Conspicuous Cinders are ripe in the Land of Mears

FIFTY CENTS A YEAR

Ninety - nine years old , ninety - nine years and six months , that is what Art Keck's great - grandfather lived to be . His grandfather lived to be 68 and his father to 52. We were talking about the reasons people used to live so long and why now they don't , and we both agreed it was the of fierce complexity of modern life , the tension , the worry , the lack sleep , the overstrain . Art lives on a farm down Rothbury way , is around 37 maybe , starts for work in Muskegon before two in the afternoon and gets home at two in the morning , rising again around seven for his morning on the farm . Art doesn't get all the sleep he needs . Neither do J. nor yet the 64 men and two women that ride to their toil on the two buses that go down the line at 5:22 a . m . Anker Sorensen , the Dane . who lives in a black farm west of St. Mary's Lake , gets up at 4 a . m . , pails his cows and locomotes to Hart by 5. He doesn't call his wife , but and gets his own breakfast . There is a song called " Anchors Aweigh . if the neighbors hear Mr. Sorensen's car going down the road they say : " Anker's alway . " Now if Art Keck could sleep ten hours a night instead of five and if he lived on buttermilk in the Balkans he might live to be a hundred and beat his great - grandfather by six months , five weeks and 32 days . But Art's cow that gives the buttermilk is dried up . The lure of one dollar an hour or more makes many people go down on the bus and live an overstrain pattern of life which , whether they realize it or not , is subtracting years from their life expectancy . For two or three years perhaps it would be not so bad if the workers are actually get- ting ahead , paying for a farm by leaps and bounds and getting a lot of new farm machinery and equipment which they will presently settle down to use and kiss the bus goodbye . But if they earn nine dollars a day and live it all up they are most pitiful . When they earned three dollars a day they managed to live on that . As their revenue increased , their expenses did also , and many a also , and many a worker finds it just as hard to stretch his ten dollars a day as he did his three . They are getting less sleep , they are away from home many hours a day , in some cases their families are growing away from them , they have less time to read , to enjoy life and the companionship of their children . They rise unsuffi clently rested , go away in the darkness and return in the twilight . Per- haps one meal a day they can eat with their families and perhaps not

that . They are the ghastly legion riding to their toil . Years are being stricken from their lives by the tension of the daily grind . And so many are finding themselves at the end of the year no farther ahead than a year ago or five . Their families acquired a new set of expensive ways of life trying to keep up with the Jones . Blessed art thou , John Cloutier , because you have a little shop where you sew buttons on shoes and glass eyes under the brows of mounted bears , Blessed art thou because you can sit on a bench saving the soles of the people and giving the laboring class a better understanding . Shoes that are speechless , you give unto them tongues so that they can tell the wind and the rain to stay out . And blessed art thou John , because Doris , your wife , works at the bench near you and helps you in your little shop . And if there are times when you must go away , as sometimes you do , she will keep things running while you are gone . Blessed art thou , Roy Geisinger , be- cause you have a little shop in a corner of your home and the chimes ring as the customers go in and out bringing watches for you to mend . You never have to know the sorrow of going away three hours before dawn , torn asunder from those you would linger with . For all day long as you bend the mainsprings and heal the pinions you are near to the comfort of the voice in the next room . And you can look out of the window and see the sunlight on your flowers and sometimse for a few moments you can take a hoe and work around the morning glories under your kitchen window . Blessed art thón , Art Anderson , because home is just behind the back door of your store . And you , Web Tiffany . as you baked pumpkin pies and fried the doughnuts down through the years , how fortunate were you that home was just beyond the swinging kitchen door and always and always you could eat with Mary and often you could sit down by your reading table and wait until an entering customer put his hand on the latch of the shop door and made a tink- ling of the bell . In Belgium and in Holland there are many little shops where the owner lives in the rooms behind and when the little bell tinkles over the door the shopkeeper comes out with his apron on to peg your shoes , clean your watch , make your keys , or sell you herring . They don't need to hire any clerks because the wife or children can mind the shop if the father has to go out on an errand . In such a way Raymond Weirich and his wife ran their little store at the Cedar . The who live on farms can also be near one another . One man who has a beautiful home in Mears works in Muskegon and is home only once or twice a week . He is getting along in years and his grasp oll life and health is not so strong . Now if ever he ought to be enjoying his evergreens , his lawn . his dream house , his family . Perhaps some day he is looking forward to a picture of life where he can sit on a bench in his own back yard and watch his tomatoes ripen in the September sun . One should not wait too long . A vaster simplicity of life , of food and raiment , and philosophy might help many of us achieve a bench in the morning sun . On the great clock of time there is just one word : NOW . Today we live . today we love , today we give , for tomorrow we know not of . Chester Brubaker waited too long for his sent in the sun . Otto Carlson farmed too wide and hard . Hortencia Andrews bas a wiser program of labor and liosure . She cleans or washes a few hours a day but plunges into the healing floods of fiction and often reads a book a day . She has a happy pattern of life . Not always so is the lot of those who are torn asunder from their families , who are gone long hours from darkness to darkness , who get no time to read or enjoy life and whose hours of sleep are shortened at both ends , When does life . begin for them ? -Bartell Adema , the

grand old barber of New Era , was laid to rest in the Eagles cemetery . For 30 years or more he sold hair cuts and medicines and raised a fine family . Lionel Tate and his Hart FFA boys were feeding hay and corn to the deer in the Pentwater plains this year . The other day they discovered someone had killed a deer and left it there . It is a shame that anyone would kill a deer this time of year . - In the Glen Myrmel house there is a new little 9½ pound daughter , born yesterday . - Her- man Stramm , 69 , died suddenly Monday and was buried at Hart Thursday . He came to Oceana county 25 years ago . - Art Gay died at 71 . Lyonel Goodenrath at Lyonel's Service Shop at Shelby sells Kelvi- nator electric ranges with ball bearing drawers . Also appliances . adv . Try Orel Burdick for those hard - to - get radio tubes . He has over 200 different types in stock at his watch and radio repair shop in Hart . adv . Weeks Lumber Co , for windows and sash ,

on

RADIO SERVICE on all makes . Experienced workmanship , reason- able rates . SHELBY RADIO SHOP , 509 Michigan Avenue . It was al WHEN YOU NEED A GOOD STRONG WRECKER CALL THE FLOOD MOTOR SALES ; 24 HR . SERVICE . PH . 161 ; NIGHT , NO . 1 .

Meals and lunches at Elmer's Place , Mears

Anderson's Grocery , Mears , sells appetitizing arrays of nourishment

fully modern , with all the furniture . Only $ 5500 . You couldn't build the dormers on the house alone for that figure nowadays and for some time to come . See Eva and Bud , that Hanson - Osborn outfit ' cross from the courthouse , ' bout this one . adv .

T

-At Rodaman's Army Surplus Store in the Archer building on Miller street in Hart you can get nice fur - lined jackets , reduced to low prices ; men's overshoes at bargain prices ; men's Bob Cross loves Margie Pearson . Bob Padecky loves Crystal Watkins . All mar- ry soon . Get ready , rice . Plane in Mears Bud Stover gives it once - over . Rafters up on Shelby's brick depot . Elmer's bak_ ery gets new tiles . Crystal said ; Good- bye , teeth . Ervin Gleason's favorite perfume is banana oil . John Riley home from Japan . Art Anderson has drawbridge Crystal needs one too . Or else a boat .

Wannta ' nice modern bungalow on the farm you buy ? Ilave a dandy 40 , about seven miles from Ludington on tarvia road . Dr. Henry G. Radel , Chiropodist . Foot Specialist , 310 Michigan Thea tre Building , Muskegon . Phone 25-482 . Hours : 9-12 1.30-5 : 00 .

-Do your chairs or davenports need doctoring ? Call Gerald Ensing , Silver Lake , phone 38F24 . to see samples and get Estimates , ady - The