For your reading enjoyment, we continue to publish Rambling Vines by the late Marylea Vines as she recalls events and names of Corning folks from many years ago. We are currently in the year 1990

Dame Rumor… It beats all how quickly a rumor can start and how fast it can travel. Go out on the streets of Corning and set a little gossip to going and tomorrow morning try to find someone who hasn’t heard it. Yet this community is not different from any other in that respect. No town is too small, and no city too large, for rumors to break speed records.

Old Dame Rumor has been the cause of suicides and murders, of bank failures and bankruptcies, of home, church, and school wrecking, and never to anyone’s knowledge has she been credited with a well-intentioned deed. She has been fooling people for thousands of years and getting by with it, and there’s no reason to think she won’t be doing business at the same old stand a thousand years from now. Politicians work her overtime, and even in Washington’s day she was so active he declared he would rather fight a whole army than one vicious rumor.

The worst enemy of prosperity, the worst enemy of progress, the greatest enemy of happiness and the biggest liar in the world, Dame Rumor has no one to come out and fight for her in the open, but millions support her secretly. And quite often the very best citizens in a community are the ones most guilty of harboring her. But one real enemy has she, and that is the closed ear. Refusing to listen is the only known way of squelching her, but it takes a pretty strong-willed person to do that. Try turning a deaf ear next time you want to test your willpower. It is your only hope of putting Dame Rumor out of business. (Courier, July 1931).

Call me goofy or whatever you want to, I couldn’t stand it. Enroute to work early on a recent morning I noticed that a little cat, about half-grown, had been hit by a vehicle, and was left lying in the middle of Third street. I came on to work and dismissed it from my mind until about 9:00 a.m. when I traveled that street again and… there it was! I couldn’t stand it any longer, Here I came back to the office, got a box and some papers, and went back over there to get it off the blacktop. It wasn’t much, but I sure hope that if anything like that should happen to Little Putter, that someone would at least drag him out of the traffic.

Well, the unofficial census figures are out, and some folks are having a spell about them… and there is just cause. Those figures will determine a lot of things, like turn-back money for the next ten years. If anyone will just take the time to list all the houses in town where they actually know only one person resides, then count the ones where only two persons reside, they might get an eye-opener. My count wasn’t too accurate, because I don’t know everyone in all areas of the city anymore, I just put down the ones I knew for sure on both and we are talking about some 250-350 households of one or two persons! I wanted us to have an increase in population, too, and I feel that some households were completely skipped, but at the same time with the school enumeration continuing to decline each year, people are going somewhere! What we need to do is ban together in an effort to “Sell Corning” and all our fine points to people who are looking for a new location in a good community.

Ever heard of fried cucumbers. My uncle and aunt came up with the idea of peeling and slicing cucumbers as if to fix them with vinegar and onion rings, but instead, rolled them in a flour mixture and deep fried them. Pretty good eating while they are hot… but not so great once they get cold. Fixed this way, cucumbers are sort of in the same category as fried green tomatoes.

It’s getting popcorn weather again… cool evenings to just take it easy around the house and pop up a batch of popcorn. Even though most of my popcorn is done in the microwave, I still have one old black-bottom stewer that is used for nothing but homemade popcorn. It tastes better if nothing else is cooked in the stewer.

I was telling some of my young co-workers about our Depression caramel popcorn and they only half believed it. We really did used to make our own caramel corn. What you do is use a minimum amount of cooking oil, put in the popcorn and just before it begins to pop, sprinkle rather heavily with white sugar, put the lid on, and wait as you would for ordinary popcorn only you have to shake it a lot. It really has the appearance of popcorn balls that failed, but the taste is good. Tread carefully for a few minutes after removing from the stove burner… that sugar has melted, it is rather sticky and burns like the very dickens!

Harris Purvis of Lummi Island, Washington, formerly of Corning, needs some help. Somewhere there is a Blue School picture, made about 1912-1913 with him included among the students, seated on a long bench. If anyone has this picture, I would appreciate borrowing it, so that I can have copies made for his son, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Harris E. Purvis is an uncle of Harold Poynor, Corning, and many old-timers remember him.