100 Years Ago

The Northfield News

August 16, 1910 3 cents a copy/$1.25 year

Fred N. Whitney, editor

K.P. Stockwell was in town recently and on returning to Montpelier, he carried with him a pet Angora cat. Just before reaching the capital the cat unexpectedly disappeared. Mr. Stockwell was here again on Sunday and found his pet safely housed in her old quarters, non the worse for her eight mile walk. It is safe to say that pussy believes in the motto, "There is no place like home."

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John A. Perry of Williamstown, who works here as a carpenter, recently metered up the distance from that place on his bicycle and finds that from A.E. Martin's shop in Williamstown village to the Northfield postoffice the distance is 9 1/4 miles. From Mr. Martin's to the Northfield line it is 4 1/4 miles.

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The names of all the strikers of the Central Vermont railway who have not been returned to work have been sent to the union officials and will receive strike pay until they are restored to work, which is supposed to be within 90 days from the signing of the agreement. On the main line men are going back slowly, as most of the strike breakers get sick of regular jobs. It was noticed that the circus train crews were nearly all old men. In the passenger service, however, the old men are still in the minority.

75 Years Ago NEWS AND ADVERTISERAugust

15, 1935

5 cents a copy, $2 a year

John E. Mazuzan, editor

Bids were opened by the state highway department last week for improvement of the road leading through Northfield gulf for a distance of 15.3 miles in the towns of Northfield, Roxbury, Brookfield, Braintree and Randolph, several separate projects grouped under one head and let as one contract. The contract will require federal approval before it is awarded and the figures will have to be checked and verified, but out of ten bids, the lowest was submitted by the Callan Construction Company of Bristol, R.I. The bid was $159,258.25 for gravel mixed in place surface.

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Bell's Hawaiians, a company of 15 singers and musicians, will be seen on the stage at the Savoy Theater Friday afternoon and evening, August 16. The Hawaiians offer genuine Hawaiian music, some American jazz and the Cuban rhumba. Baby Joy, a five-year-old Hawaiian Shirley Temple, is one of the big factors in the show's success. She not only sings and dances with amazing talent, but she is amusing in a comedy skit. Colorful costumes and settings add to the show. The girls are pretty, and the instrumentalists and singers are capable. Small guitars and ukeleles are combined with larger and other string instruments. The troupe was one of the musical features of the Worlds Fair in Chicago last year, and is the only company of its kind now playing in the East.

50 Years Ago

NEWS AND ADVERTISER

August 18, 1960

5 cents a copy, $2 a year

John E. Mazuzan, editor

Northfield firemen won two trophies at the 71st annual convention of the Vermont State Firefighters Association held in Vergennes over the weekend. The first was for having the oldest piece of equipment in the parade, and the second was for winning the wet hose race. Local firemen who participated included Donald Buck, Jake Colgan, Chief James Demasi, Stanley Warner, Joseph Genero, Dick Severy, Doug Gross, Bob Kirby and Red Colgan.

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Luke Crispe, who is just getting his campaign underway, is staking his bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination on the tax question which is the top issue in this campaign. He charges that our million dollar surplus this year will be followed by more surpluses naturally resulting from an expanding economy, increasing summer and winter recreation business, and additional revenue from other tax sources. Crispe further claims that experience in other states proves that "limited" sales taxes tend to become less limited and grow bigger each year. He also charges that a sales tax not only boosts prices to cover the cost of extra bookkeeping but contributes to the inflationary spiral. Perhaps his clinching argument against a sales tax is "We can not afford to give our customers any more incentive for buying their needs elsewhere." Merchants, generally, are opposed to a sales tax on grounds that it means extra work in bookkeeping chores. But the ones most opposed are the ones whose shops and stores are in towns bordering New Hampshire , Massachusetts and New York. Since those states have no sales tax, border merchants don't want their customers buying groceries and other necessities across the line.

25 Years Ago

NORTHFIELD NEWS

August 15, 1985 25 cents a copy, $2 a year

Erik Nelson, editor

The Vermont Statewide Meeting on Nuclear Waste will take place on Monday, Aug. 19 at 7 p.m., at Montpelier High School. Participants at the meeting include Governor Madeleine Kunin, Congressman James Jeffords, Senator Patrick Leahy, Attorney General Jeffrey Amestoy, and Rey Post, Vermont Staff Director for Senator Robert Stafford, who is not available due to prior commitments. Secretary of State James Douglas will be the moderator. The purpose of the meeting will be to discuss specific actions that are being taken or should be taken to prevent a site in Vermont from being chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy (D.O.E.) as a repository for all of the high-level nuclear waste generated in the Eastern Half of the United States.

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The Northfield Village Trustees discussed the movement of the village sludge dumping site out of Roxbury and on to land adjacent to the pig farm located on the Bean property at their meeting on Monday Aug. 12. The Village Trustees reviewed a petition signed by many residents of Roxbury which expressed dismay over the location of the site. The present permit for sludge dumping will run out next year but the new site should be in operation before that time. Sewage Plant Manager Marcel Hebert reported that the state had okayed moving the location. Residents near the dump site had complained about the smells which they claimed were exceptionally pungent during warm weather. The new location for the site will be in a relatively unpopulated area and should resolve the situation.