Adventures with Old News

If you have the desire to, going to the Benzie Shores District Library’s website and looking over the old Benzie County newspapers that are scanned in is both fun and somewhat poignant.

I really miss the old papers, with all the so and so visited such and such, and Mr. and Mrs. Jones just visited Mr. and Mrs. Smith down in Detroit. Who was in the hospital? Who was in trouble with the law? Whose barn burned down? It was maybe too nosy for today’s folks, but it was comforting to read up on things. These days, more information is shared much more publically on Facebook and similar places.

Here are some of the gleanings I have found:

April 4, 1920 The weather was really bad for Easter with drifts that were several feet high.

A humorous quote: The hard think about making your money last is making it first.

November 28, 1940 There is a great story of how City Superintendent Perry Mauseth finding a single ox shoe embedded in a big oak tree that blew down in a storm near the American Legion Hall. “The shoe had been nailed to the tree and was grown over by three inches of growth.”

In the same paper, an advertisement asks you to “remember when light was bought by the gallon?”

March 20, 2013 Small things make big news. “We have a new pencil sharpener in the hallway” reports one of the county schools.

As I read on through these old, sometimes tattered, papers, I see names of places that I am unfamiliar with. Where was Liberty Union? Pleasant Valley? Was Homestead Station up where the high school is now? What about Smith’s Corners?

April 3, 1902 “Vern Barber sold his place last fall, shook the sawdust out of his clothes and bade Honor good bye. The other day he made his appearance in our streets looking like thirty cents. Said Honor was the place of all others, bo’t his property back again, moved in and is as happy as a coon in a corn field.”

A surprisingly modern idea is rumored in the November 24, 1927 paper. Ford was promoting the idea of the car lease. “you pay a deposit of 150.00, get your car, and pay a rental fee of 10.00-15.00 a month. When you want a new car, merely turn in the old one and continue to pay the monthly fee. Nice if true!”

Talk of war, soldiers, and world news filled our little paper’s up as well. From multitudes of stories on the Philippines to brief mentions of Japan stockpiling scrap iron to Jack Dempsey being cleared of charges of draft dodging, you just won’t believe what you might find. Why, one paper even had an Edgar Rice Burroughs story running as a series in it back before 1920

It seems like we cared more about how our neighbors were doing and how our community was growing. Some of the articles were blunt, certainly none of the political correctness occurred. But there was respect and empathy in many of the stories. Humor, too. I just read about a really bad fishing trip in a paper from the 1960’s. They did not mention the chief player’s name, but they did have it at the end, all scrabbled up for folks to guess at.

It makes me grin how different the personals were from what they are now.

The advertisements are awesome: The oldest papers have tons of adds for medicinal goods such as Lydia Pinkham. The number of cures for various diseases of both human and animal are daunting! The papers I grew up with mention business names long gone. The Village Shoppe and the Village Squire, Dort's Shoe Box. Walter L. Heaths! The car prices are mouthwatering, so are the old brand new model adds. I even found an add for a sixty acre farm on the north shore of Crystal Lake for undre $5000.00, complete with hardwoods, barns, and a nice house with running water!

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