Culled by Judy Garrison
With Commentary by Jim Andrews
From July 1919 issues of
The Andes Recorder
100 Years Ago

WEEK IN AND ABOUT ANDES

Events of a week as chronicled by
the Man on the Street

The telegraph strike is off and A. L. Carman will again accept telegrams.

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Tuesday evening 85 boys arrived at the Gerry Camp in southern Bovina. [Ed.: This will be happening the first week of July this year, too, as every year before it.]

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Born to Mr. and Mrs. George Bouton in Gladstone Hollow, July 1, an 11 ½ pound boy.

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Misses Kate and Ella Reynolds, teachers in New York city schools, are home for the summer vacation. [Jim Andrews: These two grew up in Andes and lived in the house just below the corner store. Ella later married an Ochs and moved to Kingston but kept a “summer home” in Andes, the former Anne Geiger Antique shop. I was in high school when she died and there was an auction at her home here. I remember being quite impressed because she had a baby grand piano in her front room!]

An important business change took place in Andes the past week. Harry Dowie, of New York, purchased the business of the late James W. Dickson, in the “Big Store on the Corner” and then sold a half interest to Clifford L. Dickson and turned the other half over to his daughter, Lillian F. Dowie. [JA: This was the corner store building, once the Cantina and now Hasbeens & Willbees which up until the last proprietors, the Quedans, who closed it in the late 1890s, had been the longest running business in Andes, the building having been constructed in 1858. After Cliff Dickson retired, he sold the business to Frank Oles, who ran the store for several decades.]

The new firm assumed the business on Saturday under the firm of Dowie & Dickson, thus bringing back into the business life of Andes the name of Dowie, which in former years had been one of the principal in the business life and interests of the village. The junior member has for several years been a clerk in the store and is well known to its patrons.

In spite of the passage of the Dry law, apparently no one in Andes has suffered from thirst. Home manufactured stuff seems to produce a jag. [JA: This obviously means moonshine!]

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The country is on a “fifty cent dollar” basis. In other words, since about 1914, the purchasing power of the dollar, measured in goods, has depreciated about one-half. A thousand dollars in a savings bank or in dividends on stocks in 1914, is now reduced to $500 when measured by its purchasing power.~