LIFE

Montana Album: Christmas tree race, Hawaiian tour

GreatFalls

50 Years Ago

From the Tribune week of Nov. 29, 1965

The Great Falls Motorcycle Club’s 28th annual Christmas tree race is scheduled today, regardless of the weather. All cyclists have been invited to meet at Slack Cycle Shop, 2226 River Dr., at 9 a.m., for the start of the race. The destination is the Logging Creek area 25 miles south of Great Falls. The club will give prizes, including one to the rider bringing in the largest tree. A picnic lunch, provided by the club, will be served at the tree cutting area.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – Two U.S. soldiers newly freed by the Viet Cong praised their captors and criticized the allied war effort Tuesday. Both told newsmen they expect harassment when they get home. The soldiers are Sgt. George E. Smith, 27, of Chester, W. Va., and Spec. 5 Claude E. McClure, 25, of Chattanooga, Tenn., who were captured with two other Americans in a guerrilla attack on a special forces camp outside Saigon on Nov. 24, 1963. “I have known both sides, and the war in Viet Nam is of no interest to the U.S.,” Smith said.

DENVER – The American Humane Association’s William O. Stillman Citation was awarded to “Laddie,” a two-year-old Labrador owned by Bill Otto, Virgelle. Laddie was awarded the citation for rescuing August Otto and his son, Bill, from the Missouri River after the boy had fallen in and the father leaped in to save him. They had been swept almost a mile downstream when the dog came to their rescue. The award is one of a series given the Labrador since the dramatic rescue on Apr. 17.

MIAMI – Seventy-five Cuban men, women and children rode into U.S. exile Wednesday on the first flight of an airlift that could continue for years if Fidel Castro doesn’t shut the gates. All the newly arrived refugees have relatives in this country. Most of them were scheduled, after brief processing, to resume their journeys at once to cities where their kinfolk have been resettled all over the U.S. Cubans streaming down the gangway were well-dressed and appeared generally healthy. The 24 children among them included many babes in arms.

Problems of the “hard-pressed” city general fund are almost a direct reflection of two factors: Great Falls is a healthy, growing city which needs constantly expanding services, and there seems to be no immediate way to increase revenue to alleviate the condition. Aside from expanded services, costs are mounting and mill levy money received from taxes did not rise proportionately as in former years for this new fiscal year.

OAKLAND, Calif. – The Oakland Naval Hospital has two new nurses who don’t draw the usual wisecracks and wolf whistles from patients. One is an ex-fullback who says, “I’ve got a good left hook.” The other is a 200-pound former basketball center. They were members of the Navy’s first five-member class of male nurses. They are the only male nurses on a nursing staff of 113 here.

A congressional investigation of private utility companies, particularly in the state of Montana, was called for in a resolution passed at the concluding session of the Montana council of cooperatives Saturday afternoon. The resolution referred to what it called “the tireless efforts of Montana’s Sen. Lee Metcalf who has again disclosed widespread abuses presently being committed by numerous private utilities, including the Montana Power company, involving stock option preferences being granted to company ‘insiders’ at the expense of consumers and shareholders.”

ARLINGTON, Va. – Internal Revenue Service agents Friday seized and padlocked the headquarters of the American Nazi party here for non-payment of federal taxes. The IRS said three kinds of taxes were involved, mostly income taxes. The total deficiency was listed as $5,278. The self-appointed fuehrer of the organization, George Lincoln Rockwell said, “The American Nazi party is now in the hands of the government.”

Vast areas of croplands in Montana and other states long kept out of production because of surplus problems may be placed back into production within a few years to save millions and millions of persons from starving, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey indicated in an exclusive interview granted to William A. Cordingley, publisher of the Tribune, during Humphrey’s visit to Great Falls for the Democratic convention here. Pointing out that millions of persons in India and other underdeveloped nations would be starving right now if it wasn’t for American grain, the Vice President said the grim population and food problems of today will be minor compared to what they will be in a few years.

SAIGON – Combat casualties in the South Vietnamese armed forces soared to 1,505 last week largely as a result of the Viet Cong’s destruction of the 7th Infantry Regiment, a U.S. military spokesman announced Wednesday. American losses were markedly less than in the previous week, though some U.S. advisers were cut down with the Vietnamese infantrymen in their losing battle Saturday on the abandoned Michelin rubber plantation 45 miles northwest of Saigon.

WARM SPRINGS – Christmas must come to everyone, and that includes the patients at the State Hospital in Warm Springs, according to Mrs. L.P. Sanders, director of the annual “Gifts With a Lift” campaign. “Our objective is to place a gift in the hands of every adult patient at the hospital,” she said. With more than 1,700 patients at the hospital, many are forgotten at Christmas except for the usual treats provided at the state institutions. The organization has a suggestion list which includes items such as games, puzzles, cigarets, cigaret holders, gloves, mittens, handkerchiefs, ballpoint pens and hair grooming items.

DA NANG, Viet Nam – American servicemen in Viet Nam are receiving printed leaflets calling on them to “oppose the war.” Some of the servicemen are sore about it; others think it’s a joke. Printed at the bottom of the leaflet is “Viet Nam Day Committee, 2407 Fulton Street, Berkeley, Calif.” Some Seabees who received the leaflets said they were addressed to them personally, with the address written by hand in red ink.

100 Years Ago

From the Tribune week of Nov. 29, 1915

According to correspondence received at the office of Division Freight and Passenger Agent C.H. Mitchell of the Milwaukee, considerable interest is being taken in a proposed tourist party which will leave Butte Jan. 20 for Honolulu and regarding which quite a number of Great Falls people have inquired. The party will be personally conducted by William Fink of Butte, an extensive traveler, who has made many trips to the Hawaiian islands. The trip will consume 35 days and the steamer fare from San Francisco to Honolulu, and return, ranges from $130 to $350.

OTTAWA, Ont. – The Canadian government has commandeered all high-grade wheat in elevators from Fort William on Lake Superior to the Atlantic coast. The action was taken under the special war act by the Canadian grain commission. It was the property of grain shippers and millers and is all which on Saturday night was in public elevators. A revised estimate places the amount at about 20 million bushels; a considerable amount is the property of American dealers.

Farmers in the neighborhood of Stockett are anxious to get telephone connections with the outside world, and with that end in view, a committee of the residents consisting of C.E. Gerke and N.C. Arseneau were in the city yesterday discussing the situation with Manager Roger Carney of the Mountain State company. The result of the conference with Mr. Carney and consideration of the situation by the committee was the calling of a meeting of all in the neighborhood to be supplied with telephones to meet at the Gerke school house on Dec. 14 for the purpose of deciding upon a course of action.

NEW YORK – It is estimated that 15,000,000 people attend the motion picture theaters daily and that the miles of film used weekly in all the movie theaters of the land would twice encircle the globe. The estimated investment represented by the motion picture industry will exceed $100,000,000. The power of the motion picture as the moulder of public opinion is immense. The majority of the motion picture plays are clean and uplifting, and they teach good moral lessons.

Constructed of cheap material and admittedly such as ordinarily is excluded from the business district by the city ordinances, a shack with four small wheels under it is standing in the A.J. Stough lot at First avenue north and Third street. The shack has caused considerable comment by persons who pass that way, and most everybody passes there occasionally as it is across the street from the post office and Hotel Rainbow. The shack is covered with paper and has four large panes of glass on the street side. It was constructed by a couple of young men who plan to conduct a candy store there.

DETROIT – Henry Ford, who will leave for New York tomorrow evening preparatory to sailing for Europe next Saturday on his peace mission, announced tonight that accommodations on the steamer Oskar II had been reserved for 30 newspaper men, mostly from New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Nearly 50 other writers, it was added, had been unable to obtain places on the ship. Mr. Ford is anxious to find out who is backing the moving pictures exhibited in various parts of the country depicting the need for increased armament. He said tonight he would spare no pains in obtaining this information.

After 17 months continuous work, the Great Northern will tomorrow put into service the newest and most modern of its tunnels in this state, the tunnel at Paola, on the western slope of the main range of the Rockies, about midway between Summit and Belton. The tunnel will be completed today and its tracks connected up with the mainline to permit the passage through it the traffic of the system. The tunnel is 1,730 feet in length and will replace a small tunnel of about 600 feet. The principal object of its construction was to eliminate a number of sharp curves described by the old track as about 10 degree curves.

WILMINGTON, Del. – Thirty workers were killed and seven fatally injured today in a terrific explosion of about four tons of black powder at the Upper Hagley yard of the Dupont Powder company. It was the worst accident that has occurred in any of the company’s plants in a quarter of a century. The cause of the blast is unknown, but a rumor was circulated that some outside agency was responsible. Nearly all the victims were between 16 and 21 years of age, at work preparing powder for the warring nations.

Claiming to have been almost totally incapacitated from reason of arsenic poisoning, Adam J. Annan, a former employee of the Anaconda Copper company in its smelter in this city, has instituted proceedings in the district court against the Anaconda company in which he asks judgment in the sum of $40,000. Annan alleges that he was directed by Foreman Richard Tuttle to shove away and prepare the ground in the defendant’s arsenic plant for the laying of a concrete floor. He alleges that he worked in this department for three days during which time he breathed arsenic dust which had accumulated about the floor, the result of which is his health broken down and the tissues of his body rotting and wasting away.

WASHINGTON – None of the proceeds from the sale of Red Cross Christmas Seals, which are being sold widely throughout the U.S. for the benefit of the anti-tuberculosis movement, will be used for any relief purposes, according to a statement by Earnest P. Bicknell, National Director of the American Red Cross, who says, “The Red Cross is deeply appreciative of the sympathetic interest which has inspired the suggestion from various parts of the U.S. that a certain percentage of the Red Cross Seal Sales Fund, which has been used for the last seven years exclusively for the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis in the U.S., be expended this year to aid the European war sufferers. However, we do not feel justified in adopting any policy which will tend to cripple the tuberculosis work in this country.”

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