Let’s go back in time. Let’s go back 103 years back in time to see what the news was like around here. This is the Bloomington Evening World, which we’ve been reading from time-to-time. We’ve looked back through the contents three times this year — March, May and July — so we’re probably due another examination.

The Bloomington Evening World, went back to 1892 and published under that masthead until 1943. That’s a great run. It merged then with the wonderfully named Bloomington Telephone. A few mergers and name changes later, and what’s left of the current paper, The Herald-Times, will sorta claim the old paper.

This was the front page on December 19, 1917.

One of those stories you saw a lot of back then, and it meant a lot to the readers. These were our boys, after all.

Let’s look at some of those names. The first one listed there, Irvin Alexander, survived the war. He’d teach at West Point. He became an advisor to MacArthur and the Philippine army. In the early fighting in the Pacific he was wounded twice, before being captured and, ultimately, becoming a part of the Bataan Death March. That was a 60+ mile trek that claimed as many as 18,000 lives. He did three years as a Japanese POW, which was a demanding daily existence with little food, minimal fuel and brutal captors. Part of that time was captivity in Korea. That meant time on a boat. The death rates on the Japanese transfer vessels was notoriously high. And there was the risk of simply being on the water. Alexander survived two ship sinkings to even get there. He survived all that. He wrote a memoir a few years later that was published years after his death. It gets great reviews. He died in 1963, on his way to a visit of Mexico, with his wife.

Maurice Parks was a singer before the war, and after he came home he was part of a popular act, the Old Town
Quartette. He died in 1947, and is buried in a cemetery not too far away.

Oscar Dillman came home, and he would be elected commander of the local American Legion. He passed away at 56, in 1946. He’s buried just three miles away.

Leland Highlet was the unlucky lad on the destroyer spotted and sunk by a U-boat between France and Ireland. About 30 of the sailors, on a vessel that had a manifest of 99, survived.

Christmas advertising, front page advertising, it’s all been with us for a while.

There’s a restaurant at that address today.

Charming motorist in the red car. What can I say? Welcome to Bloomington.

This was the first undamaged zeppelin captured in France.

There’s a terrific picture, and more information, here.

It was your decade, so, if you say so …

This is an ad, found on page three. And some ad, huh?

Right next to it was a timeline of the declarations of war from the past three years. And, in no special font or stroke, there was the note reminding you that the US had declared war on Germany eight months earlier, and Austria just three days before.

“So I went down to the drug store and got you this snazzy gift.”

Such was the power of Kodak upon the zeitgeist that simply saying the brand name carried real heft. Wood Wiles bought the place in 1899. He ran it for some 30 years, until he had a heart attack in his store. His son took it over. In 1952 he moved it a block up the street, where it prospered for many years. The company stayed in business until 1985. The original location is today a restaurant, and a nice one. The second location is now a bookstore.

Did you think of the grocery boys? And why have people always been this way? Oh, I know it’s ten below zero, but I want my groceries now!

“We have spared ourselves no pains” … they just don’t write good ad copy these days, do they?

The Harris-Grand was a popular theater for decades. A couple of fires did it in. THere are some small stores and a parking deck there now.

Can you see any of these movies today? Right now? Yes you can.

Today’s a good day to go back in time … beeeeeecause I don’t have anything else of note to offer you today. So let’s look at the local newspaper from this same week 103 years ago, in 1917. And the headline writers didn’t really have any idea about that little thing in Russia, did they?

There were a lot of small local sadnesses taking place about this time. Seems odd to see the “final summons” formulation twice on the same front page. Some local soldiers were shipping out, and some nurses, too. There was a war on, remember. A local boy got admitted to the local bar. The judge that swore him in presided over the guy’s father’s admission to the bar a quarter century earlier. Family practice.

There’s an optician advertising on the front page. The last line says “Artificial eyes furnished.” The location today is a commercial business building. It’s the old Masonic Temple, which was still a few years in the future of this newspaper. Notably, there’s a fake radio station in that spot note. From artificial eyes to fake broadcasting.

Anyway, inside the paper … This sounds tasty!

And, in 1917, you would see some national propaganda ads like this. Need work? Move to Canada and help bring in the crops! I wonder how many people signed on for this, and what it meant to their lives.

Yeah … about that macaroni. I think I’ve lost my appetite. Thanks.

There are the usual sorts of short stories in the paper. A lot of society stuff, weddings and vacations and family visits. There’s a brief from New York about a man who’d never before spoken, but then he fell while chasing some punks and suddenly discovered the powers of speech. I googled him, but that story is the only thing about him the Internet knows. Traffic accidents and fatalities were markedly up, nationally, and people were starting to notice. A woman in Colorado had nine grandchildren in the British army. There was a mini-photo essay about treating sheep ticks.

It reminds me that there’s never a local photograph in this paper. They could print them with the technology of the day, and considering I’m looking at scans of ancient newspapers the quality is pretty good. But they didn’t publish their own. I assume this means they were a newspaper without a camera. At one of the local theaters you could see Bawbs O’ Blue Ridge:

Just before mountain girl Barbara “Bawbs” Colby’s aunt dies, she reveals that Bawbs’ deceased father had left her $5,000, but to watch out for men because they would only be interested in her for her money. Her aunt’s warning is tested when Bawbs falls for a new arrival in the mountains named Ralph Gunther, who says he is an author who’s there for the peace and quiet he needs to write.

Also, $5,000 in 1917 would be just over $100,000 today. I imagine every early 20th century matinee reads about like that.

Doesn’t everyone feel this way?

I’m happy to report my kidneys feel fine, thanks.

The circus is coming to town!

Two years prior Buffalo Bill Cody toured with this troupe. He died a few months before this paper was published. Kidney failure at 70. Anyway, the Floto Dog & Pony Show and the Sells Brothers Circus joined something called the American Circus Corporation by 1929 or so. John Ringling bought that group about the same time, and that, friends, created the great circus monopoly.