National Newspaper Week — October 1-7 — slipped by me this year. I hope, it’s not too late to offer a few memories of my career in that industry. I began reading newspapers as soon as my reading skills allowed me to do so. My parents subscribed to the Des Moines Register and our ...

I was born and raised in a suburb of Minneapolis, well aware of my Minnesota ancestors and the roles they had in the early days of that state. This is more than likely why I so enjoy learning and writing of the early settlers and builders of Webster City. One of my great-great-grandfathers ...

“The announcement yesterday forenoon that Charles Wickware was dead came like thunder from a clear sky and it might be truly said that the whole community was shocked when it was whispered from mouth to mouth.” — Webster City Tribune, May 5, 1893 Charles Wickware was born in 1840 in ...

We non-smokers are tickled that most restaurants are now smoke-free. No longer do restaurant hostesses ask, “Smoking or non-smoking?” At the risk creating work for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), I’d like to propose some other “zoning” in public eating places. How about ...

Tom Myers never really left the family farm northeast of Webster City. It was just up the Stonega blacktop from Old Highway 20, but before you reached Mulberry Center Church. In those days — I’m talking the late 1950s and early 1960s — Mulberry Center was more than a church; it was a ...

“The voices that speak the loudest are books.” — Edward Burgess Another week, warmer weather returns and fall seems to have been put aside for a few days at least. As one who reads, a lot, I’m almost anxious in my desire to see a bit more weather to “keep me in.” Reading, for ...