Turning Back the Pages

100 years ago — May 1924

Mr. Wm. Lampson has started a laundry at his place on the Lime Rock Road.

William Wilson is out again after a 6 weeks’ tussle with a severe case of blood poisoning in his feet especially the left one. Mr. Wilson believes that the dye in the hose he was wearing was responsible for the infection.

James B. Landon, the veteran farmer of Tory Hill was in town calling on his various acquaintances on Monday. Mr. Landon, who is now one of the oldest citizens of the town, says he passed a good winter and appears to be in excellent health. He is as keen as a young fellow and keeps up with the doings of the day. His many friends about the village were glad to shake his hand and extend bushels of good wishes to him. Spring this year is generally considered late in arriving. Mr. Landon says farmers can tell this is so because many of them are nearly out of hay – a true indication according to the average tiller of the soil.

Municipal affairs in New Brunswick, N.J., were given over to a new set of rulers, all boys, promptly at 11 o’clock Friday morning, when Mayor Weston Ashman and his Board of City Commissioners took up the reins of government in connection with the observance of Boys’ Week. Commission members for the occasion are boyhood friends of ‘Mayor’ Weston. Also in connection with Boys’ Week, a new county judge was seen at the regular session of Juvenile Court, in the person of Barry Rumple, and as a further feature of the observance there were five traffic officers on duty. At the City Commission meeting, conducted entirely by the boys, Mayor Ashman gave a five-minute talk and resolutions looking toward city improvement along various lines were presented. This item is interesting from the fact that ‘Mayor’ Weston is the grandson of Daniel M. Ashman of Salisbury.

A valuable German police dog belonging to W.S. Halliwell was the victim of strychnine poisoning last week and this coupled with the loss of E.A. deLima’s police dog recently from the same cause is proving alarming to owners of dogs. The State Police are now working on the case.

50 years ago — May 1974

Dena Kenny of Sharon is coxswain of the Marist College (otherwise) all-male freshman heavyweight crew. Rated the finest freshman crew in the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., school’s rowing history, Dena’s rowers have lost only to Syracuse in a string of contests this spring. Dena, the first female cox at Marist, also gets high ratings. A 1973 graduate of Housatonic Valley Regional High School, she reports modestly that she just walked into the coxswain’s job. It helps not to be too big, she says.

Paul Harney, young son of Mr. and Mrs. John Harney of Lakeville, is recuperating at home after suffering a broken leg in a tractor accident last Saturday. He spent several days at Sharon Hospital.

An appeal for “seed money” to restore the town-owned Swift house was made at last Friday’s Board of Finance budget hearing. Speaking for the Kent Historical Society, Emily Hopson requested the inclusion of $5000 in the budget as a start toward the exterior refurbishing of the building which dates back to the early years of Kent’s settlement.

Canaan firemen got a taste of the good old days last Wednesday when they were called to extinguish a blaze at the sanitary landfill site. Fire Chief Allyn Gatti theorized that some magnesium may have been mixed with the old tires and other rubbish and that the blaze erupted in the rain. He said that if it were magnesium that started the blaze he did not know how it found its way into the landfill.

Falls Village Miles Blodgett told his colleagues at Monday night’s selectmen’s meeting that the town has now received state permits which will allow it to open its new sanitary landfill site on Route 63. The selectman said that the dump will open on Tuesday morning.

25 years ago — May 1999

Robert Blum, perhaps best known in the Northwest Corner as the founder of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, will celebrate his 100th birthday on May 8. He will celebrate this milestone birthday quietly at his home at Lion’s Head in Salisbury with his son John “Jack” Blum of Lakeville, his daughter Alice Yoakum, also of Lakeville, and their spouses.

A 19-acre region of the Mohawk Mountain black spruce bog in Cornwall came under the highest level of state protection April 26 when Gov. John G. Rowland announced a total of 871 acres of state-owned land would be designated as natural area preserves. Cornwall’s protected region encompasses an acidic bog located within the Northwest Uplands ecoregion that has long been recognized to have one of the few such plant communities of its type in the state.

Always a fun and profitable time for the Sharon Day Care Center, Saturday’s Trot for Tots and carnival were no exception. Radio personality Steve Charney got lots of giggles from the younger set when he sang a song about something near and dear to them – potty chairs.

Items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, keeping the original wording intact as possible.