In 1944, Blouts set to open Colonial cafe in Aberdeen

Published 4:30 pm Monday, December 30, 2019

75 years ago

December 30, 1944

C.A. Blount, 40 years a chef with railroads and leading hotels over the country, today announced the grand opening Monday of the Colonial cafe, formerly Rube & Sue’s at Wishkah and Jefferson streets. Patrons will be served from 5 in the morning until 9 o’clock at night.

Between $7,000 and $8,000 have been spent in remodeling the cafe with a seating available to accommodate 54 patrons.

The cafe will be staffed with approximately 14 employes and Rube Walden, veteran Aberdeen restaurant proprietor who sold the cafe to the Blounts, will be the morning chef.

50 years ago

December 30, 1969

In the waning hours of the psychedelic sixties Hoquiam’s councilmen bent over backwards, crawled out on a limb and crossed their fingers that 1970 will be “the year” for Urban Renewal.

During a lengthy nail-gnawing session last night the council capped a decade of Urban Renewal dealing with a timely decision to give Auburn realtor David Morgan six more months to put together a shopping center.

The mayor called it “one more chance.”

Morgan wasn’t around, but it’s certain he’d call it lucky.

You see, the city has an $11,500 I.O.U. with his name at the bottom.

Performance deadline on Morgan’s commercial letter of credit is Wednesday, New Year’s Eve. In order to avoid forfeiting the money to the city he must deliver a new letter of credit “before bank closing time the 31st” said Mayor Rolland Youmans.

Providing the letter of credit is received on time, the council will validate its extension of the performance deadline to June 30, 1970.

25 years ago

December 30, 1994

Richard “Ornery Dick” Short was anything but shaken up after an armed gunman entered his grocery store late Thursday afternoon and made off with close to $500 in cash.

Short, who ran for governor in 1988 and 1992, was in the store’s back room when a man wearing a ski mask and wielding a small hand-gun robbed his wife, Margaret Short.

“If I’d have been there, he wouldn’t never got out of there — I’ll tell you that,” said Dick Short, 76, who got his nickname in 1956 after getting in an argument with a California public official.

Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom