By Brent Engel, Contributing writer
The traveling dead
You gotta love zombie headlines, even if unintentional. On June 16, 1931, the Louisiana Press-Journal offered a warning: “Man Killed at Barry Coming Here.”
Extreme extremity
The Clarksville Banner-Sentinel reported on June 18, 1925, that local resident William Dean had found a man’s leg encased in a leather boot on a sandbar in the Mississippi River. “He does not know how it got there nor to whom the leg belongs,” the paper told shocked readers.
Bad kitty
The Harrisburg Telegraph of June 27, 1916, let anyone thinking of staying at a Pike County hotel know that they might be in for an unpleasant surprise. The Pennsylvania paper didn’t mince words when it called the owner a “rip-tail roarer” who could “whip her weight in wildcats.” She “was discovered yesterday biting one of her boarder’s throats” and “throwing a hammer at a second.”
A future president?
In June 1866, a newspaper reported that an unidentified Pike County woman had named her baby son “Veto.” No, not Vito. V-E-T-O, which would tend to make him perfect for politics.
Women don’t forget
Louisiana hosted the Editorial Association of Missouri’s annual conference in 1873. But having 100 newspaper guys in town did not impress the Lincoln County Herald as much as who came with them. In its June 4 edition, the paper said many were “accompanied by ladies, who will ever remember with gratitude the magnificent reception tendered them by the citizens of that flourishing little city.”
Must be mistaken
The Radical of Bowling Green offered an easy out if readers found any boneheaded bloopers in its June 17, 1843, edition: “The absence of our editor this week we hope will be an excuse for all blunders.”
See ya, hiccup, honey
A late-night raid in 1923 at the home of Charles “Slim” Duff between Louisiana and Clarksville turned up an illegal distillery and a jug of homemade hooch. The Quincy Daily Herald of June 21 reported that Duff’s wife was hauled to the slammer, but that the crafty moonshiner “made a getaway under a fusillade of shots from the officers.”
CUTLINE FOR ATTACHED HEADLINE:
A headline in the June 16, 1931, edition of the Louisiana Press-Journal.