One of the perks that comes from writing about local history is that people contact me when they’ve got some to share. Recently, that happened when I received a package from the Minetto Historical Society’s Karen Rogers Capeling. Karen follows my Valley News column and thought I’d be interested to see some early issues of the newspaper. When Karen said early, she meant early.

Carefully wrapped in a clear plastic bag were a dozen copies of the Oswego Valley Rural News, the precursor to today’s Valley News. When I noticed the year they were published, 1948, I realized that I was holding in my hands issues published within the newspaper’s first year!

I was aware of our hometown paper’s birth date because I’d had the privilege of learning its history from someone who was there when it started: Vince Caravan. I met Vince, the longtime editor of The Valley News, in 2013, when the Fulton Library was launching its Memoir Project. The Project’s goal is to capture the bygone days of Fulton in the voices of those who made its history. Vince signed up to write his memories and in them he included information on how the paper got started.

“The Valley News was launched October 7, 1947, in the town of Granby,” Vince wrote. “Operations began in the cellar of the Colson and Beatrice Carr home on Route 8, fifty yards north of Route 3. It was a mimeographed sheet containing news about the local inhabitants and was named Oswego River Valley Rural News.”

Once I reread that passage by Vince, I took a closer look at the newspapers I’d been given. They were, in fact, a news sheet…actually, they were several sheets. Printed on legal size paper, the issues were a dozen or pages stapled together. It looked to me a lot like those “newspapers” kids used to create and mimeograph to distribute around the neighborhood: “Come to our carnival to raise money for the fight against Muscular Dystrophy!” “New kittens for sale. Cute!”

In fact, the early issues of Oswego Valley Rural News were a lot like those neighborhood bulletins. The issues I’d been given didn’t have much of what we consider news today. There wasn’t anything about the political scene. No sports scores were listed. And there wasn’t a wedding photo to be seen. To be fair, there weren’t any photos at all. Instead, there were sketches. Lots of them.

Drawings were over half of the newspaper’s content. Most promoted local businesses and reviewing them took me on a 75-year road trip back to a simpler retail world. Sunoco Gas & Oil used the silhouette of an
airborne deer to promote its product “for longer mileage and smoother riding comfort.” Along with their quality gasoline, Sunoco also offered tire & tube repair, batteries and accessories. They’d throw in a car wash, too. Now that’s a full service station.

Mott’s Furniture, with stores in Fulton, Cato and Hannibal, filled their ad with familiar brand names: Maytag, Westinghouse, Zenith, Hoover, RCA. Their sketch of a complete bedroom set looked appealing and you could buy one by calling the Fulton store’s phone number: 376-R; Cato’s number was even simpler: 68.

During the holidays, the Rural News offered a full-page ad from Oswego’s Gift Center on West Bridge Street. They were running a special on Christmas cards. Individual purchases started at a nickel and a whole box went for fifty cents. Stick on a three-cent postage stamp and you could send plenty of holiday cheer for a couple dollars.

There were advertisements for neighborhood grocers, car dealers and paint stores. Crop farmers even took out ads: Anthony Cocopoti invited folks to his Granby-Minetto Road farm, where a bushel of tomatoes went
for $3.00—your choice of ripe or green.

Surprisingly, there were a few businesses advertising that are still doing so today. Hudson’s Dairy offered milk, cream and ice cream, and the Midway Drive-In was playing “Copacabana” with Groucho Marx and Carmen
Miranda.

Based on its double-page ad, Lysander’s “Old Home Days” expected big crowds. The two-day event included a parade, church dinner and prize drawings. A boy’s quartet and the Community Sing group promised to send music through their village.

Every issue of Rural News ran the “Just What You’ve Been Looking For!” column, where people could find deals on had-to-have items: canaries (“Guaranteed singers,” the advertiser promised.), ladies calfskin riding boots, rye seed for planting, and plenty of quality hardwood to keep your house toasty warm.

A quarter-page was devoted to local churches, which the paper noted “improves your community.” Listed were the Bristol Hill Congregational Church, the Dexterville Seventh-Day Adventist, and Methodist Churches located in Bowens Corners, Granby Center, Little Utica, Vermillion and Clifford.

I’d never heard of some of those church locations, nor was I familiar with all the communities that the Rural
News served. Listed on its front page were some well-known areas: Granby Center, Bowens Corners, Mount Pleasant and Volney Center. But others, like Farm-to-Market Road, Suttons Corners, Eight Notes, Jacksonville Road and Cattrack-Cody, seem to have been lost to history.

But people who lived in those towns, villages or four corners cared about each other and the Rural News
took note of that—literally. About a third of the paper was short narratives of what neighbors were up to. Each community had its own reporter who tracked down the stories.

The sleuthing those reporters did must have worked because the paper thrived. At the bottom of the front page was this offer: You could subscribe to Rural News, which would be “mailed to subscribers every Friday anyplace in the United States” for $2.50 a year! The offer was appealing since the caption under the newspaper’s name boasted “5,000 Potential Readers.” Pretty impressive for a newspaper printed in
the basement of a country home.