1954
Sixteen members attended a regular meeting of the Missouri Valley Volunteer Fire Department at the fire hall Monday evening.
Plans for “rejuvenating” the department were discussed.
It was decided that the department will again operate the miniature steam strain in City Park on Sundays this summer. The train will be operating on Decoration Day for the first time of the season.
The department purchased a 17-inch television set from Harland Riley for recreation and entertainment of the members.
1964
Missouri Valley will go on daylight savings time as of Friday, May 1.
Residents will turn their clocks ahead one hour at 12:01 a.m., Friday.
This will be in conformity with the wishes of a large majority of the local merchants in accordance with a resolution adopted Tuesday night by the city council.
The council acted after a poll of merchants was conducted Tuesday morning. About 86 percent of the merchants polled said they favor daylight savings time.
The resolution puts the council on record as being in favor of the use of fast time in Missouri Valley. It was adopted by the unanimous vote of the council.
More than 90 percent of the counties in Iowa are on daylight savings time or will be soon.
Under the resolution, daylight savings was adopted as the official time for the city of Missouri Valley for the period commencing Friday, May 1 at 12:01 a.m., and ending October 4, 1964 at midnight.
1974
Many residents of Western Iowa and Eastern Nebraska are making an annual trek to the river bottomlands and to hilly areas in quest of the delicious mushrooms known as morels.
Mushroom hunters have been finding the delicacies on bottomlands for more than a week and many report they have been having good luck in the hills the past several days. The hill mushrooms are of good quality and many of them are found around old dead, fallen trees.
Recent rains brought the mushrooms out in fairly large numbers in some areas, the pickers report.
The mushroom season usually starts the latter part of April each year. The length of the season varies but is usually two or three weeks or longer, depending upon the weather conditions. The morels often pop out in large numbers after a warm rain followed by sunshine. In dry years, mushrooms are scarce.
Mushroom hunting has been a recreational activity of Harrison County people each spring for many years. These people not only delight in finding the morels but they greatly enjoy eating them. Some pickers find so many, they share them with friends or sell them to stores or individuals.
1984
It was a wet day for water in Modale Sunday. Despite the continuous rainfall, residents of the town gathered to visit their newly constructed water treatment plant during the official Open House for the plant.
Modale's City Council decided last year to build a new plant, which cost about $162,000, after the town's antiquated water filtration units failed. Prior to the filter breakdown, the water plant, built in the 1920s, was capable of mixing softened water with filtered water at the ration of 80 percent softened to 20 percent filtered. But when the filters failed, it meant all the water was 100 percent softened, high in salt content and very corrosive to city water mains, according to Mayor Robert Kraushaar.
Since repairing the filters was expensive, the council voted to build the new plant instead, hiring the Des Moines based ACCO company to oversee design of the plant.
1994
Most folks in recent years know of J.W. (Red) Brummer of Logan as that genial fellow who tends to flowers and vegetables at the County Fair, as a Master Gardener, or in his familiar role as Chairman of the Harrison County Democratic Central Committee. Old-timers remember another “Red.”
That “Red” will welcome the public to his home southwest of Logan, Sunday, May 1, to peruse his “Museum of Sports,” housed in his remodeled basement. He'll look for visitors from 1 to 6 p.m., and those who come will see hundreds of pieces of memorabilia of Red's days as a player and manager in boys and girls baseball and his managing days in Golden Gloves boxing, refereeing of boxing and wrestling meets, promotion of events and more.
In between sports events and his later political work, Red worked as a produce manager for Safeway Stores.
