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 ...
To the editor: A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll in March showed that nearly 80% of Iowans oppose the use of eminent domain for a carbon pipeline. I hope the Iowa Utility Board follows the wishes of nearly 80% of the Iowans and votes against eminent domain. In my opinion the laws pertaining to eminent domain were not written for a few investors to enter personal property against the owner’s will for their own personal financial gain. The use of eminent domain by a carbon pipeline company is not the American way. What Summit Pipeline proposes to do is an invasion of the ...
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 a Cell Phone Zone in a restaurant where the folks who can’t speak quietly on their cell phones can be seated. Admittedly, I tend to speak loudly on the phone myself but I try hard to crank it down in a public place. In fact, I try to avoid making/taking calls in a restaurant altogether. Maybe ...
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 neighborhood. Before the church was moved into Webster City and sited at Wilson Brewer Historic Park, it was the hub around which families that shared names and experiences gathered. Miller. Dinsdale. Curtis. Myers. It's a small world. It seems at one time or another, each lived on another’s ...
“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 ...
