Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Fred W. Snell, a young Spokane mail carrier, was sweet on a certain Miss Alice Odom, of Connell, Wash. He traveled to Connell to call on Miss Odom, but he was “shooed away and told not to return” by her father, who wanted his daughters to remain at home with him.

Since her father was Connell’s town marshal, a lot of suitors would have given up. Not Fred Snell. He vowed, “I’ll get her yet,” and soon implemented a plan.

He enlisted a mutual friend to take Miss Odom to the nearest train station and put her on the train to Spokane. Fred was waiting for her at the depot, and they hurried to the courthouse and got married.

This was the third Odom daughter to elope.

From the ice cream beat: A 5-year-old girl walked up to the counter and said, “Gimme a chocolate ice cream soda, mister!”

The clerk gently replied that he could not fulfill that order. When she forlornly asked why, he informed her that she was at a bank, not a soda fountain. He pointed her in the direction of the nearest soda fountain.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1943: Allied air forces raided Rome during World War II, the same day Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met in Feltre in northern Italy.