dislikes--he’s a combination of prosecuting attorney, judge and jury all in one. ---   Had a visit last week from Mr. and Mrs. Emil Minder of Auburndale, Fla. The Minders lived in Murray County for 20 years. He was a civil engineer and among his good jobs was the waterworks in Lake Wilson. Emil is kept busy looking after his real estate interests. They were accompanied by Mrs. Bob Minder of Minneapolis. ---   “Changing Times.” One of the big Oldsmobile agencies in New York has displaced its ten top salesmen and its 1961 models will be sold by ten good looking sales ladies. ---   A group of “pranksters” at Stephen hauled boxes and barrels on the highway, blocking it, and to add an artistic touch they cut down evergreen trees from the shelter belt around the schoolhouse--something new. ---   There’s always been a weak spot in the voting machines. There has never been a printed record of the vote, giving those who do the reading a chance to cheat. The Shoup voting machine this year will double check by cameras. Inside of a minute the judges will have the record in front of them without having someone to read off the totals. ---   If you’re a farmer and leave some of your grain in a field granary this will interest you. Out west where there is plenty of stealing, farmers use the confetti system. They scatter confetti throughout grain that has their initials or a number. Mix those little pieces of paper and then start shoveling, mix it up good and thieves will pass you by. It works in Montana. ---   Coya Knutson, the congresswoman, is a wizard in politics. Given up by her party, she had to change and build up a new organization. In spite of all the brass hats in the D.F.L. from Hubert to the bat boy taking the part of her opponent, she whipped them so badly they begged her to recognize them after the battle. A remarkable woman is Coya. This is the second time for her. She is the most outstanding woman in the history of Minnesota politics.
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September 29, 1960
  Dr. Burton P. Grimes in the St. Peter Herald of Sept. 8th welcomes the grocery investigation of the hospital. He says he has nothing to fear. Like all other officials he can’t understand why Hursch waited a year: does seem odd. Dr. Burton did not take any of the groceries, but as there were so many odds and ends that they were divided among 11 families, none of them on the staff. ---   Here’s an item of news--not a nice item but you’ve never read an item like it before and never will as long as you live. Three women are being tried for murder at the coming term of district court at Hudson, Wis. All are accused of killing a member of their own family. Mrs. Caroline Lange smothered her 2 1/2 year old son on Sept. 22, 1959. She had a little maternal instinct left and did not smother the ten month old child until two months later. Mr. and Mrs. Spangler, parents of 8 children went on a drinking bout. He talked to another woman. When they got home she got the shotgun and killed him: a real tragedy for the county. J. Genizel came home for dinner one day. His wife had been reading love stories and the kettle wasn’t even boiling. He chided her, finally slapped her. She got mad, ran to the house for the shotgun: finis. These murders did not happen in the sordid slums of a big city but out in the rural districts. Human life is getting cheaper. ---   Robert Service years ago wrote, “Strange things are done in the Midnight Sun.” If he had been living today he could have written the same thing about Minnesota’s State Prison. Never before has there been such goings on. Looks as if the prisoners are perfectly satisfied with Riggs. ---   The Governor of Wisconsin is in a mess. He wants to bar all motor boats from lakes that can be rowed across in 15 minutes. The ban would affect 250,000 families. An official charged it would amount to stopping motor boating on 95 percent of the lakes in Wisconsin. There are times when even a governor should keep his mouth shut. ---   J. C. Penny, who started in business in Kenimer, Wyo. 30 years ago, now has 1,700 stores, a remarkable achievement. We are too prone to tell of the big boys in business and not enough to men like Penny whose stores have done so much and meant so much to the medium sized village. Their constant growth is evidence of the quality of their goods and the price: their customers continue to increase. ---   Aluminum that has been trying to edge into the can trade finally arrives. It joined forces with United Shoe Machinery Co. and brought out a can that will make a hit. This can has a thin top and it is easily nipped off with a finger loop, so hunting for the can opener is out of date. This will be a real picnic can. ---   There’s been money in antique furniture and china for years. You’d never think it, but there is money in antique farm machinery. At that big gathering of old machinery at Oslo recently, six thousand people paid to go in and see them, at a dollar apiece. ---   Did we have a fine visit with Glen and Ruth Swenson last Tuesday. Neighbors of ours for years and grand neighbors they were. Glen was Cashier of the First National Bank at Lake Wilson for a couple of decades. They now live at Seattle, Wash. ---   Last winter the legislature of the state of New York passed a law placing a 15 per cent tax on all kinds of tobacco. Today New York officials are asking support to repeal the law: too many New Yorkers are buying their tobacco in New Jersey and Connecticut. ---   Ducks must be scarce. Up in Ontario the new game and fish laws permit you to take only one canvas or redhead in one day. You are allowed 12 ducks in possession, but only one of them can be a canvasback or redhead. Canada takes a very modest toll of its waterfowl. ---   The Minnesota Taxpayers Group we notice is not exactly pleased with the condition of Minnesota. It says in only 13 of the state’s 87 counties did the population increase more than the usual birth and death increase, and only in 14 of the remaining 75 counties, the population loss was 20 percent. Look for about the same drop in another 10 years, especially in the rural districts with its motorized machinery. We look for the day when a lot of the farming will be done from nearby villages. ---   Mexico has a national lottery and all the profits go to the building of hospitals. Last year the lottery took in $80 million. Sixty-five percent of this amount went for prizes and the balance to building 17 hospitals and research buildings. This lottery is the oldest one in the New World, being started by Charles II of Spain in 1770. ---   The soy bean crop increases yearly. The Japanese are our best customers. They eat the beans, press the oil out of them and feed the beans to the live stock. The next thing you’ll be reading about is soy bean flour. It is full of protein, pep and energy and is being developed by the Archer Daniels Company. The soy bean bread will be cheaper than wheat bread. Soy beans is one crop that is up in price from last year. ---   The average man has a hard time understanding Big Business. For months Chrysler has been the door mat for every grafter from the janitor to the president, and it has libel suits to burn, yet we notice that it has 105,000 employees and has already turned out more than 100,000 of the 1961 models: a versatile outfit is the Chrysler. Less than a year ago the president of the company had to give back $324,000 that he must have taken by mistake. ---   One of the odd things in business are the Texas Crude oil wells. During the month of October they were limited to 8 days. They have only been allowed to work that number of days during the last 6 months, and some of the refineries are unable to fill their schedules. ---   A movement is on hand to reenact the Civil War. Don’t be a bunch of fools, wait until it is over. There’s too many “Stars and Bars” flags down there yet. Propositions of this type are always backed by the winner and a lot of men who want to make something selling old human bones. ---   Remember Chas. Polquin, who with his ‘Sea Scout’ put Mankato and the Minnesota River on the map, also his trip to New Orleans. He’s back in the news again. His divorced wife is mad, real mad. She says when Charley comes to see the children he swears at her and pushes her around just like they were married. ---   See where a Sleepy Eye man raised 200 lbs. of tobacco. In the early 70’s when a dollar was worth its weight in gold the early Skandinavian settlers got their tobacco along the creek banks. A lady who was among the early day settlers said when the willow leaves turned brown and purple she and her sisters would start picking them for their dad: later their grandsons were using corn silk for cigarets. ---   We used to think that petunia seed was the smallest, but what about tobacco seed: there is 280 pounds of tobacco seed in one warehouse in New York, which is enough to produce 50 million pounds of tobacco. One buyer says that’s half as much tobacco as Cuba produces. ---   Saw an odd ad in the Minneapolis Star Thursday night. On one side were figures galore--240 stores, 125 places to eat, 680 doctors and dentists, and so on, signed “Downtown, Your Greatest Shopping Center.” Are the suburban shopping centers beginning to pinch?
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October 6, 1960
  Remember that old tacky looking dog that used to drag a bone down the alley, or push the garbage can over to get a bite to eat, you’d hardly know him now. There are 24 million dogs in the U.S. and the stores are full of brightly colored cans full of dog food in different flavors. Among them being “Meaty Flavor,” “Chicken Flavor,” “Cheese Flavor,” “Liver Flavor,” etc., so living a dog’s life isn’t so bad as it used to be. General Mills of Minneapolis makes dog food for show dogs. Total sales of dog feeds reach $325 million. ---   The village of Madelia has a dog catcher that uses a tranquilizer gun to round up the stray ones. A farmer was loading a truck of stock. The bull began acting up. The policeman brought the gun, shot a dart at the bull. He soon quieted down. Why not use these guns in time of war. They could have used ten of those guns at the U.N. meeting last week. ---   A year ago the air was full of “Let’s do something for the aged.” What happened? National conventions have come and gone, congress is dead and nothing has been accomplished. Writers have warned about the 17 million aged, that they would settle the election. On which side should they vote? ---   Puzzling to the tobacco men is that the sales of cigarets in the month of July this year is away below that of a year ago, when it should have increased. The girls might have been reading history and gone back to President Andrew Jackson’s wife--she smoked cigars, or the wife of President Taylor. She smoked a corn cob pipe in the White House, and nobody ever mentioned lung cancer. ---   The committee on the Teamsters Pension Fund seem to have faith in Florida in spite of the hurricanes. It bought the Everglades Hotel in downtown Miami recently for $2,500,000 at public auction. It had a mortgage on the hotel for $4,000,000. Some of those unions seem to be rolling in money. ---   Had a letter from our old friend Sumner Clark of Des Moines River township and attached to it a clipping from this column about interest on money throughout the world. He added, “I paid higher interest in Murray county than any of them.” So did we all. Money was scarce in those days. Remember an old Leeds township farmer walked to Tracy to borrow $5 from a friend, and in Chanarambie township Matt Lang, who later became bank president, told me he carried a letter three weeks before he could get cash to buy a stamp, and stamps were only two cents then. ---   Over in Wisconsin the sheriff cannot succeed himself, so Ole Noreman’s wife Barbara runs for sheriff. Barbara wins out in the primary and the card of thanks is signed “Barbara and Noreman (The Andersons).” ---   Was reading the minutes of a village council the other day. One of the members brought up this question. How much is the village worth? And before he got through they started appraising the real worth of the village from the water works, fire department down to the wheelbarrow; not a bad idea. ---   Visiting us last Tuesday were Mr. and Mrs. George Gowin and Mr. and Mrs. Don Johnson of Lake Wilson. We felt quite at home with them. Geo. is the barber in whose shop we, with very little assistance, liked to settle international and national problems. Don is the postmaster who is wearing my shoes. We had that job until 1942. Mrs. Gowin has been a power for good in that town. She gave of her own time, energy and ability for everything in the line of social and community service. Where there was a charity petition and no one could go, Grace always filled in: the town still needs you. ---   Did somebody whisper something? General Motors mailed questionnaires to every one of its executives and staff members last week asking them if they are interested in any company doing business with General Motors. Are those big companies honeycombed with crooks? Remember Newberg, president of the Chrysler company, turned back $324,000. ---   How would you like to live in Flora, Ill.? It is one of the real pet spots of the Ford Company. Every auto and truck in the town was replaced by a new Ford for a week. The autos are painted white and the trucks blue and are parked in a 15 acre tract where they exchange autos. Besides being an advertising stunt it is also a real testing ground. The testing is done at the grass roots by amateurs. Back of it all is Flora. It has a population of 6,000 and these Ford days are forcing the business men to spruce up their stores and streets. Sixteen hundred cars are used during the display week. The garden clubs make a special effort to beautify the town. There seems to be a community spirit. H. V. Miller, the Chevy dealer, drives a Ford for a week. ---   Waterville, a small town of 1,700 in LeSueur county has a new industry, one that will be a real benefit to a lot of folks. Gill Wiring and John Nelson have opened a television reconditioning business. They will fix your tube and give you a year’s guarantee with it. Only other plant doing this kind of work in the state is at Duluth. ---   The grouse season opened in the old country on the 12th and we notice by the Stirling Journal that the bag on the Lady Auckland estate was 25 brace for the first day. In the party was Baron Von Essen of Sweden and his son, who were having their first taste of grouse shooting. ---   Up at International Falls one of the 4-H clubs voted a project owning and training of pleasure horses. Something new on the 4-H agenda, but nevertheless highly laudable. ---   Those interweaving interests by executives in other companies has brought in accountants. Should an accountant have an interest in a client’s business? Big business seems to be getting jittery. ---   One of the really touchy questions to come up at the fall session of the U.S. Supreme Court is the Sunday closing laws. Some states are strict on stores being closed. Over in Wisconsin stores and saloons are opened all day long Sunday. ---   While towns are going crazy over Crazy Days, the rural sections are going nuts over antique farm machinery. Every week you see new ads. Some of them have been going for 8 years. One place advertises breakfasts that are an adventure in eating, another has a tug of war between men and a steam threshing machine. Another town gives prizes to the best lady wool carder, and to the best one with the spinning wheel, for weaving, etc. Back of all these gatherings is the love of people to get together, to talk about the days that were and there’s no better place to do it than Minnesota, with her sunny fall weather. ---   You can keep this until next spring, when you take a swat at a fly be sure and hit from behind it, because a fly always takes off backwards.
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October 13, 1960
  The last legislature gets a lot of hard knocks for passing a law compelling all traffic patrol cars to carry all identical markings. Who were they trying to help? It should be known as the first aid to assist highway violators. ---   Is northern Minnesota losing its attractiveness, or are more people going into Canada? The Chamber of Commerce of Alexandria reports their business was not so good this season. Time was when Alexandria was one of the plushest resorts in the state and stately resort homes were built there. ---   After the Sister Kenny Foundation flare up three months ago the Mpls. Better Business Bureau asked the organizations that were doing charity work to fill out a questionnaire. Not all of them did--one of them, the “Boys Town,” running a home near Cambridge for the benefit of underprivileged boys, is being investigated by the attorney general. Its reply to the questionnaire was a crossword puzzle. Another outfit was the Salim Grotto. The clerk said it was none of their doggone business how they ran the Grotto. The Boy’s Town in Minnesota is not connected with the Nebraska Boy’s Town. ---   When it comes to voting we should hide our heads in shame. Here is the figures in other countries. Austria 95 per cent, Italy 93 per cent, France 89 per cent, Turkey 87 per cent, Israel 82 per cent, Norway 79 per cent, Britain 78 per cent, Finland 72 per cent. The highest percentage of U.S. voters was in 1952 when 62 per cent voted. ---   Laundries, the smaller ones, are selling shirts these days which they guarantee for a year. The shirt costs $2.85 and it must be done up by the same laundry during its life time. The average shirt goes to the laundry 25 times a year. ---   The farm states as a group seem to be drying up when it comes to population. Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Maine have each lost in congressmen. ---   Back in the days of long haired men and short haired women, the theory started that all that bad boys needed was a chance where they could be placed on their honor and not behind bars. Minnesota still clings to that line of thought. Take Red Wing with its Training School for incorrigible boys, getting to be a regular hell hole. The supt. says that over 100 boys had escaped from the school this year and residents who live at Wacouta near the school held a mass meeting recently urging that some action be taken, as runaway boys have scared women so that they don’t go outdoors. While there are some decent kids at the school there are enough bad ones to give the school a bad name--and they need more iron bars and less coddling. Bad boys of today are more hardened than they were 50 years ago. ---   Common American made standard typewriters are a drug on the market. Remington, an old name in the business, is having all its standard models made in Europe. Business has been bad for the standard makers. The Smith-Corona people lost over $2 million last year. The Underwood company, an old make, was forced to sell to an Italian company. ---   Seems as if the Chrysler company hits the news columns more than any other company. Last week it fired Jack W. Minor, director of the Plymouth-De Soto division. Minor received $20,000 in commissions of advertising placed by him. ---   The Automatic Car Washing Assn. is vexed at the weather bureau. It wants it to change its wording. It says when the weather notice says, “cloudy weather, partly showers,” it should be changed to “partly sunny.” Hard to suit everybody. ---   Hawaii is finding out that it costs real money to be a state and be with the upper 10. Individuals there find their tax load the heaviest in the U.S. It is $200 a head, close behind is Washington State, with $163. Nevada was third with $154.00. ---   Microwave, the new system of communication, is creating more than usual interest. It is a high frequency signal and is pushing telephones in the corner. The Federal Communications Commission is giving it a lot of study before it allows its manufacture. All ready to put in its own system is Minute Maid Corp. of Florida. It has a 218 mile phone system which it wants to replace with the new system and connect its offices, citrus groves and processing plants. At present it leases lines from four different phone companies. The Minute Maid figures show it would save $1,400.00 a month. Naturally the Bell Telephone Co. and the Western Union are fighting the microwave system. ---   Read with interest the story of the Reinholdt cabin in the Herald last week, as we were to blame for starting the cabin on its travels. While secretary of the fair we saw the log cabin, got the idea it would be O.K. to remind the folks of the early days. Got the county board interested. It was bought for $175.00 and the late John Lang and the writer saw it moved to Slayton one Sunday afternoon. It was in feeble shape and we never thought we’d make it. ---   Shopping centers continue to more than irritate big cities. The new Lloyd Center which opened in August at Portland, Oregon has turned things upside down. It has a 5,000 free parking lot, etc., and has already stunted the retail trade down town. Some merchants claim their business has been cut 35 per cent. ---   The annual Minnesota fishing contest should have been postponed until next year. This year’s was a fizzle. It was held at Pokegama Lake. The winner was Harold Lenn of Bemidji. He won top honors with two northern pike (pickerel, we used to call them) and ten perch. Lenn won an outboard motor. ---   Here’s a new sport for you boys. A farmer up near Noyes saw a wolf in a 50 acre stubble field. He was in a pickup and took off after it. He headed it off at the first turn it made, and after that it was only a question of time. He took a half hour to tire the beast out, then he ran over it. ---   Folks up on the range are willing to take a part from the steel trust taxes and put it on the farms in Southern Minnesota. Some of these farms are groaning under the load of school taxes. Quit worrying about the steel trust. You seldom hear of one going broke. ---   Natural gas as we know it is a compound mostly methane gas and it can become deadly potent. To save space in storing, natural gas is turned into a liquid. It is done by freezing the gas at a temperature of 258 degrees below zero. It takes six hundred barrels of natural gas to make one of liquid. In Cleveland sixteen years ago, a tank containing liquid gas leaked. It got down in the sewers. Somewhere it caught fire; the blast was like an earthquake and 100 lives were wiped out. Science takes a big a toll as airplanes. ---   Last week we had a visit from our two sisters, Mrs. C. F. Lentz and Mrs. Lee Hosmer, Lee Hosmer and Charley Smith, sort of an old home week which we enjoyed. Charley toiled with us for 30 years which speaks volumes for his equanimity. We’re glad Emma came along. She is a top one: cooks the cinnamon rolls--the with, without, and within; cookies; and the home made bread. Just killed our appetite for three meals.
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October 20, 1960
  St. Peter is the real school battlefield in the state of Minnesota. The leaders on the two sides were urged to get together and work out a truce; both came back madder than ever. Naturally the supt., Ole Haugejordeo seems to be the bone of contention. Fourteen teachers resigned, stating they had lost their morale since Ole took over in 1958. Five out of seven directors lost their seats on the board and the battle rages on. ---   A while back a Mankato man with a lot of horse sense suggested a series of dancing parties for single men and women over 25 at the Y.M.C.A. Building. It went over big, both men and women driving over 30 miles to take part. The crowds are so large that it is impossible to dance, and resolves itself into a cheek to cheek festival. Under these conditions seems as if there should be a decrease of single members. ---   There’s a painter at Windom that’s going places--he conceived the idea that scaring a woman with a threatening letter would get him $1,000, but Mrs. Warren Jeffers had a different idea. When he came to pick up the loot at the designated spot, he found eleven F.B.I. men and the sheriff waiting for him. (We think someone erred in the number of F.B.I. men; sure they did not have an armored truck?) ---   We read quite a few newspapers and we see some queer things. Here’s one we saw in a church supper ad. Won’t give it all but the last price, which was “children under six 25 cents.” Fancy charging a 3 year old child for her supper. No, the ad was not in a S.W. Minnesota paper. ---   Remember when cottonseed oil was the base of Spry and all other shortenings. Times have changed and a northern oil has chased the cottonseed oil off the market: today the ratio is soy bean oil 51 per cent, cottonseed oil 14 per cent. ---   “It takes steam” and a lot of it to drive a big turbine generator. At Dresden Nuclear Power Station tiny uranium pellets (4 million in all) do the job instead of coal. The first loading of these pellets weighs less than 65 tons--it would take 2 million tons of soft coal to do the same job. Makes one dizzy, doesn’t it? ---   The making of a cigaret still starts with human hands as it has for a hundred years. The tobacco leaves don’t all get yellow at the same time, so each leaf is picked separately and tied to a stick, then hung in a wooden barn to cure. The cure changes starch to sugar by increasing the heat; some growers use steel sheds to get their leaves ready for market. ---   Hursh was on the loose again last week. He comes at you like you were a vicious animal. There is no law that prohibits a state official from acting like a gentleman. ---   Trading stamps are here to stay. They are hitting real big business now. Truck loads of structural steel weighing over 40 tons carry trading stamps these days. Competition is getting stiffer and even the Bethlehem Steel gives 40,000 trading stamps with each load. Down at the first M.E. Church at Lake Wales, Fla., there is a pastor that is ahead of the rest. He offers five trading stamps for those who attend Sunday night services. Rev. Boggs says, “We want you to feel at home.” A Chicago firm is saving up stamps to get a 50 ton punch press: it has over 200,000 saved. The Culligan water dealer in Denver, Colo. gives 1,000 stamps to every new customer. Savings banks, 23 of them, give stamps with every deposit. ---   Some farmers up in Marshall county are really progressive when it comes to heating. A lot of them have put electric heating panels in their homes. The service is not for heating a winter home. The panels are installed in bathrooms, nurseries, kitchens, etc. Places where the same heat is desired the year round. ---   Up near Moose Lake, Harold Newman was digging his potatoes. His dog was with him playing around. An auto load of hunters drove by; one of them pokes his gun out of the window and takes a shot at the dog. It crawled up to its master’s feet and died: it’s too bad there is not a whipping post for human brutes. ---   For generations the name of Pinkerton has been associated with train robbers, strike breakers, bank robbers and murderers. Read their ad today. They want to investigate applicants for employment or screen your present help. The Pinkertons claim more money is stolen from the inside than from the outside with a gun. ---   A regular building boom hit the penitentiary and prisons in the U.S. in 1960. During the first six months there was an increase of 17 per cent for new homes for the wicked. John Law must be looking forward to a big year. ---   Notice where farmers near Hector blocked the railroads because they couldn’t get cars to ship beets. We can’t remember the railroads blocking the highways when the same farmers shipped stock and grain by truck. Bobby Burns aptly wrote, “O would some power the gift to gie us to see oursel’s as others see us.” ---   The post office department in Great Britain is a money maker. Over here we lose millions of dollars daily. Last year the British P.O. dept. made a profit of $24 million. No, we don’t get any better service, in some cases they have us beat. They pay 3 1/2 cents on a one ounce letter--we pay 4 cents. ---   Some of the ladies at Moose Lake are forming a trap shooting club and are planning a contest with a ladies club at Hutchinson. Our women folks in Minnesota seem to be pretty handy with a shotgun when it comes to obliterating husbands. ---   The Minneapolis Civil Service Commission issued a ruling the other day that brought out cuss words and gnashing of teeth. It was that sick leave should be used in cases of sickness only. It is customary in many cases that part of the sick leave has been used for hunting and fishing trips, which is unfair to the tax payers. ---   Right now is the time we need guardians--the charity drives are starting. The national drives are on and there are, for instance, 19 national organizations to help the blind. Which one is the right one? And so it goes down the line. The big national outfits take out 20 per cent for expenses, while the women canvassers who plod through the mud and snow get nothing except that feeling that they have done their bit--God Bless Them. ---   “County to Sell Huge Acreage of Tax Forfeited Land.” This head is on an article in a Kittson county paper. There were 1,500 soil bank farmers there several years ago. In Pennington county $886,000 was paid out to soil bank farmers. ---   Here’s something new to us. A store over at New Richmond invited everyone to be their guest at their first Smorgasbord Oct. 6th. The Smorgasbord was held in the store. There were 17 items on the bill of fare, all taken from the store shelves: Lyon’s herrings, Peters luncheon meats and so on down the line. Clever idea: we suppose the dealers that got the advertising supplied the grub. ---   Notice the Ford Auto Co. of England has declared a dividend of 6 1/4 per cent. It does a nice business. The total amount of sales were $423 million and the total amount of net profit was $33,372,000. That would keep a lot of American mechanics busy. ---   To the towns that need a doctor, Stop, Look and Read. Mercer, Wis. wanted a doctor so bad that it took in a German refugee last year. The town gave him $2,000 to get started, rent free office and $1,500 for being the town’s health officer. Last week Dr. Jerofke notified the Mercer folks that he was moving to a town nearer a hospital, and the Mercer people have the sign out, “Doctor Wanted.” ---   Minnesota border newspapers from Baudette both sides tell of the large number of moose that are jamming the highways. Autoists have been forced to stop their cars while a big bull moose stops and looks things over. Many herds of moose also halt traffic for a spell.
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November 3, 1960
  Top money for human life in Minnesota seems to be $25,000 when it is taken wrongfully. A suit has been filed in Blue Earth county for an auto death. Plaintiff is suing on behalf of the estate of J. McGregor. Asked in the suit is $27,000, the maximum for a wrongful death case plus $2,000 medical and funeral expense. ---   Ontario farmers are sick and tired of the American farmers dumping their soy beans on them and are asking the Canadian government to put a tariff on soy beans of 45 cents a bushel. Canada bought 10 million bushels of soy beans from the U.S. last year. ---   Portland Society had an auction a while back. It was a novelty affair called Zoom for the benefit of the Zoological Society. The first novelty touch was an invitation cost $100. Lots from towns all over the state were sold. Even Gov. Hatfield and wife issued invitations for a dinner for three at the Governor’s Mansion which was to be cooked by Mrs. Hatfield. The invitations were put up for sale and brought $600. ---   Up at Grand Marais last week L. Julin shot and killed a moose; he was fined $500. The same day we read in the Minneapolis Tribune where a district court judge told a woman who murdered a man and had been found guilty by a jury that if she would leave the state she could go free, and she did. There’s no way really to punish a woman for committing a murder. She can shoot her man stone dead, then go upstairs, pack an old suitcase full of clothes and take the bus to Shakopee, where she will find a beautiful home--no uniform for her--no hard work, just putter around in the garden. Some day they’ll amend the sixth commandment to read, “For Men Only” in Minnesota. ---   Thought you might be interested in the price of gold. Over in London last week it hit $40.00 an ounce, a rise of eight cents since 1954. The U.S. has sold a billion dollars abroad, so it has only $18 billion. When foreign countries buy gold from us it costs them 12 cents an ounce for delivery. You must buy not less than 10 million and have it shipped on a chartered plane. ---   Here’s something with real sense to it--making synthetic odors. Fancy being able to turn on the odor of coffee and apple pie--they have those now, but what about the odor that comes from the kitchen oven from the turkey Thanksgiving Day, and then there’s the odor that comes with a wee doch and doris: one never gets too old to dream. ---   Minneapolis has a big league ball team now, but it will take a revolution to make it pay. Last summer the baseball spirit was at its lowest ebb--so low that the attendance was not given. They should be starting right now with stands down town with baseball vaccine and inject it into everyone: it’s going to take a lot. ---   You don’t hear much about the high prices of medicine any more. A short time ago a Kansas City drug firm ran a half page ad in the leading Chicago newspaper. The ad carried the names of 150 pills, tablets and capsules, their potency, price and size. We knew one drug by heart--digitalis. Here was the price: 1/2 gr. tablets 200’s at $1.25. It’s a wonder Senator Kefauver did mention it. ---   Never was a time you should try and keep well as there is today. Up at International Falls the Memorial Hospital upped its rates 12 1/2 per cent. The board said increases in wages is to blame. ---   We can honestly say we have never seen anyone chew gum in three years. Years ago, half the people chewed gum. If you went to a movie you’d find the underneath part of the seats covered with wads of chewing gum. We’ve seen people chew gum in church: this generation can’t be as nervous as the last. Chewing gum is going up. You’ll soon be getting only 4 sticks of Beech Nut gum for a nickel. ---   Down east, New Hampshire has an idea that could be copied by every state. If the game and fish dept. catches you throwing cans, bottles or other refuse in lakes and streams, your fishing and hunting license will be revoked. ---   Big oil companies are picking up a few stray dollars these days. The Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, that’s the big one, is selling accident insurance. This company, as well as others, ties the insurance with its credit card system; some of them pay $25,000 for accidental death. ---   Don’t know the name of the Justice at Glencoe, but here’s an orchid for him. A young squirt age 17 had lost his driver’s license. He got angry and tough and when he was leaving the courthouse he kicked in the glass door and he got 30 days in jail--no suspension. ---   For years certain farmers had no time for people that used oleomargarine because they said it was made largely from cotton seed oil. They’ll have to change their views no. Two big companies are making oleo from corn oil. Reason--it is claimed that corn oil is good for the heart as it is effective in reducing blood cholesterol. ---   A lot of the fans are wrathy because the Yankees’ officials fired Casey Stengel: they need not be. Casey was no Mrs. Post when he took out some pitchers, and he lost, didn’t he? ---   The Redwood Falls Hospital was sued last week by Leonard Martinson of Lamberton for $150,000 for injuries to his young daughter who suffered burns when an electric light bulb fell out of its socket and dropped on the little one’s head. ---   In order to curb juvenile delinquency the Hallock village council passed a ten o’clock curfew for boys and girls under seventeen, and who do you think it made mad: ten irate mothers caused the village council to change the hours on Friday and Saturday nights (more hell raising is caused on those 2 nights than all of the rest) until twelve o’clock. The newsman erred in not printing the names of the mothers who appeared before the council. It would have been the best news story of the year. ---   How much should one give to charity each year is a problem that faces many a family. Here’s a suggestion from Ohio and is suggested by charity officials: for a family of four and the salary limit is $5,000 a year you should give at least $12 a year; if the salary is $7,500 one should donate $23 (that ain’t enough). ---   Papers are full of big business expansions. Here’s the other side. Montgomery Ward has had a retail store in Mankato for years, but it is going out of business. The reasons given: declining sales and profits during the last 6 years. The store has 30 employees. ---   The passenger trains on the C. & N.W. that have been in operation through Balaton for years are a thing of the past. You can’t blame the company. It lost $390,000 on 518 and 519 during the year 1959. ---   The city of Wells is not including the Sister Kenny organization in its United Drive this fall. It also dropped the allotment to the Multiple Sclerosis agency: it refused to accept the $160 allotted to it last fall. ---   Warren Miller, 38, can change his mind as quick as you can change your shirt. He was arrested for stealing city funds, pleaded innocent less than a week ago, but later pleaded guilty to stealing $14 thousand from the city of Fairmont.
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November 10, 1960
  Ronald Oachs of Mapleton got an awful beating one day last week for driving a hunter from his farm. He was taken to the Mankato hospital for treatment. During the hunting season some of the farmers should rent a tommy gun or stay in the cellar. ---   You’ve noticed some women seem to lead the pack. They are not fancy dressers, don’t wear diamond earrings. They have a personality and dignity that attracts people. One auto seems to have the same characteristics. That car is called the Rolls Royce. By looking at the cars today you can’t tell the difference between one made in 1955 and one made 1960 and while it has no fins, fur or trimmings you can just feel here is an auto. Worth noting is that St. Paul has a Rolls Royce dealer but you can’t find one in Minneapolis. ---   Another rat caught in the tangled Sister Kenny web lost his certificate last week. He was Geo. Zimmerman, an accountant who didn’t do a clean job while auditing the Sister Kenny affairs. The state board took away his license for professional misconduct. He just did not report all he found out. ---   Up in Todd county four Staples youths were arrested for starting a new angle in juvenile delinquency. They stole an auto, then tried to sell it: nothing doing. So they took the car in the heavy brush near Motley, poured a lot of paint on it, then set fire to it. The youths pled guilty. They also told of stealing a ton of scrap iron in Morrison county: you’ll have to admit they were not lazy. ---   What happened to the TV as an advertising medium? Three years ago the score was TV 84 percent, this year it is 49 percent. Three years ago the newspaper score was 59 percent and now it is 83 percent. TV lost half of its advertising. ---   We’re going to have a big league baseball team in our village. The Washington A.L. team is coming here next spring. The rank and file of the fans were polled--half of them thought it would not pay, but the business men are for it 100 percent. Think of the fans from Iowa, North and South Dakota, Canada, besides fans from every city and hamlet in Minnesota that will drive up to see Mickey Mantle and the rest, and they’ll all leave some money. The same is true of professional football next year. ---   You’ve got to call a spade a spade on the TV programs now. A brewer had been advertising his beer in glasses with the right size collar of foam. Everything was O.K. until some nosey found out the foam on the beer came from a bar of household soap. ---   Fishermen who have not heard of the lampreys for months will be interested in this item from the Grand Marais News. “Yesterday the Pigeon River was treated for lampreys.” They found the stream full of small lampreys. This is the first stream treated in this section. Looks as if a lot of streams along the north shore will be tested, when business gets interested. ---   They must have some very old men running columns in Scotch papers. The Bellman in the Stirling Journal last week said, “Do women get anywhere by acting like a lamb when they should be looking like mutton; however, we don’t care. We are past the day of caring how old or how young she is--she is just a woman to us.” ---   Professional football is big business and is what the people want. It is a modern idea of the gladiators of ancient Rome, only more money in it. Players get from $7,000 to $12,000 the season, a few get more. Top man is Billy Cannon. He is a halfback. Has a contract for $110,000 for 3 years. Big men are in it. The Falstaff Brewery Co. bought a 10 per cent interest in the St. Louis Football team for $250,000. Dallas and Fort Worth are planning a domed field: air conditioned. ---   Deer costs nearly as much as moose if you take them out of season. Game wardens like to get the fellows who shine the deer. The poachers were hailed before a district court judge, Judge Lindgren of Thief River Falls last Monday, they were fined $300 and 90 days in jail. A son of one of the poachers was fined $200 and 90 days in jail for transporting illegal deer meat, which brought the deer up to the same price as a moose. ---   While we don’t see many of them, helicopters are doing a good business near city airports getting passengers down town. They are kept busy but they don’t make any money, too short a distance. If it was not for mail contracts and government subsidies there would not be any lines in operation. ---   Here’s one of the freakiest fatal accidents we ever read about. Mrs. Alfred Lamont of Pelican Rapids, who was 77, was finishing her breakfast when she said, “I feel dizzy,” and fell to the floor with the cup of coffee in her hand. The cup broke and one of the pieces severed her jugular vein. She was rushed to the hospital where she died soon after. ---   “Have coffee with Jerry Kelote, candidate for congress in the 8th district, on Oct. 21st at Moose Lake,” and here we were under the delusion that candidates could not entertain: if they can do that with coffee, why not whiskey and beer? ---   Martin Wunderlich of Morristown sheared one of the hydrants in his own village, then beat it. The folks did not find it out until the next morning and found the 50,000 gallon water tank empty. Wunderlich did not stop and tell anyone of the broken hydrant. He should spend the next six months in jail. ---   Lady Luck rode with former Minnesota river captain Chas. Polquin, and the justice of peace in our village of Bloomington dropped the larceny charge against him. He was accused of stealing license plates, repairs, etc. Charley has seen a lot of ups and downs in the past year. ---   Health insurance continues to increase: too many people want to go to a hospital. In New York a big Blue Cross division has raised its family policy from $3.55 in 1955 to $8.72 in 1960. Seattle will boost its family rates to $15.75 from $11.25. The highest raise was in Maryland where the boost was 17 per cent. ---   Besides being a killer of pain it is also the greatest killer of children. Almost half of the deaths by accidental poisoning are caused by aspirin. Instead of making the tablets sweet as candy, they should be made real bitter: it would save a lot of youngsters. Aspirin seems to be as much of a necessity in the average American home as coffee. ---   A. J. Lilla who has been mayor of Comfrey for the last eight years has been appointed rural mail carrier. There were 24 applicants for the job. ---   Visiting us last Sunday were Al and Eunice Reha of St. Peter. Old neighbors, old friends for years. We both enjoyed the visit. ---   Elmer Glenn of Mankato, Free Press official, died last Tuesday. Death was caused by a duck bone. The bone perforated his esophagus and death was due to an infection. He was hospitalized for nine days. He was 77 years old. ---   Heard from one of Murray county’s outstanding 4-H’ers last week. His name is Rick Rickgarn. We’ve known him all his life. His grandfather’s (Carl Rickgarn) farm and ours adjoined. Ralph is going places.
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October 17, 1960
  Over in Wisconsin the polls are open on election day from 9 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. In Minnesota the polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wisconsin must save a lot of money on elections. Why do we need so many hours in Minnesota? ---   The mainspring on a man’s watch is not perfect. Too many watches lose time. In order to improve conditions, watch makers are placing small batteries to aid the mainspring. Hamilton, the daddy of all American watches, started using batteries four months ago. Six more watches are planning on having battery powered watches on the market, either this winter or in the spring. Some clocks have them now in the U.S. ---   Pheasant hunters in Minnesota will be interested in the hunting law in California. Your pheasant hunter out there gets 20 tags for $2.00. One tag must be punched and attached immediately to a leg of each pheasant. (Can’t get that “punched.”) ---   If you plan on being a doctor, plan on having two rich aunts and one well-to-do uncle, as it will cost you a lot of money. Four years of graduate study in a medical college is $11,642.00. If you have a wife and two children it will cost you $16,048.00. So when you see a doctor just remember that some sacrifice was made to help him and don’t kick about the cost of his visit and medicine. ---   Remember the church bazaar notice that read, “Children under five 35 cents.” Read another notice last week, “Children under twelve 75 cents, Children under five free,” and the ladies took charge of the babies while you ate. The two churches were of the same denomination but in different states. ---   The iron ore boats were busy on the Great Lakes this season. Up to this time ore shipments are almost double what they were a year ago. Up to Nov. 1st, 64,028,288 tons were shipped. Last year only 34 million were shipped. ---   Mrs. Ruth Valient has brought suit in the Blue Earth county district court against the Johnson Academy of Beauty Culture for $12,000. She had her hair cut in the Academy and when she got out of the chair she slipped on hair, not her own but from a patron just ahead of her, and the employees of the Academy were negligent in leaving the hair: the first thing a Scotch jury would ask is, “Why did you not look where you were going?” ---   Every animal you see on a TV or movie has a real friend. He is a member of the American Humane Association and is present at the filming of every living thing, from an elephant to a rattlesnake. They have five inspectors at Hollywood and they saw the filming of 650 television shows last year. No animal or reptile is ever brutally treated. ---   The American Medical Journal says, “When you take your chicken pies out of the deep freezer, put them on the stove and see that they are thoroughly cooked.” Why is it that they are always talking about tainted chicken and never a word about ducks or geese? ---   One of the real problems in 75 of our big cities is birds--pigeons, starlings and sparrows, besides defacing many buildings, some of the droppings corrode some metals; starlings are accused of causing a plane accident which resulted in the death of 61 persons at Boston. There are a lot of companies in this bird extermination business, but they have to be careful as the Humane Bird Society stands with uplifted hand. Most effective remedies found to get rid of the pests is Roost-no-more, a sticky substance to paint on the roof; gin soaked bread; tranquilizers and pigeon hating monkeys. ---   Soy beans are the most popular crop in the U.S. and next year will see the largest crop of the beans in history. The demand for soy beans is increasing each season. ---   Here’s a strange move in shortenings. For years they have generally come from vegetables. This fall they came from animal fat and tallow, because it is the cheapest. The chemists have found a way to take the tallow taste out of tallow. Folks don’t always know what they are eating. ---   An 8 point buck weighing 300 pounds was killed by a car near St. Peter. An antler blew a tire ... [missing] ---   ...women approaching you wearing those shoes with the 1/14 inch heel, tuck your feet in under the chair, especially if you are a female. If she happened to step on your thin covered slipper-like shoes she would crush the bones. Hard to believe, yet those spike heel shoes filled the floor of the Boeing 707 passenger plane with holes and new floors had to be installed. The spiked shoes ruined linoleum, carpets, etc. Even the linoleum in the U.S. Senate Chamber had to get a new floor. Put a 120 pound girl on those shoes and she hurts worse than an elephant could. ---   Every airplane that enters the United States should be disinfected. Strange insects have been found in planes arriving from foreign countries and we have too many bugs now. ---   Don’t blame the grocer if the price of salmon goes up. Last year’s catch was the poorest in the last sixty years. Some brands have already gone up $3.00 a case. The catch this year was good, but dealers are keeping the prices up in the west. ---   Rev. Martin Birkholz of Mankato while hunting pheasant last Sunday fell over a tile. He kept on hunting, but when he got home his condition got worse and he was taken to the hospital at nine o’clock. ---   Even game wardens in Africa have their worries. The Johannesburg Times says that Game Warden Laubuschane of the Kruger Park reports tourists are driving too close to the wild bull elephant. He saw a herd of 54 feeding right along side of the tourist road and some tourists were driving too close. The warden says he has too many elephants. He estimates there are 1,000 and some will have to be shot. That’s a chance for big game hunters. ---   Television sets are getting more popular abroad. There are nearly 45 million outside the U.S. which has more sets than the rest of the world combined. Japan is all enthused over American programs. Here are first five shows: Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Disneyland, Cochise and William Tell. The popular films of the day come in five languages on some films. ---   Last week was full of turkey activity in central Minnesota. The plant at Pelican Rapids was processing 12,000 turkeys a day. It has 220 employees--a payroll of $15,000 a week. Over 13,700,000 will be processed this season, out of which were 24 car loads purchased by the U.S. government for the school lunch program. ---   When they want to test measles vaccine, they take it to Nigeria, Africa. That country has a nine month epidemic every year and 10 per cent of the youngsters that get it, die. The kids over there have measles before they are two years old. Blood samples will be sent to Harvard University, who are doing the testing. The U.S. is sharing the cost. ---   The DeSoto, one of the old reliable autos, sings its swan song on Dec. 3rd. So the Chrysler company announced last week. There is a story that a compact DeSoto may be on the market next year. ---   Some companies are offering deer hunters some special policies this season. You can get a weekend hunting trip policy that would give you up to $1,000 towards any accident you might sustain for $2.00. No hunter can afford to be without one of these policies if he has a wife and kids, or better still get the 31 day policy for $10.10. ---   Compact autos are still popular and if they keep that way will soon make you pay more taxes. By 1966 experts say that there will be a decrease in gasoline sales of 7 per cent.
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November 24, 1960
  The day before election in International Falls a dog sled paraded up and down the street urging people to be sure and vote. In the sled doing the urging was Bronko Nagurski. ---   Red, the color which has meant danger for so many years, is going to be discarded. After 3 years of intense study, scientists have discovered that yellow is easier to see than red and it is safer for deer hunters to use, but it will take a couple of generations to get folks to believe it. Here is the color standings: Golden yellow was 95 per cent, yellow fluorescent 75 per cent, orange fluorescent 73 per cent; red was 51 per cent. Studies made of the colors will cause many legislatures to change the hunting laws of their states. ---   Most of us in Murray county have heard about mink all our lives, and some will be interested in what happened to the largest mink farm in history. The farm is owned by Morton Gittleman of Philadelphia and has 5,000 mink. He shipped the bunch by air mail to Japan last month. He said that the ideal meat for mink is whale meat. It is only 5 cents in Japan and 15 cents here. It cost $100,000 to move them. They are an awfully smelly outfit and new shipping cases had to be made. The minks will breed in March, have their young in May. Gittleman goes into all colors and shades. He says whale meat is to blame for the move. We notice he pays $75 a week for common help, over in Japan he can get it for $24 on the island of Hokkaido. Wild mink are common both in Japan and China. ---   Notice that Montgomery Ward has closed 21 retail stores so far this year. Even the smartest business men pick poor locations once in a while. One of the Ward stores was in Mankato. ---   Seems as if all the dairies in the country are imitating Montreal and are selling a dietary drink. General Mills also markets its powered Routo 900 through the dairymen. Whenever anything new starts in the milk trade, the rest all follow like a bunch of sheep. ---   Members of the Calvary Church at Rapidan harvested their 55 acre corn crop last week. Last week the profit to the church was $1,400 and they expect to do better this year. ---   The savings banks in New York state are long on advertising but area slow in giving you the exact amount of cash when you want to withdraw. Got so bad the State Bank Supt. told them that if they did not change, the state will see that they do. ---   A 2 inch needle took a real trip and came out unscathed. An 18 months old baby at Ada swallowed the 2 inch needle. The parents put in 2 days worrying before it showed up again. ---   Another deer truck crash occurred last week near Waterville, which cost the truck owner $200 and the deer its life. This deer business is going on until someone loses their life in one of these accidents. Then something is going to happen--relatives will make a claim against the state, as the state owns the deer. These claims must come before the legislature. ---   Some of the nursing homes of today are able to take care of you no matter how rich you may be. At least one at Wheaton charges $750 a month and as Mrs. G. Boulevard says, “It is just like being at home.” At the Wheaton Nursing Home in Maryland, 105 residents get accommodations for $750 monthly. Grand to live in a country that is able to take care of all classes of people. ---   Here’s a question going before the U.S. Supreme Court that will be of interest to a lot of folks. The law of Maryland says if you are an atheist you cannot hold office of any kind. The Maryland court held that “You are incompetent to give testimony or serve as a juror.” ---   Does drinking wine make you healthy? This is being argued up and down the line in California. The wine growers are interesting the medical association as a boost from them means two things: a big advertising campaign and a lot of new vines set out next spring. ---   One of the odd village elections of the season was that of Grand Marais, county seat of Cook county. In the election there was only one name on the village ballot, for trustee. He received 522 votes, E. F. Lindquist received 28 write in votes for clerk, and M. Fenstad got 8 write in votes for J. P. IF you want to get votes up there get your name on the ticket. ---   One of the saddest things of local elections is the selection of justices of the peace and names of men suitably and mentally unfit are written in as candidates. There is not another local office that needs as much outside aid as a J.P. He is given a few unbleached blanks, a township manual of 1879 and told to go to work. It should be the duty of the county attorney to call the newly elected justices to a meeting and sift out those that are fit for service. ---   That new glass shotgun got a try out last week and it was found to be an improvement. It was the new Winchester automatic, made completely of fiber glass--in fact there was 500 miles of glass fiber in it. The barrel is of thin steel tubing and the glass wound around it. ---   The county board of Faribault county paid $7,600 for a truck and drill. The outfit will drill all over the county, not for water, not for oil, but for gravel supplies in the county. It will seem strange for the young generations to know that the early settlers did not know the value of gravel. They’d go right by sand pits on the roadside to get to the rich black dirt. Remember one bad spot in the road just west of Slayton that for years was filled with ashes. ---   Just across the line in Wisconsin, S. Stamper who was charged with murdering his wife, was bound over to the Circuit Court and was sent to jail until March 1st. He must go to jail, as the Wisconsin law does not allow accused murderers to secure bail. The judge decides whether the accused should be held. ---   The deer season brought out the greatest number of hunters on record. In Blue Earth county the auditor ran out of licenses so he got in his car and drove to St. Paul for some more tags, but when he got there the cupboard was bare and the county auditor had to change over 55 bow and arrow licenses. More than 200,000 deer licenses were printed this year--7,000 more than last year. ---   We criticize the South for its bitterness at time. They are not worse than the Scots. A great many people in my native town were in an uproar because an Englishman bought the battlefield on which the Scots had won years before from the English. They were just beating their breasts. If this battlefield had been that precious, why hadn’t the city of Stirling, the county or the nation bought it, or even taken up a public donation. They had plenty of time: the battle was fought in 1314. ---   A Minneapolis father went pheasant hunting near New Richmond last week and took his two sons along. They parked in farmer’s yard while the father hunted. The boys didn’t like sitting, so they smashed the windshield in the farmer’s pickup, and to be sure their .22 was working right they shot a hole in the pickup. Pa got through hunting and started for home. P. Beyer, the farmer, looked and saw the damaged pickup. He called the sheriff, the sheriff called New Prague and the father was stopped. It was news to him, but he agreed to pay the bill. It’s just as hard to get away from the rural John Laws as it is from the Pinkertons. ---   The rise in the price of eggs was aided by your Uncle Sam, who has bought 30 million dozen of eggs. Last week some of the top grades were bringing 55 cents the dozen in Chicago, wholesale. That is 25 cents a dozen more than they brought last year at this time. Quite a rise. Some day they’ll put eggs on the stock market.
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December 1, 1960
  One thing you’re going to see next winter is a change in the inspection law in restaurants. The present fee is only $3.50, and has been that much for 55 years. Think of an up to date state dragging a law like that along for over half a century. That amount isn’t hardly enough to write out the report. The restaurants now are only inspected once in 3 years--they smell like it, some of them, and ins some little towns there are three restaurants in three years. ---   There must be billions of coffee trees in the world as the average coffee tree in South America only produces around a pound of coffee. Fourteen coffee trees in the best section produce 18 pounds of coffee, hardly enough for the average Scandinavian to put away. ---   An aftermath of election story tells about George Washington getting elected unanimously--that is not true. After the revolution the States were in a mess for years and did not meet until 1789 to select a president by an electoral vote. Here’s how the vote stood: Washington 69, J. Adams 34, scattering 34 votes, and 4 delegates would not vote for anyone. ---   Lucky pheasant hunters in Wisconsin get a three days’ hunt in the Horicon Marsh. Applications are received by the state game and fish commission from those who want to hunt. In all, 4,015 applications were received. From this number 750 were selected, one for each day. The license cost $1, and the lucky licensee can take a friend. The Horicon Marsh is a game refuge. The hunting dates are Dec. 2, 3, and 4. ---   Of all the eating odors there is still one supreme, the one when the oven door opens the minute the turkey is done, at least there was no difference at the Elias home where we Thanksgiving. It is the truly American family day of the year. When young and old gather to give thanks to God and eat to their stomachs’ content. ---   The folks who have been used to wearing Bulova watches will find a new number. It has no hair spring or balance wheel but it does have a little battery and the watch doesn’t even tick. ---   Don’t ever adopt a charter for your village unless you give it a thorough searching. Clara Stevens sued the city of Bemidji because she fell on a bum sidewalk. The judge looked at the charter and found that the city could not be sued, but the officials could. She sued them for $25,000. The Minnesota Supreme Court held that officials could be sued, not the city. The lawyer who drew up and O.K.’ed the charter should pay the bill. ---   As there are some horses left in Murray county the following items may help you take some precautions. A farmer picked up a stray pony near Karkstad. He was driving his pick up, ran the rope through the window, would it around his left hand several times and drove with his right. All went well until the pony got scared, reared up and fell to the ground. The driver could not unloose the rope and the hand was mangled. They are trying to save some of his fingers. ---   U.S. District Judge Gunnar Nordbye doesn’t stutter when he deals out sentences. He told Osanna, former street car company president, that he was guilty of fraud and that he would spend 2 terms of 4 years each in a federal penitentiary, fined him a total of $11,000 and ordered him to pay half of his prosecution costs. Something unusual. ---   Lots of folks wonder why the school lunches are published week by week. Mothers, they say, appreciate it. But school officials are against publishing them. One board sec’y says, “The boys, that is some of them, stay away from school when the lunch is not to their liking and the lady in charge of the food in one school says when something is real good for lunch the place is swamped. Why not serve snappy meals all the time? That can’t be done, as no one can tell just what surplus commodities the government has on hand. Lots of schools do not publish the menus. ---   The beet crop in northern Minnesota was one of the best on record. In the section near Emerson, 45,000 tons were raised from 5,000 acres, averaging about 9 tons to the acre. The Dayton Sugar dump shipped 788 carloads. ---   ...[Missing]...and his tail, and timber wolves of ...[illegible] ...ize ... and do slaughter 90 deer anyway, the wardens say. ---   Alongside of the 25 cent automatic washing machines now in use are being placed automatic ironers. They will be coin operated and will cost the housewife 25 cents for each 30 minutes. The company claims half an hour on the machine is equal to 90 minutes or more of hand ironing at home. ---   Mankato has only 2 passenger trains left and the C. & N. W. wants to abandon the one called the Rochester Special. The company wanted to abandon it last year, but the commission gave it another trial. The company did and still went in the hole, so the train will go on Jan. 1st. The Special is losing $1,398 daily. ---   Years ago wasn’t it Somerset, Wis. reveled in gang battles, etc. in the Baby Nelson days? Nov. 8th it won a new title: ninety per cent of its eligible voters voted that day. ---   The Lions Club of Hallock is in the upper ten when it comes to giving. At its annual Giving Benefit party last week, the door prize was a $100 U.S. Bond, and you had to be there to win it. ---   Gaylord is really one of the lucky towns in the state of Minnesota. The Fingerhut people with some local encouragement built a factory there. It made auto seat coverings. It was employing about 150 people. Fire hit the Fingerhut factory in Princeton and the employees moved to the Gaylord factory plant, which now has 266. When a town invites a factory to come there either with pleasing words or money, the first thing it should do is to assure absolute fire protection. At the Princeton fire it was lacking and the entire plant went and will never be rebuilt. ---   There’s one man that lives in Mankato that does not have writer’s cramp. He said his name is Blaine Bergman and claims to be a reporter for the Fairmont Sentinel. He passed one no-good $10 check, was arrested. He got 90 days in jail. Besides this check he had 20 no-good checks out. They come to $385. ---   The big turkey processing plant at Madelia had to close. It could not get any turkeys. The operators had completed a $450,000 plant expansion. The plant has been closed and what birds they do get will go to Faribault. Seems tough to spend that much money and then have to shut down. ---   Over in Tokyo a Jap has a new profession. He irritates dogs until they bite him and then he sues for damages. He got $93 in damages. He’s not going to have many competitors. The police put him in jail ‘til the bit heals.
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December 8, 1960
  We know you’ll join with us in sending this orchid to the American Legion Auxiliary at Cromwell. This year the ladies will take charge of the forgotten mental patients at the Moose Lake Mental Hospital. Three hundred of the patients have neither kith or kin, relatives or friends to remember them at Christmas. The ladies will see that every one of the patients gets a present, Christmas cards and goodies. Nothing wonderful about that, some will say. Well you see, Cromwell is a village of only 197 in Carlton county: seems small, but their hearts are big. ---   Up at Warroad, Lloyd Pick shot a large doe ten days ago that was carrying a fawn all ready to be born, something that has not been seen up there before. Along the same line, several fawns have been shot this season that were still spotted. Something went wrong with the weather in northern Minnesota. ---   Sikorsky the helicopter man says his machines are doing things like carrying loads from trucks to ships in the harbor or vice versa. Five tons is all a helicopter can carry at the present time. He is building a bigger one this winter that will carry nine tons. They cost--the big ones--$2,200,000. West Germany will have its first helicopter next year. ---   Sheep men of Murray county along with the rest are facing a real threat. Dame Fashion is not going to use as much wool in the future. The mills are using sixteen million pounds less than last year. Wool used in making apparel is down 14 cents a pound. ---   If you live in a village you’ll get something to think over in this item. The State Board raised the assessment of all property in North Mankato 10 per cent. The village will have the city assessed after Jan. 1st. Jack E. Maxwell and three aides will do the work, which will cost less than $6,000. First thing Maxwell wants is the total sales in the city in 1959. He is changing the measurements from cubic to square feet. Every building in the city to be measured twice: outside and in. All property to be assessed at 90 per cent. Main factors will be the location and the amount of money the property is making. Every lot and building will bear a tag on the map in the city clerk’s office just what it was assessed for. Lots may have ten different assessments in the same block. This way every citizen can see in plain language what the village is really worth in cash. If you want to buy a house down there it won’t take long. ---   A lady arrived in Canada two weeks ago to look for a patient in that country who has arthritis. This woman has stirred up a controversy among old country doctors concerning her cure. The Canadian newspapers said she claimed she has cured over 1,000 sufferers with her bee stings. Some folks laugh at her curing anything with bee stings, but the Canadian papers have stopped calling her a “quack.” ---   Here’s what the school kids get to eat at Ridgecrest, Calif. on the rim of the desert--Monday, Sloppy Joe Sandwich, buttered green salad, cherry cobbler, milk. Tuesday, Lasagne, hot garlic bread, tossed green salad, apricot crisp, milk. Thursday, Hamburger sandwich with relish, baked beans, vegetable salad, fruit cup with marshmallow, milk. How do you like ‘em, kids? ---   We’re not at war but the law against refusing to join the armed service is still operating. W. O. Bloch who belongs to Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to enlist, join up or work in hospital service, so the judge sent him to a federal prison for two years. Bloch formerly resided at Windom. ---   Two Kilkenny men were fined $1,250 for “shining” deer in Rice county last week. Right now is the time to start a fund which could be used to repair the damage done to autos by the pesky things with the great big beautiful eyes. ---   John Harmsen and Ruth paid us a pleasant visit one day last week bringing all the news. You’d be surprised but we’ve known John for around 70 years. Can’t forget him. In the big deluge of 1929 John did this: took the battery out of the Ford, disconnected the telephone wires and the radio wires. How many did that because times were hard? ---   The American Snuff Company, the largest manufacturers of snoose in the world, has a side line making poison for flies, beetles and bugs. The company developed a power that was sure death on flies but it stank so bad the flies would not go near it. Scientists found that the odor of strawberries attracted flies, so they mixed the two and the days of the flies are numbered. We never noticed that strawberry beds attracted any more flies than petunias. ---   Don’t think the U.S. is in a very deep recession. Auto dealers delivered 165,300 autos between Nov. 11th and 30th. Second best record since the year 1955. ---   The Flying Dutchmen from Edgerton in natty new suits drove up here and beat our home team one night last week by a score of 67 to 50. Bloomington has one of the best teams in the loop districts. Here’s hoping the boys from the Rock River hit the top spot again this winter. There are now 52,700 people in our city. ---   Can the radar station be effectively choked off is a problem that is being given a thorough workout by the U.S. Army. It fills the skies around the radar station with a cloud of tin foil which is supposed to jam the radar station. Hope it doesn’t. Western Murray county likes its radar station and would feel lost without it. ---   Easy to understand and easy to avoid is the fact that the day before Christmas is the “deadest” day on the U.S. highways for the entire year. Drive just a little slower because the auto is full of shiny faces of boys and girls. ---   This from the International Falls Journal. “It may be Christmas before it is safe for plane landings. Around 115 trappers are moving onto their grounds this week. Others are settling in for the winter, where the plane will be their only contacts until spring.” ---   According to a recent survey, if a town wants to stay open one night a week, the best night is Friday night, both for banking and shopping. Next popular is Thursday. The most unpopular is Tuesday and strange to say the next is Saturday, and for generations Saturday was the big night in Murray county. ---   Jack Puterbaugh, the State Liquor Commissioner, reports only one arrest recently: the bartender of a Legion Club. He sold a fifth to be taken off the premises. Business is dull, says Jack. Only other case was that of J. Krymel of Wales, N.D., who was arrested for selling liquor he brought in from North Dakota: worth looking into. How can No. Dak. sell liquor cheaper than Minnesota? ---   There were 2,500 foreign doctors in the U.S. that faced deportation. Situation was critical. The country needs those medical men. They could not pass all the restrictions so the American Medical Assn. is taking steps to keep them here. Every so called statesman in Washington, D.C. should get back of this move. Losing those doctors and interns would be worse than losing Laos. ---   After waiting this long, the Sister Kenny suit for the recovery of $2,000,000 has been transferred to the Federal court in Minneapolis. The suit is against publishing grafters in Chicago, who worked with Kline in defrauding the folks who contributed to the Sister Kenny funds. Kline, the chief thief, is still sick and can’t come to trial. Can you blame him.
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December 15, 1960
  Here’s another item of bad news for those towns looking vainly for a doctor. Unless more doctors enlist, the government will have to start drafting medical men. ---   The Canadian natural gas started moving into Minnesota at Norman county. One of the pumping stations at Humboldt cost over two million dollars. It hits numerous towns on its way to Marshfield, Wis. As of today the station is pumping 180 million cubic feet of gas daily. What we are wondering is the gas putting the fuel oil out of business? ---   A wise old Scotchman who was a judge was asked to settle a dispute between two brothers about the fair division of a large estate left them by their father, said “Let one brother divide the estate and let the other brother have the first choice.” The same plan could be used by two neighbors. ---   St. Peter is another city that is facing re-assessing and revaluation and the council had a meeting to discuss the proposition. Jack Maxwell who seems to be the assessment wizard in that section was present. He said a re-assessment if he did the work would cost $7,000. One of the problems is to bring old houses closer to actual market values. Maxwell does that on his map of the city, so you can see what your neighbor pays. ---   Many communities in the state have already started laying the groundwork for a Civil War program next year. Most graveyards in the county have remains of Boys in Blue who gave their lives so that we could have peace, liberty and happiness. Fulda, when it comes to the Civil War memories, has the rest of the county beat with a fine statue of a uniformed Boy in Blue in its Union Cemetery. ---   Students at Gustavus Adolphus are learning business in a practical way. They have opened a taxi cab service that operates day and night. They have rented a building. They plan on making the taxi company a permanent one to be manned by a crew of freshmen each year. ---   If you have a dog you think a lot of, get a print of its nose. Like human fingers, no two dogs’ noses are the same, so says the Chemical Sun printing company. ---   Vandalism at Geneva, Wis. reached so low an ebb that there was talk of laying off one of the two police. The police heard about it and all at once there was all kinds of trouble. It was all thoroughly understood then a 16 year old boy admitted the petty crimes were committed with the knowledge of the two police. You can’t blame them for not wanting to see their jobs die. ---   Look out for bum checks at this time of the year. The bum check woman or man is ever on the alert to get a check cashed, even if they have to buy something. ---   The Chamber of Commerce of International Falls held an election last week, ostensibly to find out who the two most popular clerks in the city were. They found out after 5,000 votes were cast. There were 100 clerks in the stores. The winners got $15 apiece and the stores a good run of business. ---   Young man, if you have not made up your mind what you want to be, why not try a male nurse. There’s room for hundreds of them. Men, not matter how hard they may be, just feel a little chagrined when a two-pint sized nurse gets their arms under his to boost the poor guy up in bed. The pay is good, so are the hours. ---   If it should happen sometime that one of your buddies get just one too many at a party, put him or her away on a davenport. Never put them in an auto. Here’s why--Clarence Johnson jumped his bail of $20.00 at Mahnomen for being a drunk passenger in a motor vehicle on a public highway. He was picked up by a patrolman. ---   Uncle Sam collects 4 cents on every gallon of gasoline which brings in an enormous amount of money. Congress wants more money for the Federal Highway system and an extra cent a gallon will bring in just $650 million. ---   Over in Mexico the government is considering canceling all auto driver’s licenses when they reach the age of 70. Reason is “Old age reflexes are too slow to keep up with the modern driving speed and regulations.” England has the same idea. Soon over-70 drivers will have to undergo a rigid examination before they can get a license. It would be interesting to know just how many accidents occur to drivers over 70. ---   Down in Indiana, so many of the drug stores looked like restaurants or hardware stores that they through a new regulation must devote 10 percent of their space to prescription selling, or lose their license. ---   The Watonwan county fair at St. James is on the rocks. IT went in the hole $1,516 in 1959 and this year it was worse. The fair is now over $10,000 in debt. It charges 25 cents at the gate. One unfortunate thing the board did was to give away an auto, but did not require the winner to be present at the drawing. The county gives them a quarter of a mill and the fair board wants it raised to a half mill. The fair has 22 directors on its board. ---   Some villages are getting sense on voting hours and are keeping the polls open the length of time needed. Up at Mahnomen the polls were open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. (horse and buggy hours). At Wauban from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., and at Bejou a smaller village the polls were open from noon until 8 p.m. Thousands of dollars could be saved by curtailing election hours in small towns and villages in Minnesota. ---   Medical science is going slow on the giving of oral polio vaccine and it will probably be late next year before it is available. In the meantime, remember to take your shots. ---   Whiskey makers like milliners believe in a change of styles and are asking Uncle Sam to change his bottle sizes. They admit they want a bottle that looks bigger but holds less whisky. Things are not going so good in the whisky business. Total and per capita consumption have been off for years and there has been no increase in prices and the tax is $2.62 1/2 a quart. In the majority of Minnesota villages less liquor is sold over the bar. Remember the days when the big shots would buy a drink and leave the change spread over the bar--it’s out of style now. ---   Defense Dept. rejected protests by the U.S. drug industry and organized labor and agreed to purchase $166,016 worth of tranquilizers from a Danish chemical company. Danish price on the order of meptrobamate tablets was under that quoted by next low bidder, an American firm, by $576,015 or 346 per cent, said spokesman for Navy Dept. which purchases drugs for all the armed forces. ---   Karlstad, a town of 700 in Kittson county, was the only town to have a deer derby. The largest deer, which weighed 298 pounds, won the first prize of $50.00 The largest doe shot weighed 165 lbs. and won $25.00. The smallest deer shot weighed only 56 lbs. but it won $10.00. Elmer Martinson, the man with the freezer processed 108 deer during the season. ---   Minnesota for the second time is the Turkey State of the Union. It had a production of 14,417,000 birds the past season, and Swift & Co. will process 20,000,000 lbs. at its plant at Detroit Lakes. ---   Had a pleasant visit with Mrs. Martin Forrest and Miss Violet Ring of Pipestone. Mrs. Forrest was formerly in the newspaper business on the Pipestone Star.
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December 22, 1960
  If the doctor says cut down on salt, try bananas for six months. Bananas are only one-millionth part salt. ---   We haven’t said much about water of late so you’ll be interested in this one. Up in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota they are pumping their drinking water twenty miles, and it is costing them almost two million dollars, and the job will not be finished for two years. At present you can drink the alkaline well water or buy from the water peddlers. ---   The Mahnomen Pioneer said last week, “Dr. M. O. Stern this week announced that he is leaving for St. Paul early in January, where he will be associated with a clinic. You can’t hardly blame him. If you were a young man, ambitious, wanting to advance in your profession, you’d do the same thing.” ---   Noticed the Ellsborough Lutefisk Dag has come and gone. What great feeds those were the Norwegians put on. We know, it’s messy and gooey stuff: the trouble is to know when to stop. The name of the stuff, “lute” comes from the caustic mixture in which the fish is soaked. In the “good” old days it used to come dried in bales and you had to do your own soaking. ---   Three of the big clock companies, the Seth Thomas, General Electric and the Sessions are advertising a new type of electric clocks that are run by batteries which will last a year. They cost around $30.00 and will be running when the current is off. ---   Here’s an odd thing about you humans: it depends where you live how often you have the doctor each year. People who live in the west call the doctor more often than in any other part. They average 5.7 times a year. In the North Central and in the South they call him 4.7 times a year, and the men that live in town see their doctor more often than the ones that live in the country. ---   You won’t believe it, but if you bake a 40 lbs. round steak in the oven for three hours at cooking temperature, you will lose a third of it. ---   Business got so slack at the St. James Tumico plant that fifty men were laid off last week. The president of the firm said it was due to economic conditions. The great trouble with plants of this type is that it’s mighty hard to find employment for fifty extra men. ---   DeGaulle generally makes a mess of things and he’s still running true to form. This time he wants to throw all French settlers in Algeria into a den of lions. ---   Here we thought that jealousy caused most of the murders, but statistics show that alcohol in one brand or another is at the bottom of 64 per cent of them. The two of them make “the” deadly combination. ---   Sweden is kinder to its law breakers than most countries. Convicts are allowed to sleep as long as they want on Saturday and Sunday mornings. They are even allowed to play poker for money on the Sabbath. Officials claim it betters their morale. ---   If you believe in weather prophets, keep your red flannels in the top drawer. The United States Weather Bureau is saying now that it looks like a cold winter. ---   South Africa beats our South when it comes to treating the colored races. Prime Minister Verwoerd is dividing humans into three classes: whites, blacks, and coloreds. The government will oversee separate schools, business and welfare agencies. There’s one country worse off than we are when it comes to class difference: South Africa doesn’t argue. ---   If anyone finds a way to deodorize the moonshine still, it’s going to be a sorry day for your Uncle Sam. Right now, owing to the high price, Revenue men are seizing 20,000 moonshine stills a year. Almost as many as were seized during the Prohibition era, and don’t worry about a shortage. There is enough whiskey in bonded warehouses to do the country for three years. ---   They are using the diesel engine more in light vehicles in Europe than we do in the United States. London has 5,00 diesel taxi cabs. One garage manager says its gasoline engine cars average 15 miles to the gallon while the diesel cabs 30 to 40 miles to the gallon. J. H. Pitchford, top British engineer, says “The diesel is the most efficient practical means of conversion of fuel energy to useful work known to man at the present time.” ---   There’s weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among the basketball fans at Madelia. Suspensions seldom ever heard of on such a large scale removed 17 top players from the basketball and wrestling teams. The boys broke all the training rules and thought they would not be caught at it. ---   An election held near Good Thunder last week was the smallest one in history. It was a school election transferring a piece of land into a new district. Two people lived in the tract of land and voted. ---   There are sixteen states in the United States that require a periodic inspection of autos. The other thirty-four states should copy the above measure. ---   The whip is being brought back to English courts. Will it stop juvenile delinquency? This country will watch its “value” in cutting down all sorts of crime. England had the lash up to a few years ago. Criminals would rather take twelve months in jail than fifteen strokes of the whip. ---   You can call them old maids, spinsters or bachelor girls, but over in Denmark the government supplies the lassies with a spinster insurance policy to those who are not married at a certain age. ---   In a new assessment move, the state steps in with its own assessor. There is considerable trouble with assessors on lands in or near suburbs. State says farm land is of more value and it is being raised. ---   Minnesota got its “First” last week. The largest tank car in history was shipped into Long Prairie last week. The car held 20,000 gallons of propane gas, twice as much as an ordinary car holds. ---   There is a new radio out that is going to be appreciated by everyone from the farmer to the sportsman. It’s a two way radio that can be used on the big farms to talk from the man in the field to the home. Fisherman can scatter to three or four different places and when the wall eyes begin hitting with one group it can phone the others. It is known as the Class D Citizens Band. Be handy for Ma to know where Pa is sometimes. Most of the radiophones are to work on two or three circuits. Up to date more than 100,000 licenses have been issued to Class D operators. ---   The folks who believe that paying bounties will eradicate predatory animals will be interested in Pennsylvania’s experience. It has paid $4.00 a head on fox in the last fifteen years and the bounty was paid from 30,000 to 50,000 annually. What would have happened if no bounty had been paid? ---   Who sells the most tires in the United States? Here are the names of the first four: Goodyear, Firestone, Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. ---   We wish you all a healthy Christmas.
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December 29, 1960
  Last week we read that the present warden of the Minnesota State Penitentiary stated that he controlled his prisoners by the use of tear gas. He said it is more humane than using force of any kind, and is endorsed by the American Association of Prisons. The next day we read where Lloyd Alexander of Mora had been awarded $168,000 in a Jefferson, Mo. circuit court for damages sustained by being sprayed with tear gas; those two stories don’t jibe. ---   Do you snore? Authorities say that 41 per cent of all women snore. One woman snored so bad that her husband could only stand it for three days, then he left. The mother got the bride and groom and took them to a doctor, and he performed a slight operation that stopped her snoring forever. Didn’t they ever hear of adhesive tape? Neither a man nor a woman can snore with their mouth closed. Young man, when you go on your wedding trip, throw a roll of adhesive tape in your grip. ---   It’s not too soon to start taking your polio shots if you have not been vaccinated. The capsule vaccine will not be ready until summer, so better not wait. Ask your doctor. ---   The flurry in the gold market was caused by the Ford Motor Co. which was trying to buy up all the stock in the British Ford Co. It reduced the stock of gold in the U.S. $204 million. At the present time the U.S. government has $18 billion in gold, but it has shrunk a billion since the first of the year. ---   North Mankato is going to be re-assessed or revalued by an appraiser named by the state. The job will cost $7,000, which the state will pay for, and the city of North Mankato will repay the state in two years. Look for a lot of changes in the assessment laws by the coming legislature. ---   Europe’s tallest structure is in the making. It is a TV transmission tower in the city of Munich, Germany, and will be 1,056 feet high. ---   Notice by a California paper that British steamship lines out of San Francisco charge $15.00 a day for 30 day tourist trips, for everything. American steamships are charging $36.00 a day for a 10 day trip. ---   That was a terrible air tragedy at New York last week, but is one of the things we’ve got to expect. Our daughter Nola flew in from San Francisco on Tuesday to spend Christmas at the Elias home. We asked her how patrons took these accidents. She said they didn’t seem to affect them, and thousands were fighting for seats on planes for Christmas visits. Traffic tragedies are as old as the hills. There was one near Nashville, Tenn. on July 19, 1918 in which a railroad train went off the track and killed 101 persons. ---   Here is the end of the year and folks want to know what became of “The Groceries of 1960.” For days columns were filled with grocery stories. Warden Riggs lost his job at the State Prison and Hurst got red in the face trying to fire every state official that looked like he had a pound of coffee. The book may be closed and everything is forgotten but we notice that Hurst is on the other side now. One old fellow said, “How come?” ---   One of the finest things of the Christmas tide were the little personal notes that came on or with the Christmas card. There were only a few words on some of them but how they did stir the leaves in your book of memories. ---   The molasses that is not used in making the big round cookies goes into making of whiskey or cattle feed, and we get it by the ship load from Cuba. It only costs 13 cents a gallon in New Orleans. ---   Post offices, that is some of them, have been informed that they will soon have stamp vending machines. You put in a quarter and you want three stamps. You’ll get the stamps and the change. Saves help. ---   A while back we were sure that this wonderful supply of natural gas would put the fuel oil out of business. Might be true here, but not over in Ireland. In a booklet from Ulster we noticed that Londonderry County and City derive its electricity from a new power station. This station is Ulster’s first oil power station and will save Ulster 400,000 tons of coal annually. Oil must be lots cheaper over there. ---   Love never dies even if it is high priced. The American Greeting Card Co. is furnishing Valentine greeting cards which run from $60 to $100. Their cards are being finished by water color artists who paint the doo-dads on those high priced ambassadors of love. We had slick Valentines in our days, cost around $6.00 and they all had plenty of wide red ribbon, didn’t they, girls? ---   Japan is another country that will have a food surplus. It has a population of over 95 million and can feed them all for the first time in its history. The farmers have increased the yield of rice from 3,400 lbs. an acre to 4,400 an acre in the last five years. ---   Here’s the worst thing that is being brought against smog, the possibility that it is responsible for the rise in the deaths of babies in the smog areas in California. Dr. Merrill said the carbon-monoxide level in smog plagued Los Angeles is increasing at the rate of 10 per cent a year, and unless checked may soon exceed the amount considered safe from a health standpoint. ---   The song, “The State where the Tall Corn Grows” is going to be changed. A new corn is on the market, a shorter variety that has from 4 to 8 ears that are smaller but yield more kernels. Some farmers who plant dwarf corn 21 inches apart find they need less water per bushel than in the regular 42 inch row. After heavy rains in some sections growers are covering the soil with cheap vegetable oil. ---   Had a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Herb Reed of Slayton one day last week. Our memory went back a couple years or so when Mrs. P. J. Nelson of Minneapolis and Herb Reed of Slayton came visiting us. We said, “What a fine looking couple you make,” and repeated it. They evidently believed us. Easy to play Abigail when you have something to work with.
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