The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1923-02-07
A Sunday Away
from Home
(By Alex Miller in Daily w
ashington (Iowa) Herald)

(By Alex Miller in Daily w
ashington 1owa) Heraldl
The lonesomiest time for anybody
who is away from home, is of course
Sunday. l do not quite understand
how a travelling man becomes adj
justed to it. / would think every
travelling man would become a con-
firmed church attendant, when he is
on the road, because there is so lit
tie else to do. But we hope he would
go for other reasons also. l spent
yesterday, January IA, at Redwood
Falls, MINI. and 1t seems to be a real
church going town. The crowd at
the Christian church was not so
large, but they We're devoted and in
terested people, and the pastor, Rev.
Ellsworth preached a very able SER
mon. 1t was doctrinal and there
fore did not appeal to me as much
as it did likely, to his own members.
Rev. Hampton or Rev. Petit or Rev.
Denny, my old Des Moines friend
would have liked it better. l do not
pretend to know what Jimmie Mich
els would have thought of it, be-
cause he is so much a man of the
world, world traveller that he may
have ideas different from the ordin-
airy preacher. | do not know.
At night / went to the Methodist
church and a packed house greeted
one there. 1t made me think of
Washington churches, where folks
make church going part of their
Sunday duty. 1t was not regular
sermon, but talk on prohibition.
The pastor, Rev. Grove spoke on
the rather picturesque theme Booze
Moonshine, and Sunshine" You can
see that he would make it a very
interesting and very entertaining
talk, and he lived up to the promise.
l do not know whether his audience
was unusual or not, but every seat
in the main audience room was tax
en- and chairs were brought in. The
pipe organ was played by a young
man and the choir consisted of eight
young women, who were good sing
ers, and they sang all old well-known
Methodist hymns, except one, which
was special one. 1t was very
honey, comfortable sort of church
and | felt quite at home there. The
pastor is the son of a Methodist
preacher and he was born in New
York, and lived in Philadelphia, Bal
timore, Chicago, and his father is
now pastor of a church in Lincoln,
Nebraska. He told what he knew of
the saloons in the good old days
of booze, when men stood at the
long bars, with one foot on the brass
rail and the other on the floor He
said he saw them thousands of times
on his way to school, Indeed, he
said boy could not help seeing it
daily on his way to school and from
school. He said the good old days of
booze were gone forever. He said
now we are living in the days of
moonshine" and next will come the
days of sunshine. He had his audi
ence laughing out loud half of the
time and smiling most of the time.
He has very pronounced ideas on the
attitude of the anti-dry people and
he did not hesitate to express him
SELF He says he would like to hit
Congressman Qvayle on the nose, for
what he says about the liquor traf-
fic. He said Qvayle claims to be a
preacher and he let his remark go
at that. He is the man who defeated
Volstead, author of the Volstead act,
and dealt prohibition a terrific bio "
and no doubt he did. He said Vol
stead's name will be known a hun
dred years from now, as a man who
did a great thing for America. He
might have added that Qvayle will
be forgotten, but he didn't say it.
hn Of -
he says it is passing, and | believe
he is right. He talked for an hour
and as they say at the theater, there
was not dull moment.
An interesting feature of Redwood
Falls, is the park | mentioned a mo-
ment ago. 1t contains about 200
acres and it has all the natural ad-
vantages of park many times as
large. 1t has Redwood river run
ming through it and Ramsey Falls,
over 100 feet high are a part of the
scenery. Redwood Falls, for which
the town is named is above the park,
to be built on a solid rock founda-
ton and they do not have to go very
far to strike bed rock. Indeed, in
many places the rock formations,
granite rock, come to the surface.
Sunday morning, men took road
grader and scraped the snow off the
ice above the dam so the young
sters could skate, and they made use
of it all afternoon, too. What fun
they were having. Folks everywhere
are vitality interested in the kiddies.
At one spot, the water of Redwood
River is tunneled for an eighth of
a mile, through solid granite, to be
used for power to light the town. 1t
took six men a year to blast the tun-
mel through the rock walls. The city
is also heated, in the business dis
trict by a municipal heating plant.
There are two good country papers,
at Redwood Falls, the Gazette and
the Sun, and both are prosperous.
The weather has not beer cold,
but there is big difference in the
way folks dress here, from the way
they dress in southern Iowa. Not
a building but what has storm doors,
and not home, and the folks, boys,
girls, men and women all wear gal
oshes and heavy oyercoats. mostly