Turning Back The Pages 2-17-11

75 years ago — February 1936

On Monday morning the mercury stood at 16 to 20 below according to locality and thermometer. On Tuesday it registered from 10 to 14 below.

Ice is being harvested from the lake.

SALISBURY — Charles DuBois was quite badly jarred and bruised in a fall down the cellar stairs at his home last Thursday evening, when he stepped upon the family cat. The cat died as a result of the accident.

TACONIC — Walter Frink, who is stationed in a CCC camp at West Cornwall, was a weekend guest of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Frink.

50 years ago — February 1961

The beleaguered New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad suffered a local setback last Friday when a caboose and oil tank car were derailed on the Lakeville Branch at Twin Lakes, near the farm of the late Miss Helen Miles. The train, pulling 12 freight cars loaded with merchandise for Community Service, Tri-State and others, was derailed presumably because of ice and snow. When the caboose left the track, the wheels sheared off and rolled up onto the snowbank. A wrecker arrived from Maybrook, near Poughkeepsie, N.Y., last Tuesday noon to put the caboose and tank car back on the rails. Dwight Cowles of Community Service said a part of the shipment from the middle west had been enroute for the past six weeks.

On Feb. 8, the entire rear-end of a trailer was demolished and the front end of a Buddliner damaged at the River Road crossing in West Cornwall. The front end of the tractor was buried in snow and the rear end so smashed that photographer Ruth SoRelle could not see the number plates. Driver of the truck was Jack J. Kennedy. No one was injured.

25 years ago — February 1986

Human error, not mechanical malfunction, caused an alarm to be delayed nine minutes as fire ripped through the Community Service retail store in Lakeville Dec. 27. An employee of City Answering Service in Torrington had failed to notify the Lakeville Hose Co. of the alarm, according to Litchfield Alarm Co. president David Wilson.

A spokesman for the Torrington answering service said the alarm came in at the same time as a malfunctioning alarm, and was inadvertently erased while the malfunctioning alarm was tended to. The finding was confirmed after a monthly bill for telephone calls made from the Farnam Road store listed the automatically-dialed call at 1:58 a.m. The fire left the building a total loss.

Taken from decades-old Lake-ville Journals, these items contain original spellings and phrases.