Days Gone By
100 YEARS AGO, 1923 » If the lovers of dogs in this county value their pets, it behooves them without hesitating to have their canines licensed. Failure to comply with the law simply means that the dog catchers are going to get someone’s fine dog and then there will be weeping and wailing by the owner. There are more than 20 dogs in the Delaware county S.P.C.A. pound on the Rose Tree Road, near Media, patiently awaiting their owners.
75 YEARS AGO, 1948 » The long-anticipated and much-talked-about homeward traffic jams at the end of the fourth of July weekend last night failed to materialize. According to folk who should known — police, ferry officials, railroad passengers and motorists — traffic kept flowing smoothly and vacations were able to reach home without any great difficulty. The three-day holiday in general was a safe one in Delaware County, and fireworks proved a greater hazard than automobiles.
Five victims of the traditional fourth of July noisemakers were treated at county hospitals, but Chester Hospital had no patients in this category.
50 YEARS AGO, 1973 » The final strains of the hymn, “Nearer My God To Thee,” faded. John Norris and Kenneth Bickford pushed the “stop” button the radio transmitter, and WXUR was no more. The only sound in the small, four-room transmission shack on Locksley Road, Thornbury, was the clicking of the keys on the teletype. At midnight Thursday, the radio station, owned by Rev. Carl McIntire’s Faith Theological Seminary of Elksin Park, went off the air. The station had been charged with violations of the Federal Communications Commission’s so-called “fairness doctrine” but the license ultimately was revoked on the grounds that the station had misrepresented its programming when applying to the FCC for a license practiced “fraud and deception” on the public. 25 YEARS AGO, 1998 » Newtown Township zoners are considering a request by Omnipoint Communications to erect three telecommunications antennas on the roof of the Newtown Towers Apartments on West Chester Pike. Pros and cons on granting a necessary variance for the antennas were detailed during a 3-hour hearing last week before the township’s Zoning Hearing Board.
10 YEARS AGO, 2013 » At its July meeting, Rutledge council was given a demonstration of the Morton-Rutledge Fire Company’s 2013 Sutphen pumper, bought for $385,000. The new vehicle replaces a 1992 Pierce pumper. Councilman Tom Kopp, a 43-year member of the borough fire company and chairman of council’s public safety committee, said the old pumper was purchased by a fire company in northern Maine.