EAST FAREWELL
NEWS
Thursday, September
25, 1958 Vol. C691
LOCAL
NEWS
BLACKOUT IN EAST FAREWELL!
East
Farewell – The lights went in East Farewell
on Thursday as there was an entire blackout in town and most of the surrounding
areas. The outage lasted overnight and electricity was finally restored on
Friday afternoon. The outage also took down a major portion of the railroad
service. As it turns out both the town’s electric grid and the middle 100 miles
of the Mighty Keystone Railroad’s track service share the same transformer
station. This situation dates back to the establishment of East
Farewell. The town was basically built by the railroad as a depot for
supply storage and an iron works for rail production. The Iron Works is still
one of the largest employers in town and the railroad is the main method of
getting in and out of town. When the town was still a one traffic light town
the railroad felt that there was no real need to build an independent power
supply for the town, the Iron Works had its own power and that was enough.
There was enough power to supply the few residences and businesses that existed
at that time.
As East
Farewell grew the power station grew also but not in the same proportion as
the town. Last year the Mighty Keystone Railroad’s Facility Management prepared
a study looking at the expected shortage of power that was expected to occur in
1960. Basically, the study showed that if town growth stayed the same and power
demand increased at the current rate the town would hit the power limit in
mid-1960. What the report did not seem to take into account was the unexpected
expansion of the Fun Pier and the new electric devices that folks are
installing in their homes, like bigger refrigerators, electric dryers and
electric heaters. The unanticipated extra draw on the overall system seems to
have caught up with the system on Thursday night. There was an unexpected
sudden temperature drop as a cold front rolled in from the north forcing almost
everyone to start up their heaters all within a very short time not knowing
that the sudden call for power would over tax the system.
“It was eerie, no lights anywhere,
no street lights, no traffic lights, no lights at all in my home,” said Mrs. Mallard,
boarding house owner, “My tenants were all out on the front porch and
everyone was in the street. It was kind of fun.”
What wasn’t fun was the traffic
mayhem the occurred since all the traffic lights were out. The police
department tried to hang temporary stop signs in the main intersections but
they ran out quickly and had to rely on motorist’s good manners. For the most
part that worked out, only two fender benders were reported during the length
of the outage.
The Town Council has met with MKR
representatives to try and expedite the power hand-off. The have been no
announcements as of this publication. It is generally assumed that MKR will
relinquish all control of the town’s power. This will necessitate the building
of a power plant to serve the town. This will mean higher taxes and construction
of a power plant somewhere along the main feed line from the current station.
This will be another major step that the town will take in moving away from the
MKR ownership and towards an independent entity.
The Fire Department casts an
eerie glow over downtown
SPORTS
TRAVELERS WIN WITH AN AMAZING PLAY
Mountain
View-The Travelers continued their blistering pace through the league as they
beat a very strong Mountain View team with their ace Joe “Freight” Trane and
one of the league leading sluggers, Bobby “Hammer” Taxen. The Travelers
prevailed 4-3 with masterful pitching on both sides. The Travelers send rookie,
Buzz “the Burner” Barnet to the mound and he had another tremendous outing
allowing only three runs and nine hits. The highlight of the game and maybe the
season for the Travelers defense was an unassisted triple play executed by
second baseman, Artie Archibald. In the bottom of the sixth with Explorers,
Thorne and Fetter on first and second and Barnet showing his first signs of
fatigue batter, Jimmy Reinhardt, smacked a blistering line drive past Barnet and
it looked like a base hit into center but Archibald made a leaping stab and grabbed the ball out
of midair. He actually fell on second, doubling up Thorne who thought the ball
was through the middle and then was able scramble up and tag an oncoming Fetter
before he could get back to first. The fabulous play took a moment to sink in,
even field announcer, Joe Laver, was at a loss for words. The quick turnaround
gave Barnet a chance to regain his composure and he was able to come out and
finish the game giving up on one more hit, no more runs and used his blazing
fastball to strike out five in the last three innings with a total of twelve
for the game.
The Explorer’s “Freight” Trane did
not disappoint the hometown fans putting in a very strong albeit losing showing
by retiring fifteen straight during the middle innings. He only showed a little
weakness in the first, giving up two runs right off and in the ninth giving up
two more including another homer by Johnny Cloos extending his streak to seven
straight games with an extra base hit.
The Travelers finally come home next
week. They will face their arch rival, the Slate Mountain Miners and their
pitching ace, Tony “Michael” Angelo. The Travelers will have their nine game
winning streak on the line and send Joe Nagy to the mound. The game begins at
1:30 in the Traveler’s Park.
NATIONAL NEWS
LITTLE ROCK VOTES FOR SEGREGATION – AUTOWORKERS
STRIKE – AURORA MAYOR SUSPENDS ENTIRE POLICE FORCE – NATIONALISTS BREAK COMMIE
SIEGE – IS IKE UNWILLING TO TALK TO RUSSIA? – NEW LEBANON PREZ WANT US OUT BY
OCTOBER – DEGAULLE GETS POWER TO SETTLE ALGERIAN PROBLEM
Little Rock
votes overwhelmingly against admitting Negroes to the all-white schools in
the district and action begins immediately to reopen the schools as private
institutions. The Supreme Court warns the South that it will permit neither violence nor
legal maneuvers to block integration of schools. Chief Justice Warren read a
5,000 word opinion by the nine justices, setting forth the legal reasoning
behind the Sept 12 ruling which ordered the Little Rock high schools to admit
Negro students this year.
About 71,000
Detroit autoworkers from the three major companies walk out of their jobs. The United
Auto Workers Union blames the unauthorized strikes on what it
said was refusal of the companies to negotiate local grievances.
Mayor Paul Egan
suspends the entire police force in Aurora, Ill -
all 68 and proclaims a state of emergency and calls on the citizenry to make
arrests when laws are violated. One patrolman said the police are carrying on -
business as usual. “Nobody’s paying any attention to him,” said one patrolman.
The Mayor is bristling with anger over the refusal of Police Chief Donald
Curran to obey Egan’s order firing him. The controversy between Egan and Curran
stemmed from an Egan edict several weeks ago ordering police to clamp down on
all forms of gambling.
Nationalists
crack the Communist blockade of Quemoy with another supply-of- landing
operation. Nationalist air force planes once again parachuted supplies to the
island in the night. Though Red siege guns thundered, the air
drop was successful and there was no report of damage to planes.
The Soviet Union
declares President Eisenhower has shown he is unwilling to “listen to the voice
of reason” by
rejecting Premier Khrushchev’s latest message on the Formosa crisis.
Khrushchev’s letter demanded that President Eisenhower withdraw American ships
and troops from the Formosa Strait or risk being driven out by Communist China
with the support of Russia.
Rashid Karami,
the new pro-Nasser Premier of Lebanon, says he wants American troops to quit
his country by the end of October.
The French
people accepted by an 80% majority, a new constitution which invests Premier de Gaulle with
extraordinary powers to settle the Muslim rebellion in Algeria and to restore
France’s crippled fortunes with an authoritarian regime.
Many, many thanks to www.mrpopculture.com for contributing to this
section of the East Farewell News.
