Editor's Notebook

Though as a youngster I only participated in one of Superior’s organized Easter Egg Hunts, hunting Easter eggs and derivatives were among my favorite activities.

Instead of eating my Easter eggs, I saved them so they could be hid over and over.

My Easter eggs were stored on the top shelf of a kitchen cupboard. To get to them, I had to stand on a kitchen chair and stretch to the limit. Thus I didn’t get to play with them as often as I would have liked.

In his youth, my uncle was an avid marble player. When he left home, Grandmother saved his marbles. There were so many marbles they wouldn’t fit in one of the popcorn buckets the Crest Theatre sold at Friday’s Cruise Night. When I went to visit my grandmother, we substituted marbles for Easter eggs.

Grandmother and I would take turns hiding the marbles while the other person had to stay in one of her home’s walk-in closets. Once the marbles were hidden, the hunter was allowed to roam through the house looking for the marbles.

I never tired of the game. Grandmother made it fun as she marched through the house with me. I can still remember some of the hiding places where she missed marbles.

Though my childhood is now in the far distant past, this year’s COVID-19 inspired Easter picture and bear hunts sound like activities I would still enjoy. Last week residents of Superior were encouraged to display Teddy bears in the windows of their homes. This week Easter egg pictures are to be displayed in the windows of both residences and businesses. Then when people with cabin fever because of the COVID-19 restrictions go out for a walk, they will have something to look for.

I didn’t participate in Friday’s Cruise Night activity around the Superior square but it was fun to stand on the corner and watch those that did.

Back in the day, many of my school classmates regularly cruised the Superior Square on Saturday nights but that wasn’t something I got to do.

I was seldom in downtown Superior on a Saturday night for Saturday night was a busy night at my family’s gasoline station and I was expected to be there to help. I do remember one of the first times I was in Superior on a Saturday after obtaining a driver’s license. I wasn’t Saturday night smart and didn’t think about the cruisers. I attempted to cross Central Avenue at Fourth. I waited and waited for an opportunity. It looked like automobiles were backed up to Eighth Street while waiting at the stop sign to pull onto Third Street.

Unlike towns which are built around a courthouse square or park, the Superior Square is a loop along Third, Bloom, Eighth and Central streets.

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Monday an employee of a Superior business was on her way to work when she called her employer and reported she would be a bit late. To explain the reason for the tardy arrival, she told her boss she wouldn’t be in until she finished talking with a cop for she had violated a motor vehicle law and would have to face “the music.”

It wasn’t always that way. It wasn’t until April of 1930 that the City of Superior employed an officer to enforce the traffic regulations. The Express story telling of the new city cop follows.

Alarmed by an increasing number of traffic violations, the city administration has engaged the services of a special traffic policeman who is now checking law violations and warning the offenders. To date, no arrests have been made under the theory the city owes the offenders some warning after having failed to take action over their prior violations. However, arrests will follow if the warnings are unobserved.

One of the laws most commonly disobeyed requires an automobile to come to a full stop when approaching a stop sign. A great many drivers take this regulation with a grain of salt, slackening speed and looking up and down the street, but not coming to a halt. The trouble with such a procedure is that whereas we may use the best of judgment in such a case, some one with poorer judgment may copy our actions with a resulting smashup. It may be just such a case which was at the root of the accident in New Mexico last week when a bus-driver failed to make the stop at a railroad crossing killing 20 of his passengers and himself. The driver of the bus, F. D. Williams, was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Williams of Nelson. When he saw the mail train approaching, he swerved and the train sideswiped the bus. Had he not swerved, the death toll may have been greater.

 

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