Let Santa take the worry out of toy taint
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By Bill Wundram | Saturday, December 01, 2007 |
I have the answer to all these worries about kids chewing on lead-laced toys that are coming from China.
My solution is simple and it involves a single man.
Whatever happened to Santa? He had a workshop at the North Pole, with dozens of elves hammering and sawing away to make toys. They never heard of lead-based paint at the North Pole.
Bring back Santa-toys. Let’s have that jolly old bearded fellow make all our toys. Let’s forget about imports.
There is one other advantage. Santa delivers free.
One gown, five brides
It’s said that moms swoon to have their wedding gowns worn by their daughters. Sally Hiegel Brown, longtime Davenporter now living in California, has seen her wedding gown worn not once, not twice, but five times. Since her marriage to Jack Brown in 1946, Sally’s dress has been worn by two sisters, a niece and a daughter.
“It’s been long a long journey,” she told the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif.
She saw the dress in a store in Davenport. It cost $100, a huge amount at the time. “I paid for that dress $10 a week,” she says. The long white dress, which has become yellowed with age, is made of silk muslin, the California newspaper wrote. Sally has a grandniece who she hopes will be the next — and probably the last — to wear the dress.
Moments in time: The last Eldridge …
Oh, it began about 65,000 days ago. That goes back to John M. Eldridge, who left New Jersey for the prairie lands, and begat the first of the Eldridge clan in these parts.
Since then, there has always been someone named Eldridge, for whom the city of Eldridge was named.
Now, there is no male left to carry on the name. George Joseph Eldridge of Davenport, the last namesake, has died at age 84.
“There are no original Eldridge men left,” says George’s widow, Joyce.
The patriarch of the Eldridge clan, John M., was born in 1810. In 1871 a descendent, Jacob Eldridge, founded a hamlet north of Davenport. It had only a few residents in the beginning; what a contrast to the burgeoning city of more than 5,000 today. The way it’s going, Eldridge is going to be bumping into Davenport.
The story ends here. George and Joyce never had children to carry on the name.
Twenty years ago, Rick Montgomery, then a reporter for the Quad-City Times, traced the lineage and wrote about the family. He said of the Eldridges:
“They were the type of folks you’d gladly sit beside at a cafeteria counter.”
The worst punishment
BOB GASTON, who waves the baton for the CASI band, says that Jill the harpist and Sam the trombonist went out to a disco before going to rehearsal. Sam’s car wouldn’t lock, but Sam knew the disco owner so they locked their bulky instruments in his office. Having too much to drink, they went to rehearsal without their instruments. Jill apologized to the conductor, “I left my harp in Sam’s friend’s disco.”
SVEN and his pal Oley leave Lutsen for a night on the town.
“Let’s go to Du-loot,” says Sven, so they traipse into a fancy restaurant.
The manager says, “You two can’t come in here without a necktie; go out and get something around your necks.
They go to Oley’s pickup and wrap a couple jumper cables around their necks.
“OK,” the manager scowls, “but don’t start anything.”
Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com. Comment on this column at qctimes.com.
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