When Newspapers Read Like Novellas

 Fun With Purple Prose or How Not to Catch a Train

Caught this masterful missive on one of my local Facebook groups. It's a 90-year-old dispatch from the Mount Pleasant Courier, a now-defunct title for a northern New York City suburb. The dispatch, about a car that made a wrong turn onto railroad tracks, is a compelling yarn by itself. But what makes it fun is how it's written--breathless, totally unironic but likely in keeping with the norms of small-town newspapering in the 1930s.

To wit:

"He had proceeded about an eighth of a mile when the dawn came up like thunder behind him and he sailed out of his car and spun like a maple leaf into the bushes many yards away, shocked but otherwise unhurt. As men in railroad overalls gathered about the bushes to determine if he were killed, it dawned on young Mr. Koerner that had been driving down the right-of-way of the New York Central and had been rammed by the morning's first passenger train on the Putnam division, bound for New York."

Love it! Of course, try writing like that today and your editor will let out a hearty laugh while ensuring the door hit you on the way out. But different times. And, fortunately, you can't get into the same mess as young Mr. Koerner anymore. The Putnam division went kaput in 1958, and the right-of-way (you can still spot a few remnants of tracks) is now a popular bike trail in Westchester County.