Out of the past: March 28

1996

A Missouri Supreme Court decision to end the state's use tax has city and county leaders nervously waiting for more information; the 1.5% tax was levied in July 1992 on residents and businesses who buy products from other states and then store or use them in Missouri; it primarily affected mail-order businesses and large industries that import raw materials; justices threw out the tax Tuesday with a 7-0 ruling.

Hollywood has created a dark, despairing world perceived to be real but it's a world unlike anything you can find in America, said film critic and author Michael Medved; he spoke last night at Academic Auditorium on the Southeast Missouri State University campus to about 200 people; his visit was sponsored by the university's student government, the Young America's Foundation and KZIM.

1971

MARBLE HILL, Mo. -- The Rev. Thomas M. Jackson, former editor of The Banner Press newspaper here, has accepted a new position as administrative assistant of the World Evangelism Center of the United Pentecostal Church in Hazelwood, Missouri; the Jackson family moved from Marble Hill to St. Louis in 1968; he was formerly pastor of the United Pentecostal Church in Lutesville, Missouri.

The Church of God in Christ in Jackson sponsored the second annual "Black History Banquet" last night at Jackson Senior High School; Ken McDowell, director of the office of minority student affairs at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, was guest speaker.

1946

Agreeing juvenile delinquency, which hadn't been a major problem in Cape Girardeau during the war years, but appears now to be on the upswing, authorities in charge of juvenile problems advocate a trained social worker for full-time duty in the public schools and a curfew law placing the burden of responsibility on parents as two methods of combating the situation.

A plane of novel type, and the first of its kind to be here, stopped at Harris Field yesterday afternoon en route to Texarkana, Arkansas, from Urbana, Illinois; the ship was a Grumman Widgeon, a two-engine plane piloted by Hugh Hall; the ship is to return here in a few days; it can land on water or land.

1921

Much to the distress of fruit growers in the area, weather men are predicting freezing temperatures overnight, this on the heels of rain and sleet last night; Professor J.C. Logan of the State Teachers College reports apple trees and peaches have already been damaged by the cold, although some protection was given the fruit by the heavy foliage which saw an early appearance because of premature warm weather.

Members of the Farmers' Cooperative Association of Cape Girardeau County are out soliciting stock subscriptions for a bonded warehouse they propose to build on North Main Street; the basement of the structure would be used as a stockyard and will be fitted up with all modern conveniences for handling livestock in carload lots; the first floor would be utilized as a storeroom for stock feed, flour, fertilizer and other essentials for the farmer; the third floor would be equipped with a grain elevator and used for the storing of grain.

-- Sharon K. Sanders