100 Years Ago Today - April 2020

Look at these statements from headline articles in the La Porte Argus in April 1920. Terminology, capitalization, and what makes headline news can be different. Yet accidents, business, crime, and war still make headlines. Want to read the whole article? It’s on microfilm in the Indiana Room at the Main Library. Staff will be glad to help you access it.
 

April 1-4 

Passengers on the interurban receive a shock while crossing Michigan avenue and Lincoln Way when the rear trucks decide to depart and journey down the avenue. No injuries are sustained. 
 

Don’t worry about the shortage of meats. The Chicago Cash Market has baby beef, pig pork, genuine lamb, milk fed veal, home dressed turkeys, capons, etc. to keep La Porte for a long time. 
 

Come to Oberreich & Arnold for Edison records, player rolls and a hundred copies of classy and popular “sweet” music. 
 

An Easter blizzard strikes the city. Traffic was demoralized, there was no display of milady’s finery on Lincoln Way and people remained indoors throughout the day. 
 

April 6-11 

The 82nd annual event of First Baptist church was held. The business meeting followed a sumptuous dinner served by ladies of Circle No. 4 of which nearly 200 partook. 
 

A woman, wed when she was but 14, will be granted custody of three of her four children and $16 a month for their support. Her mother testified she once slapped the husband three times. 
 

A new combination hose and chemical fire wagon is purchased by the board of public safety. The cost is $8,500, and it will arrive in La Porte about the last of July. 
 

Thousands are dying from starvation in the Far East. There is a nationwide movement to provide food for victims of Armenian persecution. 
 

The Census Department announces that the city’s population is 15,158, a gain of 45 percent over the figures of 1910 when the population was 10,525. 
 

The oft-told tale that La Porte is a good place to grow young has been proved. A 72-year-old man in the county has a new molar coming in. His doctor had a similar case a few years ago. 
 

April 13-18 

Construction of the new telephone building for Westville starts. A mass meeting last night made formal protest to the telephone company on the poor service given the town. 
 

Paradise Confectionery Co. opens tonight. There will be favors for the ladies. 
 

The only German morning paper in Chicago suspends publication because of the paper shortage. Management hopes to obtain sufficient newsprint to resume publication in two weeks. 

Despite the closing of more than 100 coal mines in this state and the lowering of production in Illinois and other states, local dealers in La Porte say they have enough coal for some time. 
 

A Marion County grand jury indicts Sheriff Miller on the charge of extortion. The indictment charges Miller improperly fed and mistreated prisoners in the county jail. 
 

Police raid a “soft drink parlor” in Michigan City and bring bottles to headquarters. A tester declares, while he was still sober, that it was all a poor grade of whiskey. 
 

April 20-25 

After returning to his Michigan avenue home after being away for the winter, C. E. Russell finds his home had been thoroughly ransacked. So far silverware and a coat are found missing. 
 

A verdict of suicide is given in the matter of the unknown man found on a farm near Wanatah. He was extremely intelligent looking with well kept hands and neatly trimmed and combed hair. 
 

Work on the new $100,000 north side school building just west of the old church building on Weller avenue, four blocks west of Pine Lake avenue, begins. 
 

Michael Moran, president of the La Porte Area Juvenile Aid association and Robert Borst, chair of the fund-raising campaign for a Boys Country Home, show LAJAA tops its $15,000 goal. 

 

The pretty wife of the man found dead near Wanatah arrives to claim the body. He is believed to have been afflicted with periods of kleptomania which developed into a career of crime. 

 

A man who has a pool hall on Lincoln Way is haled into police court on a charge of keeping punch boards for candy. 

 

April 27-30 

Oil company employees predict the strong possibility of a gasoline famine in La Porte and other cities real soon in the event that the rail situation does not clear up at once. 

 

Work is under way for the erection of a large new garage, a hospital for automobiles, on Lincoln Way between Linwood avenue and Adams street. Buildings there are being moved and razed. 

 

Hundreds of La Porte people give a naval recruiting officer’s oddly shaped Overland automobile nicknamed “the submarine” the “once over.” The machine has traveled over 150,000 miles. 

 

A new shoe store of the serve-self style will open on Lincoln Way between Clay and Jackson streets. The manager is M. O. Smith, formerly of the Kelling shoe house of La Porte.