When your core reporters choose the monikers of “Num Skull,” “A Star Cus,” and now “The Idiot,” you can bet that your town may not be represented in the best possible light in the press. In hindsight this week, the propagation of news issuing from the office of the “Plum Grove Items,” replaced by “Notings,” this week, and penned by “The Idiot,” makes that fact plainly visible. It isn’t known how or why, maybe a voice for the times, perhaps a nomadic prophet, but “the idiot” mysteriously gained access to that esteemed platform. Nonetheless, his/her “notings” leave the ring of a dire prophetic warning.

PLUM GROVE NOTINGS.

PLUM GROVE, BUTLER CO., KANSAS, July 4th, 1879

EDITOR: Gazette 

As” Num Skull” has “gone dead.” and “Star Cuss” fails to give all the items as they occur, I concluded maybe I could write a little something for the paper, for I believe I have got as much sense as that “Starcuss.”

☞ The first thing I note is significant rain and high water and the consequent downfall of the chintz bugs.

☞ Stark’s Guardian takes frequent walks north in the direction of Levi’s.

☞ Well, two more of our boys have got reckless and “gone, went and done it;” that is, Jake Shriver has gone to rooting for his own living. Or, in other words, has married a girl by the name of Root. And James M. Tucker, having tired of living alone, has persuaded Miss Ella Stewart to link her destinies with his, and they, too, wilt trot in double harness for the rest of their natural lives. Well done, boys, may you live long, prosper and be happy.

☞ Plum Grove has organized a Protective Society, for the ferreting out and bringing to justice horse thieves and the recovery of stolen horses.

☞ If “Star Cuss” is not punctual you will again hear from

The Idiot.