I like to read letters to the editors published in newspapers and other periodicals.

Reading through local newspapers from the past, I sometimes read them with a smile because the writings were apparently not censored by anyone. For instance Mr. Spear, a Cardington resident, wrote the following letter to the editor of the Morrow County Independent in 1895.

“Editor Independent I have requested men not to hitch to my fences or shade trees; have given privilege of standing horses in my barn freely. I asked one not to hitch there about 11 o’clock a.m. told him he might unhitch from his cart and put his horse in the barn; he said “all right.”

At noon horse still there, he went to dinner; came back and tied his horse same place; where horse stood all afternoon .My fence and trees have been knawed, bark stripped from trees. I hate put up sign boards asking people to refrain.

A few days after this same person hitched his horse again to my fence. I asked him to take the horse away, told him my fence was frail. He answered

He would not take his horse away, and said he would hitch where he pleased. I again told him to go and he tied at another place. Since that time the same person has hitched to a shade tree which I had planted and I have now found the barck gnawed.

His talk to me was this: “You are a worse crank than Zury Fritz. He refused to let me have a bucket of water last summer. Gentlemen will not tie to shade trees, nor make horses fast to fences after they have been requested not to do so. I shall prosecute all persons who violate the law heretofore.

Daniel Spear

Not surprisingly a response was published the next week: “In answer to neighbor Spears article, I would say everybody is very sorry that he is not up to the standard in intelligence.He don’t know enough to wheel sawdust in the daytime but wheels it in the night.

We do not blame him for that for we read in the Bible that the Lord gave some five talets and to some one and we do not think he should be blamed for being unlucky and drawing a low number.”

Signed: Owner of the Horse.

I wonder how that eventually concluded and I wonder who was Zory Fritz!

70 years ago: On the opening day of school, the Cardington School set an all-time attendance record of 741. This total included 386 boys and 356 girls.

The bridge on Morrow Count Road 9, south of the Edison School building, collapsed under the weight of a loaded ready mix concrete truck.

60 years ago: First day enrollment at the Cardington School totaled 876 pupils. Janice Fryman of Cardington, won a new bicycle from a Marion shoe store.

40 years ago: Elza Click, a Cardington native, observed his 97th birthday September 5 at Woodside Village, Mt Gilead. He ws the last surviving member of hsi family which included three brothers, one of whom was his twin. His only relatives were nieces and nephews.

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By Evelyn Long

Contributing Columnist