WINTER BREAK THROUGHOUT THE YEARS.

The "Looking Back" from the December 20 MidWeek included several vignettes.  In 1923, the gossip columnists were attempting to marry off the Prince of Wales, the once and future King Edward VIII.  "London hints the Prince of Wales’ taste in girls is not so good. Girls should use flavored lipstick."  Scandal, abdication, and a niece on the throne for seventy years were yet to come.

The railroad was not a good neighbor.

The North Western railroad came in for a share of the complaints received at the police station yesterday when Chief James Scott was told that something must be done with the switch engine of the railroad. It was stated that the engine had been down on the Spring Valley tracks east of Evans Avenue during the forenoon and had also retuned in the afternoon. The complainant said she had taken her washing in two or three times and was getting tired of it. She said the engine was standing on the tracks doing nothing but sending a cloud of heavy black smoke over onto the wash lines.

That's my old neighborhood, and at the time there were industries along these tracks, including a canning factory, that generated carloads.  These days, the one train per weekday rolls through that neighborhood to swap empty cars for loads of fracking sand.

By 1948, people could dream of a White Christmas in song.  Sometimes it materialized, but you didn't send a local lad to the butcher to pick up the Christmas fowl. We had a different notion of diversity in those days.

Fears that there would be no snow for Christmas were alleviated on Saturday afternoon when a few flakes started falling and before the evening was over four or five inches had fallen. Even if no more should fall, the present snow should last over the holiday.

Shooters, hungry for fowl or hams at the holiday season, were out in force yesterday for the event held at the range of the DeKalb Sportsmen’s Club on the South Malta Road. Shooting began at 10 o’clock in the morning and continued until darkness forced a halt to the activities. Coffee, pie, cakes and sandwiches were available throughout the day with the wives of club members providing pies that proved highly desirable.

The only new development today in the plans for the coming Christmas carol sing for next Wednesday night is a suggestion that seems to be a popular one. This plan is to have certain descendants of racial groups in this city sing carols of the land from which their parents came in the original tongue. If the project can be worked out there should be Christmas music of Sweden, Finland, Germany and various Baltic and Balkan countries, sung in the native languages.

Would the concluding number be Silent Night simultaneously in all those languages, that being the most translated carol?

Apparently, train movements between DeKalb and West Chicago were being dispatched from DeKalb.

Main line train dispatchers on the North Western Railroad between West Chicago and DeKalb have the new CTC machine in operation. Instead of the familiar rattle of telegraph instruments, annunciator bells have taken over. A single tap of the bell announces the clearing up of a track circuit. Sometimes the machine delivers a Bronx cheer, when a wrong lineup which will not work is set up.

Those local dispatch offices were common in the early days. Sturtevant controlling a section of The Milwaukee Road and Dover controlling the Boston and Maine, Western Route, from there to Portland, come to mind.

In 1973, there was no talk of global warming, and global cooling was not yet a bogeyman, but there was an oil embargo, and insufficient reliance on energy markets.

DeKalb has cut back its snow removal operations because of the gasoline shortage, but all streets will be plowed at least once. Snow clearing operations use about 2,000 gallons of gasoline under normal conditions. All arterial streets will be kept open and all side streets will be plowed at least once.

In 1998, the enclosed shopping mall was still a thing.

Despite all the missed deadlines and a seemingly impossible time schedule, DeKalb city officials still aren’t willing to declare the DeKalb Regional Mall dead. The mall, which many believe would put DeKalb on the retail map, originally was scheduled to open in April 1999. It has been delayed repeatedly. According to the agreement between the City of DeKalb and mail develop Joseph Freed & Associates, the mall must open by February 2000.

That never happened.  Market Square, south of Barber Greene, has a few national retailers, a few currently available storefronts, a theater, and a Lowe's and Wal-Mart bracketing the main complex.  North of Barber Greene is Northland Plaza, comprising multiple rebuilds of an older Pick & Save, the original Wal-Mart, which has undergone several repurposings, and what used to be the Carson's, Sears, and Penney's stores for the area are vacant or being used for other purposes.