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AS the country celebrates the seventy-fifth birthday of the National Health Service, Monmouth is to mark the occasion with a book about working or being treated at its cottage hospital. ....
Jeff Rankin: Historic Monmouth store fell victim to retail trends Jeff Rankin The Rankin File As long ago as the early 1960s, downtown Monmouth merchants were worried about the encroachment of shopping centers and discount stores on traditional retail establishments. We know now that they had good reason to worry. One of those merchants was about as traditional as you could find. Fred Schmitz, who for more than a quarter century ran a fabric store on the Public Square, showing up every day wearing a white shirt and bowtie, announced in 1963 that he was going to retire. His wife, Mary, whose name he had combined with his own to christen the store Mayfred’s in 1937, had died the previous year, and he likely felt the time had come to gracefully bow out of the business. ....
Jeff Rankin: Before automatic washers, steam laundries relieved drudgery By Jeff Rankin The Rankin File Throughout much of the 19th century, most laundry was done by hand in a laborious process that often stretched over three days. Some cities offered commercial laundries, but the work was still done by hand, often by Chinese immigrants who toiled long working days for minimal wages. The invention of the steam laundry began to change all that. Steam laundries did not clean with steam. Rather, they made use of a boiler and a steam engine to power the machinery. The boiler also created hot water for the laundry and steam for a commercial press that eliminated the need to use hand irons heated on a stove, which could scorch clothing. ....
Jeff Rankin: Beloved veterinarian played Santa for decades By Jeff Rankin The Rankin File Dr. Vird Odell Cudd had as many vocations as Forrest Gump, working as a circus performer, professor, veterinarian, would-be sheriff, philanthropist and elephant caretaker, but his favorite role by far was Santa Claus. When the colorful longtime Monmouth resident died in 1964 at the age of 88, “Doc” Cudd was beloved by generations of local children for donning an increasingly threadbare red suit and jingling sleigh bells year after year, a tradition he began in 1897 at the age of 22. Perhaps it was Cudd’s birth, a week before Christmas in a South Carolina snowstorm, that inspired his passion. It was “the worst snow and windstorm ever to hit that state,” he once quipped, “but the doctor still had to run 20 miles to catch me.” ....