Columns

Ville Platte might lay claim to being the first small town in south Louisiana to offer high quality talking movies. The Gazette said the opening of the Evangeline Theater in the summer of 1930 put the town “on the amusement map,” right up there with the big cities.
“Talkies” had been seen regularly in the big towns since the debut of the “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, but small towns had to stay with silent films or use scratchy phonograph records that were supposed to be synchronized with what was on the screen, but seldom were.

The newspaper proclaimed that “all the wonders of science, except the atom bomb, have now been brought to Eunice” after Everett Vidrine installed a big antenna atop his West Laurel Street home in October 1950,
“Residents of this fair city have all the push-button gadgets that their big city neighbors can boast. They even have television,” the newspaper reported. “Yes, you read it right —TELEVISION.”

“Persistence can grind an iron beam down into a needle. Dripping water can pierce a stone.”
-- Chinese Proverb

“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press On”, has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race.” -- Calvin Coolidge