Dusting off the Archives
News from Verndale's Past
75 Years Ago, October 20, 1949
• A big Halloween party will be sponsored by the commercial club, school and firemen on Monday evening, October 31. There will be fun for the young and old. Prizes will be offered for best costumes, best jack-o-lanterns, pie eating, apple bobbing, and kangaroo race contest. Movies for the program at the school auditorium include a six reel thriller, “Silent Enemy” and interesting selected short films include a Micky Mouse Comedy.
• Lyle Devereaux, 29, son of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Devereaux of near Wadena, and former Verndale High School student, was struck in the face, arm and body by some 100 shotgun pellets when he stepped into the line of fire of his brother, Robert, while hunting pheasants near Clarkfield. He was taken to the Midway Hospital in St. Paul where his condition is described as fair.
• Gordon E. Blume has sold two lots lying east of his residence to A.W. Winkels. Mr. Winkels has bought a house west of Wadena that he will move to Verndale this fall or in the spring.
40 Years Ago, October 24, 1984
• Under Student Director Tonya Peterson, the senior class of the Verndale High School is preparing for its production of William Gleason’s comedy, “Trudy’s Two Faces,” which will be staged on Friday, November 2 at 9 p.m. in the school auditorium. As a synopsis, Trudy (Jen Erckenbrack) has only been asked out once in the last year and that was to a funeral. Now she’s trying to ask boys to go to the Sadie Hawkin’s dance with her and she’s getting so many sob stories.
• Staples United District Hospital is offering free x-rays of candy for children in the area. They want to make Halloween safer for children and relieve some of the fear that parents have. X-rays, as you probably know, only detect metal or solid objects in candy or fruit. It will not detect poison or drugs.
• The new parsonage for the Bethany Free Lutheran Church of Blue Grass has been completed and will be dedicated this Sunday, October 28 at a special 11 a.m. worship service. A groundbreaking ceremony was held on June 3. Pastor Frank Cherney said, “There is more good out of the project than the parsonage itself. The members of the congregation grew closer together.”
15 Years Ago, October 22, 2009
• On Tuesday, October 13, a Southern Pacific Golden State steam powered locomotive left Minneapolis around 10:30 a.m., on a return trip to Portland, Oregon. This type of locomotive was very important to our city’s past. With Verndale being an important part of the fur trade in its early beginning, there was a need by the country to get goods to their designated area quicker and easier. Later it was a means to get livestock to market and for farmers to sell their goods, not to mention it was also the “modern” way to travel at that time.
• Over a year ago, Matt and Susan Axure-Johnson along with Sterling and Vickie Wheeler, began looking for a building in which they would be able to produce animal grade bedding. Someone told them about the Verndale Truss building. Azure-Johnson said the building was perfect for what he needed to operate his business. He contacts sawmills and gets waste piles of wood and turns them into animal grade bedding and chips to be used in playgrounds. Excess product also runs the boiler system which is needed to dry the wood fiber material.
• The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is in the process of designating the Upper and Lower Twin Lakes in Hubbard and Wadena counties as “infested waters” because the faucet snail has been found there. The snail has been linked to waterfowl deaths at Lake Winnibigoshish and the Upper Mississippi Pool system in southeastern Minnesota. A local resident of Lower Twin Lakes first noticed the snails attached to his boat and brought them to the attention of DNR staff.
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