Findlians in the news

From the July 18, 1969, Findlay Enterprise:

- Mr. and Mrs. Roy Bass [Mom's half-brother] of Tulsa, Oklahoma have returned to their home after spending a 10-day visit with Mrs. Alva Bass [Grandma] while his father [Grandpa] was in the hospital. [I've seen pictures from that hospital stay - I think it was surgery for skin cancer on his temples.]

- Mr. and Mrs. Bob Owens and son, Don, of Bloomington, Indiana, were recent visitors of Mr. and Mrs. Charles White [Mom and Dad] and Billy [That's me. I don't remember that visit at all. Don Owens was a police officer in Bloomington, Indiana, and was killed in the line of duty six years later.]

The Findlay Bag Ladies need blankets

The Findlay Bag Ladies are looking for blankets:

The Findlay Bag Ladies, who are known for helping others in need, are in need of your help. The group meets every Tuesday at the Methodist Church in Findlay to turn donated blankets into sleeping bags for the homeless. Their blanket supply is nearly depleted and they are in desperate need of more donations as the demand for the homemade sleeping bags is on the rise. The ladies are more than willing to pick up the blankets, or they can be dropped off at the Methodist Church in Findlay and the Shelby County News office in Shelbyville. If you have blankets to donate, please call Carol at 217-756-3401 or Joan at 217-756-8582.

Please call if you have blankets to donate or if you know of some corporate or government donor looking to get rid of large numbers of blankets.

Farewell to the bookmobile

Anna Badkhen writes in the Boston Globe about the declining fortunes of the bookmobile. A guy from the Decatur Public Library drove one to Findlay every other week during the summers of the late 1970s. That's where I found my first Isaac Asimov, the sci-fi novels of the 1970s, and a lot of astronomy and cosmology - I'd carry home an armload to stack on a table in the living room and make my way through them in the following days,

The Findlay Bag Ladies

Here's a good article from Dave McClain on the Bag Ladies of Findlay, Illinois (my hometown) - they sew sleeping bags, stuff them with toiletries & personal items and donate them to the Northeast Community Fund Center in Decatur, Illinois to be distributed to the homeless.

Small-town news in the 21st century

This is the future of reporting - these jounalists know what to do with the internet (they could make their urls a little more friendly, though :-)

Don't miss Pauline Briney's weekly column called Methinks. She's been writing essays and poetry for decades and is one of the best essayists around. She was blogging like Lileks when Lileks was in diapers:

At my age, every day is a present and I intend to make the most of each one. Some of my friends say they hate birthdays and they hate getting older. Not me, I've never been an age that caused me to want to go back, because I've learned that every age has its own compensations. Well, I'm only 83 so I'll let you know more about more birthdays when I get old.

She has the Lileks eye for local history, too:

The Sept. 30, 1966 issue of the Findlay Enterprise included this portion of an advertisement for the Johnston’s supermarket located in Findlay. In the top left picture are Cratous and Rita Benner; in the bottom left picture is Gladys Mowry with an unidentified clerk; and Merle Minor is pictured in the photograph at right. Of interest to current-day shoppers, prices for items on sale included, for example, sirloin steak for 99 cents per pound; Del Monte tuna for 29 cents a flat; Meadow Gold ice cream for 69 cents per one-half gallon container; No. 1 Illinois Jonathan apples for 49 cents for a four-pound bag; and Banquet frozen meat pies, six eight-ounce pies for $1.