Lou’s View – April 30, 2015

Wild Dogs

by Lou Bernard

I love the Clinton County Times. This paper was the most outrageous newspaper you can imagine back about a century ago. They reported all sorts of wild news—And I’m glad they did, otherwise I wouldn’t have nearly as much to work with in my columns. Sometimes I print these stories out and read them at home, late at night, when nobody else is awake. I sit at the kitchen table eating peanut butter out of the jar, reading these columns as I stew over the fact that my wife didn’t wash her damn coffee mug again. Did Jerry Church eat peanut butter out of the jar? Did Henry Shoemaker? Probably, but they were smart enough to not write about it in the newspapers for everyone to find. Hey, you future people! Quit reading all my columns!

Anyway. The Clinton County Times. In addition to reporting every bit of odd news they could find, one of the things that made this paper so amazing is that they took submissions from the general public. I mean, I know we commonly do this now, (Thanks, Internet) but back then, it was pretty novel. People would send in bits of news from their communities, and the Times would publish them without any sort of fact-checking, or even editing.

This led to some amazing stories, but also a few grudge matches, which could be amusing. One of these hit the paper on April 29, 1904, in a column about dogs.

“We would like to say that the man who owns about 3 dogs on the first farm below the old race ground, that he had better have these dogs a little under his control,” the article said. This would have been down past East Water Street, in what is now Castanea Township area, near the river. There was once a racetrack there; it’s how Race Street got its name.

There were some interesting things about this article that grabbed my attention. First, notice the editorial “we,” as if the whole newspaper was up in arms over these dogs. I’m also amused at the “about 3 dogs” portion, as if three dogs were so many that they had to estimate.

Then the writer—Who, I must point out, stayed anonymous—Went into a long list of complaints about the dogs specifically. “They are getting in the habit of running out at everybody who goes up or down the road and it is becoming quite a nuisance to the people. It has not been very long since A.A. Sweeley, of Salona, had his horse attacked at this same farm by a nuisance of a dog and his horse became frightened and threw Mr. Sweeley out of his buggy and hurt him so badly that he was compelled to go to the hospital for a few weeks. Still some of these dogs are allowed to run loose.”

The writer had even had a few personal experiences with the dogs, which had probably led to the article in the first place.

“On Sunday morning while we were riding to Lock Haven on our bicycle one of these dogs made an attack on us and in the mix-up between getting off our wheel and having a dog take hold of us, we got a pair of trousers so badly torn that they are almost beyond repair.”

Again, I love the editorial “we”. Just how many people were in those trousers?

The writer of the column, whoever it was, had apparently had quite enough of this farmer and his crazy dogs. Clearly, as they were writing all this down, they were working themselves into quite a frenzy—The article got more and more vehement as it concluded.

“And hereafter we are going to be prepared for an attack like this and we will accommodate your dogs to just what they deserve.”

Whoa.

It was an interesting little piece back in 1904, an intense editorial disguised as a news story. As far as I can tell, nothing ever came of it … I have no idea what happened to the dogs, though as this was published a hundred and eleven years ago, I think it’s safe to say they’re dead now. And it’s interesting to note how times have changed, that we no longer live in an era where individual writers use their columns as a platform for personal grudges. And if anyone sees my wife, tell her to wash her damn coffee mug.

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