Past Pages Nov. 20

130 YEARS AGO

Curious: Very seldom does a woman sit at the door of a church pew. Why? It remains that men sit at the door as part of an old custom which originated in the unsettled times when every colonist in American towns took his gun with him to a place of public worship as a defense in case of Indian attack.

120 YEARS AGO

Silver City: Now the liveliest camp of its size in the state. Everybody is working, money plentiful, poker games frequent and whiskey abundant.

70 YEARS AGO

Costs up: Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings that the Nevada housewife is already planning for Thanksgiving will cost $1.50 more than the same dinner did in 1940. This year the lucky will be the housewife who manages to squeeze below a $6.50 repast.

50 YEARS AGO

Fort Churchill is long overdue for recognition. The State Park Commission is applying immediately for the Registry of National Historic Landmarks. The old military outpost was a base of historic facts relating to the early settlement and establishment of Nevada and its role in the Civil War.

30 YEARS AGO

Deregulation: Cheap telephone service for Nevada residents will become a thing of the past pending steps toward deregulation of the nation's telephone systems. Nevadans living in urban areas could pay $30 per month service fees, and rural areas could jump from $5 per month to $50.

10 YEARS AGO

Nevada's unemployment rate jumped 1.5 percent following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as resorts laid off employees, thus increasing Nevada's unemployment rate to 6.3 percent, a full percent higher than the national rate.

• Sue Ballew is the daughter of Bill Dolan, who wrote this column for the Nevada Appeal from 1947 until his death in 2006.