Thursday, December 9, 1920
Another week and the planet is still plunging through space. We do not know where we are going, but we are on our way. The world is full of sin and misery and Republicans. Even the women went Republican. We Democrats were very silly before the election. We thought that the women were with us and they were against us. It was a fatuous, fat-headed state to be in, when we all ought to have known that there are some women so fond of change that they would be glad to trade off their husbands…
PINK SMITH
“There has been a good deal of talk that I was chased out of Centerville, the town I came from,” said Pink Smith. “The charge is true, but I beg that my side of the story be heard. It should be remembered that I was very young when the incident happened, and in trying to do a noble thing promptly, I made a mistake and was laughed at until I had to leave town.
“One summer afternoon, I was with a number of boys who were swimming at a favorite hole in the creek near town. Suddenly it was discovered that Tom Jackson, a boy of ten or eleven, about my own age, had disappeared. Then we began diving for him, and in a little while he was dragged out on the bank. He was drowned; he had mud in his nose and was limp as a rag.
“Tom Jackson was a particular friend of mine, and when someone cried: ‘Get a doctor,’ I flew up town. Fortunately, I found Doc Lewis in his office and we hurried to the swimming hole, finding about half the women in town there, crying over Tom’s limp body.
“The Doc rolled and pounded Tom, and blew in him and at last got him to crying, then we knew that Tom had been saved. As we stood about Tom, and realized he had been brought back to life, I began thinking I had made a wonderful run up town and back after Doc Lewis. Probably it would be talked about for years, and I would be a hero. Within my recollection, equally good time had not been made by anyone else going for a doctor.
“And while I was in this comfortable frame of mind, a woman said to me: “Why, Pink, look at you!”
“And then, I realized that during the run up town and back, and at that moment, I was as naked as the day I was born. People laughed at me so much that as soon as I was able, I left town.”
SAD DEATH AT DURBIN
Arthur Parg, a young man of sterling character and the chief support of his widowed mother, was found in an unconscious condition on the street early Friday morning, and though every means known to medical skill was employed to save his life, he died Saturday afternoon at four-thirty o’clock.
An investigation is being made, and efforts will be put forth to bring those to justice who are indirectly responsible for his untimely death. The supposition is that he was persuaded to buy and drink moonshine liquor, and never having been accustomed to intoxicants of any kind, quickly succumbed to the effects of the poisonous drink, and was thus incapable of reaching his home at the Tannery.
It seems his companion tried to take him into a hotel, and failing in this, left him lying on the sidewalk where he was discovered early in the morning by one of the townsmen who was on his way to his place of business.
The death of this respected young man, who was yet a boy in years, has shocked the entire community and people are tardily awakening to the fact that something must be done to stop the wholesale peddling of illicit intoxicants about the country. It is a crying shame that a tragedy such as this should occur before law abiding citizens rouse themselves to any real concerted action against this degrading business. It is fearful enough when drink hardened men are the victims; when it comes to young boys, the thought wrings one’s heart to the very core.
Surely it is time for the men and women of Pocahontas county to take some definite action, and if their efforts are crowned with success, this heart broken mother’s sacrifice will not have been in vain. – A Mother
YEGG ALARM
Uncle Alex Johnson fired the shot heard round the town Sunday morning about 2 o’clock.
He is janitor at the First National Bank Building, and keeps a lot of fine chickens in the back lot. They roost in a tree which grows close to the brick wall and the big warm chimney of the furnace. Somebody got to pestering around about where these chickens stay, and the old rooster began to mutter in his sleep. Uncle Alex came out of the basement and loosened up a time or two with old Hulda, the big shot gun, and the would be thief moved from that place. Alex hadn’t shot to hit, and so far as he was concerned the incident was closed. He went back to bed and heard about the excitement the next morning.
But the town woke up. There has not been such a noise here since the rocks fell. A reputable witness says the windows shook at Campbelltown. A number of citizens thought a bank or store safe had been blown, and they sleuthed through the streets and alleys, cautiously peering through window fronts, prepared for a battle with the safe crackers. Two of the family physicians turned out ready for business, one with a good old pepper box and the other with a gat, the kind handed out to Uncle Sam’s Army.
A bunch of tin horns were having a friendly little game in a back room, and they got all excited and joined in the hunt. The street lights came back on, and the old Warm Springs pike has not looked so much like war since Averall’s retreat.
Things quieted down, the home guards went to bed, and no explanation was to be had until Monday. Bank and safe robberies have been too frequently reported in the papers recently from all parts of the country for an explosion in the middle of the night in the middle of the town not to cause great excitement.