Well, we're back in the 1950s again. Above is the front page of the Lorain Journal from Feb. 5, 1954 – seventy years ago today.
The headline refers to the legality of the generous raises approved by Lorain City Council in December 1953. A member of the state auditor's department contended that the raises were being paid illegally, due a law that "prevents elected and fixed term appointive officials from receiving pay boosts during their terms of office."
Elsewhere on the page, there's a great photo of the old No. 6 fire station at 31st and Palm Avenue being torn down. The photo caption notes that it was "the oldest fire house in the city."
There's an update on the "Dirty Dollar" contest in which a gambling operator had given two Journal reporters $550 to suppress their story. A Journal reader added a 'clean' one dollar to the kitty, and other readers passed along their suggestions as to what to do with the stash.
And as usual, there are a variety of interesting tidbits of both national and international origin. One that caught my attention was the small blurb about Walter E. Devine, who collected autographs of U. S. governors and was making a cross country trip on his bicycle to achieve this objective. A year later, he was in the home stretch (see photo below from the Tennessean of April 9, 1955).
4 comments:
Does anybody know much about the switch-over from the Elyria to Bell Telephone companies?
I know, for a while, many businesses had two numbers in their printed ads - one for each.
The story of Walter Devine and Annie Wilkins crossing the country by horse and bicycle is pure 1950s. While cycling across country is not too uncommon today, a 63 year old woman doing it on horseback is another story. There was a book written a few years ago about her journey and it is very interesting reading. She had no money and no family and had just lost her family farm, and her doctor told her she had just 2 years to live. Rather than feel sorry for herself she decided to sell her few possessions, and go see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She bought an old horse and with the horse and her dog set out for the Pacific. she was woefully unprepared for the long trip, but the U.S.A. of the 1950s was a much friendlier country than it is today, and the kindnesses she received from strangers along the way is amazing. Spoiler alert -- she made it from Maine all the way to the pacific, and she outlived her doctor's diagnosis by a number of years. The book is titled " The Ride Of her Life" If your nostalgic for a portrait of the U.S. in the 1950s it's a great read.
I know Dean Electric in Elyria made many of the old telephones. I have an extensive collection of old phone directories but none old enough to address the various phone companies. If you go to the Elyria Library and look through the early 1900 directories some of them have a section explaining the connections and how to dial from one to the other.
That Elyria Telephone Co. sure doesn't sound like a great place to work.
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