Odoriferous Orchards are ripe in the Land of Mears

FIFTY CENTS A YEAR

-Harold VanTassell is building a ga- rage with a shower bath so on warm days the car can run under and take a shower . It may be all done in June . During the month of Atay the car could have an outdoor shower any day . Some say old Otto Ream had a heart attack and fell into Russell's Creek and drowned . Fred DuVall was expecting him to come to work and when he didn't show up even 24 hours late he asked Officer William Carr to search . The old gentleman had a path along the bank he used to go to work . Maybe he fell over the enbankment . I first saby Otto Ream about 15 years ago when I was in the post office . He lived out in the little house north of the Draper place . His wife was Lulubelle but they never called him Scotty . She was tall and vertical and he was short . For sey- eral late years he tinkered around for Angus Peterson and lived in a little shed or granary even alone after Lulubelle left him . Two miles and more he would walk to town some evenings and go home with his groceries in a cloth sack over his back . His children , Calvin , Harold . Gilbert and Mary Jane , had grown up . He looked lonely and deserted like some old prospector in Nevada , hairy and bespectacled , hopefully panning out some dirt by some shallow mountain river . Things did not always pan out so well for Otto but he kept trudging along making the best of things , always meaning well and unaffending - like . peering wistfully into faces and hoping for some spark of answering cheer . tinkering around for someone who had some chores to do . cooking for himself , reading some old paper by a kerosene lamp or watching the firelight from a little old laundry stove play on the rafters or the wood- en wall . Saturday they will bury Otto in Hart . - Grace Estes has ac- quired a beautiful platinum finish on her hair - So fast the showers come the bees don't have much time to work in the pollen of the cherry flowers . People who rent bees for their orchards will not get very much buzzing for their money - Warren Woodard , for long years the tallest man in Mears , died May 2 in Kalamazoo county where he had been liv- ing for 20 years . He was born in Mears in 1883 and was the brother of Mrs. Emily Jane Dee , who survives him . along with two nephews , Morris and Donald Dee , and three nieces . Evelyn Olson . Mrs. Jake Lisseveld and Mrs. Merle Nichols . I remember his mother , Mrs. Har riet Woodard . a tall , kindly old lady . The Woodards ann Dees lived in what is now the Benina Olsen house . FOR SALE Top dirt , gravet ,

muck , fill dirt , clay and stone .

See BILL LATHERS , Mears , or call 3F4 - Pearl Commons is a bubbling store fixture lady , Harvey Hobbys sister - Wm . Viterua , 54 , was buried Wednesday . He leaves a daugh- ter , Marion Rider , and two sons , Roy of Washington , D. C. , and Robert of Hart . With all these daily rains the registered Guernseys at Silver Hills Farm are getting many bites of fresh green pasture . Sometimes they eat a dandelion but its good for butter color and Mike Cousinenu never tells them to spit it out . Carolyn Emmons is Ora's eight year old daughter . They were here Sunday to visit with Alice Fuller.- Tuesday evening , May 25 , is eighth grade commencement in Mears at 8:00 o'clock in the Methodist church . With its new interior decoration the church will be a pleasing spectacle to the people of Goiden town- ship who assemble on this momentous evening to see the children get their diplomas . The Mears school alone has eleven eighth graders this spring , 1 understand , and no doubt there will be several eighth graders from the country school districts of the township who will receive their diplomas at the Mears commencement . It is a most inspiring spectacie and all the people of the community should see it . With eleven pupils coming out of the eighth grade , now would be a good time to restore to the Mears school system the ninth and tenth grades , which never should have been discontinued . They were subtracted by the school board and not by a vote of the people . In transporting our uinth and tenth grade elsewhere several hundred dollars in state aid money have been lost from the Mears school . Several hundred dollars more will be lost next year if these grades are not restored . Is the Mears school treasury so rich that it can afford to throw money to the wind ? For many years our school got along financially well with its ten grades and lived within its income . In the arrogant action of the board two years ago not a dollar of expense was saved as the school continued to have just as many teachers as before and paid even higher salaries . Immediately the school board found itself in financial difficulties . We lost the state aid on the transported pupils . The sacred fifteen mill lim- itation which we had lived within so many years was butchered last summer without any necessity whatever . For if the high school grades had been kept there would have been sufficient revenue to run the school . A school board that would kick out whole grades of pupils that bring in extra revenue of several hundred dollars is indeed financially stupid . When the voters of this school district petitioned the school board for a special meeting of the electorate to re - establish the ninth and tenth grades , the school board insolently refused to let the voters have a special meeting to vote on the matter . And yet under the laws of the state of Michigan that very refusal by the board was a criminal offense , punishable by fine and imprisonment . Last winter the people of Mears had to pay a much higher tax and they got less for their sehool tax dollar than they did three years ago . Not only are the peo- ple of Mears paying an excessive school tax , which is not necessary , but the parents are inconvenienced by the sending of their children out of town . There is the extra expense and trouble of packing lunches or furnishing restaurant money for Hart . The pupils have to go earlier and return later . They are of less value to their parents in the way of doing chores about home and rumming errands . In our own little town there is a more wholesome moral environment . In some neighboring town they are running the streets at noon , and demand more spending money to keep up with the Joneses . In years past it has been proven by the quality of our output that the ninth and tenth graders that

noon

came out of the Mears school amounted to just as much in scholarship and ultimate accomplishment as others , and many off them are college graduates now , teachers . nurses and professional men . The ninth and tenth grades should be restored speedily to our village . Every parent believes in the in this village who has children coming up , and who better mora atmosphere of our little town , should stand behind me in this plea for the restoration of the ninth and tenth grades . To main- tain these grades would cost no extra expense , would bring in hundreds of extra dollars in state aid and would be vastly more convenient for both pupils and parents . It would increase the student interest in our school , make possible better school entertainments and a better basket fball teain . I will go farther and say that every merchant in this town in should see the financial advantage of financial advantage of maintaining a high school Mears . All these extra children buying tablets and pencils and bottles of ink and cookies and lunches in our town and taking home groceries from the home store mean much more to our village than having that if you buying power transported to Hart . I ask you , Art Anderson , wouldn't like to have a dozen extra students dropping in every buying things at your store ? I ask you , Elmer Krantz , with your be shrewd horse sense and financial sagacity , if you wouldn't like to doing a bigger bakery business and if you wouldn't have more people sitting around your shiny - top tables if you had a dozen or more teen- agers coming in to speed up the eight o'clock , twelve o'clock and four up o'clock business ? Just let this bun - loving . lollypop - licking gang fill their lungs with a whiff of your oven odors and they will soon be tak- ing home puffy things ordered by pa and ma . I who have watched this town rise and fall for 35 years , with unceasing vigilance for its welfare and betterment , can see these things . You're a smart man , Elmer , you stamps , write moro can see it too . And you . Crystal , would sell more money orders , do a bigger postal business if the local high school were maintained . I can remember the time a few years back when there were and tenth 22 country children coming into this village for the ninth grades . Every merchant should realize that these 22 children circulat- needs but taking ing daily in our midst , buying not only their own home loaves of brend and groceries and hardware meant a lot to our village . It is good business wisdom to kkeep our community together . In the sweet moral atmosphere of our little maple shaded village let us keep our children as long as we can instead of sending them out to get and more secure . supisticated and hard boiled . Here they are safer be patriots I.et us keep our chi.dren here as long as we can . Let us enough to build up cur home community instead of some other torn . In being loyal to our own school we have more community interest , life and activity . Tuesday night when you sit in the church of the stained gass windows and you feel so proud of all these eighth graders sitting up there on the platform all dressed up in their shining best , let us then more highly resolve that this is not a last farewell before they are thrown on the bus and carted away , but rather it is the glorious co- mencement of two more interesting years under the tower and within the ivied walls of the good old Mears school , where they will be bailed with respect and acclaimed with dignity as upperclassmen and their spirits will be lifted , instead of being sunken and submerged to a scale of unimportance in a student body of some neighboring town . In Mears their ninth and tenth grades will not be years of subordination and in- signflcance , but rather years of leadership and recognition and respect and self - confidence . Right here in Mears we have a wonderful four- room bulding , half used , and a big basement with two furnaces in it

Sweet's Service fills gas tanks , energizes

batteries , heals inner

tubes ,

In

t , say Gleason & Cargili , painters and bumpers , in Hart . Malburg's Sanitation Service , Rt . 2 , Hart . Phone Hart 10F22 or address Hart on US - 31 at the trax across from Wesleyan church . FLOOD MOTOR SALES : 24 HR . SERVICE . PH . 161 ; NIGHT , NO . 1 . SEPTIC TANKS , cesspools and dry wells cleaned at the right price . WHEN YOU NEED A GOOD STRONG WRECKER CALL THE lubricates automobiles . High - pressure greasing , candy bars , pop . We can give your car a new look like your spring suit or Easter bon-

Seville Rt . 2 , phone 111F5 .