Thirty years ago this month, headlines in the Valley News told of stories that have ramifications today.
The Idlenot Farm Dairy announced it was closing its milk plant in Wilder, part of the long, regrettable decline in dairy farming in the region.
Striking workers at NYNEX, a precursor to Verizon, picketed outside company offices in White River Junction, an early battle in the massive transformation in the telecommunications industry as well as a battle for labor rights.
Excavation started at a dump site at an old copper mine in Strafford, an acknowledgment that there might be a pollution problem.
Today, almost $90 million later, work still continues on what eventually became the Elizabeth Mine Superfund site, though the end is near.
And baseball great Pete Rose was banned from the major leagues for life for gambling on his own team. Charlie Hustle, the all-time leader with 4,256 hits, still isn’t in the Hall of Fame.
The paper also ran photographs that, in their own ways, resonate today.
Two boys are skateboarding on the sidewalk in Windsor, after the Selectboard decided not to restrict their use downtown. There isn’t another person in sight, and the boys give life to Main Street, as they would now, as well.
Another photograph shows an immigrant working in an Asian restaurant in West Lebanon, planning to go to a state college and get a better job, as many newcomers to the Upper Valley continue to do.
And construction workers were photographed replacing bolts on the bridge that carries Route 5 over the White River, part of the routine maintenance required to keep roads and bridges safe and functioning.
One of the photos shows Norwich resident Jake Guest dumping a load of corn into a truck after picking it by hand.
Guest and his wife Liz sold their Route 5 farm stand, Killdeer Farm, in late 2016, but he continues to grow corn that is sold there. And sweet corn remains a hands-on job.
“I don’t think there is anybody in the Upper Valley who picks sweet corn with a machine,” Guest, now 75, said last week. “All the silage corn is picked with a machine.”
Guest occasionally picks some corn, but has another primary function these days.
“I’m usually the guy who drives the truck to the stand,” he said.
That rich Connecticut River Valley soil keeps on doing its thing, even as the human world swirls around it.