Same As It Ever Was

The more things change...

I don’t know if you know this or not, but if you go to the Perry Public Library’s website, you can gain access to the Perry Herald archives. You can peruse issues dating all the way back to the paper’s beginnings in the 1800s.

I ended up there when I started wondering about what made headlines in February in my hometown in the 1930s and 40s and decided to do a little research.

The front page of the February 5, 1941 edition included a story about the death of Wyoming County’s last Civil War veteran. According to the article, Adelbert R. Foster had succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 93.

A writer in the “Vicinity Vignettes” column noted the death came the same week local residents gathered to say goodbye to 125 men, 19 from Perry. The men were members of Troop B of the 101st Cavalry and were bound for Camp Devens in Massachusetts. According to the article, they would be joining upwards of 25,000 other men at the post.

“How prophetic it was of history,” the columnist notes, “that the burial of a ‘last soldier’ had its counterpart during the same hours in the departure from this community and area a group of young men bound for war’s training camp. One era dies, another is born. It is the relentless cycle of history.”

I paused a moment on “relentless cycle of history” and then I kept reading.

As my eyes scanned down, I saw an item about state aid for the school ($25,634.39) and another story about vandalism at a home on the lake. Then, I came across a headline: “Groundhog Out on Sunday.” A fox hunter reported seeing a groundhog, the superintendent of schools reported seeing tracks. Neither, however, could confirm “the condition of the ‘shadow.’”

Further down, it started to feel a lot like Facebook: two people were recovering from nasty falls, several more were down with the flu, and one woman “suffered a very painful mishap when doing her household work.” A fingernail had been torn from her finger.

We can only imagine her reaction, but an article on page three may provide some insight.

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

“Forty Years of Anti-Profanity,” the headline read.

Calling it one of “America’s more peculiar organizations,” the blurb introduces us to the Anti-Profanity League. Its president, 75-year-old Arthur Colborne, apparently spent most of his life and “personal fortune” trying to clean up the language of potty mouths around the world. The article notes the league didn’t do any “campaigning” in Perry or the immediate area, but did have some success in bigger cities. It also reports Arthur took his fight to Italy in 1926, where he met with, of all people, Mussolini. It apparently went pretty well, leading the famously violent, fascist dictator to take a real stand against coarse language by putting anti-profanity laws in place.

Under normal circumstances, the article explains, members of the league would hear a swear word and deliver a pink card to the offender with the words, “please do not swear or use obscene or profane language.” The card was signed by Arthur Colborne.

Arthur was pleased as heck with his efforts, claiming there was less swearing in America in 1941 than “in any time previous.” Still, he acknowledged, it had not disappeared entirely; which brings me to my favorite part of the article.

“Blasphemy, we are told, has shifted from the truck driver and factory worker to politer spheres of society,” the article explains. “‘Women,’ we are told, ‘are now taking to blasphemy the way they took to smoking, drinking and the wearing of long pants. It is fashionable.’”

Ah, yes — I thought — there it is: “the relentless cycle of history” or, put another way, “same sh… [insert a word that would get me pink carded] different day.”

This essay originally appeared in my column in the February 6, 2025 edition of the Perry Herald in Perry, NY.