Lorain Journal Front Page – Lincoln's Birthday, Feb. 12, 1924

Did you know that Lincoln's Birthday has never been a U. S. Federal Government holiday? It's easy to assume that it was, until being mashed together with the birthday of the Father of Our Country to form Presidents Day. Nope, Honest Abe never had his own federal holiday.

And the Old Rail Splitter still doesn't. The 'third Monday in February' federal holiday that many states refer to as Presidents Day is officially called Washington's Birthday by the U. S. Government. (This website has a good explanation of the whole thing.)

Sorry, Abe. You might get a mention in the news on your actual birthday – February 12 – if you're lucky. And one hundred years ago today you did, on the front page of the Lorain Journal (shown above). It was a legal holiday in Lorain back then.

Front and center is our martyred President. What's interesting is that the Lincoln Memorial (shown behind him) had only been dedicated two years earlier. So it was relatively new at that point.

Here's a postcard from 1927 showing the still-new monument.

For more Lincoln's Birthday fun, visit some of my past posts: "The Woman Who Saw Lincoln Twice"; "They Both Saw Lincoln"; "Are You in There, Honest Abe?"; and the story of a Lorain County man who wrote The Lincoln Encyclopedia.

As for the rest of that front page, there are plenty of interesting stories: the saga of the three gunmen who robbed the store in Lorain a few days earlier and then fled to Brownhelm, where they divided the loot amongst themselves at the farmhouse of Henry Standen; the discovery of a body in the ruins of an apartment in Cleveland that had burned down; the gruesome discovery of body parts in a carload of cinders in a railcar at Weirton Junction, W. Virginia; the opening of the lid of King Tut's tomb; and the promotion of Helen Steiner to the state chairmanship of the Women's Public Information bureau of the National Electric Light association.

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I appreciate the well-wishes and concerned comments last week when I took time off from the blog. It's very frustrating to practice healthy habits at home and at work, be current on all recommended shots and vaccines – and then still get sick anyway! I'm nostalgic for the days when being sick meant it was either a cold, the flu or (worst case) pneumonia. Nowadays, it's almost always some sort of infection where you have to wait for it to go away. And I've got a lot of waiting to do.

But even though Mom's been gone for almost a year now, I'm still taking her advice and opened up a jar of the favorite Brady remedy (below).

Blog Break!

I'll be taking a few days off the blog this week while I recover from the cold flu whatever this is. I haven't been sick during winter for years, so I guess I was overdue. I'm spending most of my time sleeping.

In the meantime, here's a link to a past post in which I reminisced about being 'sick in the 60s.'

Lorain Journal Front Page – Feb. 5, 1954

 

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).

Groundhog Day in the Journal – 1934, 1944, 1954 & 1964

Here's wishing you a Happy Groundhog Day! It's a nice little bit of fun and whimsy to break up the bleak winter. It's achieved greater prominence in the news in recent decades because of the popular 1993 movie (one of my favorites).

Here on the blog, I've done so many posts about it that it has earned its own label. (Consider visiting some of my old posts for that authentic 'Groundhog Day' deja vu experience! I've also featured so many vintage groundhog postcards that it's a challenge to find a new one each year.

Anyway, I like to see how the holiday played out in the Lorain Journal over the years. Sometimes the paper ignored it, other years it's front page news.

Groundhog Day 1934 included this great front page photo.

Apparently that isn't specifically Punxsutawney Phil in the photo. The article notes, "The groundhog's decision depends on what part of the map he chose to pop out of his hole.

"So far as Lorain is concerned, there were no shadows, the sun being covered by thick clouds throughout the day."

Ten years later on Groundhog Day 1944, the Lorain Journal gave Phil's wartime forecast front page coverage.

Fast forward another decade to Groundhog Day 1954, and the Lorain Journal didn't bother to mention Phil by name. But the forecast was the same: six more weeks of winter.

But by the time of Groundhog Day 1964, Punxsutawney Phil was back in the limelight in the Journal's coverage – and with the same forecast.

 

An official Punxsutawney Phil postcard portrait

 

Lorain Journal Front Page – Feb. 1, 1954

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,

Mastodon in Brownhelm Township

It's pretty interesting that a massive glacial boulder was found last week by an excavation crew digging for sanitary sewer lines along Indian Hollow Road. (You can read about it here on the Chronicle-Telegram website.) Those kinds of stories – of people digging and unexpectedly coming up with traces of Lorain County's prehistoric past – used to be much more common decades ago.

And here's one of those stories, which has been retold with some regularity but with little detail. It appeared in the Lorain Journal back on January 18, 1929 and is about the remains of a mastodon that was found on the B. C. French family farm in Brownhelm Township. 

As the article notes, "The discovery was made by some men who were digging a drainage ditch on the farm. When about three feet below the surface a spade struck something hard and the men were attracted by the peculiar sound. They examined further and found it to be a portion of an ivory tusk. Digging still deeper they uncovered the entire tusk, about seven feet in length and about eight inches or more in diameter at the largest end.

"When the discovery was made, the men working on the ditch realized that the fossil would be of great value and exercised extreme care in removing it. They were compelled to dig about eight or ten feet deeper to remove the entire remains. Dr. Lynda Jones, of the zoology department at Oberlin College, was called and the mastodon skeleton taken over by the college where it is now held as part of the school's archeological collection.

"Both tusks, the entire skull, and many of the body bones were uncovered."

Some of the bones were put on display in January 2001 at the French Creek Nature Center on Colorado Avenue as part of an Ice Age exhibit. An article written by Ron Vidika in the Morning Journal of January 18, 2001 noted that the discovery on the French family farm took place in the late 1800s.

You might be wondering (like me) if a mastodon and a mammoth are the same. Well, the National Park Service website has a great website page explaining the difference. It notes, "Mastodon were shorter and stockier than mammoths with shorter, straighter tusks."

The folks at Encyclopedia Brittanica provided this nice illustration comparing a mastodon, a mammoth and an elephant. 

It just might come in handy if you're watching the Flintstones and need help identifying the various appliances.

On Area Movie Screens – Jan. 22, 1964

With all of the entertainment options and streaming services available to kids nowadays, there's a good chance that they're exposed to much more sex and violence than Baby Boomers ever were when they were growing up. 

It's kind of ironic, because the 1960s were a time of great cultural change, which was reflected in many of the movies being made, which emphasized – what else? – sex and violence. But parents could insulate their children from objectionable fare simply by not taking them to see it.

So what were parents to do if they wanted to go to the movies as a family?

Many parents relied on Walt Disney and his motion picture studio to provide wholesome entertainment that was safe for the entire family to see. Consequently, seeing the latest Disney movie became sort of a ritual for many families. (It was for the Bradys, even though Mom and Dad also took us to see every new bullet-riddled, blood-splattered John Wayne movie too.)

The page above from the January 22, 1964 Journal caught my attention with its ad for Walt Disney's The Sword in the Stone, the story of King Arthur as a young boy, with Merlin the magician as his teacher. It was one of several Walt Disney cartoons that I remember seeing as a kid in the 1960s. 

Even though The Sword in the Stone is not regarded today as one of the great Disney epics, I remember liking it. (I was five years old when I saw it.) The highlight of the movie is a magical duel between Merlin and a wicked female sorceress, in which they both transform into a variety of animals and creatures to do battle. It's not particularly funny, but it's creative, and there is some suspense.

Today's Disney animated features are still very popular, but they would be unrecognizable to Walt Disney himself if he was alive (or unfrozen, as the case may be). The movies aren't designed to appeal to the whole family any more. Their target audience is young girls, with plots often featuring strong female protagonists who don't need a man to rescue them. As a result, I just can't imagine any little boy having an interest in seeing any of the Disney cartoons from the last twenty years. But since Disney owns Marvel Entertainment, there's no shortage of action movies for the young males of the species.

Elsewhere on that 1964 Journal page is an ad for the Hoop chain of restaurants (which I wrote about here); a listing of Radio Programs on W-WIZ that includes Paul Harvey news; Fire Calls, with a report of an alarm (accidental in nature) at U. S. Steel; State Patrol Traffic Reports; and other local news.