Time capsule: A look back at 1963 McCook

An employee recently gave me a tremendous gift. It’s a copy of the McCook Daily Gazette dated November 22, 1963. For those of you who recognize the date, be patient. I’m burying the lede intentionally because the newspaper is a time capsule; a mid-century snapshot of McCook preserved in tangible newsprint.

On the back page, Clapps Store for Women advertised a pre-Thanksgiving sale. All fall and winter ladies’ hats were marked at half price. Yes, ladies in McCook wore fashionable hats.

Other ads captured the mundane. Gambles at 210 Norris Avenue sold 12-gauge shotgun shells for $2.40 per box. A “Small house suitable for two people” rented for $50 per month, while a three-bedroom home elsewhere in town commanded the princely sum of $65. In another ad, Sliger Motor Company offered a 1960 Chrysler New Yorker for $1,995.

Empire Sales and Service at 520 West B Street promoted a 23-inch Zenith TV that was proudly “Handcrafted!” and “Handwired!” with “no printed circuits.” UHF reception was available at an additional cost.

Carpenter Funeral Home offered an oxygen-equipped ambulance.

The classified ads reflect a less recognizable world, offering positions under the headings “Help Wanted – Male” and “Help Wanted – Female.” One listing specifically sought “3 neat and personable girls, age 18-25” for travel, and the same ad specified that “English-speaking foreigners were acceptable.”

On the softer side, members of Cub Scout Den 5, Pack 149, meeting at Memorial Methodist Church, received new neckerchiefs and pins from Den Mother Merle Clifton. The McCook United Way, however, reported raising only $21,479.24 toward its goal of $39,883.76, though the oddly specific target amount went unexplained.

Meanwhile, the Fox Theatre was showing “The V.I.P.s,” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

The statewide news carried its own concerns. The Nebraska Chamber of Commerce warned that the state’s “Legislative Realignment” (AKA redistricting) would “test free enterprise.” Governor Frank Morrison, on the same day, faced criticism for using state patrol officers as “aides” during a governor’s conference hosted in Omaha.

Nationally, Congress had approved a debt-ceiling increase to the startling amount of $315 billion (for perspective, the debt ceiling was raised to $41.1 trillion in July of this year). Another article described intraparty tensions, noting that Gov. George Romney of Michigan and Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona differed on “Industry-labor relations and civil rights.” Romney insisted he would not seek the 1964 GOP nomination but left open the possibility of being drafted.

And then, of course, came the news that would eclipse all else. Under the stark headline “JFK KILLED,” the Associated Press bulletin began, “DALLAS (AP) — President John F. Kennedy, thirty-sixth president of the United States, was shot to death today by a hidden assassin armed with a high-powered rifle who also wounded Texas Gov. John Connally.

“Kennedy, 46, lived about an hour after a sniper cut him down as his limousine left downtown Dallas.

“Automatically, the mantle of the presidency fell to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, a native Texan who had been riding two cars behind the chief executive.

“There was no immediate word on when Johnson would take the oath of office.

“Kennedy died at Parkland Hospital, where his bullet-pierced body had been taken in a frantic but futile effort to save his life.”

The Associated Press article included a report that a Dallas policeman had been killed in a related incident. We now know that to be Officer J.D. Tippit, but the AP article claims that a Secret Service agent had also been killed, an assertion later retracted but a gift to conspiracy theorists handed down through time.