25 Years Ago — Y2K An update, outlook | News of Our Past: March 29-April 4, 2024

Here are some newspaper stories published this week in years past.

25 Years Ago

Y2K An update, outlook

County officials returns from regional workshop, says prepare, don’t panic

By Nick Ellena, Staff Writer

OROVILLE — Awareness and preparedness are the keys for meeting the looming Y2K bugaboo, according to Butte County Emergency Services Office Mike Madden.

“This biggest problem we have is we do not know what we do not know,” Madden said Monday.

While the unknown hovers as a threat, preparing for it at the household level can reduce a potential technological calamity to an inconvenience, Madden said. …

Y2K refers to some computers’ inability to distinguish the year 2000 from 1900 because they use only the last two digits of the date.

Conclusions drawn at the workshop were that, while the actual impacts remain unknown, they can be minimized for the highest reaches of government and industrial operations down to individual households, Madden said.

Participants included federal and state cabinet level representatives, city, county and state emergency managers, fire marshals and Y2K coordinators from Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada and Pacific island jurisdictions. …

“The power might go out in a small area, say in Durham, but nowhere else, just like it may happen in a winter storm,” (Madden) said. …

“If prudent people prepare for Y2K, everybody should not suffer any more than they do in winter storms,” he said. “The public should know it is only going to be as serious as they allow it to become.” …

Additional worries Madden said, include:

• An increased risk from “cyber terrorists” or “nuts who are going to be out there and who are going to use this as an excuse to cause problems …

• Millenium night parties that will likely see a significant displacement of people traveling to party sites that may be impacted by traffic disruptions.

“Right in the middle of it there will be the world’s biggest parties,” Madden said. “Remember when the millenium changed over in 1900 they were still partying a year later. We expect some impact from that during this change.

— Enterprise-Record, March 31, 1999

50 Years Ago

Fraternity Contempt Charge Set

OROVILLE (E-R) — Butte County Counsel Dan Blackstock was authorized yesterday to initiate contempt proceedings against the Tau Gamma Theta fraternity at Chico State University for alleged violations of an agreement reached last February.

The agreement allowed the group to retain its use permit for a fraternity house … under special conditions that included … limitation of weekend parties to a maximum of 100 persons …

The fraternity became the focus of complaint following the strangulation murder last May of Patricia C. Farish, 18, of Chico following a beer bust at the house that was attended by an estimated 2,000 persons. The victim’s body was found the following morning in a neighboring orchard. She and Aden Rohrbough “Trey” Miller III, 23, of Chico, who was arrested for the murder, reportedly attended the kegger. Miller later hanged himself in his jail cell.

The board rescinded the permit but then entered into an agreement with the fraternity to restore it if the special conditions were observed. …

— Enterprise-Record, April 3, 1974

75 Years Ago

Chico Man Advises Doomed Oklahoman to Drink Whiskey

A daily drink of whiskey was the advice offered yesterday by an unidentified Chico man to Mrs. Heart, the Oklahoma City woman who is suffering from a heart ailment and has only one year to live.

He sent her this wire after reading of her plight in Thursday’s Chico Enterprise-Record: “Just take one little drink of the best whiskey money can buy each and every morning.” …

Mrs. Heart apparently had no comment on the Chicoan’s suggestion. The Associated Press reported that she was headed for a sanitarium today — to get away from it all and nurse her peculiar life and death problem in secrecy. …

With heart trouble, and only a year to live, what should she do with the $10,000 she has set aside to spend as she pleases? …

The response was astonishing. The Oklahoman answered nearly 1,000 telephone calls yesterday — many from far-distant states. …

The letters touched every extreme and covered all the middle ground. They ranged from pleas to seek comfort in God to the Chico suggestion for whiskey drinking.

But the ones that impressed her most told her to see more doctors.

“I just might,” said Mrs. Heart.

— Enterprise-Record, April 2, 1949

100 Years Ago

Feathered Smudge Saves Tree; Chickens in Demand

YUBA CITY, MARCH 28 — Smudge pots emit heat and smoke and save orchards from injury when the countryside is in the grip of frost. To say that chickens are on a plane with the black, sooty smudge pot in preventing the freezing of growing fruit seems unreasonable. But in Sutter county it has been proven that the unpretentious, ordinary farmyward variety of fowl really is.

Henry Kleinsorge owns an orchard of prunes in the Bogue section … The cold wave of last Friday killed virtually all of the fruit in this orchard, and when one French prune tree was found untouched by the biting frost, those who saw it were puzzled.

Then it was remembered that a few years ago chickens had begun to make the tree their roosting place at night. …

On the morning of the recent frost there were twenty or twenty-five chickens asleep in the tree. And they saved the tree, for as it is figured out now, the heat generated by their feathered bodies kept the cold from reaching the blossoms containing the young prunes.

— The Chico Record, March 30, 1924

125 Years Ago

Skeletons Found

Yesterday afternoon while a gang of workmen were engaged in grubbing out trees at the Morehead grove they came upon the skeleton of a man about two feet underground. It was supposed to be the skeleton of an Indian buried many years ago.

This forenoon the workmen found another skeleton a few feet from where the first was discovered, and in carefully examining the earth found a brass button, a bone button and a leather belt. This would indicate that the bones are more likely those of white men.

— Chico Weekly Enterprise, March 31, 1899

150 Years Ago

Hailstorm

Oroville was visited on Saturday last with one of the liveliest hailstorms ever experienced in this vicinity. It seems to have been pretty much a local affair, although there were slight storms of hail and showers of rain-fall elsewhere. Two clouds driven by adverse currents of wind met and poured down a perfect torrent of hail, the shower lasting for nearly an hour. The ground was covered with hail during the night.

— The Weekly Butte Record, April 4, 1874