By Staff
Years ago 300-pound Bill Champs told me that 17 trains passed by his hotel every night.
His many guests used to go to sleep counting trains instead of sheep.
In one of Dowagiac's bad winter snowstorms, I wonder who the woman was who lived on Indian Lake Road and couldn't get out of her driveway to get to town. I guess she called a local grocery and had two loaves of bread delivered to her mailbox.
When she went out to her mailbox, the bread was there with the usual stamps, plus a special delivery stamp.
This was when the post office slogan was through snow, sleet and hail, we never fail.
Did the old PAGODA club (Pilots and Gals of Dowagiac Airport) die and, if so, where is it buried?
In looking at a map of the City of Dowagiac in my 1872 Cass County Atlas, I see where Charles Gill owned 80 acres on both sides of the Michigan Central Railroad tracks just south of the city limits. The northern part of the 80 acres came right up and joined the city. And to think I never knew I owned this nice piece of property.
Well, the reason was it was owned by Charles R. Gill, not Charles D. Gill and, with my luck, we were not even related.
Also, didn't Dowagiac used to have a "hobo" jungle? I think it may have been just south of Dowagiac where the creek went under the tracks of the Michigan Central Railroad. This would have put it north of the viaduct.
Not too long ago I read in my Palladium newspaper an article about Pete Gent. It told where he was credited for a saying in the 1979 movie, "North Dallas Forty," a line compared to "Gone with the Wind" by Clark Gable.
Gent was born in Bangor and still lives there. Pete wrote the book "North Dallas Forty" and also the screenplay for the movie. Gent played for the Dallas Cowboys from 1964 through 1969. He graduated from Michigan State University before playing football for Dallas.
Pete's father used to stop at our liquor store once in a while on his many trips between Bangor's Du-Wel factory and the Du-Wel in Dowagiac.
On one of his visits with my clerk Joe Bournay and myself he suddenly had a fainting spell in our store lobby, which scared the bejeebers out of both of us.