Retired Woodchucks are ripe in the Land of Mears

FIFTY CENTS A YEAR

Try Orel Burdick for those hard - to - get radio tubes . IIe has over 200 different types in stock at his watch and radio repair shop in Hart . adv . Working out one's own problems may lead to most unexpected ad- ventures . You have heard of the Indian braves who before a great feast let their belts out to the last notch and as the days of the next inter- vening fast went by tightened up their belts a notch at a time . In lean days and fat days for quite a number of years . maybe six or seven , the editor has worn the same sturdy belt . January was a hard , long month , a cold and bitter January of weary early morning miles , of days that began at four a . m . and ended often at ten at night . Long hours were getting the editor thinner and thinner . On Monday I felt the need of tightening up to the last notch but could not quite stand it . On Wednes- day morning I was so thin the last notch was not tight enough , and all along the gravel road in Grant township I was in danger of losing my trousers under the February stars . I made a resolution that when I got to the schoolhouse I would find a nail and make a new notch . After school I found a long roofing nail , took the belt three - quarters of the way off , laid it on a chunk of hard stove wood and hit the nail with a stick of wood . The new hole was made alright but the nail could not be coaxed out of the hardwood chunk . Neither could I move about free- ly . I was tied down with my boat anchor , could not get the buckle end free and needed something to get the nail loose . So I carried the heavy block around with the belt , hunting for a can opener or anything 1 could pry with . Out in the hall the chunk of stovewood and the belt and I managed to find a shoved and pry and pry until the head of the nail was back - flanged like an umbrella turned inside out by the wind . Then the bell came off the nail and went back where it belonged . When I was a boy going to school in Dearborn if one of the school girls started losing on underskirt the other girls on the playground would form a ring around her , maybe a double circle , for an outdoor dressing room . But out in the country with no early morning population astir to help you out , about all you could do would be to go over into a field and set up a round fence of corn shocks and make yourself a dressing room while you fixed your belt over . People who are getting thinner hondd really carry a leather punch around in a lip pocket to punch new belt holes . That was one problem I had to figure out last week , what to do when you have nailed yourself to the woodpile - Jobn Krans and L. D. Estes and the Augurs aud Liutons in very sunny Florida don't have to 95-23-01

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worry about frozen drain pipes this winter , not now anyway . Maybe they will when they come back , but we hope not . This January with its many sub - zero nights has accented plumbing cares . The editor's four inch subterranean drain seems to have congealed somewhere in the middle of its 35 foot journey through iron river and crockery creek , or maybe it is merely soap clogged , but neither drano or lye will set it free . The septic tank was found utterly free from ice and the removal of the brass plate in the cellar showed a clear channel as far as the rake handle will reach . Elmer Krntz says that cars passing over the driveway or people walking over it might cause a freeze in the middle of the drain . It did once on his farm . He says there is something about the compression or packing of the earth under a path or driveway that makes the ground freeze harder there . It sounds logical . The stoppage is utter and complete , and not a mere sluggishness of the iron bowels of the earth . Castor oil and Carter's Little Liver Pills I haven't tried on the drain yet , but I'll have it all figured out in two or three days . I didn't try any cussing on it . Do you suppose that would help any ? Dorothy Beam , 17 , is beaming because she was chosen cherry pie queen of Hart high school . Thelma Houseman was next in line and after her came Mary Jean Robbins and Maxine Robbins . Robins always like cherries , I guess . - A little girl in Colfax fell and broke her collar bone . I don't know if it was on the ice but it probably wasn't a fall out of a cherry tree because it isn't Washington's birthday yet . James Stover , our corner garage man in Mears , went to the Rapids the other day to move his furniture . - Clare Bright went down to Washington , D. C. , to see the Potomac river . - Doc Munger has gone to Florida . Mrs. Clar- ence Spitler is going to visit in Oregon and watch a salmon run up the river and get into a can and pull the lid down over its head . - Clara Davis , who went to Indiana for the winter , was home in Mears a few minutes the other day . Of late she has been in Ludington , called there after a brother , Sam Duncan , broke his hip . She stopped at her home the other day long enough to see if the clock was stopped and grabbed up an extra blanket or two to keep her feet warm - Bill Chesness ' pic- ture was taken while shaking hands with the governor in the Farm - to- Prosper meeting in Muskegon . - Ed Webber , the wagon maker of Shel- by , started for California and Mexico City to count the spokes in any old covered wagons he finds along the Gold Dust trail and see if the Spaniards still grease their hubs with Mica axle grease that makes the horses laugh . Rev. Perry shut the kitchen door to save the dining room heat and froze up the kitchen plumbing , whereas he should have kept the tea kettle humming . Susie Henry is selling little red hearts in Livingston's Gift Shop . Put them on your valentine party cake or decorate your baked apples . - Mr . and Mis . Harold K. Royal went to Sebring , Fla . , for a vacation , and seeing it is getting time for Wash- ington's Pie - day they just naturally won't keep still about the superior pils that grow in Oceana county cherries . Of course the cherries are pre - pitted . Thomas Schrumpf went along with the Angurs to Florida to adjust the spark plugs . Mrs. D. W. Shull of Scottsville , Arkansas , used to be Alice Hodges of Pentwater . The newest bundle of charm in Livingston's Gift Shop is Carol Manrin - Corkey Fischer lives in Os- Drey , Florida , but often thinks of the corks he used to pick up along the beach in Pentwater . - About 50 people were out at the Conserva- fion League picnic in Mears school last week . Movies showed the out- doors - Mears needs a barber shop . It would bring a lot more business to Mears , not only the revenue that comes from activated skenes but every business in town would prosper more . People who need a hair cut would not have to go over to the county seat and while they are sitting in the barber chair with an apron around their necks they remember

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they need a loaf of bread from Elmer's place , some groceries from Au dersons and some spray dope and paint from Frank Fenton's hardware . Lola's Beauty Shoppe has already stepped up the demand for chewing gum in Mears , and a dry goods store next door would get business from ladies who go out with a face lift and beautified hair and new glamour . Thirty years ago I wrote vastly more poetry than I do now and one of my rhapsodies was about the beauty of the birches and the hemlocks in between . I had more time then to live with the forest and I poured out pay worship to the trees . This morning , sighing for the old trails which the pressure of occupation keeps me from traveling as often I would , I remembered snatches of old verses that ran like this : " There's the beauty of the maples in their stately colonnade . With their inter- lacing branches and their loveliness of shade . And I like to see the poplars with their silver - bottomed leaves , When the sunlight makes them glisten By the lakeside and the stream . How I love to sit and lis- ten To their rustlings while I dream . Yet of all the golden pictures that I've taken with my eye and kept and oft returned to Like the dreams of bye and bye , There is one I worship deeply and when I'm worn and tired . Then my soul goes out and searches for that landscape white and green . It's the beauty of the birches and the hemlocks in between . " In my poetry in those days you would discover very little search for human companionship . Out in the Silver Lake wilderness where I largely lived I was satisfied if I saw no human being for days at a time , and sometimes I scarcely did . Fifteen or sixteen years went by before I wrote this : " The house of life in which I lived was like a great barn where the wind sieved through crack and crevice . How it bew its loneliness through rattling boards and emptied it in barren Tofts ! There was no fire to warm my hands till I found you . Yet a few days , yet a few weeks , or yet a few years we shall warm our hands together in the snug castle of your heart , unmindful of the storms that beat about our window . I shall bask in the sunshine of your smile un- til you say Depart . ' Then I shall go back to the life which I have liv- ed which was like a great barn where the winds played . I shall hear the comfort ess creak of timbers , of winds ablowing through . There will be no fire to warm my hands when I have lost you . " Some day again , when I have time , would you like to bare me unearth some other poems out of the mist ? Write me a letter or a card and let me know-

Weeks Lumber Co , for windows and sash , Meals and lunches at Elmer's Place , Mears Anderson's Grocery , Mears , sells green vegetables and fresh fruits .

WHEN YOU NEED A GOOD STRONG WRECKER CALL THE FLOOD MOTOR SALES : 21 HR . SERVICE . PH . 61 ; NIGTH , NO . 1 . an- PRIVATE SALE : Household goods , some tiques , Saturday , Feb. 14 , 1 to 5 p . m . Mrs. C. A. Brubaker house , Mears . Edward Brubaker , Administrator

na . With the world all

for syny , rest easy by getting yourself a farm and growing your own vast and living in his wanderful Uedana county where peace and bap