It was cold with lots of snow on the ground when we published our first edition of the Vindicator the first week of January 40 years ago. The snow was bladed into the center of Broadway by Frank Freeland but, unlike the present when the city hauls it away, it stayed there until warm temperatures melted it.

Waist high or more, a path was cut through the bank so we could get from the print shop to the East Cafe, or Ulcer Gulch, for coffee and the dinner fare cooked up by Willard and Gay Trimble.

Both the print shop and the cafe were in the 300 block and both are gone now. In those days a business would never have its own coffee pot. As busy as we were, coffee breaks were taken morning and afternoon, more for the social aspect of visiting with everyone rather than the need to rest.

We also had the choice of Arthur’s Cafe and Gragg’s Recreation. Arthur’s closed soon after we arrived and we moved the print shop across from Gragg’s three or four years later and frequented it more often. Then they were all gone.

When previous editor Frank Williams escorted me on rounds to introduce me throughout the county, we had chili and hamburgers at the Family Room in Meriden. The Kitchen was the main hub for gatherings in the county seat where I attended countless meetings of the Perry Reservoir Area Assocation, which changed its name to Perry Lake Association when it sponsored the dedication in 1970.

The Wilson and Davis families had signed a contract in December to buy the paper and came here looking for housing. There wasn’t any. We watched “Doctor Zhivago” at the Rio Theater and went home without finding a home. Home then was Oakley for the Wilsons and Sharon Springs for the Davises.

Dan Sheldon was one of the real estate and insurance agents in town and a one-man chamber of commerce. He called me in Sharon Springs to tell me he had found us a house to rent five miles south of town. He paid the rent out of his pocket to hold it for us. The Wilsons delayed their move. Robert lived with us and moved his family a month later to a rural house northeast of town.

Jefferson County had undergone a radical transformation prior to us coming here. Putting a federal reservoir as big as Perry in the middle of the county uprooted a lot of people, moved an unincorporated village, and plunged the tax base to an all time low. There were people pleased to have been bought out and went on to do something else with their lives. However, those things catch people at different stages of their lives and for some it was a bitter struggle they lost.

I was spared the worst of it. It was a done deal when I got here. The dam was constructed and a flood had filled the lake once before I arrived. It was then emptied to finish the job. I could still drive on the old roads that once carried traffic where there is now water, but we had aerial photos of a full lake from the flood.

Jefferson County was hit with more than 1 million visitors to the lake in those early years, a time when one sheriff and an undersheriff was the total number of county law enforcement personnel. The sheriff’s wife was expected to cook the prisoners’ meals. There were no ambulances, no emergency medical technicians, and fire departments were equipped with little more than a World War II truck with a water tank on it.

County Commissioner Max Engle and PLA President Will Smith went to the nation’s capital to inform Congress of what the county was dealing with, focusing mostly on the gravel roads failing to stand up to the traffic. The trip resulted in the federal government providing 17 miles of new paved roads built to state secondary standards. Those miles include the Ferguson from K-16 south to K-92, West Lake Road from K-92 south, and a stretch from near the dam into Perry. I think someone needs to make another trip.

The newspaper, too, went through radical changes from the mechanical age to the computer age. The Linotype and machines of the hot metal and letterpress days used for more than half a century are now in the local museum. Several generations of computers have come and gone over the past 30 years until now if one just keeps poking keys on this keyboard a newspaper somehow appears.

The Wilson and Davis partnership ended well after 25 years. One son, Corey, joined his parents 15 years ago bringing promise of another generation and along with a good staff, we begin yet another year.

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