“Name that Year” is designed to put your knowledge of Tracy and its newsmakers of the past to the test. Each week, we will publish a news item that ran in a past edition — maybe it was a major event, or a story about a Tracy resident — it’s up to you to determine in what year that particular news item hit the pages of the paper:
• WHAT WAS SAID TO BE THE MOST COSTLY FIRE IN CURRIE’S HISTORY lighted the pre-dawn sky in north-central Murray County on a March day of this year, causing an estimated $1 million in damages to Schmitz Grain Company.
Firemen from Tracy, Slayton and Marshall joined the Currie volunteers in battling the blaze, which destroyed the elevator, its office, an older storage elevator and a feed shed, not to mention damage to huge steel grain bins at the site. The complex was still smoldering Tuesday of this week as a South Dakota salvage company worked to remove damaged grain and clean up the debris.
From his temporary office in the Pommier Realty building in downtown Currie, elevator owner Norbert Schmitz was working to pick up the pieces of the business he has owned since June of 1970 when he bought the private elevator from Ray Paal.
“We’re open for business and our telephone number remains the same,” said Schmitz.
The firm’s feed mill and chemical and fertilizer stocks are intact, he said, and the company will be buying grain again soon.
Schmitz has high hopes to rebuild once his insurance settlement is finalized, probably on the same site, since the firm’s huge new grain dryer and other storage facilities are close by.
“And it’s a nice area,” he said, “especially in the summertime with the park across the road.”
According to Currie Fire Chief Merrill Wahl, a nine-year veteran of the department, a gas furnace in the basement of the elevator office is suspected of starting the fire.
“Evidence points to that,” he said this week. “We’re sure it wasn’t an explosion, though.”
• Last week’s answer: Warren Hemmingsen, owner of Hemmingsen’s RV Sales, announced he was retiring in 2017.
