1961 Columns, May - August
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Roaming in the Gloaming

With Bob Forrest

Things Material and Immaterial

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May 4, 1961
   You horse trail riders, here’s a real vacation. An eight day trail ride out of Grand Marais. Tents will be furnished and the grub will be ready for you and you’ll be ready for it. You can rent horses at Grand Marais, wonderful scenery, nothing better. June is the best month: NO SKEETERS. ---    You won’t need to set your clock an hour ahead until May 28th at two a.m. That is when the daylight saving law changes. Daylight savings law took effect in Wisconsin last Sunday. ---    A lot of the Canadians are in favor of selecting the Canada Goose as a national bird. Neither Canada or Minnesota seems to go for beauty, but for good eating in the fall a while back, nothing excelled a Canada Honker. We never heard of anyone eating a loon. ---    California is going after the smog plague in real earnest and is now selecting the two best anti-smog devices for autos. The devices selected must be installed on every auto in California and the commission wants the device to cost less than $50.00. ---    How quick conditions change. Last year the cigaret was the main road to ruin. This year the smog from your auto fumes has pushed the cigaret among the discards. ---    Thirty-seven states in the Union have general sales taxes. Texas was the thirty-seventh state with a 2 cents sales tax: they’ll soon all be out of step but Minnesota. ---    Here’s an odd one. Kahler, the well known Rochester hotel and hospital people secured a license last week to run a saloon at Mankato. They also agreed to construct a $1,500,000 motel down town. It will have 80 sleeping units. ---    Bad luck has followed the footsteps of many a farmer in northern Minnesota this spring. Remember Kittson county had not a drop of moisture in March, and it had little since as the country in that section was visited by a forty mile wind two days last week which caused the fields to blow like drifting snow, doing a lot of damage. Farmers report that there was so much dirt and dust in the air that ditches were driven full. The problem is now--how can this dirt be removed and they are afraid if they did under present conditions the ditches could be filled the next day. This condition, the Enterprise says, exists all over the Red River country except an area south of Crookston. Another real problem is who pays for cleaning out the ditches. ---    There’s a big drop in auto sales. Last year Ford had 351,000 up to this time. This year 229,000. Chevy in the same dates had 620,000 in 1960, 1961 only 377,000. Studebaker hit the low spot with only 17,000 up to March date. Last year 42,000 same period. ---    Here’s what we’ve all been waiting for. The Paris Spectacular Strawberry. You get hundreds of berries from one plant and the berries are as large as hen’s eggs. Two berries sliced make a plate full--bear berries from spring until frost. The plants imported from France cost $1.00 apiece. You start picking this summer. ---    A new law in New York requires that every auto in the state of New York must be equipped with seat belt anchors. Statistics show that your chance of being injured is 80 per cent less if you have seat belts. Watch the belt equipped car idea grow. ---    One small village plastic company hit the jackpot. The Sail King Company of Elbow Lake is supplying its boats to Marshall Field’s three stores in Chicago. ---    We did not vote for Humphrey, nevertheless we’re pleased to note that Senator H. Humphrey of Minnesota is the second most influential man in Washington, D.C. ---    Canadian justice seems a little different from ours. At Fort Frances, just across the road from International Falls, a youth had an auto accident in which three young men were killed and the coroner proved that the dead driver was drunk by the blood test performed on his body, which showed that he must have consumed 12 bottles of beer. Never heard of that being done in the U.S. ---    Here’s a new dog ordinance over in New Richmond, Wis. that is going to bring more than arguments. One section read, “Any person may impound a dog.” ---    Pure downright stubbornness is the real cause of the largest amount of auto death accidents in Minnesota. It’s not speed or drunken drivers, just failure on the autoist’s part to give the right of way. Too many drivers want to hog the road. Fifteen thousand died last year in this type of accident. ---    There are two places in Marshall where you can’t cash a check. They are the two municipal liquor stores. The manager of the stores said, “Bad checks are getting out of hand and there are no funds in the liquor stores to back them up.” He said they got 40 bad checks in one week: takes a good business to stand a drain like that. ---    Black pheasants have not proven to be very prolific in Minnesota. Fifty-seven black pheasants were planted in Waseca county twenty-seven years ago, and strictly protected for years, yet the spread of the birds is confined to three counties. ---    Air lines are crowding the railroads out of their passenger business. Here are some samples: New York to Boston the rate is $10.91, just 38 cents more than the railroad. Washington to New York the rate is $12.73--$3.05 more than the rail. Worst feature in air travel is to get up town after you land at the airport. ---    The Norman County Civil Defense unit seems to be going places. It received Federal funds to the amount of $5,850 for purchase of radio equipment for the Civil Defense Council. ---    See where Gov. Anderson agrees with the tax plan of the Liberals. Good for you, Gov. Anderson. When you can’t beat them, join ‘em. ---    It’s no great reflection on you, brother, if you are in the hole. Your government is run by the smartest men in the world, goes deeper in debt every day. On the 17th of March 1961, Uncle Sam owed $289,774,000,000. No use thinking about it. In our wildest dreams we never could know how much that is. ---    This will take the worry from a lot of old people. According to Public Health Service, if you are over 60 you are not a potential polio victim. Sixty million people in the U.S. have never had a shot of Salk vaccine. Have you had yours? There is still time to get it before summer. A new vaccine called the Sabin vaccine is cheaper and said to be more effective. It can be taken in a piece of candy; the Salk vaccine has to be injected. Best ask your doctor which to take. ---    Have often wondered why community hospitals do not have one practical male nurse. We believe he would pay for himself. More men would go to the hospital if they could tell their troubles to a male. At heart most men, especially the older ones, are awful shy of being handled by a woman. They have a hard time dragging facts out of them, but give him a male nurse, he’ll tell him everything, even his past if he has one. No man will ever forget the day when was told to undress, and the female nurse handed him that nightshirt without a back. ---    A lot of Swedes have their eye on Stockholm for June 17th. It’s going to be a big day. Main feature will be to see the “Vasa,” the oldest ship in the world, raised last month from Stockholm harbor where it has been for 353 years. ---    One of the swearingest villages in Minnesota is Mahnomen. Last week four persons were arrested for using abusive and obscene language: not all in the same day, either.
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May 11, 1961
   Minnesota must be the Highlands of the United States. She receives no water from adjoining states or provinces. Water flows out of Minnesota but not into it. No other state pollutes our rivers or lakes: we do our own polluting. ---    The Memorial Hospital at Waseca needs more patients. It went in the red $6,807 the past year. Most of this came from higher wages. The daily cost per patient is now $28.90, it was $25.90 last year. Bad debts hurt--there was $11,625 on the books at the end of the fiscal year. ---    About the raise in postage, we take the following from the editorial columns of the Kittson Enterprise: “We have in mind a particular postoffice not far from here where the postoffice receipts run about $12.00 a month and the postmaster salary is $3,000 a year.” ---    If you live just over the border in Ontario you have to pay proper respect to your village council. You are not allowed to jump up and start raising heck. If you do anything, you must write it out and hand it to the clerk the Friday before the meeting. Citizens are permitted to attend the meetings but they must keep their lips buttoned up unless they are asked to speak. ---    Merchants keep complaining about men in the Civil Service who get good money and won’t pay their bills. The merchants can’t garnishee the government. He is the fall guy. Realizing the unfairness of the law, Rep. Tuttle of Missouri has introduced a bill which will allow service employees to be sued and garnisheed the same as anyone else. There are civil service employees in every village in Murray county. ---    After deep study and thought Barton, Batten and Durstine issued a statement saying the girl starts her hope chest when she is around 15 years and six months old. ---    Nevada has quite a tourist trade and in order to take advantage of it the legislature helped out by raising the tax on cigarets from 3 to 7 cents a pack. The state taxes on beer and liquor were raised 100 per cent. They believe in the old motto, “Get it while the getting’s good.” ---    Warroad opens bids on June 2 for the construction of a $320,000 Municipal Hospital. Funds were raised last fall by popular subscription, matched by a Federal grant. International Falls voted $300,000 bonds for a new nursing home for the aged. ---    Members of the county board of Mower county restored the tax on household goods which was removed last year. Instead of having a sales tax to help out, the burden went on the farms and other real estate. More people should pay taxes. We were assessor in Lake Wilson one year and a man who had a $3.00 tax started taking the hide off us. When he got through taking the hide off us we told him he ought to be ashamed. He had two boys and a girl in high school and we suggested that he ought to be glad to see his kids educated even if it did cost him $3.00 a year. ---    The U.S. Post Office department has raised the prices on money orders. All money orders from one cent to $10.00 will cost 20 cents after July 1st, from $50.000 to $100.00 will cost 35 cents. The department is pecking away at minor raises but the big money change must come from congress. ---    Hang out your flag today, folks. Minnesota became a state on May 11, 1858. Minnesota is the 32nd state in the union. ---    Coffee, the good kind, is not going down in price. The grocers in Colombia and Central American withheld 20 per cent of the shipments for April. This is the best way to keep the prices up. ---    Congress should not increase the tax on liquor. If it does, Minnesota No. 13 will come to life again. In 1958 revenue agents and sheriffs seized over 20,000 stills. They’ll do better this year. ---    As was expected, Cottonwood County went dry by a good sized majority. But it did not seem as if it was a real issue: there are 9,000 votes in the county. Drys received 3,897, wets got 2,307, total votes cast 6,204, leaving more stay-at-home votes than the total votes of the wets. ---    The men who built the Pyramids would be stuck when it came to constructing this cavern which is now under way for the Solar Gas Co., between Erskine and Mentor in Polk county. The cavern is to hold 300,000 barrels of propane gas, it will be 500 feet in depth where the cavern will start. Work will be completed by 1963. Ferris & Sesson of Tulsa, Okla. said the cavern will make it possible for Solar Gas to store propane gas in the summer for winter use. Seventy men will be employed on the job, all of them skilled in excavation work. Crookston is the seat of Polk county. ---    A deer poaching gang in LeSueur county was broken up last week by game wardens and two sheriffs. A municipal judge sentenced the poachers to a total of 1,700 days in jail. Earl Voss, a farmer, drew the top sentence which was 360 days. If they all go to jail it will cost the county tax payers over $5,000. Pretty expensive venison both for the poacher and the tax payer. ---    California still wants to take the life of those who commit murder. A bill calling for the repeal of the capital punishment law was defeated by a 54 to 24 vote. ---    Limited shipments of ore from the Iron Range started last week. Only 27 ore boats out of the Pittsburgh Ore fleet of 57 will see service in 1961. About this state aid for Taconite, one should remember that the 1959 World Almanac said, “The value of mineral products of the Range exceeds $500 million annually.” In 1955 it produced 49,211,000 long tons of ore; now the mining companies want the farmer to help them make Taconite pellets. ---    They must have wonderful gas in northern Minnesota. Saw an ad, “Gas will heat 64 per cent more water at 50 per cent less cost.” ---    If you like to receive letters, all you have to do is to get elected president, then you will get 40,000 letters a week. Since J.F.K. became president he has received 200,000 pieces of mail. ---    And then Uncle Sam says he will not buy any autos after June 20, 1961 that are not equipped with belts on both seats. ---    Wisconsin went on Daylight Savings time last Sunday, and so did 11 other states. Only 21 states stay on Standard time. Minnesota clocks to ahead on May 28th. ---    Last week we had an item about the drought on our northern border. Down south in California rim of the desert, we read in the Joe For column in the Ridgecrest paper, “Real estate has been moving of late. Never had so much cold stout wind since 1946. All you have to do to get your teeth polished is to open your mouth and face the wind. We love our country but we don’t like to eat it.” ---    A tire fell off a truck, the car behind ran into it and upset, injuring two people who want $45,000 damages. We thought there was a law that said you must keep far enough behind the car ahead of you so you could stop your auto to avoid accidents. ---    Over in Scotland where whiskey is a good crop, don’t take a drink too much; if you do you will lose your drivers license for a year, for the next offense it is two years. The charge is “Driving while unfit, through drink.” ---    Here’s one legislature that does not believe in home government. The lawmakers of Kansas passed a law last week prohibiting cities in the state from imposing an income tax or a city sales tax.
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May 18, 1961
   And we all thought that concrete roads should last forever, but they don’t. Twenty years ago the original Pennsylvania highway was built of concrete; since then it has been completely recovered with asphalt. The new asphalt highways have no cracks to let water seep through so they can start heaving. ---    The new minimum wage raise is not going to affect many places of business in Murray county, as you have to do $250,000 business in your store to come under the provision of this act. ---    The president of the American Women’s Medical Association infers that the U.S. will be a nation of widows. She says males between 40 and 70 years are more likely to have cardiac disease than women and that the average American wife can look forward to eight years of widowhood--providing she doesn’t get a chance to marry again. ---    Sibley Park at Mankato was needing a couple of lions, so the agent for the Northern States power company will furnish two young ones. One will come from the Como Park Zoo in St. Paul. The two cubs will cost $175. ---    The members of the Ada Hospital Auxiliary has given each of its members a dollar. The ladies are to increase the value of their dollar during the summer months and report back at the annual fall meeting with the dollar and tell of the profits that were made. ---    There’s going to be a speed limit on airplanes. The U.S. wants to limit planes to 280 miles an hour on all planes approaching congested airports. ---    Don’t be in a hurry if you are going north on a vacation. Some of the lakes on the Gunflint Trail out of Grand Marais will not be free from ice until May 20th. ---    It’s about time Minnesota lengthens the time of the legislative session. Minnesota has grown a lot in sixty years. ---    J.F.K.’s suggestion that the government loan money to home builders and give them 40 years to pay for it is a joke. By the time the borrower gets it paid for, all he has left is an out of date home that no one wants to buy or live in; too long, make it 20 years. ---    Up in Roseau county, Fosston in the heart of the best potato country is shipping potatoes to Holland by the car load. Two potato growers from Ireland have been spending some time in the vicinity, getting pointers on how to raise potatoes. The Fosston potato growers have sent samples of their potatoes to eight European countries. ---    The fat people in Minnesota are having their day by holding a Fat convention in Mpls. The polite name is T.O.P.’s, take off pounds--no the last word is not secrecy, as Mrs. Norma Anderson of International Falls boasts she lost a total of 86 pounds to win the crown. The group will elect a King, Princess and Prince but make no arrangements with a soap factory to take care of the surplus suet; are we all going nuts? ---    Too many people feel that it costs too much to go the hospital when one is sic. Trouble is that very few really appreciate that the hospital must be staffed and equipped for you at all times, whether you come or not. It would be terrible, wouldn’t it, if you had a broken leg or something and they had to send out and get nurses, medicine, etc., and that’s one thing that costs money: being ready for you at any time day or night, and remember one thing--that 60c of every dollar you pay the hospital goes for wages and for every 100 patients the average hospital needs about 224 nurses. ---    Anoka county has a lot of chicken farmers, egg farmers and game farmers where they raise pheasants, mallards, etc. A committee from this group appeared before the county board in 1959 and asked for help. Predatory animals were causing their loss of over $30,000 a year, and they said bounties were useless, so the board engaged a professional trapper and he surprised everybody, including County Agent Richard Swanson who was spearheading the trapper plan. In 1960 the trapper killed 236 foxes, 210 skunks, 51 coons and 21 badgers, and cut the $30,000 loss down to $3,000 in one year. ---    The tragic sinking of the “Titanic” in 1914 when it sank after hitting an iceberg in the Atlantic with a loss of 1,517 lives on April 15th, shocked the civilized world, and the odd thing about it is that no ship since that time has been sunk by hitting an iceberg. ---    Things were vastly different in 1833 than they are now. While doing business in the law firm of Berry and Lincoln, it was granted a saloon license and the firm name was Abraham Lincoln and J. Berry in the city of Springfield, Ill. on March 6, 1833. ---    “The public gave the school board a splendid endorsement last week. Due notice had been given of a special board meeting to discuss phases of the 1961-62 curriculum and a special invitation was given to all parents. Only one couple came and they as spectators.” New Richmond News. “Let George do it” must be the slogan of the local P.T.A. ---    Don’t think the Indian has followed the buffalo, there are more than there were in 1950 according to the census. Half of the Indians live on reservations. The U.S. has made an awful mess of the way it has handled the Indian problem. ---    Beverly Ann Hunter, 28, was arrested by the highway patrol for careless driving. Judge Mason gave her a $50.00 fine or twenty days in jail. Needing a rest, she started serving her jail sentence that afternoon. ---    You’ve often wondered how much salary the top brass hats get after the income men get through with them. Take the salary of the chairman of the General Motors. He gets a total of $574,025: salary $201,000, other compensations $372,000. Uncle Sam takes $418,000 each year leaving Mr. Donner an actual salary of $155,350. The highest salary in the U.S. is paid to the president of the Seagram Whiskey Co. He gets $359,000 but no other compensation and Uncle Sam takes $243,958, leaving Mr. Brontman only $115,792 to live on. So the highest priced man in the U.S. gets $155,350. ---    The American Medical Society is offering the people some good sound sane advice but will they heed it. The A.M.A. says that those liquid weight reducers are a delusion and more especially if you are suffering from heart, kidney or are a diabetic. Anyone who wishes to reduce should be ashamed of themselves, it’s just a lack of will power. Many a fat woman can’t even pass up a dish of chocolates; how does she ever expect to wear a smaller size girdle. Get the shoving habit, girls, and shove away from the table when they bring in the pie and ice cream. ---    Last week was a real week for tourists in Kittson county. Near Lancaster a veteran rural mail carrier said it was nothing unusual to see a herd of 50 deer on a green field at one time, especially around dusk. After they got through feeding they returned to the woods. They will quit coming to the field just as soon as the grass starts in the woods, and the grouse population is greater than it has been for years, and the partridges are on the increase. Looks like a good hunting season. That’s up in Prairie Chicken country and we’ve been promised a taste of prairie chicken meat sometime this fall; won’t that be grand. ---    The latest vaccine to bring happiness to the human race is one for the hepatitis. It has been tested for the last 5 years on 200 prisoners in the Joliet, Ill. prison. Hepatitis has been increasing throughout the world for the last four years. The U.S. had 28,633 cases between January 1st and April 30th of this year. Hepatitis is a disease of the liver.
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May 25, 1961
   You little realize that the mining companies have taken billions, yes billions of dollars worth of ore out of Minnesota Iron Range, and all they left was a bunch of holes and a lot of people that are starving and no future for better times ahead. ---    What do you think of baseball enthusiasm? A bank in a northern border county of Minnesota devotes its advertising space in the Hallock paper to boost the Minnesota Twins, 400 miles away. ---    The Canadians are now putting pop in plastic pouches or sacks with built in straws. Big saving over tin cans or glass bottles. ---    Dupont Co. has developed a new chemical that will do a lot of things. It will make materials heat resistant and water repellent and stain resistant. It helps water based paints, improves hair preparations as well as hand creams. It will force oil and water to mix, etc. This new jack of all trades is called Baymal. It is a white free flowing powder and sells at $3.50 a lb. ---    The way they do things now really startles you. A drug company worried by reports of severe sun burns among patients using Declomycin, an antibiotic prescribed for skin disorders. A California doctor asked Lederle Laboratories what information they had on it and possible side effects. The company researchers fed all data to the electronic computer. In less than ten minutes the doctor had the answer. In the 8,914 patients, less than one per cent suffered from sunburn and they were girls of 11 to 20. Just because someone takes too much of a new drug the government does not stop its manufacture, but it does warn the users. ---    Not a new idea, but the U.S. Senator Mansfield of Montana is trying to breathe some life in it. He wants to give presidential nominees a million dollars in federal funds to buy time on TV and radio. What about newspapers, Mike? ---    And then here’s what N. M. Minow, the Federal Communication chairman say. “Most TV programming is a vast wasteland aimed at the lowest common denominators of public taste, heavily overbalanced with blood and thunder, mayhem, violence and sadism.” ---    When he was connected with the rest of the booze syndicate Harry Bloom lost his liquor license. Everyone wanted it. The doctors to get the license for the benefit of the General Hospital, the preachers, a lot of them O.K.’d this move. The liquor license did a million dollar business last year, with a profit of $300,000. We don’t believe that last part, but we hope that General will get the profits. ---    Some day you are going to take the missus on an auto trip, just you two. You will find that on a 300 mile a day jaunt, gas costs you less than your meals or you lodging. Here’s how it figures out: $9.50 for beds and $7.00 for gas and oil, and $10.50 for meals. Look at the money you would make and the fun you would have if you took a tent. ---    The men on the City Council of Waseca are both brave and bold. The council has been appropriating $1,440 to the high school band, but it quit and told the band right to its teeth that it was not worth its salt. It takes backbone to do that. Think of the doting fathers and loving mothers. Here was the council’s “Bill of Rights:” it did not make enough public appearances in outside parades and it is one of the best. One trouble is the local band would never go to any nearby towns so when Waseca had a parade there weren’t any neighboring bands in it: anyway the band has got to get busy as the council will withhold the $1,440 for a rainy day. ---    Don’t forget to set your clock ahead on Saturday the 27th of May. It don’t make any difference when, just set it ahead. Daylight Saving time starts on the 28th. Twenty-eight states are on Daylight Saving time. The other twenty-two stay on Standard time. ---    Johnson & Johnson, the surgical people, have a new dressing that will be a boon to the human race, as it does not stick to the wound. Most of us have had the experience of dragging large hunks of dressing from a wound and it really stings. It is called Pertoon, nine small pads will cost 49 cents. ---    At the Twins baseball park, excuse us--stadium, there are six boxes glassed in for heat and cold, carpeted, phones, everything. They cost $3,000 a year, that’s for the six and are for the folks who can’t sit on a plank and cuss the umpire. ---    The Kennedy corn plan is not going over so big. In Grundy county, Iowa, the biggest corn county in the U.S., the Kennedy plan is not getting half of the corn farmers: so we’re back at the beginning again. ---    If you are a real dyed in the wool baseball fan it will pay you to see Battey, the colored catcher for the Twins. He is said to be the best in the league. He comes of a real baseball family. His mother and father formed a battery for a crack softball team in California. The Twins are drawing big crowds from the northern part of the state. ---    It looks as if the folks who drive autos may have to take a vision test this summer in coloration. A member of the state highway patrol or some other board may get in your car and ask politely, “Can I drive your car for a little while?” ---    Yes, he is a lucky dog, luckier than most humans. You can give that pup of yours a drug that puts a poison in its system that kills all its fleas, ticks, etc. They say the dog might have a tummy ache for a day, but the fleas and the bugs leave. ---    Over 12,000,000 folks have arthritis, one of the most painful of all ailments, and 356,000 are completely disabled. If you give the doctors a chance they can give you something that will help to ease the pain, but a cure has not been found yet. Eager to try anything, victims spend $250,000,000 annually on patent medicines which is wasted. It sometimes helps mentally. ---    Who would ever think that two old respected concerns would ever enter into a deal like this. The Singer Sewing Machine Co. is selling Remington portable typewriters. In some centers the typewriters will be Singer--whatever name goes over best will be used. ---    One of the big Minnesota concerns is the Minnesota Mining Co. of St. Paul. It had sales of over half a million last year. Did you know the company now owns the Mutual Broadcasting Company? ---    Here’s a good word for the men. They lose weight easier than women, not only in the 20 lb. heat but in the 40 lb. race. Don’t believe it: there’s still too many of short pot-bellied guys gumming up the corridors. ---    Whatever you do, don’t ever give away or throw away that old rocking chair, the one with the long rockers. That old fashioned rocker is really a combination exerciser, bone builder, intestinal cleaner and a happiness pill. If you are too weak to walk around the block you can exercise in a rocking chair, not in one of those trim compact affairs with short rockers, steer away from them. Here’s what old ones will do, massage your lungs, and leg muscles tighten and relax as they pump extra blood up the legs to the heart, etc. If you want to see contentment and happiness at its best just watch the face of that gray haired old lady as she rocks to and fro in that old fashioned rocker. ---    Norway is now making vitamins from seaweed, and it makes a tonic drink from seaweed that contains all the vitamins. They also make a crisp bread from seaweed flour. We have often wondered why our scientists did not do more research work on the ocean depths. Seems as if we should raise some kind of a crop on it, a lot of land is going to waste. ---    Soy bean oil is now seen on many a grocery shelf. It is put up in attractive containers. Minnesota folks should use it instead of the cotton seed oil from the south. ---    Minneapolis judges are cracking down hard, not only on drunken drivers but on careless one. Some of them get 30 days plus a $30.00 fine and license suspended for a year. We picked this gem out of the column. “G. Dulski, 19, was given a $25.00 fine and thirty days for driving faster than reasonable and prudent:” how fast is prudent? ---    Special delivery fees on packages are going up 10 cents a pound come July first and money orders up to $10.00 will cost 30 cents, up to $50.00 will cost 35 cents. We can remember making hundreds of money orders under $10.00 for 3 cents: things are going up. ---    To stimulate sales, companies are putting up their mdse in peppier and neater packages: women have been doing that for years. ---    Sheep raisers in Murray county must be doing fairly well these days. Fine staple wool brings $1.19 a pound now: nine cents up since March. We know that all our wool is not fine staple wool, but the low price wool generally goes up too. ---    Nebraska is another state that wants to milk the tourists. The legislature has a bill to impose a 5 per cent tax on all motel and hotel bills and 3 per cent levy on all meals over 50 cents: under 50 cents in Minnesota we call them lunches. Who ever heard of a meal for 50 cents? ---    Noticed in several northern newspapers where the state of Minnesota is advertising for six dump trucks with operators. Send sealed bids to Crookston. Is it cheaper for the state to rent than to own? Might be good business for the farmer to rent combines, etc. instead of owning them. ---    Natural gas at a cost of $300,000 roughly speaking is being used in several Minnesota towns and how it ever got by as it puts a lot of men out of business. Here is the odd thing about it. You can’t have natural gas in your town unless the Federal Power Commission says so. Argyle and Staples have already voted bonds and are enjoying natural gas.
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June 1, 1961
   Montgomery Ward is in a bad way. Business has been falling off. Discontented stockholders had their day at the annual meeting. A Chicago shareholder opened up with, “When a company like Montgomery Ward has done none of the directors should be re-elected,” and the applause was loud and long. Another shareholder: “If you can’t increase margins, let’s get some officer that will.” The outfit has been going under the “Ward” name. The shareholders decided to go back to the full name. Even the big boys have their troubles. ---    Where on earth does all the cheese come from? The government purchased only 228,000 lbs. last year and since March 31st this year, Uncle Sam has bought over four million pounds. ---    When a group of identical bids are received in New York state, the bidders can be called before a grand jury for questioning. (That is, if a proposed bill becomes a law.) ---    Mothers, when you take your two aspirin tablets don’t let the children see you take them, and then hide the bottle. Sixteen per cent of the accidental children’s deaths come from eating aspirin tablets that they had seen their mothers take. Their deaths were not accidental. They were caused by gross carelessness on the part of the mother. ---    If you are married, look out for August. More married couples fight and scrap in the month of August than any other month. Get papa to go fishing that month, it isn’t a good fishing month but it will help to keep peace in the family. ---    You’ve played a lot of cards in your life, yet you know as little about them as you do about a satellite. For instance, how many Kings have mustaches? How many Queens hold flowers, how many Jacks look at you with two eyes? ---    The Federal government has sent a billion dollars in money and food to the East Indians in the past twenty years. Half of our Indians still live on reservations and a third of them area starving. We’ve just grown so big and fat we can’t see our feet. ---    A hundred years before the Dutchmen bought Manhattan Island for $24.00 the tobacco plant was taken to Cuba from Brazil and Santo Domingo. It was just what Cuba needed. It now raises the best leaf tobacco in the world. ---    You see strange things in a country newspaper. “Could you give us one good reason why Memorial Day could not be observed on the last day of May, if at all?” Looks as if they were trying to put the skids to Memorial Day. To be truthful, it has been done to the 4th of July. Forty, fifty years ago, July 4th was the second biggest day in the year. Now it is just another day: not even 1 per cent of the homes will display the stars and stripes that day. ---    Here’s a Frenchman with a good idea. If you want to hold a county fair or a convention he will supply you with a plastic tent that will hold seats for 3,000. ---    That mind of yours has more power than you imagine. Mrs. McKalvey says you can think yourself into ill health and stay there as long as you want to. She also said that operations should be postponed until the patient is in a right frame of mind. ---    The Seventh Day Adventists are pretty proud of their record. They don’t drink, don’t smoke cigarets or any form of tobacco or drink coffee. They have forty per cent less heart trouble than the ones that do. Doctors noted that they have a blood cholesterol of 15 per cent lower than the general public. ---    We had too much land in Minnesota in the early days and you could get a homestead for a mere nothing. Here’s Cuba’s new law. A peasant who applies for land gets 67 1/2 acres, free. He can’t sell it or mortgage it. The government tells him what he should raise and he must sell to the government at its price, and only one of his children can inherit the land. They can accept a job at any time if they are up with their farm work. ---    The coffee break is now accepted as a legal part of employment. A man was hurt during a coffee break in Baltimore and was awarded workman’s compensation for his time lost. ---    “Boy Burned at Stake” is the headline where an 8 year old Fallin boy was tied to a tree by a stout rope. The grass at his feet was set afire and as he stomped it out the gang kept piling on more until he was rescued. He was badly burned on both legs and one wrist, and was taken to the infirmary for a skin grafting operation. (The above was taken from the Stirling Journal in Scotland). We were born in the town which produces juvenile delinquency equal to any in the U.S. ---    Dr. R. H. Felix should get a medal. He has developed a drug that will stop severe pain, the same as morphine does, without making a narcotic addict out of you. ---    Just because the Saturday Evening Post has over six million subscribers it does not get the top rate for its advertising space. The New Yorker gets a better price. T.V. is putting a big dent on magazine and newspaper advertising. It has also put some of the small theatres out of business in Minnesota. ---    Here’s a power lawn mower accident that’s really a freak. A resident of Lake Bronson had taken his mower out of storage and was getting it shape for spring. The vibration caused it to crawl, moving over the left foot of the operator and whirling blade beneath mangled four toes so badly that three of the toes had to be amputated: those power lawn mowers have to be handled with care, especially by the youngsters. ---    The 4-H’ers of Waseca County are sponsoring a dog show at the coming county fair. Rules say that animals must be on exhibit during the entire fair. How they were going to handle a bunch of yowling dogs was a problem. Do the dogs care to go home just as soon as they are judged? ---    On of the bitterest elections in Halstad’s history was the one on the Daylight Saving issue. The vote was 111 voting for the Daylight Saving time and there was 114 no’s. The smoke of battle was still in the air when a letter came from the attorney general, saying only border towns could remain on Standard time and Halstad is an inland town. ---    Measles that we used to kid about years ago has become so deadly that researchers are working day and night on a vaccine: measles takes twice as many victims each year as polio, but polio still gets all the headlines. ---    No, the trading stamp is not dead, not even in an unhealthy condition in these United States. One company is getting out 32,000,000 copies of its spring catalog with attractive premiums. Somebody must pay for those articles. Who is it? ---    Oklahoma gets in the news with a New York Federal Grand Jury, report it charges 3 men with defrauding Oklahoma out of $1,562,000. The president had a new plan. He transferred the above amount to the Grand Bahamas bank. The bank had a charter in 1960 all right, the report said, adding “But it had no building, doing business in a rented room with neither furniture nor records.” These crooks do have nimble minds. ---    See where Miss Meier of New York in a speech in Minneapolis said, “The father should see that the children are vaccinated for polio.” Why the father? Why not Ma, they may be shorter than they were years ago, but she still wears them. All she has to do is to say, “Bill, take the kids to the doctor and get them vaccinated.” ---    Here is a sure cure for deafness and old as we are we would like to try it. Deafness comes on because some of the small bones in the ear become stiffened with age. Plastic strips or little pieces of vein tissue take the place of aged bone. The result is marvelous. Hearing returns to normal over night, so a specialist told a congressional committee last week. ---    You gals that drive cars can now get Goodyear tires with bands of color that will match or harmonize with the auto trim or the upholstery.
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June 8, 1961
   Both the Sears and Wards were born in our day. Montgomery Ward is slowly disintegrating and Sears is now the largest merchandise concern in the world and don’t forget that this giant was born at No. Redwood Falls in the mind of a depot agent who had an express package of watches refused and he started peddling them: thus Sears Roebuck was born. ---    Cornell researchers have decided that the hog is the smartest four legged animal on the farm: could be, but we’re still betting on the dog and the horse. ---    Farm implements are liable to be cheaper. A new process is being used which increases the volume of business. Bethlehem, the big boy in the steel business, at one city is only using 24 furnaces when several years ago it had 34 going full blast. ---    Has aluminum had its day in the auto field? Buick is planning on getting out a new car this fall and will be of cast iron: a cast iron V-6 will replace the present aluminum V-8. The Buick company likes the aluminum engine but it costs more than the cast iron one, and Buick wants to save money. ---    The Wisconsin senate passed this bill last week. You can’t rent the roof of your building for advertising purposes to an advertising company: you can put an ad on your own roof, however. ---    Saw a picture of the Gamble Store man at International Falls. He was frying wall eyed pike fillets and giving items away. He was doing it to demonstrate a new frying pan. It needs no butter, lard or any kind of shortening. It has a layer of DuPont Teflon which makes it stickless. Just wipe out the pan with a paper napkin. What a blessing that will be for those that take their vacation outdoors. ---    Hotels have had metered TV sets for years. Now they are getting them in homes. There’s a little box attached to the machine. It is arranged so you can pay 25 cents an hour. It can be attached to the refrigerator. A new installment way of paying for what you need. An agent comes around and takes out the cash every so often to do the collecting. ---    We don’t know so much after all. What kind of food does the army like best? A recent survey of 30,000 soldiers brought out the strange fact that the most popular food is milk. After milk came hot rolls, hot biscuits, strawberry shortcake, the came grilled steak, ice cream and fried chicken, so Ma you know what to cook when Johnny comes marching home. ---    The Iron Range is using the stamp plan to help feed those in need. The stamps come in books of $10, $3.00 and $2.00. The stamp will not be accepted for high priced foods or those that are imported (that rules out Norwegian sardines) and many more food items. ---    All that hooey about a man and woman becoming one at marriage is just plain bunk. In New Jersey if a man and wife have an auto accident while he is driving she can sue her husband’s estate for all he had, no matter if he left some to relatives. That’s what the Supreme Court of New Jersey says. ---    Do you honestly know what a pearl is and how it starts? Few people do. A pearl is only a grain of sand that finds its way into an oyster’s mouth. The oyster is irritated and surrounds the sand with mucus in its mouth. Nearly all the pearls you ever saw are hand raised or cultured pearls. The Japs are tops both at diving and pearling. They go down into the oyster beds and see that they all have sand. The best looking oysters are picked by the Japs and put in wooded boxes on the kean ved [sic] so they can grow: it takes some seven years. ---    Col. Nola Forrest of San Francisco is visiting at the home of her sister, Mrs. Ray D. Elias, and parents, Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Forrest. She was on her way home from Washington, D.C., where she had been called to discuss the forthcoming history of the U.S. Nurse Corps. ---    Send an orchid to a legislator in Alabama. He wants a law that will impose a $50.00 tax on every divorce. Why didn’t you think of that long ago? This is going to add more discouragement to many a mature man who has been playing around the edges: now this $50.00 to get out. By the way there were 40,000 divorces in the U.S. last year. Are more folks getting married by a J.P.? The figures are not as bad as they look. There are only a little over 2 per cent of marriages that go on the rocks. ---    A doctor in Ada gives this suggestion on how to avoid a cold. Take plenty of sleep, eat sensible meals of nourishing food and don’t kiss girls with runny noses. What about married women with runny noses, why should they be allowed to spread colds all over the neighborhood? ---    A lot of dealers who have been guests of their companies on trips to the Bahamas, Florida, Hawaii, etc. have been doing some thinking and discovered they would be better off if the companies would send the cash instead of the vacation tickets. ---    Teen agers in New Jersey don’t go for the booze parties, they go on pep pill drunks. A gang of 50 was recently arrested. Four of them said they had been consuming 3,000 of the pills and 3,000 bottles of cough syrup in a year. When they get a jag they are dead to the world for 24 hours. Police say the drugs are worse than marijuana. The youngsters are also using a drug they inject into their arms and the U.S. is trying to tighten the drug act. Only try? Just do it. ---    The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Sunday blue laws in the State of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Does this mean that no Sunday baseball games are allowed in the three states? ---    Good news for the Iron Range, some of the ore mines are opening up. This will help solve the labor situation, which is one of the worst in the U.S. ---    If you know of anyone who has hay fever, tell them that Honeywell of Minneapolis has just what they need. The little machine will take the pollen, smoke, dirt and odor out of the average room in 15 minutes. Then move it to another room. They cost $229.00. ---    Here’s one that could happen to you. A lady was driving north of St. Peter. Her purse jiggled off the seat. While it could not get out, the dame reached down to pick up the purse. It took 3 seconds, not long, but 3 seconds are too long to take your eyes off the road. Her car went over the white line and they both went to the garage, with damages of $375.00. ---    Some of the states that have 3 percent sales tax have some exceptions. In some states sales under 25 cents are exempt, other states have a 50 cent limit. This will take care of “The poor man’s loaf” of bread. ---    Here’s a margarine that can be used on any farm table. It is called Fleischman’s Margarine and it is 100 percent golden corn oil. ---    An angry mother living near Meridan in Waseca county notified the sheriff after rubbing the hands and putting cold cloths on her son’s head, after a drunken party that brought a fine of $50 to two young men and a 20 year old woman and jail sentence of 30 days to 3 young men, two of them twins. See what a mother can do when she gets her dander up. ---    If you are interested in polio the Salk vaccine is one of the best preventives known. According to the U.S. Health Service statistics, the vaccine is 90 percent effective with 3 shots and better still with four shots. The polio season will soon be here: again we say see your doctor. ---    If you are interested in Ford stock you can buy some at the end of June. The company is selling 2,750,000 shares. The company wants cash to purchase more diversified investments: seems as if all the big companies want to spread out. ---    Sears company, the biggest in the world, has its off day, too. Its net sales fell 15 percent for the first quarter of 1961. The weather and an early Easter are blamed--its gross sales were over 900 million and 15 percent of that amount is a lot of money.
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June 15, 1961
   The coming of the dry mixed drink is here and it is exceeding that of the bottle goods. Both of them put out enough to float battleships. Popular in the summer days is a round ball bigger than a nickel. It has citric acid, etc., and a color. Fair example of the citric group is this label, “Artificial grape flavor, artificial grape color.” ---    New Richmond, Wisconsin has a local custom that has a firm hold on the hearts of its residents. The names of all its soldier dead are published in the News. It has veterans starting with the Mexican War, but every name is brought back to memory of the folks at home. Places of where the boys were sleeping, whether abroad or home. The Legion is in charge of the list at New Richmond. We notice that the Civil War had about sixty dead. ---    Here’s the start of a real feud. South Africa nominated 64 white persons on the school boards and not one of them can speak the English language. You’d think they would unite instead of encouraging the black. Johannesburg’s majority is now a minority. Bitter trouble has been brewing for years. ---    Cars seem to be slow this year compared to last. Here are the figures: Chevrolet 1960 839,000, 1961 537,200; Ford 1960 499,000 and in 1961 345,000 and the rest from 30 per cent up. The Lincoln rose from 10,000 to 12,000 in ‘61. Must still be some money left in the country. ---    Here’s the way the village council of Baldwin, Wisconsin talks: “Second Notice to Dog Owners: Dogs must be tied up and kept on your premises or they will be taken and destroyed - and WE MEAN IT.” ---    Even a member of the U.S. Supreme Court changes his ideas about the law. A year ago Justice Douglas got in an auto accident and sued the man for $35,000 in Maryville, Maryland. The jury gave the judge $1,932. The joke was on the justice: he could have had $3,000 if he had settled. He’ll be known more about this case than any of the big ones: most of us can understand this one. ---    The next thing on the agenda seems to be a county soft drink license. It has just been proposed in Blue Earth County. It’s a round about way to get at the places that sell set-ups. A soft drink license that would take in every vending machine should do right well. ---    Remember the days when the people on branch railroad lines used to fight to hold the service. Mankato is going through the same motions now to hold its plane service. The minimum is five a day and they don’t always get that. The slogan of the plane company is “Use It or Lose It.” ---    FOR LADIES ONLY: Say gals, here’s the biggest piece of news you’ve heard in many a year. At least that is what a DuPont official did last week. The girdle is made from Spandex - a new synthetic. Spandex can stretch better than rubber - nearly twenty times better. ---    Morrell, butcher cattle dealer, is having his share of bad luck. It is almost tragic. The earnings in the first half of 1961 were 90 percent lower than those of 1960. That’s a real drop in business. ---    They have a quaint custom in Johannesburg, Africa, even if the city has over a million people. In the marriage columns of the Times, after getting through with the newly weds come the announcements of Golden Weddings, Silver Weddings, Pearl Weddings, Coral Weddings, etc. and you can’t say you forgot it. ---    Here’s the way Waseca settled its band argument. The city gave the high school band the other three months--the band will be known as the Waseca Municipal Band and now peace reigns supreme; also noticed the city rented a Ford car for a police car for $120 a month. ---    Harry Truman has a contract for a 26 hour T.V. shows. Don’t miss him: he’s the best in the All American Political Show. ---    Over in London technicians shoot supersonic waves through containers of fresh milk, then freeze the milk to preserve it. Thus treated, the milk will keep for over eighteen months. When thawed out it will return to its original color and flavor. ---    You folks who are bitter against Communism, look how your U.S. Supreme Court stands. The U.S. wanted the Communists to reveal their records. They objected and our U.S. Supreme Court vote was only five to four in favor. ---    You’ve heard of a man drinking like a fish. We come near that, we have a Professor Lockeed that can talk with porpoises. He says they are smartest thing in fish life. Their alphabets consist of seventeen different letters and they look awful happy when they do their tricks by themselves. First thing you know they’ll be wanting to vote. ---    Uncle Sam is hard up for cash and is selling over one billion dollars in short term bill issues. You have a right to bid on the new term bills, only you’ve got to buy $18,000 worth. ---    This Federal food stamp plan is rather interesting. First of all you’ve got to buy them if you are hard up. an unemployed miner at Virginia had $59. For his $59 he received $86 worth of Federal food coupons which are good at local stores and the first thing Mrs. Smith bought was a fourteen pound turkey. It won’t be 100 per cent popular; you’ve got to pay cash for coffee. ---    Here’s the latest in newspaper circles. The Wall Street Journal is using facsimile transmission on sending pages of its newspaper through the air for a thousand miles -- saves time, help and money. ---    Here’s the latest in robots: a new device can lay 900 bricks in an hour, more bricks than a brick layer can lay in a whole day. Looks as if men were on their way out. They’ll still be needed as fathers for another generation or two. ---    Up near Humboldt, close to the border, the Midwestern Gas Co. has just completed it own radio tower to complete messages between pumping stations on the big pipe line of this concern, which carries natural gas and complies with both U.S. and Canadian laws. By relaying messages they talk to the other end of the line at Portland, Tennessee. ---    There is quite a drouth area in northern Minnesota and the Kittson county paper said this last week, “Crops are in such a bad condition that if rain does not come soon, some will be ruined.” The grain got a good start but now the topsoil moisture is depleted. ---    What shape is your car in? Notice they tested autos in Grafton N.D. on two different nights and ten per cent were bad. ---    Youths from Warren and East Grand Forks fought again over the age old question, “Who is to have the girls?” While the battle was shaping up the law arrived, so the girls are in glee. When a woman gets two men fighting over her she wouldn’t change place with Mickey Mantle. ---    See where an eastern doctor advocates putting the father in jail if his son does not get his polio shots. Why put the father in jail? In spite of them being a little shorter, Ma is still wearing ‘em. All she has to do is to tell Pa to take Johnny down to the doctor.
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June 22, 1961
   Big Business Again: A group of crooks has issued more than $500,000 in counterfeit bonds of the State of Ohio highway bonds. The fake bonds were represented as carrying 3 1/2 per cent interest. About thirty persons are involved in two counterfeit cases. You’ve often wondered what became of Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson: here they are, but in today’s style they don’t carry guns or wear ten-gallon hats. ---    Every year a cougar is seen in Waseca County at early spring time. A farmer’s wife called her husband last week and pointed at a tawny animal in a nearby field, said “That can’t be a deer, it has a long tail.” The cougar heard and it went into a crouch like a cat and then crept out of sight. The cougar has not been accused of doing any damage to live stock: could be on a liquid diet. ---    The State Bank of New Richmond, Wisconsin stands high in the hearts of the dairy men. June is “Dairy Month” and the bank will serve milk free in its lobby during the entire month. ---    Jet engines are reaching into new fields. One of the big fire engines in San Francisco is being driven by a 335 pound jet. They are used to help drill wells, pump natural gas, etc., and in using natural gas, saving truck or fly-in fuel. ---    Here’s something unusual. Ellendale has two veterinarians. Dr. A. Folstad and Dr. B. I. Folstad are man and wife. Both are graduates of the Minnesota U. ---    Dealers in tire chains, guard rails, metal pipe, etc. in Ohio evidently belong to the same lodge. The governor sends 2,479 identical bids that he had received on those items to the federal Justice Department at Washington, D.C. for investigation. These bids were on state highway purchases. ---    Airplane companies chided Mankato for not using planes. There’s two sides to this plane travel. Mrs. Ted Hill came down from Brainerd by plane one day last week and we asked her what it cost. She said $11. Passengers shouldn’t have to buy the plane. ---    The Kuehn and Rohdes Company of Abilene, Texas are finishing a real job near Erskine in Polk County. The hole to start with is five hundred feet deep and when they get down that far they were to start excavating a cavern that was to hold three hundred thousand barrels of propane gas for the Solar Gas Company. The hole was 64 inches across. They drill the dirt out with a 54 inch drill, then ream it out. A crew of seventy men came from Texas to do the cavern work. The curbing is of steel pipe and is an inch thick. ---    The Plaza Hotel at Durban on the Indian Ocean in its adv. says among many other things that it has eighty-eight items on its menu and good garaging. ---    Out of state visitors are special guests at one northern Minnesota city. They receive special courtesy parking tags from the police and the tag is taken up by the Chamber of Commerce. ---    A new law covering the sale of soft drinks, to regulate the set-up, is going to cost the soft drink vending machine soft drink dealer and the county some extra money. The new law means supervision. You can’t sell soft drinks as a mix without a state license (and the new county license). ---    And here’s another type of a band. Up at International Falls it gets some funds from the city and in an article the band leader says the band will be glad to play for concerts, parades, etc. for any civic organization in the city. ---    Nevada is the free and easy state in the union. It is the only state where gambling of any kind is legal and its laws admit questionable concerns. Some of the 9,000 concerns whose official records are kept at Carson City do no business in the state. Over 2,000 companies were registered in Nevada in the last eighteen months. There is no income tax in Nevada, no inheritance taxes. To give you an idea how the woolly west state is run, one lawyer in Carson City represents 288 corporations. The income from gambling and the sales tax and gas tax keeps the state going. Divorces? You never hear them mentioned. We’re living in days “When a woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke.” ---    The chicken market in the east took its worst jolt last wee. In some of the midwest cities chicken broilers sold for 9 cents a pound, so you can see that the farmer did not get much for his flock. ---    One bank in northern Minnesota has its finger on the pulse of all farm activities and crops. It hired the former county agent as Agricultural Representative and he covers two counties with a fine tooth comb. The bank can look at its map and see what sections need rain, those that have too much, where efforts are made to control weeds. In fact everything about the farmers: the good ones and the poor ones and the sections suited for the different kinds of grain. A sort of an all-seeing eye, and it’s a good idea. ---    That cigar you’re smoking most likely was made in Puerto Rico. More eastern factories are being closed and Puerto Rico is producing 500 million cigars annually. Consolidated Cigar Company will discharge 700 workers in July from a plant that has been operating steadily since before the Civil War. ---    Sportsmen have been busy of late in Nicollet County. Committees from Sportsmen’s Clubs are hunting in the alfalfa fields for eggs from deserted pheasant nests and putting them in incubators. ---    While the new minimum wage law does not hit the farmer, it hurts just the same as men change to other lines. Last year the government said the farmer paid ninety cents an hour. Out in California where union organizers are active, farm wages now average $1.22 an hour. The hyphen in Farm-Labor is almost played out: too bad the farmers can’t organize too. ---    King Feigner and his gang are playing Northern Minnesota. Too bad he doesn’t make Southern Minnesota. Eddie is the greatest wizard in the history of softball. He throws strikes from behind his back, from underneath his legs and while wearing a blindfold. He pitched 1,852 games and lost only 154. He has pitched 356 no-hit games and 687 shutouts. He has struck out 2,428 batters: some Eddie. ---    You’ll want to take a peek at this one. It’s about the largest self propelled machine ever to move on the surface of the earth. It is a 7,000 ton shovel and it is used in stripping and other phases of coal mining in Western Kentucky. The boom of the shovel rises twenty stories above the ground and is capable of ripping loose 173 tons of rock, earth, etc. at a single bite, two thirds more than any other shovel. It takes 250 cars to move it. The new queen is to lay bare a 65 million ton mine near Paradise, Kentucky and will cut the price of coal from $4.73 a ton to $2.95 a ton. The company has to pay the United Mine Workers forty cents on every ton and it will keep more than that for itself. It is the biggest tourist attraction in the state. ---    Kids are not near as smart as they were seventy years ago. In those days it only took three months’ school each winter to educate them (at least that’s all the country kids got), now they need ten months. There were no paper tablets, slates were used. You carried your lessons home on your slates. Didn’t always work out. Ed Engebretson, trying to get an extra month’s school, came to Slayton one winter. He was carrying home his slate after school when a city slicker, Frank Morse, took after him, grabbed his slate and rubbed snow all over it and Ed had no problems: there were juvenile delinquents in those days, too. ---    We Yanks are the fightingest people in the world or perhaps we like to see body contact T.V. better than any other nation and yet we have not got a white prize fighter that amounts to much. O! for the days of Bob Fitzsimmons, John L. Sullivan, Kilran, etc.
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June 29, 1961
   The greatest pest the farmer has in New Zealand, strange to say, is the opossum. There are so many that a bounty is paid on them. Or they are killed with poisoned bait. Farmers are afraid the government will withdraw the bounty. We read the article in the Auckland News thoroughly but were unable to discover just what, when and where the possums were doing damage. We plenty of possums in eleven states in the U.S., but we never heard of any damage wrought. ---    What will be the longest auto tunnel in the world has just been started in Europe. It will be seven and 2/10ths miles long. French and Italian engineers are working to meet each other. A tunnel that long has one real problem: monoxide gas. How to get fresh air into the tunnel and keep it fresh. A breakdown in this machinery would be deadly. The French have an enormous drilling machine: it bores 140 holes thirteen feet deep in five minutes. The holes are packed full of dynamite. The debris is packed on a narrow gauge railroad and taken to the mouth of the tunnel. The toll will be $9.00 for a medium sized auto. ---    For several years, smoked turkey has been the top delicacy for a lot of people and it should as it costs around $1.80 a pound. A new turkey dainty has lately come on the market. A German butcher at Melrose grinds raw turkey flesh, seasons it, then stuffs it into sausage links. It needs a little boiling before it is fried--then it is tops. ---    A large number of the really big companies are compelling their top officials to take physical check-ups each year and they must change doctors. The companies have too much money invested in flesh and blood not to look after it. One eastern firm sends over 200 employees and officials to Mayo at Rochester every year. A Boston clinic charges $175.00 for a three day examination. ---    Had a pleasant visit with Vincent Harmsen the other day. He gave us a full report of things in the village where we lived so long. No baseball, he said, but a softball league this summer. ---    “Belts in automobiles” grows daily. In one count in Indiana, over 5,500 motorists bough safety belts for their cars last year. How much safety does the belt give? A study showed just as many small bruises and bumps, but they reduced the number of deaths and serious accidents by 35 per cent. Main purpose of them is to keep from being thrown out on the pavement, where most of the deaths occur. ---    This must be cougar year in Minnesota. Notice they have been seen in Rock County in the South, Grand Marais in the North and in Waseca County in the center. Cougar have been called the American Lion, the panther and the puma. They have the most blood curdling shriek of any of the cats. One lady on the Gunflint Trail said it made her skin creep when the cougar shrieked south of the house; the man said his hair stood straight up. In spite of all those fierce names and blood curdling yells the cougar does not attack human beings. ---    When you see youngsters twirl that baton, see the wide open spaces. Here’s what happened to a fourteen year old twirler in Ventura, California. He twirled it so high that it struck two 4,000 volt power lines, with these consequences: a ten block area of the city was blacked out for an hour, a grass fire was started and a radio station knocked off the air. If you must twirl, seek the wide open places. ---    What a grand bunch of youngsters they must have at Waseca. They arranged a benefit for the hospital, with fortune tellers, fish ponds and home-made lemonade. We admire that type of juvenile delinquency. Grand thing for the kids, too. It gives them something to do. Every town has a bunch of kids that should imitate. ---    Sleepy Eye had a three-day celebration recently without a parade. The chairman said he could not beg or borrow enough bands or floats to make a decent showing. It has come to the time when bands, whether high school or municipal, should get together on the old adage, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” A good band is a real asset to any city. ---    The Department of Agriculture is going to stop Mexico from dumping all her small size tomatoes on this country. All tomatoes must be 1 7/8 inch in diameter or they go down the drain. ---    Here’s something that should have been out years ago. It is a talking Bible. To people hard of hearing--and that takes in a lot--how many people go to church and hear every word the pastor says? With this new record book, you can play your favorite sections of the Bible so you can hear every word and the record is played slowly. More people will listen to their favorite sermons who seldom go to church. ---    Freeman is not going over so well with his farm program and the Democrats offer to cut his power. ---    Have you a good nose not to look at but a good smeller? If so, your Uncle Sam wants you and he will train you. He wants men who can detect spoiled batches of frozen eggs. Science cannot determine if there are rotten eggs in those batches. The new smellers must go to smelling schools. Holes are drilled in frozen eggs and then the smeller takes a whiff. Strange things are done these days. The agent said age makes no difference to smelling. Neither does sex--some women years ago could smell John Barleycorn a mile away. ---    Young man, move to Illinois. If you do slip over the line and get thirty days or more, a group of industrial companies in the state, such as G.E., Ill. Inland Steel, Caterpillar Tractor, Abbott Laboratories and some more have agreed to take the young man and give him another chance. Why don’t you hear of a female business group offering to give the girl another chance? The only answer she gets to her plea is “Move,” and it always comes from another female: the sex from which affection, pity and kindness springs, and strange to say these females are voted as leaders in the community and so-called pillars of the church. ---    The owner of a supermarket in Wisconsin has an ad in the local paper. It reads, “In order to be with our family during vacation days we are closing our store on Saturday afternoons.” ---    If brevity is the soul of wit, this citizen should be a B.A. He appeared before the city council of Winona and said, “Do something about our water. The stuff that comes out of the faucet ain’t fit for a hag to drink.” ---    Talk about the U.S. being in a depression. Last year more English-made Rolls Royces and Bentleys were sold than the year before. They are the top luxury cars and sell for around $25,000. ---    The day may come when a blood test will tell you what you should eat so you can keep healthy. Wouldn’t that be grand, then you would know what not to eat. ---    President Kennedy is dropping lower in popularity each day, due to his physical ailment. Americans don’t want their leaders to be impaired. Look how Ike dropped when he had that heart attack. ---    Old Dog Tray don’t need to trail Mother Hubbard to the cupboard to get him a bone. Just give him a quarter and he will find one of those new vending machines. They have dog foods of various kinds and flavors. ---    When that little girl of yours comes running home from school all excited over something, give her half a tranquilizer tablet. It does the business. Tranquilizers help too when the little one balks at going to school. ---    Seems every lake must have reefs in it to be a good fishing lake. You can make a dandy fishing lake of yours with plenty of reefs. Next winter get all the auto carcasses you can find and plant them on top of the ice where you want the reefs. Don’t laugh: it works. Off the coast of Santa Barbara 120 old auto bodies were planted last year. ---    Not so many folks are going abroad this season. Jet liners are leaving for Europe with extra seats. Last year you had to speak a month ahead for a seat. ---    Grand thing to have a daughter on Father’s Day. You know where you are going to get a swell dinner that day. We did at Mrs. Ray Elias’. Nola, who was also a guest, left the next day for her home in San Francisco. She was accompanied as far as Denver by Mrs. Elias, where they visited at the James B. Forrest home.
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July 6, 1961
   The drought in North Dakota started the gambling on the flax crop. In the Minneapolis market last week it took a jump of twenty cents a bushel: a real boost in the grain crop. Looks like someone is trying to corner the crop. Half of the 1960 flax crop was raised in North Dakota. Flax is now $3.40 a bushel. ---    Here’s an ad we plucked from a South African paper that you could not insert in any United States paper: Copper Bracelet Cure--Rheumatism, Lumbago, Arthritis and Muscular Pains in all parts of the body. A wonderful relief with the wonder Swiss Aid Copper armlet (worn on arm). Famous film stars, politicians, and people from all over the world use this wonder pain relieving armlet. Don’t suffer any longer. Only 15 shillings -- Swiss Aids. Durban. ---    The best walleyed pike lake in Minnesota is Rainy Lake. The catch is nearly three times larger in Rainy than any other lake. The chemical compound of Rainy indicates a fairly good fertility in regard to total nitrogen content. Pretty popular lake, too. Last year there were 1,521 boats registered in International Falls and 2,326 boats just across the river in Fort Francis. ---    Renting autos ran up against a snag last wee. Fines over $40.00 have been chalked up against rented cars for violations of the parking laws and the company that owns the cars will have to pay the bill. ---    It’s getting harder for youths to get a drivers license. The parents who signed the application are held responsible for his carelessness. Over in Stirling before a youngster can drive he goes to the police station and a police instructor in uniform goes out with him; not a bad idea as it also places some responsibility on the police force. ---    Do you know how to keep a room cool? We thought we did. Directions say point your fan out the window. Keep every window open at night and closed in the daytime and put one fan in the corner and pointed upward: it keeps the air in motion. Drink lots of water and take lots of salt with your food. ---    Lake Shetek is coming into its own and the picture in the Herald of Oscar Beal and his Valhalla Marine is just a start. Got a kick out of Maple Island as it was born in this column. One day we went visiting Charles Durgin and he was telling us that in the early days three men came over to the island and told that at one time there were three maples on what is now the Lutheran Park grounds. The name sounded better to us than Keeley Cure Island so we used it in the column and it was finally legally named by County Commissioner G. Carlson. ---    Four new cigarettes have been put on the market of late for you to try. “Shopente” came out last month with a brand new manufacturer. Main thing about this newcomer is they will sell for 40 cents a carton less than the well known brands. ---    The late lamented legislature is being lambasted from one end of the state to the other for its failure to redistrict. ---    The Junior Chamber of Commerce of International Falls for the third year is sponsoring an adult polio clinic. ---    Fifteen years ago Minnesota’s tourist bureau gave the state the name “The Land of the Sky Blue Waters” and here we thought it was Hamm’s Beer. ---    There’s a new drug just out that will make you well again. It is called “Novacain” and is said to restore vigor and cure chronic diseases. It softens hardening of the arteries, grows fuzz on bald heads and melts arthritis, etc. Who was the guy looking for land of perpetual youth: “It’s here.” Of course you’ll have to get the permission before you can peddle the stuff. Watch for “Novacain” or “H 3”. ---    When those big companies have their annual meeting, there always seems to be a shareholder there with a pointed question. The Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company has 4,351 stores and one shareholder present said the secretary of the company has only 22 shares and he made a motion that every officer must have 100 shares. A woman wanted to elect a woman on the board which was ridiculous. Directors in these days are not elected because they have big names, sex or color of their hair, but what they now about merchandise. ---    If you’re a man and want to be cool, wear short sleeved sport shirts. Leave the collar open and wear the shirt outside the belt, if you don’t forget it. Why don’t those experts tell a woman what to wear? ---    Got to take your hat off to Grand Marais, county seat of Cook County. It has a population of 1,078. It raised a fund of $8,000 to send the Cook County High School Band to Atlantic City. The population of the county is 3,100. ---    Game warden Bill Saarl was fired recently by the Commissioner of Conservation. Charges came over the sale of some venison. Charges were worked up by Lester Borning, the game warden in Murray County. Bill says he does not know whether Borning conducted the investigation or whether requested by the department. What difference does it make? ---    Here is another freak of nature that is hard to understand. No one has ever seen a moose with only one left horn. They always lose the left horn first. ---    This is the gloomiest year for potato growers in the history of the Red River Valley. Everybody put in too many spuds and 1,000 potato growers attending a meeting were told by W. S. Dean, president, that the present prices were the lowest known. This is the third year in succession that too many potatoes have been planted. ---    Fuel, that is bottled gas, is at the lowest price it has been for seven years. Warm weather in many parts of the United States last winter left a billion gallons on hand as of last week; over 340 million gallons more than a year ago. Propane, one of the new gases, is lower than it was last year. ---    Kline, former mayor of Minneapolis and who was found guilty of robbing the Sister Kenny Polio Fund, did a wonderful job in killing public interest in the fund. The fund drive is “only” 85 per cent short of its goal and Kline is still out of jail. ---    The dry weather took an awful toll of trees planted this year in some sections of Northern Minnesota. One farmer planted 1,200 young elm and only 14 remain. Grasshoppers were thick and the authorities sprayed the roads to help kill them and that stopped the farmers from getting the roadside feed for the cows, which was sorely needed. ---    Spiegel, the third largest mail order house, is out with a brand new idea. It’s going into the drug business. If you have a prescription, send it in to them and they will fill it without profit. Another form of advertising. “We call it a service to our customers with a savings from $20.00 to $40.00 a year.” Druggists and the American Medical Association are not in favor of the Spiegel plan. ---    They have migraine headaches in South Africa, too. At least that’s what Ann Wise, a sort of an Abigail in the Johannesburg,. So. Africa Times says, as she received over seventy-two letters from sufferers with aid. All of them seemed to be against smells, two of them included dead mule smells. Last advice on the list was for cows: “Two tablets that looked like aspirin tablets and two teaspoons of vinegar every half hour.” The man added, “I got this from a vet who actually prescribed it for a cow. It seemed to relieve her and I tried it and it worked on me.” One man said, “Try whiskey,” another said, “Don’t be crazy wasting good Scotch on a cow.”
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July 13, 1961
   British cars have been taking an awful beating this year. Last year up to this time 95,000 cars had been received. Up to June 1st only 7,000. ---    Sears Roebuck keeps going ahead at a rapid pace in Central America. Its new plan of boosting sales of goods manufactured in the various sections is making friends--it should. In Mexico and Brazil 98 per cent of goods sold by Sears are made locally. In Peru, 22 per cent, etc. How large can Sears get? ---    And talk of odd customs, here’s a new one. The Moose Lake Gazette prints two weekly issues of the paper on the same day. Jack Griffin, who used to edit the Iona Journal and afterward worked for us, told us that after a week’s vacation he changed the date line, ran off enough papers and continued his vacation. ---    Wheelchair riders have it mighty lucky in New York. There are taxi cabs made for the wheel chair folks: you wheel up a little ramp, the driver shuts you in and the first thing you know you are visiting a group of your friends of long ago. ---    Seldom has the labor union taken the beating it got in California where it tried unionizing the farm workers. After 2 years of hard work, all the union canvassers were able to get was 3,500 out of a potential 250,000. If it had won, Labor planned on trying to get 11 other states. ---    Germany has changed a lot since the war. Young folks are leaving the farms in droves and hiking for Berlin and how are you going to keep..., etc. A lot of the potatoes and sugar beets rotted in the ground last fall: that isn’t like Germany, one of the thriftiest and best fighting nations in the world. ---    Women are still in the railroad business. We notice that Mrs. Frank Burkhalter took over the duties of depot agent at West Concord last week. ---    The tomato plants are lifted into the big long trucks in California. They are shaken gently. It must work, as 12 men do the work of 60. These 12 men act as sorters, with chutes leading to trucks alongside. Some of these new machines cost $12,000. ---    The people around Ortonville still believe in rain makers and have signed up for this season. Last year they raised over $7,000 and were apparently well satisfied. The rain makers committee consists of 600 subscribers, mostly farmers. Some of them live in South Dakota. Some folks laugh at them. Don’t do it. Scientists can make rain. Trouble is that it does not always fall on the designated spot and that causes friction among the donors. ---    Those Jaycees are a versatile bunch. Over in Waseca the J.C.’s are collecting old clothing and rags to be sent the needy in the cities. Several depots have been designated where donors can leave their bundle. ---    If you are interested in photography you’ll be reading about a new unit that will print snapshots in five seconds in daylight and costs less than $10. ---    Mankato seems to have a big “Welcome” sign out for females and males with bad checks. Can you imagine that over 4,000 bad checks have been cashed up to date in 1961. The business men can’t be too inquisitive. Many checks that bounce back, no operator can remember who cashed them. Makes it hard on police and sheriff. About 50 percent of the checks passed are repeaters. The court just doesn’t hit them hard enough. ---    Here’s another odd custom. a headline in the Barnum Herald reads, “Bible School Starts with Parade Saturday.” ---    The Farmer’s Almanac which was started by Benjamin Franklin 150 years ago is still going strong. As of 1961 it has 1,600,000 subscribers. ---    If you drink strong liquor and go a-visiting in Iowa, where it is cheaper than in Minnesota, don’t bring more than a quart back with you. It’s against the law, the liquor commission says. ---    Remember we told you about Rainy Lake last week. Here’s another feather for its cap. A member of a Tyler Texas fishing party last week caught a 75 pound fish with a hook and line. It was a sturgeon and was 65 inches long. He was going to have it smoked--nothing better, but be careful not to have any sturgeon fat near the frying pan. It is obnoxious. ---    We do see odd things in the papers. Alabama has a 3 cent sales tax and a bill is now before the legislature to excuse Bibles from the 3 cent tax. ---    Mass public use of the new Sabin oral vaccine was recommended by the American Medical Society. It said it presents a unique opportunity to eliminate polio as a significant problem. Interesting and significant words to many a parent. ---    Can you guess how they harvest tree fruits and nuts in California? Here’s one method. A canvas floor is set up under the tree. A huge pea shooter is set up and a five pound weight is shot at the tree and the impact jars the fruit loose. Another method is a vibrator. A long boom can reach around the tree, grab each big branch and vibrate the fruit and nuts to the canvas. Anything to get away from human labor which is sky high in California. ---    Your old friend the Saturday Evening Post is going up 25 percent in September. The new price will be 20 cents. It is now 15 cents. ---    If you go north fishing and can get a small bear gun, take it with you. A couple has a cabin in Bancroft Bay close to the border. While in town they bought a picnic ham. They put it in a pot and when it started boiling they had company. ‘Twas a big mama bear and they could not drive her away. It all added zest to camping life, but too much is too much and they had to kill the poor bear because she got too inquisitive. ---    If you are planning on buying some furniture, do it now. Most of the big furniture companies are located in the south. The president of the Shaw Manufacturing Company at Charlotte, North Carolina, says “We have not had an increase in prices in 18 months,” while their costs have increased. ---    There is no such a thing as a Sunday closing law in New Jersey. The supers headed by the A&P joined the busy throng and now the grocery stores are open seven days a week.
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July 20, 1961
   Some of the big county fairs are cutting down on their programs. One of them, Waseca, only has one afternoon program and that of Sunday afternoon. ---    Ford employees want to know when they are going to close certain plants and when it is going to open others. The union also demanded that General Motors pay the full cost of health insurance. You’ll be paying more for that car next year. ---    Biggest business outfit in the U.S. was General Motors with over $12 billion. Company with highest profit of over 14% and the lowest profit paid was well known Lockheed Plane concern, which disbursed two-tenths of one per cent of sales. ---    The drought has brought up Lake Superior as an answer to any dry problem that we may have, but it costs a half a million dollars a mile and even if we had the money Lake Superior water is not for us as we checked Chicago from taking over. ---    Jack Puterbaugh, who was appointed Chief of Police of Minneapolis by the new mayor, jumped on the stage with the Stars and Stripes in one hand, a scared grin on his face, tells of his law-breaking adventures. His drivers auto license was suspended for two years but he kept on driving just the same. He also admitted being arrested by Minneapolis police and booked. He also said he was arrested for speeding, but “Paid my fine like any other good citizen.” ---    Up to the minute burglars moved into Mankato last week. They used walkie-talkie radios, so the gang could be informed of the movements of the police. The police got one of the gang, they think, but is it a crime for a man to have a walkie-talkie radio? ---    No, the woman does always pay the full price. A few years ago a farmer’s wife near Albert Lea got mixed up with the hired hand and the husband had to go. They bought a pint of whiskey, put some poison in it, and put it below the front seat of the auto. Ma knew just where he kept it. They both went shopping and bought the poison. They set the trap for the loving husband, but fate willed that another would be the victim. Both Mrs. Gavle and lover were found guilty. The man going to Stillwater and the woman to Shakopee. The state pardon board cut the woman’s sentence last week and she will be out in a few years. We met Mrs. Gavle some years ago. Visited with her and what a wonderful woman she is. Quiet and reserved and no restraint. The man is in Stillwater and the board never mentioned him. Gavle visits his wife quite often. He knows where she is now. ---    Brazil coffee growers are trying to get world powers, including the U.S., into an agreement on prices. Isn’t that what the electric magnates were doing, and some of them went to jail. ---    A lady lives along the west Kabetogama Road, it is up north, a fine place to live any time, if it is a little wild. Mrs. Bauman bought a couple of piglets. They were her pride and joy. As she watched them cavort in the little pen she made for them, she heard a noise, saw a lean black bear trying to get in the pen. It left but came back more brazen than ever, so she took the rifle and shot it dead. Variety is the spice of life. ---    Turkey growers pulled a boner in the U.S. last year. They will raise 85 million more turkeys than they have since 1942. We can all afford a turkey some night during the season. ---    The U.S. must be a non-thinking nation. A passenger pulled a knife in a plane, threatened to do bodily harm. When the plane landed he was arrested and the law found out there was no fine for raising heck on a plane. What would have happened if he’d killed a passenger? ---    This will make a lot of people squirm. You cannot be sure that you are going to get the Sabin oral vaccine as it is scarce. So the medical folks are advising that you start on the Salk vaccine. If you need shots, don’t wait. ---    Here’s a new idea that sounds mighty good to us. Use paint in designating streets. Have all streets going north colored yellow, all south streets painted red, etc. ---    If you have a cud of chewing gum in your mouth, throw it out when you go into the water. A 20 year old youth had gum in his mouth, took a dive in seven feet of water, choked on the gum and he went down and out for a few minutes. If you hate to lose it, give it to somebody to hold. ---    While many farmers lost all of their crops by drouth, it was not a total loss as they were insured for $30 million. North Dakota is not so bad off. She gets $20 million. ---    There never has been a time since the Tin Lizzie that you needed to be more careful than you do now. It’s getting so if you get your license revoked in your own state you can get someone to drive your car across the state line so you can drive. You’re not going to be able to do that with some states next year. ---    Fire insurance companies are busy these nights and days. Arson is a temptation and more are tempted this year than there were last. ---    Mr. and Mrs. Harold Steven and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Jacobson, formerly of Slayton, visited us one day last week. The group was cheerful and how good for us to meet with young folks that we had known all our lives. ---    The St. James enforcement officials are going into high speed against tough youngsters. The policy is now to hold the parents for all damages done by the juveniles. The “Teen Room” has been closed. Here’s what the council said, “Parents who do not assume their responsibility should regretfully be called on the carpet and if facts warrant they should be prosecuted.” ---    The Coronet, one of the brightest of the small pocket magazines, goes out of business next October, so Esquire, Inc. reported last week. The Curtis Publishing Company and the Readers Digest have purchased the Coronet’s subscription list. The Coronet has 2,312,000 subscribers and the management has tried everything to make it pay. There were also 810,000 sold at the stands. The Coronet was losing $600,000 a year. ---    The public changes its tastes quite often. The directors of the Hilton Hotel at Cincinnati, Ohio, one of the big ones, has a fancy dining room and an ice skating rink on the eighth floor, which will be replaced by a swimming pool. You’ll be seeing some of the big apartment houses with pools next year. ---    It’s hard for a lot of people to imagine the steps of big business. The Bell System added 550,000 telephones to its systems in the second quarter of 1961.
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July 27, 1961
   We are still interested in medicine and medical men. You would too if you had the same introduction. We come of medicine stock (both my father and grandfather were Edinburgh students). It came to us when were nine years old when our father said, “Take this note down to the apothecary shop.” We did. There were several shelves with glass jars from a pint size up to a quart, filled with something dark grey. He gave me one. It was a huge leech. Those were back in the bleeding days when you were bled for everything. And the leech was soon reducing some body’s supply of blood. ---    Mankato merchants had a Krazy Day last week and among other pranks was an authentic flag that flew from the Blue Earth County Court House. It was no more of a prank as was the Stars and Bars of the erstwhile Confederate States. It takes a long time for some folks to forget. ---    Are we facing war? Why is the U.S. calling up the Reserves? Who are we going to fight? Why don’t they tell you and me about it? If JFK calls up a million men--good times are just around the corner. ---    If you like peaches you’ll be glad to know that there are a lot of them in our southern states. Last year Georgia peaches were 12 cents a pound: this season 8 cents. ---    Here’s something new in advertising. McCalls now has over eight million subscribers and has made no raise in rates. ---    This English girl should have a blacksmith shop for a powder room. Miss C. Stardeen limped into a police station in Christchurch, England and said she wanted to borrow a hammer to straighten out her leg--even the police were sympathetic. The young lady who was 22 lost a leg when she was youngster and showing legs don’t make her blush. ---    The country is just packed with potatoes and to show you how the wind blows, farmers in June sold their potatoes for $1.69 a hundred; last year they brought $2.31. Of course you can make good alcohol out of them, that’s what they used to say in western Murray County a while back. ---    Here’s a new insurance, “Death Only.” You’ve got to be killed by accident to win. It gives you day and night insurance from 16 to 64, $1.25 the thousand. The minimum policy $15,000. ---    Had a letter from a Murray County lady suggesting an article giving the names of the first settlers in each township. Trouble would be, how many names? They could easily be dug out of the records. Who is going to do the paying? How many people in Murray are descendants of the F.F. of Murray County? ---    And Mr Chairman, we move that the saying, “Money is the root of all evil,” be changed to, “The auto is the root of all evil.” How many men or women have driven for 20 years without having an accident of some kind. ---    More about leeches. Eighty years ago U.S. medical men imported their leeches from Russia, Bohemia and Germany. Not all leeches were of value for medical service. A French surgeon started a leech farm on the outskirts of Paris and raised enough to supply the Parisian doctors. ---    We need more taxes says the Governor of Texas: “...And I withdraw my opposition to more taxes.” He calls the legislature in special session to impose a two percent sales tax: and she has more oil than she knows what to do with. The sales tax will bring in $360 million. Texas is one of the few states that has neither a sales tax or income tax. ---    Wish we could get a chance to vote for Senator Kay Childs of Maynard for something. He suggested a payless extra session to redistrict the state. Minnesota needs more Childs. ---    Two southern states are a-feudin’. They are Florida and Georgia. They are the honest to goodness states’ rights. They put a tax on each other’s farm goods. Florida put an inspection fee of 1/8 cent a pound on poultry and Georgia came back with a tax of ten cents on each crate of citrus fruit. And Florida had a $10.00 per year tax on cigar vending machines. The prices to be raised to $50 a year. ---    Don’t put that little tot of yours out on the lawn without looking over the lawn. A Janesville woman did that. A minute after, she looked out the window and here the baby was gulping a big white toadstool or poisonous mushroom. It was not long before Ma had the little one in the hospital and had its stomach pumped out. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” ---    Franklin Rogers of Mankato is entitled to a bushel basket of orchids for his efforts in bringing together the people of Blue Earth County who are over twenty-five and unwed. First meeting the crowd was so large they had to move. Is it a success? Less than a year old, it has seven marriages to its credit. Franklin is Cupid in a business suit and he’s bringing a lot of shy and bashful folks together. No young gals can come and raid the parties and you’ve got to be over 25 to get in. ---    Good news was that from Federal authorities on the polio question which has a remarkably low locale. There were 237 in the first half of the year; in 1960 the total for the same period was 1,469. ---    They’ll be calling city manager of Newburg N.Y. Simon Legree. This is his welfare code. Limit relief funds to 3 months a year, half payments to able bodied men who won’t take jobs. Cut off unwed mothers who have other illegitimate children while on relief. Also ban anyone from relief who moved to the city without a job. ---    And there’s this one about the couple on their honeymoon. She took over early and said, “Now don’t go around and tell everyone we were just married.” At noon she said, “Did you tell everybody we were just married?” “I did not,” he answered. “I told them we were just friends.” ---    There are still some bold bad wicked women left in Duluth. Mrs. Amelia Pletcher got acquainted with Carl E. Anderson, or vice versa. She was 32, he was 83. He had over $10,000 when he met her last December: last week he had $1.98. She did the trimming in three months. He told the welfare folks and they put the woman in jail: even at 83 there’s no excuse for him losing his head. Amelia seemed to have taking ways--but it’s no joke for a man over 80. ---    The cougar is back to life again with a half column article in the Waseca Herald last week. It’s a real will of the wisp; we’re glad it is back so we can find out how to pronounce it. Some pronounce it coogar, others cougar. But it’s a beast you can’t hide under a bushel. It is eight feet long. If you saw it, you would not forget it. The theory now is that it escaped from some circus. ---    If there’s anything a city or village hates it’s a leak in a reservoir, especially before it is used. Mankato has one. It leaks 40,000 gallons a day. To sterilize the water takes 1,350 pounds of chlorine. ---    Girls who would like a pen pal from a real romantic spot, write this one. Pushpa-Kanta-Mania is an Indian girl of 18 interested in basketball, swimming and cycling. Her address is Penang, Sangam High School, Raki Raki Rafiji. ---    Kids that love to break laws, steal, etc. are not confined to slums of the larger cities. We notice that a gang of 11 kids were picked up by John Law. It was high time. Four of the boys entered the church last Sunday and stole 75 cents from the collection box. ---    Here’s a new party that could not be copied. A Golden Age picnic was held at Springfield recently and over 500 persons, all over fifty, had a real enjoyable day. There were German, Swedish & Norwegian numbers on the program as well as English. Coffee, cold drinks and watermelon were served by the Jaycees. ---    Next paper we took up was your Herald with a picture up in the left hand corner of the Slayton Jaycees seeing that 1,400 Murrayland folks received polio shots. JC’s do get around, don’t they? ---    The Board of County Commissioners in St. Croix County, Wis. needs one of the new bomb shelters. Last week it bought $40,000 worth of real estate with a “Yea and Nay” vote and the news is asking, why isn’t someone asking for a roll call? ---    Don’t forget to take out some trip insurance before you go a-visiting. With some companies you can get $7,500 for a week, for a dollar. ---    Up in Kittson County, one of the dry counties, the pastor of the Episcopalian church notified his flock that he was going to pray for rain the coming Sunday and asked them all to attend. He told them on Sunday that they evidently did not believe in prayer as not one of them brought an umbrella. ---    The county fair in the County of Kittson was hit hard by the drouth. Their grandstand shows were always crowded in the evening--were not all staged this season, and the Sunday show, when they raffled off the auto, was only half the regular show. All afternoon shows were called off. This county gives away an auto and four bicycles each year. ---    Farmers in the dry counties in Minnesota use a new method of baling hay. They sprinkle it with water, especially the alfalfa hay, to keep the leaves from falling off.
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August 3, 1961
   When the English speaking people talk about the “old country” they are just 100 per cent right. When the Duke of Kent married Miss Worsley last June, it was the first Royal wedding in York Cathedral since 1329. ---    The Janesville Chief of Police took too much under his belt one day recently, and the other policeman had to put him in the Waseca County jail; he resigned. He had been Chief of Police there for five years. ---    Here’s a real vacation for you if you are tough and hardy. A Michigan school teacher crossed the border at International Falls last week headed for Alaska, driving a two-wheeled scooter that has a 45 gasoline engine. He expected to get to Anchorage in five weeks. ---    “A doctor chum phoned me yesterday and said, ‘You print some terrible shaggy stories, how do you like this one? Two pigs were chatting and one pig said, “I must say you don’t look like a fool in a Homburg hat.” Said the other pig, “And I would look like a fool in a pork pie.”’ Terribly, terribly sorry.” Taken from the Johannesburg Times in Africa--Molly heads her column with “Love and Kisses.” ---    One of the machines or autos worth seeing is the one that travels on air, skipping over water or land on a cushion of air. The car or boat has a speed of 50 miles an hour. They cost $14,000 and they work. ---    Who said that water is scarce near Mankato. City has been constructing a reservoir for the last fortnight and every day it has leaked 40,000 gal. The leak is supposed to be in the floor. ---    Oregon is one state that actually believes there is going to be a war. If you want to build a fallout shelter you get an exemption of $1,500. ---    A movement is on foot in congress now to start seeding rains in the Dakotas and Montana, which if successful will do more for humanity than a bushel of pictures of the Man in the Moon. ---    “How can a bunch of fans that are hot make you cool?” and the professor comes back with, “By evaporation of perspiration.” ---    One of the big stimulants to a lot of county fairs, especially in the northern part of the state, is the raffling of an automobile. For the one at Kittson County, you had one chance in 340,000 to win. The lucky lady said she needed one badly. ---    Two commercial giants in the U.S. are in a bitter struggle: they are the tin can people and the glass bottle crowd, and there is no use denying it but the tin can groups are slowly but surely winning out. Even vodka is being served in metal cans, the first hard stuff. Here’s some of your old bottled favorites that are coming to you in tin cans--pardon us, metal containers: Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Seven Up, Canada Dry. But ginger ale, finest of the bunch to a lot of old timers, is never mentioned. The Steel Trust is interested in the tin cans: it turned out 810 million in 1960 and will have a 20 per cent up in 1961. Tin has the edge on glass, it does not need to be returned. ---    If all signs don’t fail, we are right on the brink of war. Here is what the President said last week, “We must plan for higher taxes to prepare for a rise in military preparedness.” ---    For years the rose was the most popular flower with the American Beauties. Science came along and with their hybridding pushed the carnation into the first place. And you want to send some by mail. The flower people have an agent in 186 countries. ---    Several counties in the prairie section of northern Minnesota are getting rapped by the editors of their local papers. Here’s one of them, saying “Farmers are asleep,” following with “Shelter tree belts would have helped a lot this year.” And the county agent poled into the editorial with, “We had a tour on the shelter belt; a few were making shelter belts, but the rank and file just don’t give a damn.” ---    Can a cigarette come back? Mfrs. of Old Gold who made Beech Nut for your Dad (not your Ma) a generation ago is being brought to life again. ---    The Archbishop of Canterbury has asked for an investigation of the influence TV has on children. Plenty. The TV is the biggest in the amusement world today. ---    There’s one unpleasant thing about living on the beautiful seashore: that is sharks. New York and New Jersey seem to be infested. These states have been doping the ocean with a repellent. A new bill in the offing in the New Jersey legislature requires communities to chase away the sharks, but it did not say how. ---    Forgot to tell you about the bottled vodka. The drug firm that is getting it out gives 1 1/2 ounces and mix for 49 cents. ---    The folks of Hallock will be bigger baseball fans than ever. Battey, colored catcher of the Twins baseball team, won a price of a case of popular coffee for making a home run. He ups and sends it to the “Old Folks Rest Home” at Hallock: a touch of nature makes the whole world akin. ---    How are you and the little lady getting along? Get those wrinkles out of that forehead. You’re a free man. You can now buy a book written by Dr. Parke, entitled “How to Get People to Do What You Want,” costs $4.95. The book, just one of the many things it does with you is to show how to make people love you instantly. How to avoid friction with others, two or more, etc. Forget all about the book, all you have to do is to say yes. ---    Those big companies have long fought. In the tin and bottle wrestle the Crown Cork Co. has for the three months ending June 30 had sales of over 63 million. ---    Gasoline hit the lowest retail price in ten years last week. It went down as far as 10.9 and the big fellows are worrying. This one is so wide spread it takes too long to come back. ---    Men’s ambition when it comes to autos never seems to cool down. Hundreds of them want to make one that will chase the big five. One of the companies is the Midget Motor Co., Athens, Ohio. There is only one model, and the price is $960.50. The King Midget is less than ten feet long, has a 325 H.P. engine and gets from 50 to 60 miles on a gallon of gas. The panel board only has room for 5 gadgets. The Midget Motors makes five cars a day with 30 men. Another amateur car is the Cotton Bug, a 2 passenger, looks like a jeep and sells for $1350. Another one will be in competition with the Rolls Royce and will cost $30,000. One model will have an engine that will produce more than 1,000 H.P. top speed which can be cut to 540 by turning a screw. ---    Hoover says the juveniles in the U.S. are growing worse. In 1950 there were 256,277 arrests. In 1960 529,905. Don’t look good. Over 100 per cent in ten years. ---    If you’re traveling on the superhighway and have car trouble, a service station is not always near you. You should tie a white handkerchief on the door handle. If your car seems to be in serious trouble raise the hood and stare. ---    Isn’t there enough impact in baseball the way it is today? Notice the brass hats in the game want to bring the spitball back and put some real action in the game. You find more impact and downright brutality in a quarter of football than you do in 10 innings of baseball. There was a time when baseball was a little rough. We want all our sport a little rough in this day and age. If the spitball is brought back, change the name: “spit” is filthy and disgusting, and baseball is attractive to a lot of ladies. ---    Here’s something that every motorist has been looking for. It’s a new motor that is being tried out in a 1959 Plymouth and is being watched by all the top officials. Drive up to the filling station and ask for gas; if they have none, say, “Give me kerosene, jet fuel or furnace oil.” Texaco is doing its bit to help by brewing a new brand. The new fuel works equally well on heavy equipment. The car you drive uses 8 parts of gas to 100 parts of air. ---    And to you, John David, humbly and gratefully my thanks to you for the kind words of last week: those kind that don’t just wither.
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August 10, 1961
   The Waseca Jaycees are on the go again. They were having a contest to promote safer tractor driving. When it comes to accidents on the farm a real subject to work on. Remember when you let that kid start driving, that 75 per cent of all farm accidents result from tractors and farm drawn implements. ---    Texas believes more in an impending war than we do in Minnesota. One company down there has sold 25 community shelters (each has a capacity of 200 persons). The Civil Service Wonder Company says demand is spotted in some sections. The war fever is stronger in some places than others. ---    U.S. beer drinkers are increasing the shipment of foreign beer. There’s a strong demand for heavier and stouter beer and there is none in this country. ---    If the plastic imitation is cutting into the home grown flowers offerings it has a new angle that is helping in two eastern states. Give flowers to Dad on Father’s Day, also on his birthday. ---    We should get Governor Andersen to take the Indian and his loping pony out of the State Seal for two weeks and insert in its place a big turkey gobbler strutting his stuff. Minnesota is now the No. 1 turkey state in the nation, passing California last year: what about this hot and cold state argument? ---    The Beltrami County fair at Bemidji had one stimulant on the program, “Calf Scramble.” Who does the scrambling? ---    Mr. and Mrs. H. Hanson of Lake Wilson made us a nice visit last wee. They live on top of Buffalo Ridge and Harold said there is more water on top of the Ridge than he has seen before. Some of the small pot holes look like small lakes. ---    Good news: if you’re going to build, there was a drop of $3.00 a thousand board feet in green fir last week in most of the mills in northern Oregon. Rural dealers say that there has been a lag in building. ---    Here’s a new form of sport that western Murray is ideally situated for. It is called motor cycle hill climbing and trail riding; the “course” located near Oklee sometimes has 1,000 spectators. The Buffalo Ridge could be used as a hill climbing course in the summer and as ski jumps in the winter. ---    Big business changes its mind as often as those in the lower five. One of the big outfits, Royal McBee Corp., had a fine outfit near Port Chester, N.Y., all modern with 14 acres of beautiful gardens--has shut up shop and moved to Manhattan, N.Y. It’s got to be that way or we have all cities or all farms. ---    Looks like the drought in north Minnesota was somewhat exaggerated. Barley in north Norman is going around 49 pounds to the bushel, but did not say how many bushels to the acre. ---    When you come to move merchandise or anything else cheaply, try a tow boat. There is a tow boat on the big rivers that can push 40,000 tons: that is equal to eight 100-car freight trains. The boats are called “two” boats, but in reality they push. ---    One of the most important highway laws of the last session is to get a try-out soon. The new law gives the highway cop the right to put an autoist in jail who is suspected of being intoxicated but refuses to take the blood test. Just as soon as a driver is arrested and fined, the case is to be rushed to the Supreme Court. ---    Here’s something we’ve never had before. A Negro World’s Fair. It’s going to be held in Chicago in 1963. ---    Grocery stores are really a thing of beauty these days and you, my dear housewife, pay for the scenery so the suggestion today is “Buy in bigger quantities.” ---    The brewers in the midwest are doing a lot of brooding these days. The drouth hit most of the middle states area. It takes 110,000,000 of this type of barley for the U.S. ---    Time honored and respected Quaker Oats Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice are in bad. They are charged with short weight. Some of their packages had a shortage of over 15 per cent; pretty poor thieves. Why didn’t they start with 5 per cent? ---    Minnesota and Canada, or rather Manitoba, have agreed to build a road to the Northwest Angle. This N.W.A. is a piece of land belonging to Minnesota that we cannot get out to by land without going through Canada. It’s a real historic spot. Has some farmers and a school and as it is or rather was the most northerly part of the U.S. would be a real spot for a hotel. On one side is Lake of the Woods with its 14,000 islands, whose shores fairly teem with man size northerns. ---    There must have been truth in that potato crash. Prices have begun to crumble already. California Whites are a third less than a year ago. ---    All this war talk brings smiles to the faces of the Steel Trust crowd. They are putting up wheat in 6 lb. cans. Fancy putting up wheat for shipment in Mason jars. ---    Farmers in the Central states that have been carrying the soy bean crop will now have some help. Six states find that soy bean crop a profitable one. One reason is because it is where the most chickens are found and soy beans makes them grow faster than a lot of other foods. ---    Don’t forget folks that August is the tornado month of the year. There have been more tornadoes on record in August than all the other months put together. ---    Here’s another record for Minnesota last year. The city of East Grand Forks warehouses ship more potatoes than does any municipality in the nation. ---    If you are just a little shaky on this war scare, better invest $10.00 in an emergency repeater. You can plug it into any electrical outlet. It is said that it could be installed in every home for $1: to us this is a time when we should not be promising too much. ---    Here’s the kind of jokes that millionaires read: “You might say that a dog rescued from the city pound gets a new leash on life.” We got this from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. ---    The city manager plan whose job is to pick up all the odds and ends in the village and most of the big ones is not making much headway in Wisconsin. It has only 18 manager stores, California 209. Minnesota was not mentioned. ---    Why did we cut down on eating sweet potatoes? One year we ate as high as 26 pounds each. Now the consumption in 1961 is based at 5.4 pounds, and seventy-five cents a crate higher than last year. ---    The big lumberjack program of the year was held at International Falls last Sunday when $210.00 was given away in cash prizes, in the sawing and chopping events. This contest brings out all the oldtime lumber jacks in the north woods. You’d be surprised to know that one nation in Europe has lumber sawing and chopping as a national sport, and the name of that nation is Spain. Here’s a chance for northern Minnesota to get up a World’s Championship event. Invite Spain over, you Birlin’ Jacks of the North. ---    Those “Honest as the day is long and solid as the Rock of Gibraltar” men are getting away with an awful lot of cash these days. The sign, “Honesty is the Best Policy” in many homes has been changed to “Get in while the getting is good.” One big bonding company says conditions are the worst in over thirty years. Another company lost $4,000,000 the year before. What hurts the bond people the most is that instead of taking $100, they take thousands or tens of thousands.
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August 17, 1961
   Early day settlers in Murray county will be glad to know that there are still some prairie chickens left in the state, in the far north. What wonderful eating they were, and how plentiful they were. Hunters used to shoot them for the market in the summer and trap them in the winter, especially in spots like the rushes in Bear Lake. They were shipped to R. E. Cobb in sugar barrels. Can remember how many of them died when they could not see the telephone wire. ---    Why do people act like sheep sometimes? The sale of Ford autos was plugging along sort of as normal, when all at once they started buying Fords. A salesman for the company said the market has so much momentum it could carry the fall sales of Fords to new sales records. ---    Those power lawn mowers struck over in Comfrey recently. This time a ten year old boy. He was mowing grass and in some way slipped into the whirling blades and lost all the toes on his left foot and one toe on his right. Time for the one handed cornpickers and the one footed lawn mowers to hold “Safety First” meetings and give their experiences. ---    One of the real mysteries of the medical world is deafness, but there is some hope for those who have time enough and money enough to spend. Briefly speaking, you have three tiny ear bones, the tiniest in the body, and the removal of the smallest one...[lines missing]... aid. This operation was only developed five years ago and as there are 4 million deaf folks in the U.S. and as there are only enough surgeons trained in the technique to perform about 5,000 operations in a year in the Mass. Eye & Ear Inf., patients usually have to wait from 13 to 18 months for an operation. Not very encouraging. ---    It doesn’t pay to get sick: in Minneapolis some of the hospitals are over $32.00 a day and there’s no telling where they will stop. ---    There was quite an argument at Sleepy Eye. the Jaycees won and they had four boats out on Sleepy Eye Lake sprinkling copper sulphate, etc. to clean out the algae and other scum. Four days after the lake was treated it was covered with thousands of dead fish. Game and fish dept., whose duty it is to apply fish poison, should have taken care of the job. ---    A study of flowers can become real interesting. Did you ever treat the earth with hot water instead of cool? Some florists plant seeds and now exactly when they will bloom. He feeds them hot water to hurry and black cloth to retard them. One of the big concerns in N.C. has a steam system and you can plant and get the size of bloom you want: and we talk of Mother Nature being so wonderful. A grower in Long Island has a real modern plant, hot mist one. Poinsettias take root in ten days with the steam system, used to take three weeks. Steamed water is what is most needed. Try it on one plant. ---    This is no time for boat fans to try and imitate auto fans. In a water race two boats were badly damaged at Park Rapids and the day will soon be here when there will be policemen on every good lake and those smart alecks with their fast boats that go out and in about peaceful ... [missing] scon’s, will. ---    Bet you never read an item like this before, a woman justice sentencing another to ten days. Her name was Sadie Steele, J.P., she lived in International Falls; the lady prisoner was Pauline Verner from Illinois. She was driving too fast. ---    This is no place to put items like this. Next month you’ll be receiving water from Scotland to mix into highballs with Johnny Walker, White Horse, etc. It’s the same kind of water from Torfar Shire that the whiskey is made with. Fancy shipping water across the water to make highballs. ---    Just across the border at International Falls, Ontario used to pay $10.00 on a bear pelt. The government canceled it. If you are a non-farmer over there and want to shoot a bear you must get a deer and a moose license. ---    If your name is Jameson and you live in Fairmont you’re doggoned lucky. Here’s what Harris Jameson got in the New Ulm court--five days for open bottle in car, failure to appear in court five days, and all was suspended “if you don’t do it again.” New Ulm is a good place to celebrate your birthday. ---    The Koochiching county fair was on last week at Northhome. Odd thing about it was the price. General admission was 75 cents. ---    Heavy rains in California have raised the price of your salads. Seventy per cent of your summer salads come from that state. The growers wanted to limit the crop to raise the price and did both, the crate is 75 cents higher. ---    If you’re going to buy any fur and it costs over $7.00 the government sort of stands by you. On the label it must give the real name of the fur in English, whether it has been dyed or bleached or had the color changed. If imported, where from, if any part is made of bellies, paws, tails, etc. Remember there are no such animals as Hudson Seal or Isabella Fox. The Hudson Seal was a muskrat and the Isabella Fox was a dyed dog skin. ---    Shoe manufacturers are going to do their best to eliminate that peaked pointed shoe women have been wearing: about time, women do the darndest things to keep in style. Only thing that stymied them of late was the dress with the full chemise droop effect. That was a pippin. ---    Once in a while a breeze of sanity comes out of the U.S. Senate, this time it is Senator Tower, the new senator from Texas. He says, “Take over Cuba” before someone else does. There won’t be any other country kick right now: the day’s a-coming when they will. ---    There never was any drouth in southern Minnesota in the year of 1960 and the municipal owned stores did well; none of them went into bankruptcy. Slayton in its lush saloon days never gave as much to the town. ---    To show the school children the kind of a school building their parents went to school in, Norman county folks hauled into Ada a school that was built in 1885 and placed it alongside of the museum. ---    Detroit isn’t quite so proud of being the No. 1 auto city. The battle is on over which is the cheaper fuel, and they’ve ended up with the stinking Diesel. While many a U.S. city is trying to get rid of auto fumes, burning of diesel oil is only adding to the stench. ---    Fair boards encourage more pure bred stock. Kittson has drawings of gilts and ewes. The live stock were offered in a drawing to those who agreed to take them as projects for next year. ---    The federal government has it figured out that a dollar bill is about 15 years old. Ten dollar bills 25 years old and one hundred dollar bills 100 years old, add ten per cent when in the possession of the Scotch. ---    If you can’t play baseball in the summer, why not try playing “action.” Some schools have school plays and put them on in the vacation. One school is doing that and is urging all young folks between 16 and 20 interested in plays, making costumes, stage scenery to organize two plays and put them on locally. No one will ever forget the home talent plays of long ago. ---    You won’t know what your next year’s cigarets will cost until the end of this month, but the price will be up. Bad weather has shrunk the crop over a billion pounds, and that’s 47 billion below 1960.
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August 24, 1961
   Some sections of the state seem to be more interested than others in the war. Senator Larson of Ada and the county of Norman has called a special county wide meeting to do something along Civil Defense, Aug. 16th. Why not a state wide meeting, just to know how many are really interested. ---    After being doctored up, Lake Sleepy Eye is now fit for the kids. Some folks or communities took it upon themselves to kill the algae, etc., killing a lot of fish; a few were wall eyes. ---    You know there is some difference in hospitals, county or community. We notice the county has an auxiliary of 704 members and it is getting things done in Norman county. ---    We’ve been wondering where all this talk about war is: Pravda, the Russian government paper, runs this head: “War Hysteria Grips the West.” ---    FDA said the following substances must be labeled “danger”, “poison” or “warning,” with certain other descriptive phrases: carbon tetrachloride, diethylene glycol, ethylene glycol, methyl alcohol, turpentine and petroleum distillates such as kerosene, naphtha, mineral spirits, paint thinner and gasoline. The agency said human experience has established these as hazardous because of their toxicity and the frequency with which they are accidentally swallowed. The act itself sets up a series of animal tests which are required to demonstrate toxicity, but FDA wants to let human experience take precedence even when animal tests don’t show toxicity. ---    The Campbell Soup Company is out with a new soup. It is a powdered soup, comes in eight different varieties, comes in a thin tin can, has room for two servings. Don’t need a can opener. ---    There is a new fish in some of the Minnesota lakes this summer. It is the splate. It is a cross between a brook trout and a lake trout. They can be taken daily between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. in Gogebic Lake on the Gunflint Trail. You can only catch four days and the use of live bait is prohibited. The lake was stocked in 1957 and some of them weigh more than four pounds. ---    The small retail liquor store is the most profitable place of business in the U.S., says a recent report. Not too many states are like Minnesota. Here’s a state that is bitterly against trust, mergers oozed in, took over liquor from A to Z. It does not make what price you pay, the modest liquor in the small village to the upper ten bars, the price must be the same. Lots of booze in bar bottles does not need very much water, whether it comes from Forfashire or Duke county. ---    The new driver auto “consent” law is being held up by atty. general Mondale. Some lawyers say it is as full of holes as a sieve. One is, you can’t correct any law with a village ordinance. It must be made under the new state law. Often wondered why those new laws don’t get a chance to be tried for their constitutionality while the legislature is still in session. If the court said “No,” have the law passed in a different form. ---    The New York hotels keep booked up a long way ahead. They have been busy with delegates as far ahead. the Roosevelt says reservations for July of 1964 are larger than those of 1963. The real bait is the hoped-for World’s Fair in 1963. The New York Convention Bureau says it has already booked more fairs for 1964 than it has in 1963. ---    Our grandson James B. Forrest of Denver, Colo. gave us a short visit Sunday. He is here with the Army Reserve unit from Denver, training 34th Division at Fort Ripley. ---    While we had the TV pushing the moves out of the picture, all shows have increased attendance. Some owners admit that it may be that foreign pictures are being used. One showhouse man said, “The terrible type of TV programs is pushing people back to the movie houses.” ---    Deer hunters had good hunting in 1961. Almost 100,000 were taken, to be exact 96,055. Out of this number 445 were got by archers. How many were killed by autos? That is what most of the hunters and non-hunters wish to know. Will the day ever come when the state is going to be liable for accidents caused by the deer? ---    Food and Drug Agency at Washington, D.C. should get a Thank You card. It has published a list of household substances--that will in some cases have to be changed. Every medicine that has poison in it must be so labeled. ---    Last week we mentioned that the Koochiching Fair charged 75 cents for admission for adults. We meant to add: children 50 cents, children to 15 years free. There will be no charge for parking or the grandstand. ---    Beat it for California, Bill. There’s a story going around that there is too much wine and both the federal and state governments are trying how to get a fair price which is not present now. ---    The problem in the entertainment circles is just what is the trouble with colored TV? The progress made causes many to stop and wonder why. ---    Of all the dumb chumps that roam Minnesota, the tree peelers go to the head of the class. A park employee at the St. Croix circle caught a young man peeling the bark from three young birch trees. He took the peeler before a justice who only fined him $10.00. Should have been a hundred dollars or more: only God can build a tree. ---    Something new last week in the town in which we were born. Goes back to B.C. In the front page of the Stirling Journal was this item: “A deer visited Stirling of late.” Visited at Clifford Park. Reports say that no one has ever seen a deer or heard of one. Fancy a city (30,000) yet no one has ever...wait a minute, wasn’t Bobby Burns about “A wee dearie,” etc.? ---    The increase in the number of predatory animals in Koochiching county irritated the board members and it put back the bounty on all of that class of animals: fancy a county on the border being with a bounty for years and not a farmer or a sheep raiser was mentioned as being interested. The new bounty of $3.00 for adults and $1.00 for cubs: often thought that a $3.00 bounty on cubs would get more foxes. ---    Notice in a New York newspaper last week that Rep. Blatnik of Minnesota considers running for governor next year. ---    Hard thing for the average being to understand is, if there is no such thing as war a-coming, the September draft is the largest since the Korean war. Why all the activity?
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August 31, 1961
   If you are peddling booze illegally and found guilty you lose your car, pick up, truck, etc. The Federal Internal Revenue Bureau seized nearly 100, to be exact 96, vehicles last year. Commissioner Caplin drives a Lincoln taken from a high class bootlegger in Virginia. ---    City attorney Hantink of International Falls says persons accepting drivers licenses as proof of age must be mighty careful. Youths use them to get beer. ---    Airplane travel is might dull this summer for Europe and the British Isles. Here’s a sample. Edinburgh 1st class $869. During this 12 day bargain price $325.00. ---    This was old home week for Kate and us. Mrs. C. F. Lentz and Mr. and Mrs. L. Hosmer--the ladies are out sisters--and Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Smith, all of Lake Wilson. Charley worked faithfully for us for over 40 years, so we had a lot of visiting. ---    Home runs are getting too monotonous in baseball. They come too often. Suppose the whole team starts hitting home runs? The public likes to see or hear the odd things, the rare things. we remember a while back the finger was put on the Silver fox. The upper ten were happy. A hired girl started wearing one, the frosty dames saw it and turned up their nose, that was the end of the many silver fox farms in Minnesota and many a farmer who had gone into fur raising. ---    Now that the cougar with its romantic history has vanished leaving a black pony, here’s a whitish white cat that the “turkey people” near Henning are looking for. M. Wehalman does guard duty for his father’s ranch and twice he has been attacked at night of late, by what appeared to be a wild whitish cat weighing about seventy pounds. Wehalaman had his shepherd dog with him and the two animals clashed. The man has the proof, a scratched hand. ---    Here’s the kind of an outing some people go miles for--they could get almost as much spice up at Rainy Lake. Mr. and Mrs. Enczama of Int. Falls, Minn. wanted to go on a camping trip on Rainy Lake. First night they were awakened by the howls and snarls of a pack of wolves all round the tent (not prairie wolves), that war 1:30 a.m. About 3 a.m. he saw a wolf sitting on a rock 30 feet away howling its head off. He scared it with a flashlight. They built a log fire, it didn’t faze them. Then the mother bear came along, snuffing for her cubs. That was the end. With what they had on they made a dash for the boat, got in and rowed out on Rainy Lake. They hesitated a minute and decided they had had an exciting holiday. ---    If you eat canned soup you eat Campbells and some of it is made by Murray county folks: four cans out of every five made are Campbells. The two firms pulling up are Heinz and Corn Products Co. Soup is wonderful food. Americans have just started eating soup: the demand has increased 60 per cent faster than any other food. And the real good old fashioned bean soup bubbling in the thick fat greasy liquid isn’t there. Why not? ---    The Hallock Enterprise gives Kittson county’s crop report in these terse words on the front page: “County’s Crop Return Looks Like Half a Normal Yield.” ---    Talk about a good advertiser. Mr. and Mrs. Leonard of Elkader, Iowa, are making their 33rd trip to Int. Falls, Minn.; he has hay fever. ---    Dangerous cornfields confront you at this time of the year. You’ve got to be more alert in the late fall than you did in the summer. When there are four or five in the car one should be appointed “Look Out Lady” to watch the corners. Death lurks there. ---    There’s always something new in driving laws. When you pass the car ahead of you, dim your auto lights. You’ve got to do it in Pennsylvania and you’ll soon be seeing it in action in Minnesota. This is a progressive state. ---    A new fad in the east is to do away with corded fans, razors, etc. They have them now--take the razor. You can take it with you fishing and shave every day. You can always charge your fan at night, then you move it to any part in the house. Say someone is sick, just grab the charged fan without dragging a mile of cord. ---    Scotch women seem to be attracted by law suits. Noticed by the Stirling Journal of late that a postmaster was tried by a judge and jury for embezzling. The trial was held before Sheriff-Principal Miss Margaret Kidd, who is a judge. Another thing we should like to see more about is television. The number of Scottish schools now using TV has reached a total of 274. ---    Vending machines have made a big hit with the school boys and girls. Thirteen states have installed over 22,000 machines in schools. ---    And then across the St. Croix river last Sunday was the tug of war between the Carol Haroldson team and the Eleanor Nutzmann team, and it was at the Little Johnnie’s Bar. Everything goes in Wisconsin, saloons open all the time. ---    Would you like to know what the doctor gets for a call in the big cities? Here’s what some city doctors get. Minneapolis $7.44; San Francisco, Calif. $9.19; Los Angeles, Calif. $11.36; Boston $5.91; Phil. $6.06; Washington D.C. $7.11. ---    This tan that you’ve got to wear could be expensive and painful. Don’t stay out in the sun for more than ten minutes the first time. Looks tough driving 30 miles to the bathing beach and then to be allowed out in the open only ten minutes, next day you get 20 minutes, etc. ---    If you love flowers--who doesn’t--there’s a new dirtless dust out now. The new soil comes in five colors and its “energizer” gives you three times the growth. ---    Don’t think Minnesota is a small state. Austin is the race horse center. At the Fair there this year there were 75 race horses, which satisfied those that like that grand old sport. Steele county is being attended by 200,000. The grounds are so big a bus has regular trips across the grounds. ---    Did you make any money out of your garden this year? This is the question going the rounds. Before you start, what do you charge for yours and the boys’ time? If you don’t make some charge, why start? ---    The next time you shave don’t forget to take a look at the face in the glass. That face is going to be a grandpa of 70. We’re not guessing at it. This comes from the Metropolitan Life Ins. Company. Man’s span in life in 1937 was set 60.5 years. ---    Wasn’t it grand that the county fair came back this year? There’s a place in your life if you live in Murray county, in the county fair. ---    Saks, one of the largest stores in New York, and several others have made one change in their advertising: all ending dollar prices like $1.45 go to $1.00 each way. ---    If you like to keep your beautiful flowers after they are cut and put in vases, W. R. Grace & Co. has a chemical that dehydrates but will not change the color in them: could be--but. ---    Good times ahead, boys. The auto workers union and the Big Three both assert that 6,200,000 will be made in 1962. When that many cars are built there won’t be much grass growing in the streets. ---    Ford has told their employees that their average pay is 71 cents an hour higher than the average for all U.S. manufacturers. ---    Here’s a county that lays its cards on the table. “Kittson County’s Crop Return Looks Like Half Normal Yield.” Yields run from 3 to 30 bushels to the acre. ---    If you are inclined to forget or sleep too long don’t live in Illinois. A new bank law just passed. Takes all the money you have in a bank if you don’t claim it in 15 years: to us that looks like petty larceny.
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