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pounds. Winner by 4 bushels and 25 pounds was Ernest L. Perry. “The corn in the contest field yielded 47½ bushels per acre and 75 pounds to the bushel.”
We can not give the year of the following item. It happened in the teens. It was in the fall of either 1914, '15, or '16.
A young man in Zearing left his home without notifying the family. They were greatly worried. A neighborhood search, failed to reveal his whereabouts. Two bloodhounds were brought to Zearing.
I was a small boy at the time. I was at Chandler's barber shop on the north side of Main Street for a hair cut. All of us ran out of the shop to watch the hounds go by. They traveled east on the north side of Main Street.
The hounds went to the water tank on the railroad right of way east of Zearing. The hounds eventually lost the trail so the tank was drained. A short time later the young man returned to his home.
A newspaper item published in 1918 stated that Sidney Cameron, William Moon, and Frank Moon had turned in their sweaters. The boys had been knitting for the soldiers. The Red Cross ladies said that the boys did a good job.
The information for this item comes from a confession made by Kenneth L. Cerka. We have always rated the Halloween prank performed by Kenneth and his associates as the outstanding Halloween prank in the history of Zearing.
We do not have the year. It happened in the early 1920's. C. O. Daubenburg, the depot agent, was a well known prankster. It seems that he had been telling the boys about the pranks of his boyhood. As a result he set himself up as a target for the local Halloween celebration.
The local railroad carried many passengers in those days. So the waiting room at the depot had to be kept in good condition.
On Halloween night, Kenneth L. Cerka, Clifford Van Orsdel, and Homer McVitty captured Roy J. Pulley's billy goat. They put him in the depot waiting room. The next morning C. O. did not need to enter the depot to find the goat. Billy was standing on a waiting room bench looking out of the window when C. O. arrived.
The rage displayed by the red headed depot agent was out of this world. One should remember that this happened before the invention of the odor removers of today. Kenneth admits that he was scared by C. O. Daubenberg's rage. “Who done it” remained a secret.
A balloon ascension was the feature of one of Zearing's celebrations. The. take off point was located a short distance from the