Peekin’ into the past

Five Years Ago
Nov. 20, 2014

Laden with bumps, holes and expansion cracks, the 18-mile stretch of Highway 23 from north of Holyoke to the Colorado-Nebraska state line continues to be more and more troublesome. Repairs have been pushed back, and the State hopes to get to work on it by 2016.

Spencer Kotch has opened Kotch’s Heating and Air in Holyoke, offering his services in the HVAC/R industry — heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration.

A final set of windows was put back in the Phillips County Court House last week, a welcome sight to County employees who worked with boarded-up windows in shifts the past few months. A grant from the History Colorado State Historical Fund provided Phillips County with $110,472 to restore the windows.

Ten Years Ago
Nov. 19, 2009

There are still many fields with standing corn left all around northeast Colorado. This year’s harvest is two to three weeks later than normal, and with 1.5 inches of snowfall on Nov. 15, farmers were forced to sit out another couple days to let things dry up.

Construction on the new Phillips County Event Center should be wrapped up by the end of the month, reported county commissioner Bud Biesemeier.

Twenty-Five Years Ago
Nov. 24, 1994

Baby’s First Steps has a new home visitor coordinator in Phillips and Sedgwick counties. Kay Harmon took over the coordinator’s duties on Nov. 1. She replaced Mary Austin, who served as coordinator from the time the program began in March of 1993 to October of 1994.

Author and breast cancer survivor Lois Hjelmstad will be at Schmidt’s in Holyoke on Dec. 2 to give a brief talk and to sign copies of her book, “Fine Black Lines: Reflections on Facing Cancer, Fear and Loneliness.”

Phillips County farmer and rancher Henry Jackson will celebrate his 90th birthday on Nov. 28.

Fifty Years Ago
Nov. 20, 1969

Mountain States Beet Growers Marketing Association and representatives of Great Western Sugar Co. met in Greeley yesterday, and an agreement was reached that some of the sugar beets frozen in October’s bitter weather will be harvested and processed immediately to save as much of their sugar content as possible. About half of the total 1969 crop still is in the ground because of the cold weather.

Boy Scout Troop 32 will be selling light bulbs the first part of December for a fundraising project.

Astronaut Charles Conrad Jr. stepped from the lander Intrepid to the surface of the moon at 3:58 a.m. MST to complete the second landing on the moon by the United States. Conrad was followed shortly by astronaut Alan L. Bean. Astronaut Richard F. Gordon Jr. continued to orbit the moon in the command ship Yankee Clipper.

Seventy-Five Years Ago
Nov. 23, 1944

The Phillips County Farm Improvement Association organized last evening to obtain prisoners of war for corn picking. With a large acreage of corn still in the fields and no free labor in sight, this group of men felt it wise to organize and obtain this labor. If enough farmers can be organized in the next few days, prisoners of war will be brought into the county.

Due to a shortage of water to keep vegetation green in the Holyoke Cemetery, the cemetery board some months ago received donations toward a new well and pump in amount sufficient to start the improvement. The well was completed and the pump installed in the summer. An effort is being made to get a complete record of all graves in the cemetery, including names, dates and locations.

All the waste paper which had been stored since the last shipment from Holyoke was taken from the building first door east of the Clover Blossom Creamery on Monday. The building will not be used for this purpose again as it has been condemned because it is a fire hazard.