Norovirus and the flu

I've been suffering for the past few days with what I assume to be norovirus, sometimes called the stomach flu. As I understand it, norovirus is a completely separate disease from the regular flu. The main symptoms are vomiting, diarrhea, and general weakness. However, you don't usually run a fever with norovirus as you do with the regular flu or at least not as much, and you tend to get over it quite a bit quicker. Even though the two maladies are unrelated, being sick with the stomach flu, got me to thinking about the regular flu, and I did a little combing through newspapers during the time of the great flu epidemic of 1918-1919. I've already written about this pandemic a couple of years ago; so I won't repeat the basic history of the outbreak. However, I wanted to share a couple of interesting items I found in Springfield newspapers pertaining to the flu epidemic.
By February 1919, the great flu epidemic was beginning to subside, but concern over the disease was still very much on people's minds. Scientists and medical professionals were trying to come up with ways to prevent the disease or lessen its effects, and even editorial observers sometimes offered their opinions as to how best to control the disease. For instance, the Wichita Beacon published a list of tips on how to prevent or minimize the flu, and the Springfield Republican reprinted the article. The list was really just a list of tips for maintaining overall health, since the Beacon prefaced the list with the observation that people who were in overall good health tended to be less susceptible to the flu than those who were already in a weakened condition. The newspaper advised:
"Let us sleep with the windows open."
"Drink a glass of water for every waking hour."
"Eat less of concentrated foods and more of fruits and vegetables, and keep on the hungry side of our appetites."
"Let us walk a part way to and from work, and keep in the open on Sundays."
"Practice deep breathing in the open."
"Do not get frightened at the first symptoms.... The fear of the disease weakens the resistance."
"Do not get angry nor entertain resentments toward anyone, for anger and hate create poisonous toxins in the body."
Some of these bits of advice, the author admitted, might be foolish, but then again, he reminded readers, scientists often conducted experiments on "the vaguest possible theory."
Some of these tips many health professionals would probably still endorse today, such as eating fruits and vegetables. Others maybe not so much, like sleeping with the windows open.
Even a year later, in February 1920, the flu was still very much a public concern, in Springfield as well as throughout the rest of the country. Early that month a group of university student leaders in Springfield adopted a resolution calling upon the city to close all schools, churches, and places of amusement until the danger of another flu epidemic had passed.

Northview

The Ozarks, like nearly every other area of the country, I imagine, has a lot of small towns that enjoyed prosperity many years ago but have since become almost ghost towns. Once such community is Northview, Missouri, located in Webster County along I-44 about halfway between Strafford and Marshfield. Actually, it sits off I-44 a short distance to the south on a hill and is not even visible from the highway. In fact, the construction of I-44, which bypassed the town, was one of several factors that contributed to Northview's decline.

I think I've only been to Northview once in my life, about fifty years ago, and even then there wasn't much left of the town. But once upon a time, it was a booming little community. When Northview first came into existence, about the time of the Civil War, it was called Bunker Hill, and there is still a road at Northview called Bunker Hill Road. Around 1870, the name was changed to Northview, when the railroad came through and railroad workers said the spot offered a good north view.

A library society was organized at Northview in January 1881, and the first Sunday school was organized in June of the same year. An influx of Germans settled near Northview in 1883. In the late 1880s, the town sported one general store, a blacksmith shop, and several residences.

A mining boom spurred the growth of Northview after lead, zinc, and perhaps other ores were discovered just south of the town in 1891. The community enjoyed its greatest prosperity, however, from about the beginning until about the middle of the twentieth century. During the early 1900s, Northview had a school and a number of businesses, including a bank and a canning factory. It also had a town baseball team that competed against surrounding towns, like Niangua and Strafford. In 1930, the Northview bank closed, as did a lot of small-town banks during the Depression. The bank failure was perhaps the beginning of Northview's downward arc. With the coming of automobiles, the number of passengers arriving and departing Northview by rail declined drastically, and many people started driving to larger surrounding towns to do their shopping. The construction of I-44 was one of the last nails in the coffin, as automobiles no longer passed through the town along Route 66, as they had in the past.

In 2005, 96-year-old Eva Lena Cruise, who'd grown up in Northview during the 1920s, remembered the place as a "bustling little town," but by the time I made my one and only visit to Northview in the late 1960s, its heyday was already long past. Today, there are still a few residences at Northview but not much else, as far as I can tell without actually visiting the place.    

Aldridge-Crawford Shooting

On Wednesday, April 20, 1892, neighbors 44-year-old John Crawford and 47-year-old Nathaniel Aldridge of Ozark County, Missouri, got into a dispute over what one report at the time called "family matters." The argument led to a "shooting scrape" in which Aldridge (name given as Aldrich in some reports) was killed instantly and Crawford was wounded. The latter retreated to his house, and Aldridge's twenty-three-year-old son, Joe, who'd taken a part in the confrontation, went after him. Joe Aldridge tried to gain admission at the Crawford residence but was denied entrance. As he was being put out, though, he fired at random, and the bullet found "a resting place in Crawford's eye, killing him instantly." Young Aldridge, who was slightly wounded in the melee, was arrested for his part in the deadly affray, along with two of his brothers who had no part in the incident.
Another contemporaneous report stated that the disagreement grew out of a disturbance that Joe Aldridge had caused at the church Crawford attended, but a grandson of Crawford said many years later that the Aldridges came to the Crawford place angry over a disputed fence. The second contemporaneous report, unlike the first, claimed that Joe Aldridge suffered serious injuries, so serious that it was doubtful whether he would ever be able to testify.
Both dead men, according to contemporaneous reports, were well thought of in the community, and excitement ran high in the immediate aftermath of the double tragedy. Nat Aldridge, a "well-known stockman and cattle dealer," was buried in the Mammouth Cemetery a few miles south of Gainesville, near where both men lived, while Crawford was buried at the Gainesville Cemetery in Gainesville.
Apparently the first report was more accurate than the second, at least as far as Joe Aldridge's injuries were concerned, because he did recover and go on to marry and have kids. The outcome of the legal proceedings against him for the killing of Crawford, if indeed there were any, has not been determined, however.

Murder of Betty Tapp

I usually prefer to write about things that happened many years ago, as in fifty years ago or more. Things that happened during my lifetime, at least things that happened since I've been old enough to remember them, don't seem quite as much like history to me. But then I stop and realize that, when I first starting writing about historical topics, my adult lifetime had only spanned about 25 years. Now it has spanned over 50 years. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I need to redefine my concept of  what constitutes history. With that in mind, I'm going to write today about something that happened a little over 30 years ago and that I well remember: the murder of Betty Tapp of Joplin.

On the early morning of Saturday, February 15, 1986, Jerry Tapp came home from work to discover the dead body of his 42-year-old wife Betty in the floor of their home on College View Drive in Joplin. She had suffered multiple stab wounds. The couple's Down's Syndrome daughter told her father that "Doc" had committed the crime.
The Tapps had formerly employed a man named Clendell Sanders (aka Sandles) in their janitorial service business, and they knew him as Doc. Acting on this lead and others, police located the 32-year-old Sanders driving near Wichita, Kansas, late Saturday morning, pulled him over, and arrested him. When apprehended, Sanders admitted killing Betty Tapp. He said that when he got off work late Friday night from his job as an aide at Oak Hill Hospital, he drank several alcoholic drinks and then went to the Tapp residence in the wee hours of Saturday morning. He claimed that he and Betty had consensual sex at first but then for some reason unknown even to himself he ended up stabbing her, although he admitted to stabbing her only once. An examination of Betty Tapp's body revealed that she had indeed had sex shortly before her death, but the police felt it was a case of rape, not consensual sex.
Sanders was brought back to Joplin and went on trial there in October 1986. He was convicted of first-degree murder, but the jury could not agree on the punishment. Eleven favored the death penalty, but one held out for life imprisonment. The decision was then put in the hands of the judge, who sentenced Sanders to death.
The defense appealed the case to the Missouri Supreme Court on the grounds that Sanders should have been granted a new trial and various other exceptions. In early 1988, the high court affirmed the lower court's verdict, but Sanders died of a heart attack in prison before his execution could be carried out.