Note: The Pabody Gazette gives us some real insight into life in Plum Grove in the late 1870’s and early 1880’s. In this weekly newspaper we find columns entitled “Plum Grove Items.” These colurnns were mostly submitted by two authors. The first contributor signs his name “A Star Cus” and it is easy to deduce from the way the columns are written and the similarity of the name that this is Starchus M. Spencer. The other contributor signs his name “Num Skull.” We are never given a clue as to the identity of Num Skull. Both of these authors gives us a lot ofinfomation about the people, the area and the climate in and around Plum Grove.
” NUM SKULL” WRATHY.
Me. Editor –I am about the madest man you ever saw, and not likely to get in a better humor very soon. In my last communication headed” Our trip to Reno Co.,” you made us say we” found our friends 5 miles above Halstead,” when the copy said 25. Now, is the name of common sense, what geography did you study when you went to school, that located the Reno county line within 5 miles of Halstead? It may be a matter of very little importance to you, but it is of vital interest to me. I would have you know the” Num Skulls” for fourteen generations have had a reputation for truth that even George Washington might have been proud of, and I being the sole survivor of that, illustrious family, have their interests at heart,
and cannot stand to have your million readers read such a lie as that over our signature, caused by the blunders of an ignorant “printer devil.” You may think a mistake of 20 miles isn’t much, (and so it would riot be if it had been signed “A Star Cus”) but it is enough (if not corrected) to disgrace the whole line of “Num Skulls.” if you can’t do better than that I will have to furnish you a proof reader’ Now if your Ile had shortened the distance by that 20 miles we should not have said anything about it, but as it didn’t we feel compelled to stand up and make our little speech, just to let you know what a careless typo may cause.
An illustrious
NUM SKULL.
[The intelligent compositor has been killed, and his remains properly disposed of—ED. GAZETTE.
𝚨nything for A Quiet LifeΩ 
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