May 1942: Development in home heating, a pocket-size coal-burning furnace that may solve the fuel problem created by wartime restrictions, was announced by the Round Oak Co.
With new installations of oil- and gas-burning banned for the duration, the Round Oak Co. has developed a pocket-size furnace which rests inside the chimney.
With the help of a miniature fan, it supplies heat for a five- or six-room house.
The unit requires but 36 pounds of steel.
Two tons of coal are all that’s needed for a winter’s operation (Does anyone remember this?).
Remember when the fish fries out at the Conservation Club only cost $1.25 in 1962? Service was from 5 to 9.
I saw another old ad in the Daily News, $2 and service was 5:30 to 8.
In 1910, a big Thomas Flyer seven-passenger car with six cylinders came into Dowagiac.
Aboard was a Chicago millionaire and his ladies. They stopped in Dowagiac for a slight overhauling. They say the cost of this big car is about $7,500.
I wonder who the heck it was that came up with the saying “fresh as a daisy?”
God gave us memory. A person can never get back to the past, but one doesn’t forget most of it, either.
Another thing I fond in some old papers that almost made me cry. It was an ad for money market certificates at Peoples Savings Association. It said effective Dec. 18 through Dec. 24, 1980, they were paying 15.673 percent.
Holy cow, we just recently had one come due and, guess what, it is now paying less than 1 percent.
What a big change in interest, but it was 31 years ago, wasn’t it?
Here were some ads under personals and business jottings in a 1923 Daily News.
Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood at the Century Theatre. Wiggle Your Toes in our sterling hose at the Sol Tobias store. Krizza’s glasses fit the eye. General Cord tires go a long way to make friends. Ferguson’s Vulcanizing Works (I remember this on the first block of E. Division Street from the Front Street corner.
Special sale $1 jar of A.D.S. beauty clay with one jar of A.D.S. cold cream for $1 at Barber’s (I think this was the Barber’s Drug Store on the east side of Front Street).
Something I can remember from before electric mixers.
My mother had one that had two blades and a crank handle that turned the gears to make the blades turn.
A lot of folks years ago had those pressure cookers. I don’t think we ever had one. But I do remember folks who used to tell how they used to blow up.
How many can got back and remember the old “Hadacal” medicine they used to pitch on the radio programs? And how many remember having to go outdoors in the night to the old outhouse? Some called it the “necessary” house.

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