Thursday, February 1, 1973
Monday’s snow and cold wind reminded us it was still winter but last week it was in the 50s.
Friday is Groundhog Day, but we’re not sure the ground hogs have gone to sleep. Jack Morrison saw one along the road near Buckeye on the nice day, Thursday, January 25. Alfred McNeel found a fresh groundhog hole January 22.
Would you believe winged insects in January? Last Thursday the sky seemed filled with what looked like floating soap bubbles. It was the sun shining on the transparent wings of some flying insects.
Ring Out!
The church bells rang out a welcome message at 7:00 Saturday night as the long awaited time of ceasefire came. The historic signing [of the Vietnam peace agreement] in Paris Saturday morning was witnessed throughout the world. America will be withdrawing, the prisoners will be coming home, and the world looks with hope for peace.
America’s Powder Horn
Robert C. Radcliffe
National Geographic News Service
Daniel Boone and his Kentucky rifle today might not be able to get off a shot.
America’s powder horn is empty.
Black powder production has been stopped by the last American factory to make it. Not enough business from fireworks makers or the 30,000 or so muzzleloader marksmen in the United States says the DuPont Company, and modern explosives have taken over blasting and military uses. Now black powder is made only abroad.
For 600 years, until smokeless powder and dynamite became available in the late 1800s, black powder was man’s only explosive, the National Geographic Society says.
It smashed down castle walls and with them the Age of Chivalry. It provided new might and menace to warring armies and wandering marauders alike. And, in the New World, black powder lifted stumps and split rocks by the millions as a new nation cleared the wilderness…
Gunpowder blasted out the Erie Canal and other waterways then helped railroaders dig tunnels and cut down mountains. Irish and Chinese workers on the railroad used 200 to 300 kegs of blasting powder as they pushed toward a meeting of iron horses at Promontory Point, Utah.
On Bunker Hill, “don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes” was an order aimed at saving gunpowder as much as assuring a telling toll among the attacking Redcoats.
In the War of 1812, during the British attack on Baltimore, black powder produced “the rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air” that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem.
WEDDING
Mr. and Mrs. Earl Sutton, of Marlinton, are announcing the open church wedding of their daughter, Billy Jean, to Keith Beverage, son of Mr. and Mrs. Roscoe Beverage, also of Marlinton, Saturday, February 3, at six o’clock, at the Marlinton Nazarene Church.
DEATHS
Mrs. Rosa F. Waugh, 88, of Marlinton; widow of Jacob B. Waugh; and a daughter of the late Ervin and Nancy Sharp Wilfong. Burial in the Wilfong Cemetery.
Mrs. Eva McCoy McCarty, 85, of Buckeye, a daughter of the late Noah D. and Nancy McCarty McCoy. Burial in Mountain View Cemetery.
T. Sgt. Robert Eugene Madison, 32, of Dayton, Ohio, was killed in a car-train accident at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He was a son of Mrs. Virginia Lovell, of Marlinton, and the late Richard Madison. Burial in Mountain View Cemetery.
Mrs. Helen Virginia Hunter Marshall, 67, of Eustis, Florida; born in Marlinton, a daughter of the late Frank R. and Anna V. Price Hunter. Burial in Pine Forest Cemetery.
Mrs. Elvie Forren, 83, of Marlinton; burial in Mountain View Cemetery.
Mrs. Flora Minerva Kellison, 81, of Forest Hill, Maryland, formerly of Droop; a daughter of the late Thomas and Christine Tolley Mc-Laughlin. Burial in the Kellison Cemetery near Jacox.
Jack Ryder, 62, of Dunmore, a retired carpenter and farmer. Burial in Dunmore Cemetery.