Saturday, August 23, 2008

Stranger than fiction

With the passing of my grandfather a couple of years ago, who was in his 90's, and having another grandfather enter that decade of life last summer, I've desired to know more about what life was like when they were young. I enjoy hearing stories when I'm back to visit, but living so far away means not a lot of visits. Their both being from the town I grew up in makes me even more curious.

I've found that my small town South Dakota newspaper is available on-line (http://www.smalltownpapers.com/). It isn't a complete archive, at least for my hometown paper (I can find 1915-1949 and then the last few years). The current issues are actually about a month and a half behind, date-wise; but a "new" issue is posted every week.

So I've been reading the 'Years Gone By' column - 75 years ago and 100 years ago- of the recent papers. I've been meaning to post about a shocking something that I learned early this spring about a couple who were raised and married in my hometown that became...ahem, rather famous. (I promise I'll tell give you the scoop soon.) But for today I just had to share this from The Wilmot Enterprise:

July 11, 1908
'South Dakota holds the tornado freak record: A barn in the vicinity of Armour was lifted bodily from its foundation and deposited in a field 50 feet away. Another tornado visited the scene, flirted with the barn and placed it back on the old foundation. It is reported that the only insurance claim that will be allowed is for the loss of two nails and a screw.'

2 comments:

Erin said...

That is INSANE.

Traci said...

woah, that is just umm...werid