Lou’s View – Feb. 12, 2015
Nothing to Report
by Lou Bernard
So every week, here in the Record, I write a column on the news that was going on in the past. As long as Clinton County has existed, there’s been something going on. There’s always been some news to report.
Until recently, when I was looking through the Clinton County Times in 1904. The week of May 22 to May 27 was, apparently, a time when nothing at all was going on, at least in Mill Hall.
Not that that stopped the writers.
Every week, the Clinton County Times would take submissions from local writers, who would send in a column with information from their communities. Sugar Valley, Mackeyville, Dunnstown, Beech Creek….All of them would send in their news. Even Glen Union got in on the act, in spite of the fact that it has continually had a population in the single digits and nobody has ever figured out how to get there. The Times would run these stories on a couple of pages, notifying the readers what was going on all over the county.
Until May 22 came around in Mill Hall, and nothing was happening, apparently.
“This week is another stickler in news getting,” said the article, which ran in the Mill Hall column on May 27, 1904. “There has not even been a dog fight to record or your scribe would take pains to give it in detail, and if some variations were suggested they would be recorded with more or less embellishments.”
And that shows the awesome journalism for which the Clinton County Times was known. The lack of news didn’t stop the reporter, whose name was not recorded, from going on about it for the rest of the page, however. He began by reporting what hadn’t happened in the weather.
“If the hot wave had brought with it a sensation of any sort or the store box weather prophet had made some predictions instead of ‘I told you so’ after all happened, then I might have something to say,” he said, before lamenting the fact that there wasn’t even any small talk. “Do you know the town is at present devoid of gossip and that is an extremely unusual event in its history? Some of the letters in the post office are even dead and the liar’s voice is still for the time.”
Maybe these writers were paid by the word. He went on to list specific examples of things that were not happening in the community. “Willie is rid of the mumps and Mrs. Jones and her sister, Sal, will not visit for a day or two. Unless the Italians soon do some stunt the whole thing will be on the hog. No one was killed and it is doubtful if anyone will even be injured. The doctors have all they can to do and the people with whom they have to do have nothing to say.”
You have to feel bad for the poor guy and the community of Mill Hall, what with nobody being killed or injured for a whole week. Even the local organization weren’t doing anything worth reporting.
“There is no talk of moving any of the busy hotels to Salona and the Prohibitionists have held their convention. When the churches are open day and night and the overworked hotel men take a well-earned vacation during the heated summer months, things may take a different turn, or when the boys consider it too hot to go to Sunday school. Or again when a member of some beneficial organization for about 40 years passes and the order does the philanthropic act of holding a festival for the poor widow who wore cheap clothes all her life to permit her husband to keep up his dues. The great surprise is that one of these worthy causes has not been announced to make ready for a banquet. If it were only next week, the record of another Memorial Day might be made in which the brave soldiers were honored by strewing flowers over the graves and a lot of brainless fellows got drunk. As it is, however, there was little doing and when nothing is doing there is nothing to report.”
Boy, it’s too bad there was nothing going on that week. Otherwise, this guy would have had something to say, and a century later, I might have written an entire column on it.
But fortunately by the next week, there had been a car collision, a theft, and a bridge had been severely damaged. Wow, how lucky can you get?
