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).
