Forum Flashbacks: April 17-23
MARYVILLE DAILY FORUM, APRIL 21, 2000
25 YEARS AGO: Future Business Entrepreneurs – Steven Spire and Michael Clements, both of Northeast Nodaway Elementary School, display their Sprayomatic 2000 at the fourth annual “Mind Your Own Business” contest, sponsored by Access 2000.
50 years ago
Maryville Daily Forum, April 19, 1975
Metric System Converts Students During Horace Mann Study Unit
All indications are it is only a matter of time until the United States converts from the English to the metric system of measurement. Evidence is seen in many everyday instances.
Pattern companies are including metric charts converting inches and yards to centimeters and meters and tool companies are beginning to specify both the English and metric measurements.
The University of Missouri Extension Office is planning to conduct a credit course for elementary and secondary school teachers on the introduction of the metric system in the classroom early in June. It is time to prepare although it appears everyone has adopted a wait and see, or “I’ll do it when I have to attitude.” One group of area students will be ready when the time comes.
“I’m Okay, You’re Okay, Let’s Go Metric,” the song the students at Horace Mann Learning Center adopted as the theme “Think Metric Week,” has been echoing in the halls of the school this past week. …
However, no matter how they feel about it, they have all been actively involved with “hands on” experiences with metric measurements and have been having fun while learning.
Getting into the spirit of the week, they have also edited some slogans. “A gram of prevention will be worth a kilogram of cure” and a national hamburger chain’s “Quarter pounder” will be a “113.4 gramer.”
100 years ago
Maryville Tribune April 18, 1925
Five Automobiles In County Eighteen Years Ago and There Are More Than 5,000 Here
Nineteen years ago the first gasoline buggy made its appearance in Maryville. Before the end of the year 1906, there were five automobile owners in Nodaway County. And now? The assessment books show 3,661 automobiles in the county, and the actual number is estimated at from five to six thousand. Harking to the days when doctors declared that the human heart would stop beating if the body traveled faster than twenty miles an hour is great sport for men who braved the ridicule and, one mustn’t forget, the actual abuse, in order to become the pioneers in an industry which has grown with a speed in excess of the wildest dreams.
There is W. J. Staples of Maryville, for instance, in 1906 Mr. Staples was agent for the Wells Fargo Express Company, the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Bell Telephone Company and the Buick Motor Company. He owned the first automobile in Nodaway County — which is another way of saying that at one time he was the most cussed-out man in northwest Missouri.
Mr. Staples’ first car was a Stanley Steamer, but in a short time he came to consider the Buick as the keenest little old bus that science could turn out, and he chug-chugged-sput-sputtered and banged around in that for a time, finally taking over the agency.
George Conrad and Arthur Leet both owned one cylinder Oldsmobiles about the time the song “Come Away With Me Lucile, In My Merry Oldsmobile,” made its appeal to popularity. Mrs. Reacksecker bought the fourth car in the county, a Buick from Mr. Staples, and the fifth, a one cylinder Reo, went to Leland Denning. …
EDITOR’S NOTE: The 50- and 100-year flashbacks are courtesy of the Missouri Digital Newspaper Project from the State Historical Society of Missouri, accessible at shsmo.newspapers.com.
