Forum Flashbacks: May 23-29
MARYVILLE DAILY FORUM, MAY 24, 1974
50 YEARS AGO: Lee Schneider, left, Maryville R-II High School Band Director, presented awards to four band members during the May 17 Senior Awards Assembly at the high school gymnasium. The recipients were Miss Lori Watkins, Marching Spoofhounds Drum Majorette, 1971-74; Ted Rounds, percussionist, “Mr. Music”; Craig Gaugh, trombonist, the Phi Beta Mu certificate for outstanding achievement; and Mark Mitchell, trumpeter, the Ralph Yehle Band Award given to an outstanding senior band member. At right, Schneider, Mitchell and Herman Boswell, R-II principal, display the 1974 Band of the Year award presented annually to the best band in the state. Missouri’s Lambda Chapter, Phi Beta Mu, National Bandmaster’s Fraternity, designated the Maryville R-II Marching and Concert Bands jointly as the best in the state for 1974.
10 years ago
Maryville Daily Forum, May 29, 2014
Just a little more than a year after its decades-old predecessor collapsed from structural failure, the new Rolla Dicks Post No. 315 American Legion building in Burlington Junction — designed to do double duty as a community center — is completed and has already hosted several events.
When the old brick storefront tumbled into a pile of rubble in early February 2013, it was at first feared the veterans organization would not be able to rebuild. Residents of this small, tightly knit north-county town feared they would lose a valuable community hub that has tied friends and families together for years. But a grass-roots effort spearheaded by C.D. Clark and other community leaders wasted no time in forming a nonprofit corporation and raising more than $100,000 for construction of a new building at the same downtown location.
“There’s still some work to do on the outside, including a sidewalk and some landscaping,” Post 315 Commander Justin Plymell said. “Inside, we’re still waiting to get the permanent counter installed for the kitchen, and the meeting room needs some final touches. But we’re open for business, and the building is available to rent.
“The Burlington Junction school reunion was held here, and the building recently hosted a local high school graduation reception as well. I know several events are already scheduled throughout the summer, so the building is getting the use we all hoped for when the decision was made to rebuild.”
The facility, which has 3,800 square feet of floor space, is equipped with tables and chairs in a main meeting area that connects to the fully equipped kitchen. A large cleaning closet and men’s and women’s restrooms are located in the back hallway. …
Plymell said the post is grateful for generous donations of money, labor and time, adding that construction would not have been possible without an outpouring of support from members of the community.
“The trend in many small towns is when a downtown building like this collapses, it’s not rebuilt.” Plymell said. “We felt it was important to rebuild and equally important to rebuild downtown in the same spot. Our hope by doing that is that the building will get lots of use by the community in addition to serving as home for our American Legion post.”
50 years ago
Maryville Daily Forum, May 23, 1974
Editor’s note: The following is from the editor’s “Omnibus” column, by editor Phillip Putney.
I moved out into the country not too long ago and have become accustomed to chugholes in the road — have come, in fact, to accept them as part of Nature’s grand scheme of things (if not Nature, maybe the county court).
Since my move, I have had few chances to drive the streets of Maryville.
I feel that is only one of the benefits of the bucolic splendors of the country.
What all that circumlocution is about, I guess, is that Maryville’s streets have some of the biggest chugholes anywhere, and a person driving down such streets in anything more powerful than a mo-ped risks serious internal bodily injury whenever they have the misfortune to drive into a chughole (into is correct since the ability to drive over or around the holes has long since passed).
I’m not really certain what can be done, but I do have a proposal.
!!!NOTICE!!!
Announcing the Maryville Daily Forum’s First-Annual-Neverending-Rock-and-Gravel-Best-Chughole-in-the-City-Contest.
There are no prizes, no benefits to be gained by entering this contest, unless we get a donation of orthopedic braces.
The rules are simple.
Send us a picture of your favorite chughole in town and its location and we’ll ask the powers that be what is being done about it.
To paraphrase some fool or another: “Drivers of the city unite, you have nothing to lose but your kidneys.”
100 years ago
Maryville Tribune, May 26, 1924
SEIZE MASH, LIQUOR AND LARGE STILL
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The largest and most complete apparatus for the making of illicit liquor ever confiscated by Nodaway County authorities was seized late yesterday afternoon in a raid on the home of W. P. Jones, who lives on what is known as the old Cole place, about sixteen miles south of Maryville, or three miles southwest of Barnard. The raid was made by W. W. Randall, deputy sheriff, and Bernard Dougan, Maryville chief of police.
Jones was arrested and arraigned before W. L. Johnson, justice of the peace, this morning. He waived preliminary examination on charges of possession of liquor, possession of a still, manufacture of liquor and sale of a still, and was bound over to the Circuit Court with bond fixed at $1,000. He had not furnished bail at a late hour this afternoon.
A truck load of apparatus and material for making whisky was confiscated and brought to Maryville last night. There was a forty gallon copper still complete with a copper coil which stands about four feet high and is perfectly made in every detail. A regular mash cooker, whisky testers and barrels and kegs for holding the mash and the whisky were also brought here.
Forty gallons of liquor, which Jones said he had recently made, was brought to town and about two hundred and fifty gallons of mash was destroyed. In addition to the mash which was “working,” the officers found large quantities of cracked rye, a big box of compressed yeast, and about three hundred pounds of sugar. The whisky, officers said, showed a very high test.
All the apparatus was set up in the out room of the Jones house, which had been fitted up with drains, water and all the other appurtenances of a real distillery.
Jones told officers that he bought the outfit in St. Joseph and had brought the whisky making materials to the farm from that city. He does not know the name of the man from whom he purchased the outfit, he says. Jones moved to the farm from St. Joseph early this spring. The house sits pretty well back in a field on a by-road which is about three-quarters of a mile off the main road. …
There were enough barrels about the “still room” and an adjacent outhouse to hold six or seven hundred gallons of mash and liquor, according to Randall. One of the barrels stood about five feet high and was about four feet in diameter.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The 50-year and 100-year flashbacks are courtesy of the Missouri Digital Newspaper Project from the State Historical Society of Missouri, accessible at shsmo.newspapers.com.
