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Sunday, January 9, 2011

20 cents a dance

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a treasure chest of mansfield history is displayed in the sherman room of the richland county public library.
among shelves and shelves of treasures are microfilm copies of mansfield history dating back to the 1880s.
items can be photographed directly from the display, or copies printed for 20 cents each.

a vague memory of the leah sternbaum murder and the sternbaum grocery market with the help of the librarian
led me to facts, and not the cloudy fuzzy memory of a then 8 year old aloc. he had uncharacteristically slept downstairs  nestled deep in the feather mattress that cold december night;  railroad workers who couldn't make it home were staying the night.  around midnight an endless  parade of sirens, for a house that proved less than a block away, began.  

i had been to the sternbaum market almost daily during my 7 years.  stores were not open on sundays in those days because of what were called blue laws.

a few notes about my perusal of a couple of news journals from the date. mansfield had hundreds of businesses marketting american made products and services with pride.
hometown newspapers were vibrant and important, and often corrupt.



about the sternbaum case, pages and pages of court testimony were printed verbatim on many pages of the mansfield news journal.

note that max's father's funeral(founder of the market)occurred the same day the jury was deliberating.
attending one's father's funeral with a death sentence looming must be an incredible emotional stress.
note also that max sternbaum, within a month or 2, married for a 3rd time. note that his wife-to-be did not attend, nor was she mentioned in the lengthy trial.
public conjecture at the time assumed max sternbaum's guilt. i agree.



at the world level at that time, young american soldiers were fighting, dying, and being maimed for life in faroff korea
news of the the first h-bomb detonated was in the banter of the day.
5 u.s. congressmen were shot in one day.




























haunted heart



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