“Yesterday is but a memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.”

-Khalil Gibran

I took a walk down memory lane the other day, but they were not my memories.

With a little time on my hands, I was curious to track down an obituary from 1917, so I took to the Free Press morgue to peruse the delicate yellow pages printed under the watch of Editor/Manager R.G. Weisell. It was a very different paper in those days.

For starters, an annual subscription was only a buck and a half. That wouldn’t cover the postage to bring today’s paper to the reader’s door.

Most of the ads were estate sales or medical in nature, whereas today, our advertising ranges widely. Alegent Health may make its presence known, but it’s not to market Sloan’s Ointment, Dr. King’s New Life Pills, California Syrup of Figs, Dr. Kilmer Swamp-Root, Garfield Tea or Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound to us. And then there was Dr. Latimer, who claimed that “dullness” in school can be traced back to the teeth. “Maybe this sounds strange to you,” the ad reads. Yes. Yes, it does.

This little tidbit of insight was actually a surprise to me. Though I’ve seen snake oil salesmen on movies and The Andy Griffith Show throughout my life, I really thought that our pharmaceuticals-down-the-throat approach to advertising was a relatively recent adventure. One reason I don’t watch the evening news often is because of the high percentage of pharmaceutical advertising. We’re living in a mighty “drugged-up” world these days, and I don’t mean of the “cracked up” variety. While pharmaceutical ad dollars may have doubled in recent years, I guess the premise is nothing new.

In addition to cure-alls, there were other interesting elements in this 95-year-old copy of the paper.

In my mind, I’ve always figured that a small, local paper was small and about primarily local news, but in 1917, I didn’t see much in the way of feature or news writing that would be entirely recognizable today’s reader. Much content was pulled from a news wire and dealt with national news, as well as foreign affairs, including a lot of information about World War I, written by someone other than Weisell.

While I certainly obtain news items from sources other than my own attendance at every event and understand the use of the newswire, I thought it seemed a little too much like broadcast media when I read a story that, seriously, started like this: “From the Des Moines papers of Sunday it is learned that…”

Now, that’s just lazy. If you’re going to snag someone else’s work at least take a few minutes to hammer out a more deceptive introduction.

Local news did appear, however. I read a report about the ongoing investigation of the Villisca axe murders of 1912, a mystery that was five years old at the time and still perplexing investigators. And there were dispatches from the many nooks and crannies within Adams County: Southwest Carl, Southeast Washington, Mt. Zion, Salem and Stringtown, to name but a few.

While I did fine novels printed in serial form, I didn’t find my obituary. On April 7, I grew tired of reading about how Carter’s Little Liver Pills could help my indigestion, complexion, eyes and constipation. But I’ll get back to it one of these days.

Free Press Editor J. Wilson can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .