75 years ago

Jan. 12, 1942

A service men’s canteen that has been so successful the soldiers themselves have voluntarily dug in their pockets to help finance it — that’s the record of the project maintained in Pacific Beach by the 4-H Girls club.

The canteen, located in the Cooper restaurant building, started late in December and has been expanding ever since. The canteen is open every night and serves free coffee, doughnuts, sandwiches and cake. The soldiers insisted they be allowed to do their bit to help with the success of the canteen so they donated $25.

Jan. 13, 1942

A test of one of Aberdeen’s new air raid sirens was heard as far as Central Park yesterday, the city defense council said today.

The huge steam-powered device, built by Joe Malinowski at city barn, was tested at Electric Park. Malinowski said four of the sirens have been completed, and three of them are ready to signal air raids — one at the park, one at Aberdeen Plywood and the third at the Bay City mill. The fourth will be installed in another industrial plant this week. Two more, bringing the number to six, will be built and put in place as rapidly as possible and the simultaneous sounding of all six will be clearly audible in all parts of Aberdeen, Malinowski said.

50 years ago

Jan. 12, 1967

Setting vacant and unused in the South Bend city hall is a historic jail cell now being sought by the Pacific County Historical Society for display as a museum piece.

The cell was first housed in the old county courthouse at Oysterville in the late 1870s. Later it was used by the City of South Bend in the old city hall on Water Street. When the present city hall was built, the cell was moved in during the early stages of construction and the walls were built around it.

Police Chief Ron Freytag reports the manufacturer’s date on the cell in Sept. 17, 1874.

Measuring about 10 by 12 feet, the cell weighs about five or six tons. Its removal would necessitate the knocking down of a wall and its subsequent replacement and thus far the city officials have not been eager to go to the trouble and expense without some estimate as to cost and reimbursement to the city.

Jan. 13, 1967

Today is an anniversary that many Harbor oldtimers would like to forget. On this day, Friday, the 13th, 17 years ago, nature marshaled snow, biting cold and gale force winds to wrestle the control of man’s affairs from him.

In the peak of the storm Westport fishermen, coastguardsmen and citizens, who were taking the brunt of up to 70 mile-an-hour winds, scurried to the Westhaven fish base to batten down hatches and secure boats to the docks but in some cases the docks collapsed.

Men were virtually helpless in the storm. It was so cold (getting down to six degrees above zero) that the water blown against the men froze, turning them into walking icicles. The fish base, an observer said, “was literally torn to hell,” as boats were torn from their moorings, sinking or pushed under docks, their tall trolling poles snapped off like match sticks.

25 years ago

Jan. 12, 1992

A few crumbling bony fragments resembling an elephant’s tusk discovered along a muddy bank of the Quinault River might have a story to tell — a tale with its beginnings perhaps in the chill mists of the last ice age.

A great elephant-like creature with exotic twisted tusks, called a mammoth or another tusked species known as a mastodon, may have laid down to die in a dark, quicksand-like bog near the Quinault River more than 11,000 years ago.

The tiny fragments — found last weekend in a blue clay riverbank by Robbin Rhoades, the Quinault Indian Nation police chief, might have started their journey through time in a peat bog laid down by a retreating ice age glacier from the Quinault Valley.

Jan. 13, 1992

Walt Morey, author of “Gentle Ben” and other award winning children’s books, died Sunday at his home in Wilsonville, Ore. He was 84.

He was born in 1907 in Hoquiam and after graduating from Hoquiam High School moved around the Pacific Northwest holding jobs such as mill worker, construction worker, theater manager and professional boxer.

“Gentle Ben,” the story of a 13-foot, 2,200-pound Kodiak bear, appeared in 1965 and sold nearly 3 million copies.

Morey spent the last 15 years visiting elementary schools urging children to read. Morey said he knew about non-readers. He repeated the first grade three times and said he hated school in general and reading in particular until he became a teenager.

Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom