In 1949, Poplar Bluff shows traits of a growing metropolis — robust parking meter profits, growing schools and plans for a city centennial.
__Feb. 8, 1924__
• The Justrite Oil Company is almost finished with construction in Sikeston and Poplar Bluff. The DAR’s predecessor, The Interstate American, declared the Sikeston location “one of the best bulk stations...that can be found in Southeast Missouri” and noted the “beautiful brick filling station” north of Poplar Bluff will open March 1.
Justrite intends to build another bulk storage site and filling station in Poplar Bluff, which will someday be its home office.
• The Butler County Court appropriates $2,500 to pave Front Street, all the way from B Street to a highway leading to Cairo. The project has steadily gathered steam among East Poplar Bluff business owners.
__Feb. 8, 1949__
• A centennial celebration for Poplar Bluff is in the works. Plans are in the early stages, but the Chamber of Commerce will ask local men to embrace Butler County’s pioneer spirit by growing out their beards before the midsummer event.
• Poplar Bluff’s parking meters are raking in $600 per week on average. Half of the money goes toward the meters’ cost, and Mayor Arch Bartlett announced the rest will be earmarked for street repairs.
• Student enrollment is rising and classrooms are getting crowded. Thus, the Poplar Bluff Board of Education announced plans at their last meeting to build additional buildings and classrooms. The Eugene Field, Mark Twain and J. Minnie Smith elementary schools will all be expanded. The board proposed combining the Mark Twain addition to the construction of a new building planned a few blocks north of the school, which will house a new gym and high school home economics department.
• The local March of Dimes campaign contributed $2,489 to polio aid. The drive was organized by the Butler County Chapter, National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
__Feb. 8 1974__
• Federal Judge James Meredith hands down Dallas Ray Delay’s full sentence today: over three centuries behind bars.
Delay, age 34, was convicted of leading the 1973 kidnapping and murder of the Kitterman family in Grandin. Robert Kitterman was president of the bank of Grandin. Delay and two accomplices took his wife and daughter hostage and forced him to withdraw money from the vault, then killed all three victims.
Delay was sentenced to 100 years for each murder plus an additional 20 years on the robbery conviction. His sentences will be served concurrently and Meredith stated he will likely never be eligible for parole. Delay will serve his time at the Missouri Department of Corrections in Jefferson City.
• The government and representatives of independent truckers on strike reached an agreement yesterday, but many drivers are calling the deal a sellout and remain off the road. Among them are around 100 members of the Southeast Missouri Independent Truckers Association. Peaceful picketing has resumed outside the local Motor Harbor truck stop.
Drivers continuing the strike say the settlement will only inflate consumer prices, not solve the conditions that led to the nationwide strike in the first place. Truckers left the roads nine days ago to force the federal government to lower gas prices and increase freight rates so their fuel expenses would no longer put them in the red. Instead, the Nixon administration promised to provide free diesel to truckers and allow negotiations for future freight rates.
Despite the controversy, other groups of independent truckers have agreed to the proposal and resumed driving nationwide. Southeast Missouri law enforcement reported more trucks on the road today but statewide statistics are not yet available.
Scattered violence also continues. A driver in Cape Girardeau reported a gunman in a car shot his windshield at 1:30 a.m. this morning on Route K. He was not injured.