Compiled by Don Hoiness from archived copies of The Bulletin at Deschutes County Historical Society.

100 years ago

For the week ending

Nov. 11, 1917

Boys dismissed 
with warning

Charged with appropriating a motor car for their own use without the consent of the owner, two boys were brought into the justice court yesterday for a hearing. Their case was continued indefinitely.

O Hallowe’en night the boys took the car belonging to R. Schimmel from the street in front of the Hippodrome and drove it to Laidlaw. A crowd of youngsters accompanied them. The car was brought back three of four hours later and left on Greenwood Avenue near First Street. The boys did not seem to realize the seriousness of the escapade until their arrest followed.

Under the circumstances the boys had committed an offense subject to a penitentiary penalty if committed twice. For the first offense three months in the county jail and a $500 fine are the punishment. The justice court took into consideration the youthfulness of the boys and continued the case. The boys were warned that if a repetition of the crime occurred again, the charges would be pushed and the matter brought before the grand jury. Other boys playing similar pranks will be given more severe treatment after this, according to Justice of the Peace J.A. Eastes

Football record 
in Bend enviable

With the defeat of the Prineville high school team Saturday by a score of 13-7, Bend high school has emerged as the unquestioned champion of Central Oregon, and without a single defeat. Two games with Prineville, one with Klamath Falls, and Redmond clean up the central part of the state, although the season is far from completion.

No small feature in the attainment of the enviable record of Coach Sanders’ athletes is found in the playing of three brothers named Coyner, who have filled positions on the first lineup since the opening of the season. Marion holds down a halfback’s job, Craig works handily at left tackle, and Leroy is found at center. The brothers are all above average players.

YMCA is greatest thing in army life, says soldier

A letter just received by a Bend soldier in France: “We are not allowed by the censor to tell where we are, what we are doing or how long we are going to stay.

“The YMCA is the greatest thing in a soldier’s life here. The association furnishes a hut at every camp and has footballs and other athletic equipment, also tables and benches where we can read and write. They also have a piano and a phonograph. We are furnished paper, envelopes, pens, ink and magazines. A kind of confectionery is also conducted.

“The soldiers are being taught to speak French now. At first we had to talk without hands but now we are able to understand some, and can order a dinner in French. We all wish the war was over.”

75 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Nov. 11, 1942

Rommel retreat 
called wild rout

A British source said tonight that the position of Marshal Erwin Rommel is “desperate,” and predicted the destruction of the Nazi Afrika Korps will be accomplished “in a matter of a few days.”

(CBS quoted Lieut. Gen. Bernard Montgomery as declaring in a message that “complete victory is almost in sight.” Montgomery said, “We have the chance of putting the whole panzer army in the bag.”)

The British spokesman said that the axis forces in north Africa are “badly busted up already.”

“We are just beginning to give them the sort of warfare they gave to the civilians of France, Holland and Belgium on the highways two years ago,” he said.

The commentator said that the axis troops were attempting to retreat back along the coastal road “like so many rabbits smoked out of their holes.”

“They are being pounded mercilessly,” he said. “We wouldn’t do that sort of thing to civilians but we will to them. This is the first time since the war has started that we are really handing it back to German troops in retreat.

“We are interested,” he said, “in killing Germans where we find them — and we will take care of the Italian lackeys as we go along.

“We are interested in utterly smashing the army of men about whom Hitler boasted when he jeered at the British generals.”

George M. Cohan 
taken by death

George M. Cohan, the Yankee Doodle Dandy who wrote the best war song since “Dixie,” died today in the midst of a new war for which “Over There” might mean any part of the globe.

The song and dance man — his own choice as the most fitting summation of his 54 years in the theater — still was enfeebled from the long illness when Japan struck at Pearl Harbor. He wrote another war song. The tune was sprightly, with the old Cohan lilt, and the words rang true, but it was not the perfect wedding of lyrics and music which made “Over There” the marching song of a million yanks.

On the eve of publication it was decided to let the song rest on the shelf. That decision fulfilled his own intuition, expressed two years ago, when he said:

“I hope America will never need another war song. But if we do need one, it will have to be written by some young fellow.”

50 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Nov. 11, 1967

Surveyor scores moon success, sends pictures

Surveyor 6, beating the odds against making a successful soft landing on the moon, today transmitted clear and sharp pictures back to earth of the satellite’s central bay region.

“The quality of the pictures is excellent,” said a spokesman for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The terrain around the spacecraft appears quite rough, with some very large craters and lots of small ones.”

The photographs taken by a rotating television camera were received on a screen with a 600-line mode, which produces sharper images than the 510-line screen on home television sets.

Surveyor’s alpha particle scattering device, with which scientists will analyze the lunar soil, survived the landing and was working perfectly. First experiments with the miniature chemistry set were due late today.

JPL scientists also planned today to attempt to recontact Surveyor 5, which landed on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility last September. If radio contact is achieved, it would be the first time space scientists have maintained simultaneous contact with two lunar spacecraft.

Initial photos returned by Surveyor 6 showed no trace of the ill-fated Surveyor 4, believed to be 5 to 10 miles away. Surveyor 4 crash landed in the rugged area last July.

Successful Saturn flight happy day for Von Braun

As the Saturn 5 rocket climbed slowly toward the top of its launch pad tower, Wernher Von Braun’s life work focused into 10 agonizing seconds.

Then, as the world’s greatest rocket shot into space, the German-born pioneer of modern space technology allowed himself a pure Americanism: Go baby, go.

Von Braun, the director of NASA’s Space Flight Center, was a 19-year-old college student when he wrote a paper envisioning the day of huge, long distance rockets.

Von Braun, an American citizen since 1955, is now graying. He speaks fluent, slightly accented English. He has been researching or working on rockets for more than two thirds of his life.

“I got into rocketry through an interest in astronomy,” he said. “The articles I read discussed flying to the moon with pretty large rockets. I never envisioned for even a second the complexity of the entire operation, however. Back then we didn’t have any computers or automatic checkout or any of the things that made Saturn 5 possible.”

Von Braun headed development of Germany’s famous V2 rocket at the Peenemeude Rocket Center in 1937. As Germany collapsed in the closing days of World War II, Von Braun led more than 100 of his fellow scientists to the West and surrendered to the allied powers. He came to the United States in 1945.

25 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Nov. 11, 1992

Lord’s acre tradition deepens with age

Portland tour buses don’t ordinarily visit rural church bazaars. But then, the Lord’s Acre Sale is at least a league above the ordinary.

It’s not the sheer volume of the event — the 800 pies, the ton-and-a-half of sausage or the 650 pounds of cabbage — that sets the annual sale apart.

What draws buyers to the small community are the people of Powell Butte, who for 46 years have prided themselves in selling the best they can make and grow for a fair price.

The tradition has endured because of old-timers like Pansie Michel, a retired rancher who has missed just one Lord’s Acre Sale in 46 years, and then only because she had pneumonia.

Michel sewed 56 aprons for this year’s country store the same way she made them 40 years ago: carefully crimping the seams and securing the hems with bias tape.

“You put-near can’t find any apron patterns these days, so I cut them up out of newspapers,” Michel said, straightening some aprons that had been mussed by an eager shopper in the earlier crush.

“I enjoy sewing. I always have. I had three daughters, and I made all their clothes,” she said.

A lot has changed since Michel moved to Powell Butte in 1930. There were no tractors on the farms then, just horses and mules. But progress hasn’t changed the Lord’s Acre Sale, she said. “It’s just gotten bigger, that’s all.”

About 2,000 people visited the sale Saturday on the grounds of the Powell Butte Church, which sponsors the event, and the grade school next door.

In addition to shopping at the country store, visitors ate 75-cent slices of pie, savored the famed Lord’s Acre barbecue dinner, and bought about 46 quilts — six of them hand-pieced and quilted.

Shiela Nordeman, Lord’s Acre chairwoman, said that approximately 1,500 people helped put the event together. Half of them aren’t even members of the church. “They just come because they love to do it,” she said.

The sale raises between $26,000 and $30,000 per year for the church, she said, and 90 percent of it is earmarked for missions and scholarships.