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This Week in Rockland: Newspaper Excerpts: Flashback Friday: Week of June 9

June 7, 1873 – 150 YEARS AGO
Rockland County Journal

AROUND HOME
   ☞ The members of the Tappan Zee Club opened the season on Thursday evening by inviting a number of ladies to accompany them in their barge.
   ☞ Charles Haines has nearly completed a handsome sixteen feet working boat. Charley is a thorough workman and the public will soon appreciate the fact.
   ☞ For two weeks past teamsters have been engaged in hauling the furniture of the Palmer House from the steamboat landing, and they are not half through yet.
   ☞ Louis Hoffer’s new Opera House has been occupied during the week with Crossen’s Combination Theatrical Troupe. Fair audiences have been in attendance.
   ☞ The ash pan of the locomotive which brings up the 8:30 train, was torn into on Monday evening by a warped plank at the crossing between Grandview and Mansfield Avenue stations,
   ☞ The Mary Powell passed up on Wednesday, looking like a bride adorned for the bride groom. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” says the poet, and that the Mary is a beauty is beyond question.

June 8, 1923 – 100 YEARS AGO
Pearl River News

AN HISTORICAL INCIDENT OF YE OLDEN DAYS — A POPULAR TALE CONCERNING THE OLD SALISBURY HOUSE WHERE OCCURRED THE UNVEILING OF A TABLET, LAST SATURDAY
[Image: Salisbury House demolition, 1959. Parkhurst collection, Nyack Library via NYHeritage]
       Local history furnishes some interesting data concerning the old Salisbury house at South Nyack, N.Y., one of the oldest in that part of the country, situated on Piermont avenue, where was held the tablet unveiling ceremonies of the Rockland County Society on the second of June.
       The Misses Salisbury occupy the house now, which was built by their great-great-grandfather, Michael Cornelison, in 1770. Many have been the additions to the building since then; and now it is a long brownstone structure with a deep sloping roof.
       It is said that some English officers occupied this house during the revolutionary war. The English general having spoken harshly to a private, the latter, in the evening, while the officers were at dinner (in the old sitting room), stood by the wall and fired a shotgun at him.
       Tho the General’s life was saved by poor marksmanship, the bullet passing harmlessly over his head, it entered the mantlepiece in that room and, in all probability, lies embedded within the wood. At least the hole is there, for curious visitors to speculate about.
       At the unveiling of the tablet at the Salisbury house, H. P. McKenney, of Suffern, President of the Rockland County Society, presided at the dinner.

June 7, 1973 – 50 YEARS AGO
The Journal News

DON’T CALL ME SHE, PLEEUZ
       Ray Odell delights in surprising callers with a cheery and masculine, “Can I help you?” And generally, he says, they’re surprised, for male telephone operators are still a rarity, though they seem to be the coming trend.
       The Nyack telephone office has three men manning the switchboards and two more are in training. Other men work in Spring Valley.
       “It’s a goof,” said Odell, 18, of 19 North Street, Grassy Point. “The expressions you get from people are sort of—what are you doing on my phone? Others just don’t know what to say when they hear my voice and there’s this uncomfortable silence. Then the customer will ask me questions like ‘Are you really an operator?’ and ‘How did you get the job?’ “
       Odell said that most of the women operators “get a kick out of a man working there. The older women don’t snob [sic] me but they feel it’s a wrong job for a man. But they’ve accepted it.
       “But my girl friend hasn’t. She doesn’t like it at all. She hates it. She doesn’t know what I’m doing with all these women around,” Odell said.
       Ray works with more than 130 female operators.
       Odell said that while he has enjoyed his seven months at the switchboard, he would prefer being an installer or a frameman so that he could work outside. He said that some women are getting into those fields now just as he has invaded their domain.
       Miss J. J. Kwasnicki, the chief operator at Nyack, said “Ray is doing beautifully. He’s just as good as a woman.”
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