Some more things from the 1897 and 1918 Daily News:
Noland Lewis drug store opened. His soda fountain and sodas were free to women and children the first day and evening.
Men waited for them in the Clearwater Saloon (those son-of-a-guns).
Old Sid Mosher was the genius who concocted those chocolate sodas of fond memory at the old R.A. Lewis Drug Store.
Sid went to Chicago and learned how to make the chocolate syrup that earned those sodas a lasting reputation.
The hired girl in a house was paid $2 per week for a seven-day week, but was always treated as one of the family.
Indian Lake Club was formed in 1897 by Dr. Essig, John Lindsley, Frank Reshore and Charles Arnsden.
The Dowagiac Fair was in back of my great-grandfather’s house (443 E. Division) and the race track started just behind the house. Many races were held on this track. (Years ago you could see the track layout flying over it.)
The D.G.D. secret society was entertained by Mrs. Mae Walker. The motto is “Boys not wanted, they can’t keep secrets.”
Ed Tryon and Frank Lyle had a white tandem bicycle.
Here are some stores in Dowagiac in 1918: Spring Lake Ice and Fuel, Bigelow’s Music Shop, Cook and Hart’s jewelers, Blackmond jewelers, Burgette and Dewey, R.E. Morse grocery at 113 Commercial, A.K. Ritchey, Little’s department store, Willard service station, 105 N. Front, Ran Avery’s plumbing shop, 116 Penn Ave., next to the post office, Gebhard’s shoe store, Welsh’s grocery, Guttmacher’s clothing, Boyd Redner and Son grocery, Merwin and Bonnell poultry and feed store, Hinckley and Garrett hardware, Nelson drug store.
A couple of notes from the 1918 Daily News. Carl Barton, who was in the S.A.T.C. at Ann Arbor, was home for the weekend.
Harry Beach (old Beacher, as Berenice used to call him) is in aviation at Rochester, N.Y., and home on a short furlough.
Robert Grove and Leonard Bright, former Daily News employees, are now in training at Ann Arbor and were home Sunday.
These fellows were probably training for our first World War.
I, being 81 years old, remember a few of the stories I mentioned and knew a few of the names mentioned.

“Cardinal Charlie” Gill writes a nostalgic weekly column about growing up in the Grand Old City. E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.