Ginger Hoffhines and Angela Hoffhines provided a puppet program last Wednesday at the Tonganoxie Library for the lap readers thru Kindergartners. 137 kids are enrolled in the reading program this summer.

If you can make it out to the Lawrence Municipal Airport this week for the Advanced World Aerobatic Championship (AWAC), you may not feel you are in Kansas anymore. The event has drawn aerobatic teams from 14 countries including Argentina, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, South Africa, and Czechoslovakia. This is only the second event of its kind and the first time it has taken place in the United States.

50 years ago: July 13, 1972

It was a milestone of sorts, when Jackie Crain, 18, checked in at Ruidoso Downs to put in an afternoon of riding. But if being the first lady jockey at the mountain track meant anything special, you couldn’t tell it by Jackie’s lean country girl look and her quiet attitude. Jackie shipped in from Tonganoxie to ride three mounts in the recent qualifying trials for the Kansas Quarter Horse Futurity. During the afternoon of riding at Ruidoso, Jackie’s presence just about put Fred Berger, Ruidoso Downs Vice President, out on the sidewalk. His office was turned into a dressing room for the first jockette in the track’s 25-year history. Jackie feels a girl can be just at home aboard a snorting racehorse as any boy. Jackie has been riding since she was four years old. Jackie’s riding caught the eye of Lee Smith, a Kansas quarter horse trainer. It was Smith who brought her to the Kansas trials.

The Bill Martinez family lost their barn full of hay and a machine shed with tools, a boat, and other valuable items in a fire. No one was home at the time. Neighbors reported the fire and started helping get things to safety. The Fairmount Fire Department battled the blaze for two to three hours before it was extinguished. The loss was not covered by insurance and a fund was started to help rebuild. It’s hard to beat good old-fashioned neighbors.

Richard Skaggs became ill at Perry Lake Sunday evening and was taken to Lawrence Memorial Hospital where he suffered a severe heart attack. He is improving but critical.

Hours and hours of country music will rock through Linwood, July 22 and 23, and there will be lots of other free entertainment and two parades to provide fun at the Pioneer Festival.

75 years ago: July 10, 1947

As reported a few weeks ago, the Tonganoxie Association of Southern California held its annual picnic on June 1 in beautiful Pasadena. We have recently received a very nice photo of the group of the fifteen THS graduates. Many of you may remember these individuals. Contact our office if you are interested in their names.

Travelers heading to Cool, Colorful, Colorado are cranking up the heat in the car as they travel through our state, as temperatures have been at almost record lows in the mornings. 

The local Girl Scouts split into three teams and were sent on a city-wide scavenger hunt. One interesting thing that the girls learned was that the first telephone was installed in Tonganoxie in 1902. Some 45 years later and we’re still ringing up our friends and neighbors.

Wilks Cafe is serving fried chicken and steaks on Sundays. They are open until midnight every night. Sure wouldn’t want to be frying a chicken at 10 p.m. Wilks Cafe will serve you right up until closing time.

The United States Brewers Foundation is encouraging any citizen who witnesses the sale of beer to underage buyers to report by letter. Anonymous letters will not be considered. This will help eliminate undesirable elements from the beer industry.

100 years ago: July 13, 1922

Sunday night one and three quarter inches of rain fell in this vicinity and Monday night three inches fell, which caused all the creeks to go on a rampage.

Tuesday morning early Nine Mile creek was for a short distance running over the pavement near the bridge. The old bridge at Mud Creek was washed off its piers and against the trees below. Mud Creek was higher than it has been in years.

About a mile from Lansing toward Tonganoxie about three hundred feet of the Union Pacific track was washed out and moved five feet from the roadbed, which prevented any train service all day Tuesday.

The daily papers from Kansas City which go to Lawrence and then here on the Sechrest bus did not arrive because of a washout on the Interurban.

In the spring of 1915 the main street of Tonganoxie, Kansas, got so muddy and the mud got so deep that travel was next to impossible. One day an old white hen attempted to cross the street, got stuck in the mud, and had to be rescued. While flopping her wings in distress a photo was taken of her and later printed in the local paper.

The citizens never felt their disgrace so keenly as then and all made a vow that if that street ever dried up, they would pave her or bust. And true to vow they did. During 1916 a concrete pavement was laid from east to west end of their main street. At first the kickers said it would break them with high taxes. But there has never been a complaint. Not only did they like this sample but they all became boosters for paved roads.

Today the finest eighteen-foot concrete road in America connects “Tongy” with Lawrence–fifteen miles and by September 1 it will connect Lawrence with Topeka. Next year this same paved street will be extended east to Kansas City, Kansas, and north to Leavenworth. Just see what an old hen did.

Now the local paper states that the people of old “Tongy” are soon to begin the construction of a modern sewer system. When this is done this little town will be a real modern city, on a paved road between New York and San Francisco and there will be thousands of visitors passing down her main street.

125 years ago: July 15, 1897

Sealed proposals will be received by the undersigned up to 10 o’clock A.M. Monday July 26th 1897 for building a brick school house in school district No. 28, Leavenworth County, Kansas, according to plans and specifications now on file in my office. Each bid must be accompanied with a certified check for two hundred and fifty dollars as a guarantee of good faith that the bidder will enter into contract, to erect said building, should his bid be accepted. Bidders must take into consideration the value of all brick and other material that can be used from the old school building. The right is reserved to reject any or all bids. The building must be completed and ready for occupancy not later than October 1st, 1897.

The plans and specifications can be seen at the store of C.J. Halsted. By order of District Board, R.H. Taylor, District Clerk.