Weekly Papers: Getting a Read on State of the Nation

A Texas teen-ager getting ready for the Junior Livestock Show had some thoughts about petulant porkers.

“Raising a pig is good fun, but how much fun depends on the mood of the pig,” Jenny Haley told the Anvil Herald in Hondo, Tex.

In West Virginia, a woman egged on by a granddaughter-in-law, finally got around to earning a high school diploma.

“I dreaded math the most,” Dorothy Johns, 71, of Gay, W. Va., told her local paper, the Ravenswood News.

When the 91-year-old founder of an egg and poultry company in Electra, Tex., died, his obituary in the San Saba (Texas) News matter-of-factly noted that he was born in Indian territory and as a child was brought across the Red River in a covered wagon.

In the Bonners Ferry Herald, which has served Boundary County, Ida., since 1891, columnist Grace Bauman offered this observation: “If you think you’re getting too much government, just be thankful you’re not getting as much as you’re paying for.”

A Warning About Rabies

A headline in the Meade County Messenger of Brandenburg, Ky.: “Rabies Cases Fewer, but Stay Alert.”

So it goes in the countryside. While Washington concerned itself with savings-and-loan insolvency and the social habits of John Tower, the topic of the Tri-State Cow-Calf Symposium at Haigler, Neb. was closer to home: “Producing the Cow of the Future Today.”

There are things to be learned about the state of the nation from America’s 7,500 weekly newspapers that cannot be found in the Congressional Record.

Of course, there is also some bad news:

The taxpayers of Clinton County, Mo., may be stuck with the $20,000 medical bill of a jail escapee who suffered frostbite while at large and had to have both legs amputated, the Lawson Review reported.

The Osawatomie (Kansas) Graphic worries that Osawatomie’s reputation as a railroad town may be slipping; the Union Pacific is thinking about routing fewer trains through town.

Drug problems are a worry in the country, as in the big cities. Schools get consolidated, young people leave town and factories close. The drought of 1988 is not over yet. There is still not enough rain in many regions, not enough snow cover for winter wheat crops.

“Hunters are finding fewer rabbits and quail than usual in Kentucky this season,” the Bath County News-Outlook of Owingsville reported. Blame the drought, said Jeff Sole of the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

News From Back Home

For all that, the weeklies report news that tells you that the heart of America is still ticking. It is important news, because, after all, doesn’t everyone come from a small town--or think one did, or wish one had?

Here is some of the news from back home:

Wallace Wyatt Jr. promised that if he were elected probate judge of St. Clair County, Ala., he would eat a super-hot barbecue sandwich at Smitty’s Barb-B-Que in Odenville. He was, and he did. “He said he wouldn’t do it again for $500, and it wasn’t something he’d wish on anyone, even a Republican,” the St. Clair News-Aegis reported.

While working on a master’s degree, Melanie Reid of Due West, S. C., looked into the history of the Opera House that opened in Abbeville in 1908 and put the lie to some local legends. There is no evidence at all, she told the Abbeville Press and Banner, that Jimmy Durante, Sarah Bernhardt or the Ziegfield Follies ever performed there.

In Oconomowoc, Wis., high school football player Rich Andrus was recruited by the University of Wisconsin. Head coach Don Morton and an assistant called on him on the first day home visits were permitted. Exactly when did they arrive? “Twelve-oh-one a.m.,” Andrus told the Oconomowoc Enterprise. He said their tenacity was “pretty impressive.”

The Enterprise also reported that people from the Oconomowoc area drove in four trucks for 4 1/2 hours to deliver food, clothes and paper products to northern Wisconsin farmers still suffering from the effects of last summer’s drought. The farm families need work clothes, said Mrs. Gerhart Tetzlaff of Stone Bank, but they especially need food. “I think they are so hungry they don’t care about clothes.”

The Garden Club of Stamford, Tex., celebrated the state’s 100th Arbor Day by planting two pecan trees on the west side of Post Office Square as a memorial to Mrs. A. C. Denson, a longtime member of the club “who, had she lived another month, would also have been 100 years old,” the Stamford American said.

A Deputy’s Deposition

Glenn R. and Anne Jane Eutsey of Scottdale, Pa., celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with 46 relatives at a dinner given at their home by their children.

Deputy Ernie Booth was assigned to parts of Millard, Juab and Beaver counties in Utah’s western desert--what Millard County Sheriff Ed Phillips called “the largest beat in the United States” an area of--3,000 square miles. Almost triple the size of Rhode Island, it has about 600 residents. Booth told the Millard County Chronicle Progress: “Basically, I’m pretty well qualified. I can ride a horse dang near anywhere. I rodeo a lot. I still ride bulls occasionally and I’ve team-roped. I know cattle.”

The Area Chamber of Commerce of Yale, Mich., decided to hold a festival in July to honor the town’s most famous product, bologna. Among the activities will be a pet parade, a dog show and selection of a King and Queen of Bologna, the Yale Expositor reported.

In Harrah, Okla., the Town Board discussed the number of animals that Casey Rychlec keeps on his property--48 by one count, including geese, ducks, chickens, guinea fowl, turkeys, pigeons and dogs. The Harrah News referred to the collection as a “menagerie” and said neighbors are disturbed.

‘It’s Carl Rooks Day’

From the Bowdon (Georgia) Bulletin: “At Bowdon Elementary School, teacher Sylvia Caldwell asked her seventh-graders why Friday was such an important day to all Americans. Though it was also Inauguration Day, and that was the answer she was looking for, student Andy Boatright quickly responded: “It’s Carl Rooks Day.” He was right. Carl Rooks had retired as police chief. In an interview with the Bulletin, Rooks said that in 24 years in law enforcement, he had never had to shoot anyone.

The Eagle Bulletin of Fayetteville, N. Y., described one recent Friday this way: “That was the kind of day you could separate the feeble defrosters from the strong.”

The newsmaker in the resort town of Whitefish, Mont., was Police Chief Dave Dolson. He told the city council that Whitefish was becoming the “drug capital of northwest Montana.” Out-of-town newspapers picked up the story and local business people were irked, the Whitefish Pilot said. Bar owners were especially angry because of Dolson’s reference to “people inhaling lines of cocaine off the bars and card tables in our town.”

The Friend (Nebraska) Sentinel, reported on an opossum’s night visit to Marie French’s porch on Chestnut Street. She took some photographs to prove it, and the Sentinel published two of them.

The Sentinel also reported that Brian Wienke of Indicott, Neb., has been planting turnips for fall and winter forage for the last two years.

“The cows love the turnips once they discover them,” Wienke said. “They will walk through milo stubble and winter wheat to get to the turnips.”

Kenny Barnes defeated Stephanie Franks for the title of the best speller in Itawamba County, Miss. He did so, the Itawamba County Times said, by correctly spelling “khaki” and “separation” and won a prize of $84. Stephanie won $25.

In his column in the Waupun (Wis.) Leaders News, public librarian Tom Green noted that 6,316 borrowers checked out 108,549 items in 1988, and that fines totaling $3,108.80 were turned over to the city.

Postmaster Rhonda Wallace advised residents of Hominy, Okla., to keep their mailboxes in good shape. “An old dented box with sharp cutting edges or a box that is too small should be replaced or mail delivery may be withheld,” she said.

Litterbugs Exposed

The Manchester-Coffee County Beautification Assn. of Tennessee established a Litter Hotline so that tipsters could report the license numbers of drivers seen tossing trash from their vehicles. People who are informed on get a warning letter and a litter bag in the mail, the Tullahoma (Tennessee) News reported.

In a letter to the editor of the Horton (Kansas) Headlight, Donna Hoffman protested a proposal, discussed by the commissioners, that stray cats be destroyed. She wrote that the cats help control mice and rats. “Imagine what it would be like with no cats to catch and kill these rodents! What’s next? A rat ordinance?”

The conditions of the restrooms at Duran Junior High School came up at a meeting of the board of education in Pell City, Ala. The problems--overcrowding, a lack of privacy and urinals installed so high that boys couldn’t use them.

One angry father said he understood that if a boy was tardy because he had to wait to use the restroom he might get a paddling when he finally reached class.

The St. Clair News-Aegis quoted the father as saying: “I’ll tell you this, if my child comes home and says he got a paddling because he was held up in the bathroom, I’m going to come here and see some folks.”