Forum Flashbacks: June 11-17
MARYVILLE DAILY FORUM, JUNE 12, 2001
25 YEARS AGO: Let’s See — The Coach Said … – Practice makes perfect — but you have to remember all the steps. Jackson Zimmerman plans his strategy in hopes of that elusive home run. Jackson plays for the Maryville Daily Forum tee ball team.
50 years ago
Maryville Daily Forum, June 17, 1976
Clyde Post Office Closes Era
It was a happy day in Clyde in July of 1880. The town citizenry gathered to establish and name their new post office.
More than fifty persons of the community known as New Conception attended the meeting. It was a prosperous town of about 250 persons which had sprung up around the Wabash Railroad two miles northeast of Conception.
Many names were bandied around at the gathering. But, Frank Bellows had recently been up in Canada and upon his return brought some imported Clydesdale horses. One wag suggested calling the post office Clyde after the famous horses.
It was voted on and approved. The name was forwarded to Washington and the postal department so named it.
Friday, the town’s namesake will close its doors for the last time by order of the U.S. Postal Service, the victim of rising postal costs. The post office at Quitman will also close.
It is the end of an era for Clyde. With the closing of the post office, Clyde will no longer have a public business. The hardware store, grocery store, saloons, opera house, hotels and others are long gone. …
“It’s kind of bad,” Postmaster Robert Eckstein said of the closing. “It (the post office) is a meeting place, a social center.
“It is the only remaining business in town. As such, it is the only remaining gathering place in town.”
75 years ago
Maryville Daily Forum, June 15, 1951
An Editorial: Swimming in Iowa
The Red Cross finance committee is out beating the bushes again to raise funds to send Maryville children up to Bedford, Ia., for a series of swimming lessons. This is a yearly procedure, and it looks as if it will go on forever.
We Maryville citizens, every one of us, should be ashamed of ourselves. Here we are, living through a great era of prosperity; we smugly point with pride to the great amount of depositor’s money in our two banks; we are proud of our town; we think we are progressive; in fact, we think we are just about tops as people and citizens.
And yet, year after year we have to make cumbersome arrangements, raise funds, and go to considerable trouble, in order that we can transport our children to a small town up in Iowa, so that they can have swimming facilities. Oh, yes, us oldsters take care of ourselves. We see to it that we have our clubs, our fraternal organizations, our golf, and various other forms of amusement and occupation to take care of ourselves.
But we don’t seem to care much what our kids have to do, and we certainly are way under standard, in supplying recreational facilities for them, compared to other towns our size, or even much smaller communities. Again, every one of us should be ashamed of himself.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The 50- and 75-year flashbacks are courtesy of the Missouri Digital Newspaper Project from the State Historical Society of Missouri, accessible at shsmo.newspapers.com.
