“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:
• Firemen from four area departments assisted Balaton firemen in controlling a major fire in that community’s downtown business district on an early Monday morning of this year.
The blaze completely destroyed a two-story frame apartment building just west of the Balaton Press-Tribune office and caused some minor smoke and structural damage to the newspaper office as well.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated by the office of the State Fire Marshal.
Donald Ewing said three men lived in three separate apartments within the building and all escaped injury. Clarence Hively and Arnie Johnson lived in the second-story apartments and Gus Wendland lived in the lower-level apartment.
Damage to the Press-Tribune newspaper office was said to including some structural damage to the roof and a window, plus slight smoke damage within the building. Lou Gellerman is publisher of the newspaper.
Tracy firemen, along with crews from Ruthton, Garvin and a utility truck with oxygen from Marshall, assisted the Balaton department in attempting to control the blaze and keep it from spreading to other downtown buildings Daisy Wilcox, who lives about a half block from the fire site and who serves as the Headlight-Herald’s Balaton news correspondent, said her Yorkshire terrier apparently discovered the fire.
• Last week’s answer: The Wheels Across the Prairie museum celebrated its grand opening in 1985.
