Turning Back The Pages

 100 years ago — January 1921

Tuesday morning’s thermometer readings gave a temperature of 8 to 10 below zero, the coldest yet this season. A high wind made the day seem still worse and necessitated some hustling with the coal shovel to keep houses warm.

ORE HILL — Tony Genito has gone to New Jersey to work.

SHARON — Mrs. Stanley Mather on Wednesday entered Sharon Hospital for treatment. Her sister, Mrs. Raymond Whitford of Canaan, was here to accompany her.

— A good quality of 10 inch ice is being harvested.

— The new telephone directory has been issued, and many subscribers’ numbers have been changed. It is well to consult the new directory before putting in calls for familiar numbers.

50 years ago — January 1971

— A motion stating that the town of Sharon does not want to join a redefined Litchfield Hills Planning Region but would like instead to form its own planning region with other area towns was unanimously passed at the public hearing on regional planning Friday night at Sharon Center School.

— Lieut. Robert Hotaling and his wife have just left Sharon after spending a week of his rest and recreation leave visiting his family. Lieut. Hotaling has returned to duty in Saigon and Mrs. Hotaling has resumed her studies in Reading, Pa.

— Connecticut Light and Power Company recently honored Minot S. Giddings of Main Street, Kent, for his 30 years of service with that utility. 

25 years ago — January 1996

“Distance learning” is an educational tool of the future already in place throughout Dutchess County though it is still an unrealized goal across the state border in Connecticut’s Region One school district. 

CORNWALL — Richard McCarty is used to the diesel rumble of the train. He is chef at the West Cornwall Grill on Railroad Plaza. The train passes his kitchen every day. But Friday afternoon the rumble he took for a locomotive turned into a wall of water, mud, rock and uprooted trees collapsing the hillside behind him.

Then the mud broke down two padlocked back doors and washed right through the restaurant store room, flooding the kitchen and the dining room with mud, water and debris. McCarty cut the gas, electricity and water lines and with grill owner Laura Macdonald and wait person Linda Essenfeld the trio evacuated art work, the espresso machine and the cash register.

SHARON — Arthur Getz, an artist whose covers for The New Yorker magazine were on every newsstand and on countless coffee tables for 50 years, moved to the Northwest Corner in 1969. He died here Jan. 19 at Sharon Hospital as the result of a stroke.

SALISBURY — The stone water kettle next to Town Hall has run dry in the wake of last week’s heavy rainfall and will not flow again until spring when a flood-ruined dam can be rebuilt. 

These items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives, keeping the original wording intact as possible.