Looking Backward 3.19.2015
25 Years Ago
March 15, 1990
The Ava City Council has authorized the city attorney to begin a civil suit against a local bank to recover interest the city says it lost through action of that bank. At Monday night’s regular city council meeting, the aldermen voted to commence action against Citizens Bank of Ava to reclaim over $1,200 in interest lost by the city when the bank refused to honor a city check.
Receiving all-conference recognition from the coaches of the South Central Association at the close of the 1989-90 season were several Ava Basketball players. Joe Harper received honorable mention, Mike Roberts was named to the second team, and Dee Dee Gray and Danny Schnieder were named to first teams. Gray is a senior and all the others are juniors.
Mr. and Mrs. Martin Kellogg will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary with a reception at the Ava Community Center on Sunday, March 18. The celebration will be hosted by the couple’s four children.
Central Methodist College is proud to announce that Scott Silvey has pledge to the Alpha Phi Gamma.
Ava High School speech students who participated in the Southwest District Speech Contest last week are Ricky Voliva, Genet McCullough, Leigh Lakey, Becky Henry, Kelly Dobbs, Melissa Christian, Rhonda Lee and David Davidson.
GENTRYVILLE –– Roger and Joan Ingram have a new baby boy, Cody Ray, born Thursday.
SKYLINE –– Having birthdays this week are Clark Lambert, Chris Garrison, and Andy Nation.
HAMMOND –– Mike Woods has sold his place at Noble and is leaving for Costa Rica to join his wife, Anna, who is there caring for her mother.
50 Years Ago
March 11, 1965
An artist’s drawing of the $82,000 Ava Country Club has been completed, the building is to be built here on an 80-acre site west of the city. The 24×48 foot concrete block clubhouse will contain a 24×36 foot dining room. Over 100 member-ships have been sold.
Ronald Reagan of movie and television fame, and more recently champion of the “Constitutiona-lists” will speak at 8 p.m. April 2, at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield. His subject will be “What is happening to our United States?”
Burley Jones, a long time druggist and resident of Lebanon and Springfield, has accepted the position as chief pharmacist at Norman Rexall Drug, it was announced this week by Bob Turton, owner of the firm.
An Ava High School student and member of the Bears basketball team, Lonnie Swofford, has been named as a member of the South Central Association all-conference basketball team. Another member of the team, Mike Spurlock, received honorable mention on the SCA all-conference team list.
Snow provided only .57 inches of moisture during the period of March 1-7, according to Mark Twain National Forest officials.
Members of the Parent-Teachers Association casts of “Itchin’ to Get Hitched” and “The Bigger Babies Contest” will give a repeat performance at 8 p.m. Friday evening at the Ava High School gymnasium for the Crippled Children’s Association of Douglas County. Appearing in the “Itchin’ to Get Hitched” play is Dr. Taylor Wood as Clem Snead; Vance Moore, Paw Snead; June Byerley, Maw Snead; Beulah Luna, Preacher Bessie Smith; Charles Fish, Uncle Fud; Doyne Huffman, Lizzy Snead; Ola Sue Souder Tate, Pearly Mae Snead; Gorman Dye, Jr. Hank Faddle.
Item furnished by Mrs. Bob Dougherty of Ava from an unidentified newspaper publication: “An American is a fellow who drives home in a German car from a French movie, slips off his Hong Kong suit and Italian shoes. Puts on his English robe and Mexican slippers and sips Brazilian coffee from Dutch china while sitting on Danish furniture. Then he writes a letter to his Congressman on Canadian paper with a Japanese ballpoint pen demanding that he do something about all the gold that is leaving the country.
Mr. and Mrs. Earnest H. Hamby celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary Sunday, Feb. 28, at an open house held at their home 314 NE 5th Street.
Mr. and Mrs. Jackie Holman (Geraldine Gunter) of Route 5, Ava, announce the birth of a daughter at 6:55 Tuesday evening, Feb. 23, at the Gainesville Clinic, Gainesville. The baby weighed 6 pounds 5 ounces at the time of her birth and she has been named Peggy Sue.
75 Years Ago
March 14, 1940
Peace on Russian terms this week ended the war between Soviet Russia and the tiny neighboring republic of Finland. A treaty signed in Moscow, which stopped the fighting Wednesday, the 105th day following the soviet invasion, gave to Russia even more than she had demanded before the war started.
J.D. McClure local chairman in a nation-wide drive for funds to help the Finnish people, sent $20.43 to the state chairman the latter part of last week. A large part of the sum was received from the Ava school teachers and students.
A “what’s-it” was brought into Ava Monday morning by E.T. Detherage and Mrs. J.E. Morris, both of Ava Route 2. Mrs. Morris is Mr. Detherage’s mother-in-law. The “what’s-it” was in a quart bottle, partially filled with water, and never failed to attract and hold attention wherever it went. It was something like fifteen inches long, about as big through as the lead of a pencil and was yellowish-brown in color. It wiggled and squired and seemed to swim in the water, sometimes sticking its exploring fore-end up through the bottle neck. Its head, if it was a head, was no different from the rest of its body, except being possibility a little darker. Several persons looked at it and identified it as a horse hair snake. Others looked at it and just gaped. One man looked at it and swore off drinking. Mr. Detherage said he found the “what’s-it” Sunday wriggling in a spring branch near his home nine miles northeast of Ava.
Jesse Mitchell, member of the state tax commission at Jefferson City and former Ava Banker, is going to have difficulty in convincing his friends here that he does not know the identity of the mysterious “angel” who has been bestowing money upon Ava citizens. That Mitchell is in on the secret is indicated in a letter received this week by Mrs. J.W. Reese from her brother, J.E. Mackey of Costa Mesa, California. Mackey, former merchant at Rome, 12 miles southwest of Ava, is a recipient of one of the “gift” checks, and wrote Mrs. Reese in an effort to learn the identity of the giver. All the information that accompanied the $100 bank draft, Mackey said, was a notation “from Santa Claus,” and a return address on the envelope “Ed Glen, Box 146, Jefferson City, Mo.”
BLACK OAK –– Ernest Alcorn has moved into a building on the Fred Davis place and will assist Mr. Davis on the farm this season.
- TABOR –– Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Turner moved Saturday morning to their home which is occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Fred Andrews.
SPRINGCREEK –– Mr. and Mrs. J.F. Vantrease had as Sunday dinner guests Mr. and Mrs. Ray Watterson and son, Jimmie Don, and Mrs. E.H. Hamby and children, Rex, Russell and Ronalee. Visitors in the afternoon were Robert Hicks and Reba Hamby.
100 Years Ago
March 25, 1915
It is reliably reported that C.E. Vrooman, a prominent financier of St. Louis has purchased the stock in the company formerly owned by the H.A. Vrooman estate and is planning large improvements to the property probably an extension to reach the heavily timbered section of Douglas and Ozark counties. We have heard similar reports for many years and are still hoping someone will see the splendid opportunity offered to capital in this section and believe the time is not far distant when this country will come into its own.
You remember the Fontinelle Stock Co. was in Ava a little more than a year ago and put on some of the best shows of the season at the Wilson Opera. Well, they are coming again, and will show at the same place during the week commencing March 29th. Their show is clean, moral, and refined, and will no doubt be worth more than the price of admission, 15 and 25 cents.
SCHOOL NOTES –– The Primary Room enjoyed a ciphering match last week. Harold Pettit was the successful one. New students enrolled this week are Miss Alice Nisley and Noll and Lock Alsup.
We are on the threshold of “The Farm Era” in this state. The signs of the times point to the new awakening, the new popularity, and the new realization that a home on five or forty acres is a haven of rest where a house on a little lot is a cage.
Butterfat is scarce. The price is high, and is going higher. It will pay to produce more butterfat, but it cannot be done by feeding the cows fall grass, corsetsilks and timothy hay. It is important that the milk yield never be allowed to decline.
- ZION NOTES –– Miss Ina Jones of Garrison is a recent new student. … Mr. Lewis Cunningham and family of Garrison have moved on the farm he purchased from Allen Miller.
COLD SPRINGS –– We understand there are several cases of measles near Brushy Knob. The disease was brought here by the family of Eugene Rhoads, who lately returned from Oklahoma. The families suffering from it are J.R. John and Ben Heard.
Perhaps the most successful school officers and directors meeting ever in Douglas County was held last Friday and Saturday.
125 Years Ago
March 20, 1890
The piers of the Kansas City, Fort Scott and Memphis bridge, which will span the Mississippi River at Memphis, are being constructed of blue limestone. This viaduct will be 75 feet above high water mark, which is much higher than other western structures of the kind.
The Missouri State Board of Agriculture has adopted stringent regulations to prevent the spread of Texas fever and other infection diseases among stock in the state.
A building association has been organized at Knob Noster.
The boys of William Jewell College are greatly interested over the proposed establishment of a $30,000 female university at Liberty.
Noah Armstrong, owner of the great racehorse Spokane, reports that his famous steed cleared last season about $23,000.
Two of the three persons who are supposed to have broken into Capt. Samuel Turner’s store last week and robbed his safe, have been arrested at Marshfield. They were found at the Ozark Hotel and arrested by Sheriff Lyons on Sunday night at about 12 o’clock p.m. Capt. Turner and Sheriff Lyons trailed them through from Arno to that place. When arrested they gave their names as J.M. Officer and T.W. Berry.
On Friday night, March 4, the house of John Dalton and John Plumb, of Walls Township, was visited by a party of armed men who claimed to be Bald Knobbers. They left a written notice for each of the men notifying them to get out of the county by the 18th, and threatening dire vengeance if they were found after that date. On the night of March 7th the same party called on Mr. Samuel Plumb in the same neighborhood and left a written notice with them giving him warning to leave the country, and when about to leave the premises, fired off their guns, the bullets sliced into the house in several places but none of them penetrating to the inside as the walls are built of hewn logs. Mr. Plumb found some of the bullets the next morning and brought one of them to Ava for inspection. It is supposed that the same party burned the house of William Murray, near Rippee Hall. There was no one in the home at the time, as Mr. Murray had recently purchased the house and moved one load of goods into it, which were burned up in the house. Dalton and Plumb are not easily scared and say that they are going to stay and defend their homes.
One thousand and fifty immigrants arrived in New York.
The Massachusetts House has passed the bill forbidding the sale of Oleomargarine as butter.
The snow on San Juan range at Cumbree on the Rio Grande railway is 60 feet deep, and 250 shovelers are clearing the tracks. The temperature is 21º below zero.
