11/12/2008
compiled by Chris Willingham

1959, 49 years ago this week

•Fall foliage is at its peak this week and the paper is encouraging eve-ryone to take a drive up north. The blacktop ends at Mt. Herman, but road crews are busy building a highway. In six weeks you’ll be able to take paved road all the way to Smithville, the paper says. Then there will only be a short gap to close from Smithville to the completed highway north of Octavia. When that phase is complete, southeastern Oklahoma is expected to have one of the top foliage drives in the country.



•The new skating rink in Idabel will have a formal grand opening Fri-day.



•The national trade journal “Boot and Shoe Recorder” has a nice fea-ture this month on Idabel entrepreneur Carl Sherman’s newest shoe store in the Preston Forest section of Dallas. The shoe display is a tiered circu-lar revolving shelf at the front of the store. The article says 99 out of 100 women entering the store stop and turn the shelf and look the shoes over.



•The newspaper has an interesting article this week on a beautiful watermill southeast of Valliant on Clear Creek. The mill, which could still operate, has been on the site for more than 125 years. The owner of the land that the mill sits on, Woodrow McLaughlin, uses the mill to make fresh mill-ground meal.



1919, 89 years ago this week

•A 71-year-old De Queen man returned home this week after fighting in World War I. The paper said H.C. Churchman fought in some of the hottest battles in the war and “doesn’t look a day over 50 and steps about like a youth of 20.” Churchman said he only met one other American soldier who was as old as he was.



•As violence erupted in a coal miners’ strike at Hartshorne, 800 Na-tional Guardsmen, about 20 of whom were from Idabel, have been called in to stop the violence and protect the mines. Meanwhile, this corner of the state is experiencing a disastrous coal shortage. There is only one non-union mine in the entire state, the McAlester-Edwards mine, which is hardly enough to supply cities with coal for power. Hobart has already been in the dark for two days and Idabel’s mayor says the city only has enough coal for three days worth of electricity. Emergency shipments of coal are being sent in by rail, but have been delayed. By next Monday an estimated 3,000 National Guardsmen will be stationed at every mine in southeastern Oklahoma. Plans are being made for convicts to begin op-eration of the mines next week.



•By Monday, Idabel still had not received any coal, so Mayor A.R. Mitchell sent an emergency letter to the governor saying the situation was critical. Mitchell said the city must receive five rails cars of coal or the water works, schools, cotton gins and light plant will have be to shut down. The governor contacted the fuel administration who said the coal would be spent as soon as possible.



1909, 99 years ago this week

•Idabel attorney J.A. Moore received a patent this month on a new rail-road switch he invented. The modern switch eliminates the need for both the “frog” (which must be a common railway term as it is not explained) and split switch, which decreases the chance of a derailment. Moore said he came up with the idea about five years ago and has been in the test and design process ever since. After news of the patent was spread by the Patent Gazette, a national magazine, he has already been contacted with “splendid offers” from several manufacturers and mechanics, but has turned them all down. Moore wishes to test the switch further with a rail-road company before signing with a company.



•In a Rosa Parks-like move, but 46 years earlier, a black Idabel man caused quite a stir Saturday night when he sat in the “whites only” sec-tion of the very well attended Kennedy Bros. Circus. The man said he was of the school of thought of Booker T. Washington and Teddy Roo-sevelt – social equality of the races. When a police officer walked over and told him to move, the man said he would not and doubled his fists. The officer hit him over the head with his pistol, sending him running out of the chair. The officer kicked the man in the backside, “accelerating his speed,” the paper said. The man’s name was not given.