Syrup Pans are ripe in the Land of Mears

Syrup Pans

" Lorna Fetters , take these letters , " Mr. Tompkins said . " Type them black or type them red and mail them overhead . " - Some soil conserva- tion pictures came to Mears the other night . Mr. Tompkins made them made them talk in the old town hall . - When Miss Ruth Pearson comes home Thursday night from teaching school she may find a lot of tea- cups and teaspoons to wash up as her mother is having the Swedish ladies ' aid . - Emmet Roche deserves great commendation for the high class of shows he brings to his theatres in Hart , Shelby and Pentwater . He presents the cinema in a liberating glory that sets us free from mundane cares and lifts us out of the dish water and stables with a Cinderella miracle to keep company for a charming hour with the flow- ers of Hollywood and Santa Monica . - The editor of The Mears Newz received national recognition this month in a five page article by James S. Pooler in The American Mercury Magazine . Letters from all over the country have been coming in . " How does it seem to be famous ? " someone asked Swift Lathers . " Oh , I just keep trudging along the same as always . Since the fast time came I sleep with one eye open half the night to be sure I get the fire built and the children to school on time . The moon shines in the window and I wonder if it is getting light . I get up and look at the kitchen clock which is at home on the range and find it is three o'clock . After a while I find it is four or ten minutes after five and then I stay up when it is 6:12 , rake the ashes out of the range , bring up the pine chips which last night I parked on the cement at the foot of the cellar stairs , build the fire and cook the corn meal . With the waxed paper from last night's loaf of bread I build a fire in the furnace , throw on the choppings from yesterday's big chunk of wood and breath into the reddening spark the breath of life . I awaken little Nathan who has just turned six , because he is the youngest of our children who go to school . On a chair before the cook stove he starts to get dressed . I hand him his clothes one by one after I have turned them right side out . Little Dale , aged 3 , comes down stairs in his pajamas carrying his hot watter bottle . I dress him next . They sit at the table to eat their cocea and toast and pour the milk on their yellow breakfast food . The other children come down when they are ready . Forest goes up to the old house well to earn two cents pumping a tank of water . I hand out cough drops to the ones

that are barking and get them all started to school . I descend to the furnace room and chop intermittently for an hour on a knotty pine chunk until it is small enough to go into the furnace door . Three more chunks I may need before the day is done . I do up a few bundles of papers that have gone through the addressing machine . I put on my overcoat to take up the pilgrimage for another day . So many places I would like to go this morning , out on Peach Ridge , or down Ole Pearson's hilly road or into the blue hills beyond Bass Lake . Perhaps I shall breathe the breath of freedom on none of the trails I long for . More apt I will stand by the gutters in the county seat , hoping to take in a few coins to keep the wheels of life and business turning another day . It is not hard to get to Shelby . There seems to be a milder , kind- lier atmosphere there , hateless and well - wishing . The molecular tension of village life is less austere , the people take more time to breathe , to live , to be tolerant of the other fellow . There is an essence in the atmos- phere of towns if your soul is quick to grasp it . And yet no day is com- plete for me if I cannot escape from the towns to the wilderness for a little while , to the bottomlands of the creeks beyond the mountains of the Cobb or up into the sumac hills . Toward evening I will return afoot to hear the welcome of little children running out to carry in the groceries . Are there cookies in this bag ? And did you bring any raisins and cheese ? And then the potatoes are frying for supper , language les- sons and geometry around the dining room table . Dale is getting sleepy . Nathan is nodding on the couch . It's time to take them to bed . Yes , life is much the same , fame or no fame . We live only one day at a time . " RIDING HORSES for sale , weight about 1,000 pounds . Will work single or double . Boo Blackmer , Shelby .

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Just 14 miles off the pavement , Mrs. Eva Osborn of Hart has 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 , you 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 you should see her and take your pick , as most every week , the one advertised last week is gone : and so it goes . adv . - Louis Meisch says he will soon have to move his fish shanty as the ice on Lake Pentwater is getting a little thin . Louis and John Schestag have been having some good luck with ice fishing this year , what with Louis ' red hair to illuminate the dark interior like a torch and John's musical ability to play the violin and siren the pickerel to surface - Lottie Fuller has new rugs and window curtains and she doesn't want the Angora cat to get scared of a mouse and run up the new curtains and start a run.-Ed. Pearson is moving way back up in the foothills so he can water his cows at John Olsen's wind mill - Alvin Reid has returned from the army after 20 months . most of it spent in Panama . His good dog Pepper , who had run many weary local miles and looked all over for Alvin when he left 600 days ago , was most over - joyed to see him and stood before his young mas- ter shaking for joy - Beech Ellis , who has been undenting cars for Les & Guy , goes now to polish the decks of a battleship and stand by the big guns while they make dents that won't come out - Being a wor- shipper of steam trains since I heard the engines whistle in my child- hood . I was one of the most frequent passengers of the Peter Mar- quette back in the dear din days when the passenger cars stopped at the Mears depot twelve times a day . And after the schedule declined

to one mixed train a day I still ran to the depot to buy a ticket and catch the cars . No more does the telegraph tick in the depot at Mears , no longer does the little ticket window fly up so we could hear the jolt of the ticket stamper on the pasteboard , and no longer are passengers accepted . The freight comes when it listeth and we hear the sound thereof , but no one looks on the bulletin board to see if the engine was chalked up 20 minutes late out of Berry or if the board was out at Bender flag station . Of course , I still ride the trains down state once in a while coming back from making a speech , but that doesn't satis- fy the train hunger we have known since the good old days of train satisfaction when we could go to the depot when the whistle blew and see the summer resort girls getting off and the trunks coming out of the baggage car . But last Saturday I was in a train again . The work cars have been standing on the siding in Hart while the crew fixed a culvert or something . I knocked on the door of one of the cars and Ray Dickinson said to come in . There he sat by the stove keeping the bunkhouse warm , and the eight bunks were double - deckers , lumberjack style . If Harold Vildheer and Warren Van Til couldn't decide whether they wanted upper or lower berths in their pullman they could pull straws out of the bed ticks and match them with Gus Sorgen and John Hindges . The pile driver engineer , Earl Potter , doesn't wipe his feet on a blotter when he climbs out of the ditches with mud on his breeches . When it comes his turn in the cook shanty John Van Til will pare potatoes ' til we meat again and hungry John Vandermor will let out a roar and yell for more . - HORSES and cattle for sale . Myron Kokx , Hart , Rt . 2. - The first time I knew that Jens Halberg lived at Round Lake was back in 1909 when Emma Halberg rode through Mears on horseback to teach school in the Cobb mountains . I would see his house when I rode by the little lake on the train going up to Pentwater on the four o'clock and coming back on the 8 p . m . When I came to know him I was impressed with the genial smile on his round and bearded face and the twinkle in his eyes . I liked to think of him as a sea captain on a Viking ship navigating the fjords of Norway . He grubbed the sticks out of the muck , picked the stones out of the sand , dug potatoes and hoed his corn in the sweat of the day and cooled his bearded chest by the Round Lake breeze when the milking chores were done at night . It is 85 years since Jens Halberg was born , it is 60 since he came from Sweden . His children , Olaf and Emil . Edward and Oxel , Edith and Emma , have all grown up to have homes of their own and remember the little sister who was killed by the train . Jens Hal- berg's days are numbered . Sitting in the kitchen he will no longer watch his granddaughter , Nina , bake the morning pancakes on cook stove , or Norman bringing in the pail of milk , or hear Corrine play on the piano in the other room . There was a gathering of Scandi- navian friends at the Swedish church this afternoon to say farewell . And after that his flowers were banked upon bis mound . While high soon the Hart City school basketball is in the limelight this week . League will be in the limelight . Floyd Weeks is manager . The combats of 29 teams will be represented in the culminations of the second larg- est tournament in western Michigan , March 18-19-20-21 . Holland Fur- on the Guernsey barn at nace won last year . - The big new addition Silver Hills Farm rapidly nears completion and will increase the floor- space of the main barn 50 per cent . I wondered if the small outer door in the concrete basement would still be used as the passage of inter- communication from the old stables to the new , but Floyd Krauter as- sures us that the segment of basement wall will come out and it will be all open between the old basement and the new . - Grocer Keith Cor- liss , who sells oranges and onions at the corner store in Mears at the

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