November 9, 2017
This is “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.
With the
recent School Board elections now complete, our story today is about one man’s
opinion about learning.
In an effort
to encourage people to subscribe to the newspaper, the Junction City Union printed the following tale in 1896. It was written that “a man who didn’t take the
newspaper was in town the other day. He
brought his family in an ox wagon. He
still believed Millard Fillmore was the President when in fact it was William
McKinley. He had just sold his pork for
6 cents a pound, when he might have gotten 8 cents. One of his sons went to a blacksmith to be
measured for a pair of shoes and another mistook the post office for … a
church. The son hung his hat on a box
hinge and waited patiently for an hour for the service to begin. One of the girls in the family took a lot of
seed onions to the printing office to trade off for a letter and she had a baby
which she carried in a “sugar trough” stopping occasionally to rock it on the
sidewalk. When it cried, she filled its
mouth with a cotton handkerchief and sang “Barbara Allen.” The old man had a tea kettle he wanted fixed
and he carried it to the millinery shop.
The clerk thought he was CRAZY!!! Having seen the hole in the kettle, the clerk
politely directed him to the proper place to have it mended. The gentleman then took an old plow to the
jeweler’s to have it sharpened. We told
the fellow he ought to read the newspapers, (in order to become more
knowledgeable about where services can be found), but he would not listen. He was opposed to “eternal improvements” and
thought “larnin’ was a wicked invention.”
Let’s hope they aren’t any people who think this way today.
Many of you
have shared how much you learn about Geary County history on this program and
we are confident you are lifelong learners.
Thank you for that and for reading “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary
County Historical Society.
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