There have been many newspapers here in Stutsman County. The Stutsman County Citizen was the successor to the Medina Citizen. In the early 1920s the paper was exceptionally local and farm oriented.

Most every issue included a front page article titled “Interesting Farm News” which included the latest information from the North Dakota Agricultural College. The school is now known as North Dakota State University.

The paper was so local and rural that I couldn’t find any example of a national news story on the front page.

In fact, when Pres. Warren Harding died in 1923 the article about his death was on page 3. A couple columns over was the note that “Little Mary Bashinski” of rural Stutsman County had cracked her elbow when she was thrown from her horse.

Little Mary and the President ranked right up there together in the eyes of the editor of the Stutsman County Citizen.

Maybe it was because the Harding presidency isn’t all that notable.

His campaign slogan was “return to normalcy.” He hoped to get the country back on a normal footing after the stress of the Great War. However, normal was a ways off.

The economy was bad and unemployment was high. The Harding administration was most noted for the Teapot Dome Scandal. The scandal involved an oil field in Wyoming that had been reserved for the use of the Navy and off limits to developers. The administration set aside another oil patch in Alaska and opened up the Teapot Dome oil field for development.

And administration officials sold the development rights, in sweetheart deals, to buddies and business acquaintances.

And he was known for serving booze in the White House during prohibition. When questioned by the press he told them it was none of their business what he did in his own home.

 Harding, elected president in 1920, had suffered from poor health from sometime in 1922. He died while on an official west coast trip. He was in the Presidential Suite at a San Francisco hotel, chatting with his wife, when he keeled over dead in mid sentence.

Even though he wasn’t a terribly popular president, and was under fire for the scandals, the public throughout the country grieved for the nation’s leader.

In Jamestown that meant a Memorial Service for a man no one in the community had met.

Numerous community leaders and ministers served as speakers to the service. The keynote speaker was Alfred Steel who had been a delegate to the Republican Convention where Harding had been nominated for his run for the presidency.

These local services were common back in the day before television. Now, in the case of a death of world leader, we can all watch the memorial services on out TV.

In the 1920s the local citizens had to create their own service to mark the passing of a national figure.

Even if he was best known for crooked deals and illegal booze.

We take for granted trucks rolling up and down the highways and through our communities. That obviously was not always the case.

Back about 1930 there was an effort to outlaw truck freight lines in North Dakota. It was backed by many in the business community including the Jamestown Chamber of Commerce.

The business leaders were trying to protect the railroads from the loss of business associated with a scheduled truck line running from community to community around the state.

For Jamestown this was a big deal. Serving as a regional hub for the Northern Pacific the railroad was a major employer in Jamestown.

But Jamestown said it was trying to save the small communities with the effort. The logic was the truck lines would only serve the bigger towns in North Dakota. This meant that any freight going to the small towns would still have to move by rail. If the railroad lost the freight business of the big towns the rates for freight to the small towns would rise putting them at a disadvantage.

This was back in the era where there were some controls on this type of business. The North Dakota Board of Railroad Commissioners had the final say on any truck line.

It appears from the newspaper articles the requests to start a truck line came before the commission quite regularly. And the state and local chambers fought them each time.

In the end their efforts were to no avail. Trucks became the standard for hauling freight over the next decades. This followed the development of better trucks and the construction of better roads. One of the arguments against allowing truck lines was that they could never serve small towns because the roads leading to these villages were often too poor to support truck traffic.

Since 1930 trucks have become bigger and faster and our roads have become better. In 1950 the state of North Dakota decided that every county seat should have at least one paved road leading to it. At the time it meant a huge road construction project all across North Dakota.

Trucks and railroads each offer their own efficiencies and pose their own problems. Railroads move heavy bulk commodities from place to place more efficiently than trucks. Trucks can travel to areas trains can’t and pick up the freight right at the farm or business.

The railroad track requires less maintenance and any repairs are the expense of the railroad line.

Trucks use the roads. When a road requires maintenance it is the taxpayer that picks up the bill although the trucks do pay license and user fees towards our road system.

Back in the 1930s the decision was the truck or the train. For many commodities we don’t have that choice any longer. We just have the choice of how we maintain our roads.

The United States military has presented the Cheney Award every year since 1927. That predates the actual forming of the United States Air Force and in its early days the award was presented to Army fliers.

The award is named in honor of an early pilot. Lt. William Cheney, killed in a mid-air collision over Italy during the Great War. It was given to fliers who showed extreme valor or self-sacrifice in a humanitarian interest.

And the 1929 award went to a local man.

The Jan. 20, 1930 headline Jamestown Sun headline read, “Carrington Flier Wins Cheney Award.” The story went on to say Lt. William A. Matheny, whose home was in Carrington, received the award for rescuing a fellow pilot and crewman after a crash in Panama.

The mission was a bit of an experiment for the Army Air Corps. It was the first attempt to fly the Keystone Bomber to Central America.

The incident occurred in August, 1929. First one engine failed forcing them to run the other engine flat out to stay in the air.

And if you guessed that caused the second engine to fail you’re way ahead of me.

With both engines out the plane went one direction, down. Despite being soaked in aviation gas from the broken fuel tanks Matheny went back into the flaming wreckage to pull the other two people on the plane to safety.

Not letting a little thing like a near fatal crash into the jungle deter him, Matheny made military aviation his life..

During World War II Matheny served with the Pacific Fleet and was decorated by Adm. Chester Nimitz for his efforts. He continued to serve in the Air Force rising to the rank of Brigadier General and serving as Chief of Staff for Allied Air Forces in Northern Europe.

He also had a command a little closer to home when he led the 31st Air Division at Fort Snelling, Minn.

Matheny’s heroics made headlines at a time when aviation was getting a lot of press coverage. The simple fact the military was trying to fly a squadron across the northern part of the United States during the winter made headlines in January, 1930.

The squadron was initially slated to stop for fuel in Jamestown but weather delays changed those plans.

And the search for Carl Ben Eielson continued off the coast of Russia where his plane had crashed during a rescue effort.

Even the same day the Matheny award was announced the paper contained a headline of two air crashes that claimed 19 lives in California.

When a local person is recognized for their heroics it likely prompts an interest in following in his footsteps. But I think the interest in aviation in 1930 had to be a little tempered by the way the planes kept running into the ground.

This sharp shinned hawk has been a visitor to our bird feeder this winter. He’s not eating the sunflower seeds, he’s munching on the fat sparrows who have been eating the sunflower seeds.

Early this week he bagged a sparrow just outside our window but the picture I shot through the picture window wasn’t so good. Today he set patiently for me to go outside and snap a shot.

You can’t see it but there are a couple very nervous sparrows sitting on the other side of the lilacs about 5 feet away. There were also three pheasants on the ground within the lilacs. Nobody was venturing into the open.

I do have to say that the more time Mr. Hawk spends in our trees the longer the bucket of birdseed lasts.

The headline in the March 19, 1930 Jamestown Sun proclaimed “Courtenay Bank Cashier Slain” in the biggest letters possible. The subheads said Elmer Bunkowske was found dead about 2 p.m.

Of course it was a bank robbery. The news said the First National Bank of Courtenay was cleaned out. Every bill and coin in the bank was taken. The outlaws made off with about $3,000.

The details of Bunkowske’s murder were also in the paper. The victim had been shot once in the chest. The Courtenay area doctor, in I suppose one of the earliest CSI moments in Stutsman County, stated that the victim had been dead about 2 hours.

The Stutsman County Sheriff H.P. Stanton, Assistant State’s Attorney Harry Ritigers and Coroner Harry Brastrup all headed up to Courtenay to begin the investigation. They noted no strangers had been seen in town and no one had heard a shot. At least at the beginning law enforcement was clueless.

 But that doesn’t mean there weren’t theories.

Some people claimed to have seen strangers in both Wimbledon and Courtenay. They were described as driving either a four-cylinder Chrysler or Pontiac sedan.

But there was another theory. Some felt the crime was committed by local people. It seems this is the way the investigators proceeded.

The day after the crime a pair of men from Woodworth were arrested and questioned. They were released without being charged after providing alibis for the time of the robbery.

On March 28, 1930 Nicholas Mead was arrested for the crime. According to the newspaper reports the 40 year tenant farmer and father of seven was arrested because “the investigation has narrowed to Mead as the only individual who was at the vicinity of the place the crime was committed.”

Other evidence included a pistol of the same caliber as the murder weapon found at the Mead home.

The case took a turn on April 1, 1930 when Robert Walker was arrested as an accessory. The public learned it was comments from Walker that lead investigators to suspect Mead. The papers also reported that township and school district funds in Foster County entrusted to Mead were short about $3,000.

But it turned out Walker had nothing to do with the case.

The April 2 edition of the Jamestown Sun proclaimed Mead had confessed to the crime. His confession absolved Walker and said he had acted alone. The confession followed his attempt to slash his wrists with a broken jailhouse mirror the night before.

And justice was a lot swifter back then.

The day after the confession Mead was sentenced to life in prison at the North Dakota penitentiary. The reports indicated he was transported to Bismarck the same day.

From the date of the crime until the sentencing of the culprit was less than two weeks. And by the time of the sentencing the bank recounted the cash and determined that $601 was missing from the bank.

Bunkowske was buried in Minnesota at the home of his parents in one of the sadder cases of North Dakota crime.