Turner's Public Spirit, August 9, 1924
A look back in time to a century ago
By Bob Oliphant
Center. Mrs. Charles Campbell, of Hudson, N.H., Miss Francelia Sargent and Mrs. John Hale, of Brownsville, Vt., have been recent guests of Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Knight.
Miss Olive Hanscom is the guest of her grandmother in Malden.
Arthur G. Hildreth has been at Isles of Shoals, N.H., as a delegate from the Laymen’s league of the Unitarian church.
George A. Hosley, ex-commander of the G.A.R., was in town on last Saturday and called upon his old friend and schoolmate, Capt. Sherman H. Fletcher. Mr. Hosley will be chief of staff in the parade to be held in Boston next Tuesday.
George L. Aldrich, of the U.S. Revenue Dept., was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Harry E. Whiting on Wednesday and Thursday.
Mrs. Charles A. Blodgett is the guest of relatives at West Pembroke, Maine.
Miss Blanche Lawrence, of the William E. Frost school, has been taking a summer course at the Fitchburg Normal school.
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Norris are the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur G. Hildreth.
The Westford friends of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Decatur, of Roseville, Cal., will regret to learn of the death of their year-old son, Frederick Allen, at the Lane hospital, San Francisco, on July 28. Besides his parents he leave three brothers.
The members of the republican town committees of the eighth representative and eighth senatorial districts[1] met in the town hall on Wednesday evening to perfect plans for their annual outing to be held here on August 23. Committees were elected. The plans include a band concert, mid-way, ball game, sports and a dance in the evening. Many prominent men of the party will address the gathering. Herbert Burbank, of the state committee, attended the meeting on Wednesday evening.
Miss Elizabeth Wells has returned after visiting her aunt in West Newbury.
Asa Eastman quietly celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday on Tuesday.
Mrs. Francis Banister has been the guest of her son’s family in Strafford, N.H. Her son Seth is taking a summer course at Durham.
The Y.P.R.U. held a well attended dancing party in the town hall on last week Friday evening. Fisher Buckshorn and Miss Marjorie Seavey were in charge of arrangements.
The contract for shingling the William E. Frost school has been awarded to P. Henry Harrington.
Long pond, Littleton, is proving itself especially attractive to bathers this season. Many of the young people visit the pond each evening.
About Town. [The annual picnic of the] Methodist Sunday [school of] West Chelmsford was held [at Lake] Nabnassett on last Saturday afternoon. [paper torn, inferred words] The weather conditions could not have been improved upon for the picnic, but could be for growing crops. All of the various listed sports were possible to illustrate because of non-interference by rainfall moisture. The arrangements were made by the superintendent, Miss Lottie Snow [sister of Frederick Snow, Samuel Taylor’s son-in-law], assisted by teachers and friends. Rev. B. A. Gessner assisted Adolf Lofsted, who had charge of the sports. Supper was an added sport, and to some of us it was the most sporting event of the day.
The boys at the Y.M.C.A. camp at Lake Nabnassett are making a lawn tennis court. The Old Oaken Bucket farm furnished the necessary clay and Perley E. Wright did the truck delivery act.
The most vigorous and healthy growing potatoes that we have seen in our circuit riding this year were on the Frank C. Drew farm on the Lowell road, and most promising of a crop. They evidently are to some extent being kept from the full effects of this dog-day[2] dry drouth by capillary attraction from the flowage of Brookside mills. We have a piece of corn ditto, where once grew hoed crops and hay, but now it is the happy home of water snakes and other snakes and snapping turtles and non-snapping bullfrogs.
Ho everybody next Wednesday for Henry Ford’s farm, Wayside Inn, South Sudbury, where the Middlesex County Farm Bureau will hold their annual farm outing. Band concerts, tug-of-war by town teams and all kinds of modern and ancient sports. Basket lunch at the twelfth hour of the day. One hour later and you will listen to the story of “Wayside Inn.” Other addresses by Edward N. Lewis, president of the Massachusetts Agricultural college, Dr. Arthur W. Gilbert, of the same college, Pres. Leon Wetherbee, County Farm Bureau, and others on the program. At two o’clock there will be a parade of floats, boys’ and girls’ clubs, athletic contests for everyone, young and old, at three o’clock, baseball game, married men against the single men. All this and much more will lighten up the toil of farming and get socially acquainted with new friendships and stay acquainted.
The annual meeting of the Spalding Light Cavalry association will be held at the Center on next week Thursday afternoon and evening. The annual meeting for the election of officers will be held at the Association building on the Boston road [No. 20] at five o’clock. Dinner will be served in the town hall at six o’clock, and an entertainment that will entertain will follow the dinner. The clay pigeon shoot will be held on the Whitney playground at 2:30. This is an annual reminiscent come together good time for everybody.
A slight flurry of snow was reported on July 31 at Sackett Harbor on Lake Ontario. Some folks would not object to some snow moisture if rain moisture is held up by the dog star [Sirius], perhaps to give us a clearer view of the canal system on the approaching Mars.
Edward J. Robbins, of Chelmsford, gentleman that he is, has withdrawn as a contesting candidate for representative from the eleventh district. This leaves so far Langdon Prouty, of Littleton.
Several million dairy cattle have been killed in California in an effort to exterminate the hoof and mouth epidemic.[3] We recall, some of us, the limited run it had in town several years ago. It proved to be the most stubborn cattle plague to exterminate or even temporarily control that afflicts cows and young stock.
The Old Oaken Bucket farm had their first sweet corn on Wednesday, August 6. This is the result of coming the early flank movement act on the present dry weather by planting with rubber boots on when the ground is in a mud moisture condition. Recently we, and others, circled around the farming community to see who is who in this moistless time, and it was self-evident that with a few notable exceptions everybody got scared by the exceptionally cold, backward spring and went to the other extreme and planted unusually late and got badly caught between the upper and nether of a cold, backward spring and a hot, dry drouth.
Mrs. C. R. P. Decatur, who has been quite ill, is very much better. While she was sick an extensive correspondence was carried on by air mail, costing twenty-five cents a letter. It took less than two and a half days for mail to come and go to California, where the correspondence was carried on with her daughter, Mrs. Alma Prudenhoff [probably Prud’homme].
Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Barnes, of Malden, were visitors last Sunday at the C. R. P. Decaturs, Capt. Peletiah Fletcher place, [No. 54] Lowell Road.
Interesting Adventures. The following is taken from the Miami Herald, Florida: “Thrilling stories of adventure and interesting scientific discoveries have been reported to the National Geographic society by Joseph F. Rock, discoverer of [the] Chaulmoogra tree that yields a leprosy combating oil, and leader of the society’s expedition into Yuman [sic, probably Yunnan, a province in southwest China, is meant] aboriginal tribes who will practice religious ceremonies that predate the introduction of Buddhism and the discovery of a blight-resisting chestnut tree, which it is hoped will aid in restoring the diseased chestnut timber crop in the United States. The explorer brought back from the wilds of this Chinese province 1700 specimens of birds, 500 specimens of mammals and more than 60,000 plants. He also came into possession of books used by the Nashi or Moso priests containing ancient writing in picture form. The books also antidate [sic, antedate is meant] Buddhism in China and Tibet and include a story of a great flood.
“[Paper torn, first two lines of next paragraph missing] an hitherto unexplored gorge of the Yangze [sic, Yangtze] river[4], descending as much deeper than the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The crossing of streams presented one of the most difficult problems of the expedition, Mr. Rock and his twenty-three native assistants and pack animals having to be swung across them on single strand rope bridges.”
Auto Accident. A party of five persons on the way to Lowell from Lake Nabnassett met with a serious automobile accident at Billson’s corner, West Chelmsford, Tuesday, about midnight, when their machine turned turtle in attempting to dodge a motorcycle [bicycle?]. Of the injured, Edward Sinnett fractured his skull; Myrtle Bigelow, fracture of left leg and multiple bruises; Cora Dickson, loss of all her teeth and many bruises and lacerations; Jean Palmer, multiple bruises and lacerations. William Milne, 43, Westford street, driver of the car, was the only one to escape without injury. All of the party were from Lowell. The details of the accident are about as follows. At Billson’s corner they met a bicycle. After swinging to one side to avoid the rider, Milne was forced to swing quickly to the other side when the bicyclist swung to the same side, forcing Milne to drive his car onto the side of the road to avoid the man, but in doing so he struck some loose sand and the car turned turtle and struck a big tree at the side of the road.
Residents in the locality of the accident awakened at the crash and upon investigating the seriousness of the case sent an emergency call for the ambulance, and in record time the Lowell ambulance arrived and the injured were removed to St. John’s hospital. Milne in the morning reported the accident to the Lowell police.
This is what comes of a confusion of rules, or rather lack of well defined rules for passing on the highway vehicles going in the same direction. Some pass on the right, some on the left, and some zigzag right and left as in this instance, and some pass with rear-end collision. The number of ways to pass should be reduced by law and obeyed.
Against Preparedness. To the frightened clergymen of this country who are alarmed over the army’s defense test scheduled for September 12, Secretary Weeks says, “Nothing will be done on that day to alarm any sincere American citizen. The event will not be a general mobilization. Our military establishments will not be increased for an instant on September 12. The defense test will be only a demonstration of mobilization plans. It will be an endeavor on the part of the federal government to inform our people as fully as possible of the present status of our security. Our whole purpose is to present to our country the new citizen army of the United States and to indicate what action would have to be taken in any national emergency by our individual citizens and by communities if our country is to be defended successfully. We are able to take this forward step because our plans are purely for defense and their object for peace. Unpreparedness has never prevented war, and the only results of our peace-time nonchalance has been increased losses and hardships to those of our citizens who rallied to the defense of the nation.”
Secretary Weeks’ stand is based on history. It is conceded by the best military authority that unpreparedness kept the United States out of the world war a year longer than we ought to have kept out. It is conceded that poorly trained troops cost much unnecessary loss of life. In fact, this world war would likely never have occurred if France, England and the United States had not decreased their military defense forces about in proportion as Germany increased her military forces.
Our own civil war is another illustration of unpreparedness with only about 25,000 soldiers for a standing army and a spineless cucumber for president [i.e., James Buchanan], for he certainly wasn’t a Jackson or a Lincoln or a Cal Coolidge, and he “sat still” and let secession run off with everything. That unpreparedness cost us over 600,000 lives, and yet our pacifist peace party, who are no more anxious for peace than Coolidge, Weeks & Co., and the rest of us, are silent on the fearful results of unpreparedness, but they have clear gone frightened out of sanity sense on preparedness demonstrion on September 12. Say, they do not have any preparedness in the jungles of Africa. Why not open shop there?
Graniteville. The Abbots defeated the Reading team in a Greater Boston Twilight league game at Abbot park on Tuesday evening by the score of 8 to 5. Hech, Mitchell and McQuinn did the battery work for the Abbots, while Kroog and Bond were on the firing line for Reading. The Abbots are at the head of the league. The Abbots will play Everett in Everett on this Saturday afternoon.
The usual band concert will be given at Forge Village on Saturday evening by the Abbot Worsted Company band.
Miss Catherine Flaherty, of Portland, Me., is now the guest of Miss Elizabeth Prinn.
Townsend
Center. Rev. Frank I. Noyes, now of Pelham, N.H., is very popular in his new charge and is meeting with good success. The same is true of Rev. A. L. O’Brien, now of Graniteville.
[1] About Town. A republican outing will be held at Whitney playground on Saturday, August 23. Towns in the 7th and 8th senatorial districts and the 11th representative district are all included in the rally. The Westford Wardsman, August 16, 1924.
[2] The dog days are the hottest days of the summer, traditionally occurring when the brightest star in the night sky rises, Sirius, the Dog Star, in the constellation Canus Major (the Greater Dog).
[3] About Town. We wish to correct an error in regard to the ravages of the hoof and mouth disease in California. As reported and printed, it read, “Several million dairy cattle have been killed in California in an effort to exterminate the hoof and mouth disease.” It should have read, “The foot [sic] and mouth disease in California has cost about $5,000,000 and his made necessary the slaughter of 102,000 head of livestock.” Millions were all right—only in money and not cattle. The Westford Wardsman, August 16, 1924.
[4] This probably a reference to the “Tiger Leaping Gorge … a scenic canyon on the Jinsha River, a primary tributary of the upper Yangtze River. It is located 60 kilometres (37 mi) north of Lijiang City, Yunnan in southwestern China. …
“At a maximum depth of approximately 3,790 meters (12,430 feet) from river to mountain peak, Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the deepest and most spectacular river canyons in the world. The inhabitants of the gorge are primarily the indigenous Nakhi people, who live in a handful of small hamlets. Their primary subsistence comes from grain production and nowadays hiking tourism.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Leaping_Gorge.