Community ire has evolved into a blame game after the Red Cross and flood victims were denied access to the local armory for 24 hours. The controversial order was given by Missouri’s adjutant general. Now residents wonder if the local Armory Board is at fault for giving control of the building to the National Guard, or if the military’s reticence hamstrung it.
In other headlines: a failed car bombing and a daring train rescue.
Saturday
Jan. 27, 1924 and Jan. 27, 1974 — No issues available.
75 years ago
Jan. 27, 1949
• The Black River and other waterways are slowly receding after devastating floods in Southeast Missouri. A farm agent inspecting the Bacon’s Pasture area reported 18-20 inches of water in most houses, plus one house under four feet of water. He also observed around 60 drowned livestock animals.
Residents are slowly returning to their homes. The number of people sheltering in the Poplar Bluff armory dropped from 77 to 56 today.
Outrage erupted in previous days when flood victims were turned away from the armory by Missouri’s adjutant general on the grounds they would interfere with a National Guard inspection. Public pressure forced him to reverse that order and the inspection went forward as planned while survivors sheltered at the armory. The inspector, Col. W. L. Smith, said this didn’t interfere “to a great extent” with the operation.
Another article indicated the Armory Board was previously unable to meet and gave full oversight to the National Guard, which “has resulted in embarrassment for the National Guard on previous occasions.”
Sunday
100 years ago
Jan. 28, 1924
• The top of a 110-foot smokestack crashes to the ground at the City Light & Water Company, but no one is injured. It’s estimated 2-3 tons of bricks fell, leaving the stack 25 feet shorter, and the company attributes the collapse to the age and deterioration from the gases released by burning coal. Guide wires served their purpose by directing debris away from buildings. The rest of the stack is being shored up by scaffolding and the whole thing will be replaced as quickly as possible.
• A man’s “death grip” saves him from being crushed under a train.
Bob Grimsby of Sikeston was a passenger in a car struck by Missouri Pacific Train No. 436 at a crossing. The car was destroyed and Grimsby thrown directly against the engine’s pilot (the protective grate on the front of the train) where he clung until the engine ground to a halt.
A witness said rescuers found Grimsby in a “stupefied” condition, gripping so tightly they had to literally pry his hands loose.
• An inventive Poplar Bluff salesman announces he’s created a “secret formula” for car engines. Dusty Brown alleges his Pep Producer increases mileage and power, cuts down on carbon, preserves motor function, winter-proofs engines and prevents overheating. By his own account “in every car that it has been used it has worked wonders.”
Brown is a salesman and reported automotive expert for the Mangold-Buick Auto Company.
75 years ago
Jan. 28, 1949
• An editorial on the front page urges the City of Poplar Bluff to reactivate a board of directors for the armory and “not let its management go by default” to the military again. The editorial begins with a tongue-in-cheek ad reading, in part, “LOST, STRAYED OR STOLEN — One large Armory Auditorium.”
50 years ago
Jan. 28, 1974
• Poplar Bluff police and the Missouri State Highway Patrol are investigating a failed bombing.
Former Arkansas police chief James Williams saw what he thought was a broken shock absorber under his sedan at 9:30 a.m. this morning, only to grab it and discover a pipe bomb. He gingerly placed it on the side of the road and called police. They took the bomb to a firearms range where a highway patrol bomb squad disarmed it.
The bomb was a 2-inch pipe containing gunpowder and BB pellets, fitted with a firecracker fuse. A follow-up piece in the Jan. 29 paper said the fuse was lit but apparently went out.
A similar incident happened in Morehouse last night, causing light damage to a restaurant manager’s truck. Morehouse police said, “Whoever did this didn’t know what they were doing. They were amateurs.”
Harold Pace, the truck’s owner, didn’t know of anyone who was mad at him.
Williams was also at a loss to explain the bomb, “unless it was put there by some of the thugs I’ve had dealings with as a police officer.”
Williams was a patrolman at the Rector, Arkansas, police department and a chief in Corning. He most recently worked as a wholesale used car manager in Poplar Bluff until he was laid off last month.
Monday
100 years ago
Jan. 29, 1924
• Residents of Williamsville are seeking the relatives of an unidentified teen killed in a railway accident.
The accident occurred six miles west of Williamsville on Jan. 24, at a junction between the Frisco and Missouri Pacific lines. Before the accident, the 17-year-old boy told passenger Henry Magill of Hendrickson he was en route to Oklahoma from an area south of Poplar Bluff.
The body was held for four days in Williamsville for identification before burial. W. L. Holiday, a merchant, paid $70 to furnish a casket and funeral clothes.
James Liddell arrived in Poplar Bluff today on behalf of Williamsville authorities to search for the young man’s family. He submitted the following description to The Interstate American: 5-foot 6-inches with brown hair, blue eyes and a small scar below his left eyebrow, and wearing a yellow coat, gray sweater and blue overalls at the time of the accident. He carried a silk ladies handkerchief with blue corners.
75 years ago
Jan. 29, 1949
• The Poplar Bluff armory saga continues. L.J. Lindsay, chairman of the defunct Armory Board, claims the National Guard refused to cooperate with the board during WWII, even denying them a key to the building to make minor repairs. Military officers were reportedly invited to meetings but never attended. The board eventually defaulted control of the armory, which was built on donated land and largely funded by citizens, to the National Guard.
• John McClure, a Mill Spring farmer, saved lives by driving through an ice storm on Jan. 22 to report a landslide on the train tracks between Williamsville and Mill Spring. He arrived just in time for railway agents to halt a train from Texas County. The landslide was 20 feet wide and left two feet of mud across the tracks.
• A hard overnight freeze alleviated flood conditions in Butler County. Unfortunately, it also froze a glass of water containing one Poplar Bluff octogenarian’s false teeth. She complained to her paper boy, Bob Ferguson, who duly reported the incident to the paper.
The recorded temperature was 10 degrees last night. The woman assured Ferguson the glass was in her kitchen when it froze, not on her nightstand.
50 years ago
Jan. 29, 1974
• A Cape Girardeau woman is free after a harrowing carjacking.
Alicia Ann Knight was recovered by police in Owensboro, Kentucky, on Jan. 27. The day before, a man carrying a hunting knife and a woman with a gun kidnapped her outside a Cape supermarket and forced her to drive them across state lines in her car. Knight attempted to escape at a rest stop in Illinois, but said she fell and was dragged back to the vehicle.
Knight and her kidnappers reached Owensboro around 1 a.m. Jan. 27. The suspects fled on foot.
Knight is a Poplar Bluff High School graduate and teaches life science at L.J. Schultz School. Her husband, Wallace Knight, is attending Southeast Missouri State University.
• A virus puts 737 Poplar Bluff kids out of school, mostly junior and senior high students. Symptoms include a high fever, sore throat and upset stomach.