__Sept. 1, 1923__
• The deputy sheriff’s car is found after being stolen by particularly bold car thieves in Poplar Bluff. Deputy Sheriff Clyde Hogg’s car was taken from outside the sheriff’s department Aug. 31. The car is discovered at noon today by the farm of Charles Bloodworth, a couple miles south of the city, who reported two men abandoned the car after it blew a tire. Hogg vows to arrest the men if he found them, but it’s theorized they already skipped town via the railroad.
• Drillers in Broseley declare they’ve gotten through a patch of particularly hard rock and are now digging at 15-20 feet per day in search of oil.
__Sept. 1, 1948__
• A captured German Seehund sub, or “midget submarine,” from World War II goes on display in Poplar Bluff.
• 10-year-old Dennis Hopkins of Puxico survives being run over by a tractor with only cuts and bruises.
__Sept. 1, 1973__
• After 14 years technically spent on the run, a Malden man is free. Eugene Floyd Counts, 34, walked away from a two-year sentence on a prison farm after he was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon. He moved to Malden and lived as an unworried fugutive, marrying and having six children while working at a Bernie shoe factory.
Counts was discovered when a state computer matched a card with his name on it to a wanted list. Both his lawyer and the patrolman who arrested him convinced the judge to commute his sentence, since he was a model citizen.
“I didn’t worry about it,” Counts told his attorney. “I knew that one day I’d be caught, and if I have led a good life it would turn out in my favor.”
Editor’s note: This is part of a new regular series looking at today in Poplar Bluff’s history through the pages of the Daily American Republic and its early predecessors.