September 4
20 years ago – 1996
Just like the students at The Dalles High School, “Cuddles,” a seven-foot boa constrictor is back in the classroom. Actually, it now appears that the snake, reported missing from his cage at TDHS on August 20, probably never left. The snake was found hiding in a cupboard in a storage room next to Franki Davido’s science classroom on Tuesday afternoon. Davido said he was looking through storage shelves for items to use in his class and came eye to eye with the snake. It is not the first time the snake has fled its confinement at the school.
For the first time in at least 16 years, The Dalles has gone through a summer without using all three of its wells, a city official said.
HOOD RIVER – The first major event planned for the Hood River Expo Center since its renovation begins next week. The American Windsurfing Industries Association brings its 12th annual conference and trade show to Hood River beginning Sept. 11.
40 years ago – 1976
PASADENA, Calif. (UPI) – The first pictures of the Martian plains of Utopia were transmitted back to Earth early today from a tilted Viking 2 lander showing a very rocky surface stretching to the horizon. The photos were delayed for more than nine hours by communications problems. They indicated the lander was sitting on a 10-degree slope or had put down with a footpad on a large rock, mission control said.
HOOD RIVER, Ore. (UPI) – Roy Webster still has the sniffles from a practice session Tuesday but the 75-year-old orchardist says he’ll be in the water Monday for his annual Labor Day swim across the mile-wide Columbia River. Webster will have plenty of company. Entries in the annual swim were cut off at 150. Included are eight members of Webster’s family who will join him as “kind of a 75th birthday present.” Webster began making the swim in 1942 “as kind of a holiday lark and for exercise.” He hasn’t missed the Labor Day swim since. Every year a few more swimmers joined him and the event took on civic sponsorship. Last year the number of swimmers was more than 100. “It now takes me an hour or a little longer to make the swim,” Webster said. “I used to do it in 36 minutes when I was in my 40s.”
60 years ago – 1956
LOS ANGELES (UP) – AFL-CIO President George Meany today endorsed automation, the mechanizing of factories that has been considered by some labor elements a threat to the working man. He hailed it as a scientific achievement that, coupled with atomic power, laid America “on the threshold of a second industrial revolution.” His attitude toward the increasing use of automatic controls and computer “brains” to run assembly lines and other functions formerly performed by humans was disclosed in a speech at the 38th National convention of the American Legion.
Two Dalles youngsters, Jake Grossmiller and Sharon Widener, were among top honor winners in the 4-H competition at the State Fair at Salem this weekend.
80 years ago – 1936
Commendation for the producers and cast of the pageant of progress, “131 Years in The Dalles” was heard on every hand today, following presentation of the pageant last night as the opening show of the 12th annual Old Fort Dalles Frolics, sponsored by The Dalles Post of the American Legion. A capacity audience at the civic Auditorium gave every evidence of full enjoyment of the unrolling of the scroll of The Dalles’ own personal history, many times breaking into spontaneous applause at the sheer beauty of scenes, costuming and action. Especially enjoyable were scenes depicting the establishment of the Methodist mission here in 1838, the Catholic mission 1848 Jason Lee preaching to the Indians and early settlers from Pulpit Rock, the arrival of refugees of the Whitman massacre, and military scenes at Old Fort Dalles.
100 years ago – 1916
PROF WORTHINGTON IN THE DALLES – Trance Medium, Clairvoyant And Palmist, Located At Chapman Apartments, 213 Second Street. – His Noted Palm Collection Includes Many Of The Most Noted Personages Of Either Hemisphere. – These were taken by Professor Worthington, the wonderful mind reader and palmist, who has driven blindfolded through the crowded streets of either hemisphere, who has opened the time locks and needlepoint combination safes while blindfolded, and who has appear night after night in crowded theatres throughout the land giving strange and startling exemplifications of his most marvelous power of reading unuttered thoughts – he will tell you what you call for, tell you of your enemies and friends, husband, wife or sweetheart; who is true and who is falls; tells who and when you will marry; how to win the one you love; tells how to attract, control and change the actions of anyone secretly. If you are ambitious, if you wish success, if you are involved in an unhappy love affair, then consult Professor Worthington. Office hours, 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Labor day was observed in The Dalles by a general suspension of business. Except for the closed stores, there was not much evidence of a holiday here. The reason is that the celebrators journeyed outside the city – to Thornton’s lake, three miles west, where the Modern Woodmen furnished amusement for local citizens. The crowd started going to the lake at 8 o’clock, and by noon it is estimated that 500 persons were there. In the meantime, many others had motored to the scene of festivities and returned to the city for lunch.
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