1900s Book Brings Laughter Back to Morrison County

LITTLE FALLS (WJON News) -- A forgotten treasure is getting new life in a monthly Central Minnesota update. The Morrison County Historical Society recently found the forgotten 1900s book "Catchy Comic Dialogues" in a cabinet during a power outage in the Weyerhaeuser Memorial Museum. The book was used by Rose Frances (Vasaly), a teacher in Little Falls, to practice public speaking.

Museum Manager Alesha Ouren says while the humour doesn't always stand up, they decided to share one joke from the book every month in the Historical Society's newsletter:

"It's from so early in the 20th Century that the humour is so odd to look back on. It aged poorly, but I just thought it was a fun way to, a fun thing to talk about and bring up, but because it's not specifically Morrison County history, like this is a book that could be used in any classroom across the country."

Ouren says in addition to the book, they found old knitting magazines, JCPenney catalogs, and old school homework.

The book is about 120 pages, and they have enough material for the monthly joke to last at least a few years. Ouren says, while there are not many notes from Frances in the book, there is some neat information:

"The most we have are students names written next to characters, so some of the plays we know that they did, they performed in class. So we have, I just opened to a random one called Selling a Telegram, we have a Tracy and an Arnold playing the characters in there."

Ouren says you have to use your imagination and think of the context of when Frances may have used the book in her classes. She says they hope by sharing the names and the jokes that people will connect with the shared history from the book.

READ MORE FROM AUTHOR PAUL HABSTRITT