| A History of STRUM and the TOWN OF UNITY by Roy Matson |
| THIS IS PAGE 74 | TABLE OF CONTENTS | PAGE BACK | PAGE FORWARD |
| cage and always a number of dogs would perform tricks that Sport or Shep just could not learn. Also, here were medicine shows with their variety of soothing salve and a few instrumental numbers. Carnivals were frequent. One over-wintered in Strum and a large snake, boxed for the season, spent a comfortable winter in a basement of an unknowing owner. Chataquas were good entertainment and a business group dated these programs year after year. Independence day celebrations took place in 1907, 1911 and 1920. The 1911 event shows Main Street decked with pine branches for shade and among everything else, an automobile seems the center of attraction. All concessions were on Main Street which also was the site of all parades. Probably the most spectacular of numerous free acts through the years took place during a Labor Day celebration in 1934. The writer was secretary of the Commercial Club at the time and charged with obtaining a good free attraction for the event. Because of depression times the purse was necessarily small, but finally an ad in a Twin City daily brought results. The reply came from a former Hollywood stuntman, unemployed of course, who would dive from a 90-foot ladder into a small tank filled with five feet of water. It was a fire dive, timed for late evening. He would furnish the ladder and tank, the club was obligated to fill the tank with water, furnish 5 gallons of gasoline and $75 for two performances. The stuntman arrived a day early. The ladder went up and was possibly a few feet short of the figure advertised, but it towered far over the highest buildings. The tank seemed woefully small. The site of action was the lot where the Post Office now stands. Came the evening and the show. The climb began at 9 PM. Preliminary to that the diver soaked the upper part of a white coverall with gasoline. A responsible party had been appointed to fire the tank on signal. Most of the 5 gallon can had been poured on the water. After considerable hullabaloo, Captain Delps (title assumed he said) reached the small platform high above a crowd that covered every bit of available ground space below. Plans called for the captain to fire himself, whereupon the tank would be torched and the dive to follow immediately. Things went differently - a high wind set the diver afire. Whether the same zephyr blew out the torch far below, no one would guess, but after two, three desperate yells for a light, the captain dove and fortunately hit the tank squarely, sending about two barrels of water over the responsible citizen who was still trying to start a fire. It was a short, spectacular act. As one spectator remarked, "If you blinked, you missed it." The club paid $37.50 for the evening’s performance. Today . . . ? Probably the most bizarre of Main Street events concerned a bachelor who lived a couple of miles south of town and a group of local vigilantees who used the law in a manner that satisfied all at a small cost. Sever Moe was normally a quiet unobtrusive person who became an abnormal pest when had "too many". He had need of supplies sometime during the cold winter months and had tarried far beyond reasonable time. Business men bore his conduct for a couple of days but when he spilled a bowl of soup on a waitress at the Ole Myhers cafe, patience ran out, enough was enough. Local law enforcement was vested in a town constable. Genial Del Williams was justice of the peace and interpreted enough of the statutes necessary to keep things reasonably quiet. It was the dead of winter; no auto roads those days, no uniformed officer ready to answer a call in a warm, brightly identified car. Time was the early twenties and a small town was an isolated spot, far from prompt authority. The culprit was in sort of a stupor and those present felt a good scare would suffice. Judge Williams was always ready from some such scheme. Moe was informed there would be a trial and a prosecutor was appointed, a defense attorney selected and the most nondescript jury that ever sat was seated. A salesman overnighting at the Liberty Hotel was prosecutor and opened the "tria"” by painting the soup spilling as a most heinous |