Garden Seed Catalogues are ripe in the Land of Mears

Garden Seed Catalogues

-Monday there was a whale of a blizzard . Thin people hardly dared appear on the streets of Mears for fear of being blown up onto the roof of the town hall , and even heavy people were more sure of sticking to the earth if they wore a couple heavy glass paper weights in their pockets . The roads were blocked , too , in the western direction . Some- times for a ways the highway would be bare and then a huge impas- sible drift . - A 1934 V - 8 sedan for sale at the Economy Gas Station in Hart where you can get good gas for less . On US - 31 at the trax . adv.- Charlie Newton , the whisker trimmer , writes that it is 90 in the shade at Lantana , Florida . I don't know if the water is a little muddy there or not , but he is leaving there for Clearwater - War pictures on Mon- day evening , March 16 , at the Hart high school gym , sponsored by the Hart fire department . No admission . " Fighting the Fire Bomb . " An American - made film , depicting the proper method of dealing with the magnesium incendiary bomb . " London Fire Raids . " A British film showing the actual fire raids on the city of London . " War and Order . " A British film showing the training of War Reserve Police in England . Actual pictures of a daylight bombing raid on London are shown in this picture . " Citizens Army . " A British film showing the training of Home Guards . " Coastal Defense . " A British film showing the manner in which the British coast is being defended . In this picture is shown an airplane battle over Dover as well as the attempted bombing of British merchant ship by German planes . - John McCulley says frozen water pipes are almost all thawed out for this winter . - The girls ' glee club put on their best sateen waists and their blondest stockings to sing before the teachers ' institute . Ruth Jean Moore was one of the voices and her mother's fingers were on the piano keys . The little Welsh minister from Detroit made a great hit when he came up with two sheets of music and laid one on the floor while in a high squeaky voice he said . " Ladies and gintlemen . " Marion Barton and Ruth Pear- son giggled right out loud and so did half a hundred other school teach- ers . Which was just what he wanted them to do . He sang a song about McGinty . He said he never saw his pianist until this morning and he wanted to thank her now because he was afraid he might never see her

a

marlie Hale to pull

again . Boo hoo , he sobbed , and ha ha said all the school teachers . After awhile the time came for the teachers to go over to the assembly room to learn how to teach little Jimmie his reading lesson ; but the school board members were to stay and hear Mr. Beadle from the Lan- sing office interpret the new legislation and answer any and all ques- tions . Every little while he had to put in some centralizing school hint . " Now , now , I'm not saying that you should , but just that it's something to be thinking about . " He didn't want to come out too brazen at first because he didn't want to run the risk of wearing any tomato seeds home in his ears . He could see that there were a lot of common sense farmers in the school officer ranks before him and he wasn't going to come out flat footed before men who knew they wanted their children to attend the good old country school in the home district . Harvey Gif- ford and a lot of directors had plaid jackets and horse sense . So as the bland Mr. Beadle reviewed the history of school legislation from the days when the home taxpayers had almost complete control of their local school affairs down to this present era when the central bureau wants to control everything and direct everything . And if there were any little minor matters that were still left to the local taxpayers and school boards to decide he was sure to emphasize these matters and say : There , you see that is something again that is left up to the board . So the school board members gave thanks that there were really two or three little minor matters they could decide upon , even if they couldn't pick out their own teacher . After a while if things keep agoing this way the superintendent of public instruction might be able to put in three tin men in every district that would work with wires and raise their metallic arms and say yes , no , stop . go , whatever the Lansing office wanted them to say until such a day as the great cen- tral bureau usurped all authority and all local control and abolished all district schools and had your children shot through tubes every morning to the centralized education stuffing plant where they could be jammed with a needle , exposed , imposed , trimmed , formed and re- formed according to the latest changing theories far from the hearing of the mother's door step . We don't want that kind of an educational system . We want the little red school house by the country road and a kindly local school board that has the right to pick out a teacher for the district . The farmers , the Grangers , the lovers of country life may have to arouse themselves and send representatives down to the legis- lature to get the state back to common sense . And in the meantime you will have to watch out for these crafty subtle high - pressure salesmen from the department of public instruction who are hell - bent for cen- tralization and come to institutes to plant the crafty seed of de - rurali- zation . They are glad if they can get a school board off by themselves and whip them into line . The bland Mr. Beadle mentioned a couple of school boards he would like to see after the meeting . While he was talking to one board at the head of the center aisle , his confederate was taking care of another school board on the left flank . His colleague was spellbinding the audience in the afternoon , hinting that there might be a shortage of teachers and that it might be the patriotic thing for some of the district schools to combine . But there is no need for such alarm . There will be plenty of teachers . There always are . You and I know that many times after our county normal graduates got their diplomas some of them would have to sit around at home the next year because there was no school for them . Most of our teachers are women , and our women aren't going to war . They are staying here . And if there should be a shortage many of our married women who are

ex - teachers could pick up the chalk and ring the district bell again . No , the crafty fox knew there was no such thing as a shortage of teach- ers here . But charged as he was by the galvanic currents of centraliza- tion at headquarters he just thought he would say something plausible and put in a blow for centralization at a cunning moment . And just as the Ku Klux Klan organizers used to open their meetings with the Lord's prayer and the singing of " America " when they wanted to dis- arm the rural audience and pull a lot of $ 10 bills out of the church people , so this high - pressure salesman of centralization craftily works in the word " patriotic " when he talks about combining the country schools . He figured we would just naturally fall for it . We fail to see that is more patriotic to herd our children into buses and educate them in central plants . The little red school house on the country road by the green fields will give our children more peace and poise and power than they could find in the artificial atmosphere under the big roofs in town , where the Japs could drop their bombs with more telling effect in the centers of population . There will be plenty of teachers for our rural schools . If it were a time of peace the high - pressure guy from Lansing would be pulling some other excuse . We need our country schools . They are bulwarks of the nation . - Old postage stamps back of 1880 , old books , old coins , old glassware wanted . Drop a card to Wm . C. Wade , Shelby . - The Vroom Produce Co. of Detroit are building a packing house and cold storage plant for their own use to hold 50,000 bushels of apples . It is just east of Salisbury's storage and there will be two buildings . one 60 and one 120 feet long . The Vrooms have bought apples here for years . While this plant is for their private use , Hugh Salisbury is installing a plant that eosts $ 9.000 . He has already found 85 farmers and others who are interested in a locker , and doubt- less there will be more . Hugh says our grandmothers dried everything . the last generation canned foods , but this generation will preserve their foods by quick - freezing . - Monday evening . March16 , the Mears PTA at the town hall . The Pentwater band comes down and we eat.- Coal in your bin now for the winter of 1942-43 may save worry . Ask us for prices . Wood at yard , $ 1.35 cord . Shelby Ice & Fuel Co. Ph . 157 . WE HATCH BARRED ROCKS and WHITE ROCKS , RHODE ISLAND REDS , WHITE LEGHORNS and WHITE WYANDOTTES . Book your order today . ARCHER'S HATCHERY , HART .

and

Just 14 miles off the pavement , Mrs. Eva Osborn of Hart has a dandy little 15 - acre place with some fruit on it and a dandy house . electric wired , and a nice big chicken house , also wired . You can buy this place for $ 785.00 . Can you believe it ? Why folks , yon can make your living there and have spending money besides . Eva also has a nice big farm of nearly 70 acres , with a woods on it , and just the nicest buildings sitting by themselves among old shade trees ground that has been kept in condition throughout the years : only $ 3600 for this one . Yes , she has just others and others ; and yam should The 4 - H club boys are making foot stools to polish . - Olive Fuller has been painting the inside of the Mears post office a cocoa brown , but it seems to have a pinkish tint in it . So maybe the brown cocoa and the white milk were sweetened with a little pink sugar . Anyway , it makes the lobby and the workroom very cheerful . We understand there will be a new linoleum in the back room too , so if Crystal loses her ear rings they won't fall down the crack . Well , I don't even know if she has any earrings , but it will keep the frost from coming up , and if the rural carrier loses his necktie stick pin it won't fall down through . In chasing dimes that roll away the new linoleum may be a blessing.-