IT HAPPENED IN KANSAS
24-hour Four O'Clocks
THIS is one of those believe-it-or-not tales and it all happened because a Kansan decided to take liberties with the clock. Ben Turner, Great Bend, wasn't content with his four o'clock flowers blooming only at that hour of the day. He thought it would be a swell idea if he could "kid" them into blooming the whole 24 hours. So, he collected four o'clock seed from a dozen different time zones over the world and, after a process of elimination, crossed the seed from Bankok and Budapest, two towns exactly 12 hours apart. Result (so he claims): An ever-blooming four o'clock which has no respect for the hand of the clock and is in blossom the entire 24 hours. Difficulty: Mr. Turner has been unable to secure any seed from his ever-blooming flower because the new blooms push off the old ones as fast as they appear.
Directs Own Operation
WHEN Dr. P. P. Trueheart, 84, veteran Sterling physician, found it necessary to undergo an operation for a gangrenous appendix he insisted upon directing the surgery. A local anesthetic was applied and the actual operation was performed by his son, Dr. Marion Trueheart, Sterling, and his son-in-law, Dr. Kilbourn, Wichita, but the patient directed the proceedings.
Health Hint
MR. and Mrs. Lou Hollars, living near Horton, have six children. They have never been a sick a day in their lives. Reason, according to Lou: Plenty of onions and potatoes and no health fads. The family eats a hundred onions a month and 100 pounds of potatoes weekly. And, the children sit in drafts, play bare-footed in the snow and do whatever else their impulses dictate.
First Automobile
THE first automobile was built in Kansas, claims Carl Brodrick, of Osborne. Back in 1883 or 1884, Brodrick recalls, Frank Hatch, an Osborne mechanical genius, hitched an old kerosene engine to the running gears of a hay rack and drove it through the main streets of the town loaded with children, much to the consternation of the adult population.
Ancient Kansan
PETRIFIED shoulder blade of an alligator 100,000,000 years old, according to the computations of Russell Ballou, Kansas University graduate, was found in a stone quarry seven miles northwest of Lincoln by Blaine Lessor, Clinton Howard and Al Clark. The fossil is a relic of the reptilian age when a sea 600 feet deep extended from central Kansas to the Rocky Mountains, south to the Texas Panhandle and north into Nebraska.
Secret
TWO Kansas State College students -- Junior Howard, Oberlin, and Earle L. Kent, Manhattan -- have developed a new method of secret communication through the use of a light beam. Voice and music have previously been transmitted by means of light beams but the advantage of the method developed by the two Kansans is that it insures absolute secrecy and there can be no "tapping" of messages.
Kansas Movie Stars
THREE Kansas children are on the way to movie stardom. Maryln Jean Anderson, 4-year-old Dodge City tot, is now a member of the "our Gang" comedy crew after playing with Sally Eiler in "AliasMary Dow." Her father operates a Dodge City cleaning establishment. Marilyn and Carolyn Crumley, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Ray H. Crumley, Colby, have been signed to contracts by Warner Brothers and are now on location. They are talented dancers and went to the talkies from the vaudeville stage.
Suspicion Yankee Trading
THE Kaw Indians are on the warpath again. But this time they aim to do their scalping legally. The tribe claims that Uncle Sam "gypped" them in a Kansas land trade. Under an 1825 treaty the Kaws ceded 20,000,000 acres drained by the Kansas river but retained 6,665,200 acres in a strip 30 miles wide along the river valley. Subsequently, 2,000,000 acres of this was given to the government and the remainder was taken 88 years ago, the Indians receiving 255,854 acres in Morris county in return. Now, they have a suspicion that the government "put over a fast one" on them and they are sueing to collect the undetermined difference between the value of 4,655,200 areas which the government grabbed and 255,854 acres which the Kaws received in return.
Page Diogenes
DIOGENES may look no farther. When Ozark township in Anderson county was assessed a large barn, filled with valuable prairie hay, both owned by Fred Schalnost, was overlooked. So what? So, Honest Fred made a special trip to the home of one of the county commissioners to report the oversight. Result: An additional $400 added to the county tax rolls.
Collectors
ADD to the list of unique Kansas collectors the name of W. H. Blevens, Lawrence, and R. H. Fairchild, Topeka. Mr. Blevens garners antique bicycles and has just added a tandem to his collection. Mr. Fairchild, a cabinet maker, has collected 80 different kinds of wood grown in the state. His aim is 105 -- one for each county.
KANSANS SAY:
Excerpts From Written or Spoken Statements
L. A. KAUFFMAN, district manager, Union Telephone Company, McPherson -- Cooperation would solve most of our problems. Freckles would be a good coat of tan if they would get together.
CHARLES M. HARGER, chairman state board of regents, Abilene -- No dollar spent by the state pays such large returns as that put into higher education.
W. E. GRIMES, agricultural economist, Kansas State College -- Business activity has held up well at the beginning of the summer. This period is usually a slack time, and uncertainty concerning pending federal legislation has been a further depressing factor this year. Hence, the fact that business activity has been maintained with but little slackening indicates the increasing strength of the general business situation.
J. P. (JACK) HARRIS, Editor Hutchinson News -- A hundred and fifty-nine years ago this summer our forefathers were standing behind stone fences pot-shooting the red coats because the British had put a tax on tea. What do you suppose they would have done had England established a two per cent sales tax?
EARLE WOOD EVANS, past president American Bar Association, Wichita -- The lawyer-criminal is very decidedly on the run. But there is still much to do before the bar can be purged entirely of this public menace.
E. A. BRILES, editor, Stafford -- Taxing the rich may sound good but it is only an illusion. The tax collectors may get the money from the rich, but all of us, rich and poor, will help provide it. The kind of tax doesn't make much difference. The point of collection doesn't matter -- we all help pay it. It may be more comfortable to let someone else pay the tax and collect it from the rest of us in the form of higher prices. We may delude ourselves with the notion that we are escaping, but it will only be a delusion.
W. A. BRANDENBURG, president Pittsburg Teachers' College -- I'm getting tired of keeping school tax levies down to help certain political interests. Salaries of teacher in Kansas have been cut ridiculously low, both in rural and city schools. Taxpayers must be made to understand that if they want the kind of schools their children should have, they'll have to pay better salaries.
HARRY KING, postmaster, Zarah -- Zarah may be small but it has one record I defy any town to beat. We have 36 men and women in town, 38 boys and girls, 36 dogs and two puppies, which gives a total of 38 for the canine population, and according to the last count we have 38 cats.
HENRY LOHENSTEIN, extension horticultural specialist, Kansas State College -- In planning for a winter food supply, Kansas people should not overlook a plentiful stock of Kansas grown apples.
ODD BUT TRUE
ROBERT R. Morrill, Emporia, paid for his marriage license with 350 pennies while George Barnett, Beloit, produced 1300 pennies to pay the first premium on an accident insurance policy.
WHEN four Wellsville fishermen hauled in a 20-pound shovelhead from the Marais de Cygne river they figured it odd that the fish had been caught on a hook baited only with small minnows. They found that the bait had originally been snapped up by a one-pound drum which, in turn, had been swallowed by the shovelhead.
CHARLES Whitacre, blacksmith at Colony for 50 years and still in business, has shod more than 10,000 horses in his lifetime.
PLOWING up long-lost watches seems to be a popular Kansas pastime. A watch lost in 1908 by Jim Leichliter on a farm near Clayton was recently uncovered and returned to the owner. Likewise, a timepiece lost eight years ago in a corn field by Kenneth Johnston, Phillipsburg, has just been plowed up by his brother.
JOHN Miller, Chase county farmer, owns five head of Holstein milk cows. Each has given birth to twin calves. Latest twins are only a few weeks old; oldest, over a year.
WHEN a farmer living near Effingham bought a cow that had been milked only by women he let himself in for plenty of trouble. Bossy objected to the ministrations of her male persuader and emphasized her protest with a one-two sock that would do credit to Jack Dempsey. Mrs. Farmer couldn't be induced to help out, so now the owner performs his daily milking operations in an old-fashioned sunbonnet and one of his wife's dresses. And has he got bossy fooled!
WHEN her master disposed of her litter of five puppies Brownie, a fox terrier owned by Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Hines, near Olathe, sorrowed. Then, a motor car orphaned four kittens. Brownie immediately adopted them and is caring for them as her own.
EVERETT Farrar, of Johnson, whose hobby is car trading, is now driving the 190th automobile he has owned since he bought his first motor vehicle in 1916.
MR. and Mrs. John Dunsworth, Emporia, took a long vacation trip and returned without accident. Within five minutes after they got home Mr. Dunsworth's eyebrows and hair were burned when a gas heater exploded as he attempted to light it and his wife smashed several fingers trying to raise a window.
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