It's hard to believe it's February already! That means tomorrow is Groundhog Day – which is nice, because it's a ready-made blog topic for me!
But in the meantime, let's see what was going on in Lorain seventy years ago today. Above is the front page of the February 1, 1954 Lorain Journal.
The headline YANK JET DOWNS MIG IN AIR BATTLE seems pretty ominous. A formation of Russian-built MIG-15s attacked an American reconnaissance plane off the coast of Korea. But the whole thing was downplayed by the State Department.
In actuality, the really big story for Lorain on the front page was the price of coffee (a favorite topic on this blog). With prices for the "South American brew" rising anywhere from two to seven cents a pound, Lorainites were naturally upset. But they were still buying, although some decided to switch to tea.
In a related story, a used car dealer in Jacksonville, Florida was running an ad selling a pound of coffee for $600 – and throwing in a free automobile with each purchase!
(Sorry, but I'd pay whatever I have to in order to get my coffee. It's the high point of my day. (That will give you an idea of my day). I look forward to a cup when I get up, when I get to work and as a treat during the day. But don't get the idea that I'm addicted to it.)
Elsewhere on the 1954 page: the Journal's Dirty Dollars Contest, in which newspaper readers were invited to submit ideas for what to do with $550 given by a gambling operator to two Journal newsmen; the crash of a U. S. Air Force courier plane off the coast of Japan; a terrible rail disaster in Korea; a tragedy in Sheffield Lake; a maniac slasher loose in Montreal; and an interesting item from London in which a woman could net a cool one-half million bucks just by changing her name,
