Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten years ago

May 9 2012

Elton Brown of Pomeroy and his grandson Jason Brown of Clarkston spent part of Saturday morning at Garfield County Memorial Hospital’s long-term care wing, entertaining residents and staff with six or seven snakes. The snake hunters pulled rattlers and bull snakes out of their case and let the reptiles slither on the floor. Most of the residents from the county had seen snakes before but the sound of the rattlers could still set them on edge. Elton said that he’s been snake-hunting in the county for 45 or 50 years and has lost count of how many he’s captured. Jason recalled that he was allowed to ride along with grandfather and grandmother Bobbi on hunts, but not permitted to hunt. Growing up in Portland, Jason said he had some impressive items for show-and-tell sent to him by his grandpa.

With an escort of Garfield County law enforcement and emergency vehicles, three bicycle riders on a cross-county trip to raise money for wounded military personnel made a stop in Pomeroy last week Monday. Lead rider Thomas Von Kaenel of Oxford, England, and fellow riders Alvon Elrod of Ventura, Calif., and Bob Cox of Santa Paula, Calif., were greeted by a group of local residents organized by Ed Huntington. Ed and Judy hosted the group at their home overnight, including ride manager Bruce Hammesley and his wife Marge.

Twenty-five years ago

May 14 1997

Drivers in Pomeroy should prepare for a change at one of the busiest intersections in the city. Police Chief Dave Boyer said that stop signs will be put up in all four directions of the intersection of 10th St. and Columbia St. A couple of accidents in the past two years and concern that the intersection could be the scene of more serious mishaps motivated the chief to make the intersection a four-way stop. “When you’re going south on 10th, the eastbound traffic on Columbia sort of blends in with the parked vehicles on that side of the street,” Boyer said. With traffic coming and going and from both the elementary and high school in the mornings and afternoons, the intersection is busy, the chief said, increasing the risks for students walking in the area.

Rowena Bell reports that Floyd and Ruby Porter went to Spokane on Tuesday of last week with their daughter Barbara DeHerrera. The next evening they attended the spring concert of East Valley Orchestras. The theme of the program was Back to the Future. Over 500 students from grade 4 through high school participated. Joshua DeHerrera, one of the Porters’ grandsons played the violin in the East Valley sixth grade orchestra. All the orchestra students remained quietly seated in the gymnasium for one hour and 45 minutes during the Spring String Fling ’97. Ruby said she thought that was quite an accomplishment for that many students to sit for that long of a program.

Fifty years ago

May 11, 1972

Pomeroy firemen spent much of the day Sunday in an actual putting into practice lessons learned in the last two months by putting out four separate fires in the gutted former home of Jim Slagle. Each time they put the fire out they started it again and let it get a good start before extinguishing the blaze. The house was burned originally on Nov. 6, 1971, and firemen, in the act of demolishing the building Sunday, were able to put into practice new scientific techniques of firefighting which use much less water and do a better job of controlling and dousing flames than old methods. The advantage, besides getting the fire out quickly, is far less water damage.

Barbary Matheny is grand award winner and earns her name engraved on the Pomeroy Soil and Water Conservation District achievement award plaque, for her conservation theme “Soil-Water-Range and Wildlife Conservation”. The contest is open annually to sixth and seventh graders prior to the Farm and Rangeland Conservation tour, which was held at the Clark Long farm last week.

Seventy-five years ago

May 8, 1947

A pickup loaded with freight for the Pomeroy Bakery and Schaefer’s, driven by Jack Denny, owner of the bakery, caught on fire on the return trip from Clarkston Tuesday evening near the Parker McFaddin farm. Mr. Denny believes that fire originated from a short circuit in the electrical equipment. Quick thinking on the part of Mr. Denny saved his car and freight from being destroyed by fire. The damage to the car is estimated at $50.

A local farmer was in the office yesterday disturbed over the fact that someone from town had driven out into the country the other evening and deposited several sacks of empty cans and other refuse beside the road along his farm. These same people, he said, wouldn’t like it if he should bring his trash in and dump it on their parking strip, yet that is just what they did to him.

One hundred years ago

May 6, 1922

A.J. Buchet, captain of the Wenaha Game association team leading the hunt for predatory animals and birds in the contest between Garfield and Asotin counties, offers the following words of encouragement and advice: “We are sure your influence in your part of the country among your neighbors would be of great service to the Game association in the contest between Asotin and Garfield counties in the predatory bird and animal hunt. We are therefore taking the liberty of asking you to use you influence among them to get busy during their leisure hours and secure all the points possible, for we will certainly need them if we make the Asotin boys pay for the feed.”

Extension of its marketing arrangements to increase the efficiency of its sales department in 1922 are already being worked out by the Northwest Wheat Growers, Associated. The decision to open a sales agency in Minneapolis is regarded as of supreme importance – particularly to Montana growers, whose wheat ordinarily is marketed in the east, in contrast to the Idaho, Washington and Oregon, which normally goes to the coast markets. The other move in the expansion is aimed to increase the export end of the business.

While much of the northwest organization wheat went abroad in 1921-22, but little of it was actually exported by the organization. Instead of chartering vessels and exporting its own wheat, the organization the last season for the most part sold to exporters, who assumed the risk of transoceanic shipment.