Inventories are ripe in the Land of Mears

Inventories

While many rural schools were closed during part of the ten - day storm , and even Hart village schools shut down for a little while , the school in Mears did not close . One day the bell rope broke in its cou- rageous effort to tell the pupils there would be school anyway , but one of the teachers brought a cow bell to school to ring instead . After the storm abated a bunch of boys , for the consideration of all - day suckers or candy bars , climbed up into the tower and put on a new bell rope . Yes , the Mears school carried on during all the blizzard . Get out and walk in the snow : it's good for you . Emmet Rocke , chairman of civilian defense in the line of salvage of waste materials , reminds us of the insistent need of waste paper , old rags , scrap metal and old rubber . Save all these waste materials , dig into your attics , back yards , cellars . Tie newspapers in bundles , flatten out cardboard boxes . Either sell the material to the junk yard or give it to the Boy Scouts , who will collect it , sell it and likely give the proceeds to war relief . The Boy Scouts will be around Mears . Old metal , old tires , old newspapers will help win the war . - Mrs . Joseph Senecal . 67 , passes away in Hesperia . Thes used to live in Benona , south of Mears , near the Cobb school . Se leaves 12 children . Henry Christian of Mears is her brother . - Forty- four cars went to John Olsen's auction sale , went as far as they could and parked in a field a quarter of a mile away , for there were no cars in the dooryard . The snow simply wouldn't let them . Bert Areklet couldn't get there with his Mode ! T. He walked across the field and bought a cream can . Hubert Snider bought a dozen books for 30c , some murder stories and some books of Sunday school bymus . Floyd Krauter was one of the first bidders . He bid in a rope 30 feet long , or was it 15 ? Anyway he got the rone and it is plenty long to lead one of the famous Guernseys around at Silver Hills Farm . Nels Anderson kept landing out the small articles from the shed to windjammer Lawrence Matrix . who coaxed the money out of the crowd with " C0 , now the 70 , 75 , cesio- weesie , now the 80. " Mary Edlund landed the big crock . Thomas Welsh bought a milk pail and walked around with it on his arm just like be was going to pail the cows , Pat Kelley bought the enemmber speder and is all ready to have a big patch next summer to keep the Mexicans

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jumping like Mexican beans . When the crowd broke up they were get- ting near supper time and the fellow with the fish market spread on the ground did a rushing business , Joe Stoner says : " Heres where I get a mess of fish . " - See Claude Rummer if you have a load of po- tatoes to seil . He lives in the Russell Block in Hart - Keith Corliss sells fresh bread , rolis , fried cakes . See him for green vegetables , citrus fruits , bananas and breakfast foods . In the middle of Mears , adv.- Mrs. Clara Davis and brother Sam Duncan left this morning for her farm in Indiana where she is getting out some timber . - Pnil Paimer and wife Pania were in Mears today with their camera and little son two years old . - We are very glad to see that Smith Corners school , where the building so recently burned , will go on with classes in the basement of the Smith Corners church . The ever - reaching , ever - greedy school bus centralization system was quickly eager to absorb them into l'entwater but the good people at Smith's Corners had a lot of sense and said , " No. we have our teacher on our hands and we will have to pay her the rest of the year anyway whether she teaches or not . " The school bus system is a poor substitute for your own district school any- way . For a week during the storm the Cobb school bus to Shelby could not get through . The pupils had to stay home . Yet in Mears they lad school every day . One of those stormy days , I think on a Tuesday after- noon , the Walkerville school bus driver became apprehensive of the increasing storm and at 2:00 p . m . started to round up his charges to deliver them home . But the bus was caught in the storm and in spite of the assistance of the county snow plows it was 2:00 o'clock in the morning before the last of the pupils were delivered to their homes . Picture the anxiety of the mothers looking fearfully out of the windows of their homes into the storm wondering if their children were freezing in the blizzard . Little folks of kindergarten age herded into the cen- tralized schools . What will they do when their morning session is over ? Maybe walk the streets of Pentwater the way one little girl from Cobb did in Shelby . No , the school bus system is a poor substitute for the school in the home district . And often it is more expensive than run- ning the home school . By the time you pay the school bus driver and the upkeep on tires and gas aid oil and all the tuition in the town school you will see it is often much cheaper to keep the home school going and infinitely better for the pupils . Why must they be herded like cattle into a bus whether they like it or not and endure the tension of the mechanized , motorized day when their lives would be much simpler and sweeter walking reflectively along the country lanes and highways , noticing the birds and wild flowers and butterflies . Search the daily newspapers and you will read of the school buses that are hit by the trains or overturn in the ditch . Why should your little five- year - old son be swallowed up in a school bus every morning and cough- ed ont at night after a day of centralized tension , when beside the clover fields the little red school house could be his friend ? Remember the little Walkerville boy who was killed as he stepped out of a school bus down near Detroit Let us keep our country schools and be sensi ble . And these high - pressure guys they send out from the department of public instruction to windjam the country parents into closing country schools and transporting the pupils to town ought to take a jump in the lake . Let us keep our country schools and enjoy the pence of rural life - Dorothy Van Andel was going down the basement stens at New Era when she fell with two pails of hot water and was badly burned . The New Era station agent . James L. Sheln , went to Shelby hospital to have an x - ray taken . Maybe he swallowed a few telegraph

dots and dashes - Looked like Winnie Sloan was taking a card table into her mother - in - law's house this morning . So maybe she just threw a bridge party at home or is about to throw one away from home- To the Central Meat Market in Hart where Nixon & Nixon will be glad to wrap up beef steak for supper , pork roast for dinner , bologna for the lunch box and pork sausage for pancake relish .

Eva Hanson - Osborn says : Everybody loves a river , a nice wide river . surrounded by wooded delis and all such things ; a pretty woods , some farm land , say 40 to 50 acres , the best piece of pasture land in all out- doors , and all just a little ways from the county seat ; buildings , too : most a quarter section and only ' round $ 35.00 an acre . Can you beat that in these times with land going " sky high " everywhere ? Local folks are letting the outsiders get all the good bays.-

And now you can get Ethyl gas at the Economy Gas Station in Hart on US - 31 by the railroad trax , adv .

Oscar Worth was going to Muskegon this morning in the pursuit of fame and fortune and occupational opportunities . - A country chamch that has a good lively attendance of 23 at its Sunday evening meeting would make a big mistake to succumb to the centralization craze and close up for seven weeks to be transported to some church in another town . When such local services are closed down you will always find that some of the attendance , perhaps more than half , will not follow along to the church that is to be visited . Those who are left behind win most likely not be in any church . Why not keep the lighthouse open and the Sunday evening light ashining ? When Mears can muster a Sun- day evening attendance of 23 at its Epworth League meeting that is better than larger churches are getting out . In Mears this service went on for many years , even when there was no minister to attend . It is more credit to a minister to keep the home church open and the Sun- day evening light shining and the bell ringing out its invitation to the neighborhood than it is to try to close down the services and dark- en the windows and lock the doors and transport a few - a very few- over to some neighboring village . The more you close your church doors and go away the harder it is to re - open and gather your crowd to gether again . It is like the life history of a habit . You teach your crowd to scatter to the four winds and they keep on scattering - Frank I .. Hoffman , who ran a drug store in Houston , Texas , passed away Once he lived in Shelby and ran a drug store there . - Clarence Bennett . 60 , is gone . He was a successful merchant in the south side of Hart and sold groceries and gasoline . Some people cursed him because he was thrifty and knew how to save money and accumulate it . They thought he should blow his money to the winds and then he would have nothing . and be like they are . But Clarence Bennett helped many in distress by extending grocery credit and sometimes he lost . He lent money fo friends who came to him , and sometimes they forgot to pay him back . IIe gave to charity , too , but if he was going to hand out five dollars or ten dollars he wanted to know what it was going to he used for : be had a practical , every - day religion . He reached ont a helping hand . a lending hand , and often he lost . Shall we condemn a man because he has the thrift of saving and the wisdom to accumulate money because