As I write this week’s editor’s note, I have a bound volume containing every edition of the Blue Mountain Eagle from 1971 open on my desk. I’ve been poring over the paper’s coverage of the filming of “Napoleon and Samantha” here in Grant County for a story about the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release, which is coming up next week.

But as fascinating as those stories are, it’s hard not to get distracted by all the other stuff on the page. The pages themselves are the full broadsheet size, not the narrower width that so many of today’s journals, including the Eagle, have gone to in reaction to soaring newsprint costs. The cover price was 15 cents. T-bone steak was $1.39 a pound at the local market. 

News coverage had a different feel as well. Many of the stories are short, often just a paragraph or two. The vast majority appear to have been written by editor and publisher John Moreau, although he seemingly never gave himself a byline. Some of the inside pages are filled with stories by correspondents from around the county, mostly reports on whose grandchildren came to visit and what they did while they were here or where local residents traveled on vacation and what they saw out there in the wide world.

My favorite find so far is a front page item in the Aug. 12 edition on the “men’s lib” movement at Grant Union High School. It seems pressure was building to relax the dress code for boys after the girls won permission to wear slacks to school. The school board finally relented and allowed the boys to come to class sporting beards and wearing Bermuda shorts. 

In case you missed last week’s edition, we had stories on controversial plans for the first development in John Day’s Innovation Gateway project, a lucrative consulting contract for former John Day City Manager Nick Green, a BMW motorcycle rally and the dramatic rescue of a woman and her dog trapped in a vehicle that crashed into a creek.

Our plans for this week’s paper include stories on how Grant County department heads are reacting to cuts in their budgets, how the pandemic has financially impacted the local hospital, a hefty grant for Painted Sky and the 50th anniversary of the locally filmed Disney movie “Napoleon and Samantha.”

As always, I want to take this opportunity to thank our subscribers for their support. We can’t do this work without you!