Serving the High Plains

Pages past - Aug. 28

On this date ...

1969: The Tucumcari Community Theatre group last week began casting for a production of “Finian’s Rainbow” with a tentative curtain date of Nov. 6 at the junior high school auditorium. The group hoped to generate enough funds to develop a Little Theatre group and produce at least one play a year, along with children’s plays. The locals in recent years had staged productions of “My Fair Lady” and “Oklahoma!” for charity.

• Concrete medians and curbs began to take shape on First Street to the Smith Avenue intersection. Work was projected to be finished within 90 days.

• Cooper’s Market in Tucumcari sold a commemorative record of the Apollo 11 expedition titled “First Man on the Moon” for 39 cents. The LP featured the voices of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins during the mission.

• The Safeway grocery in Tucumcari offered the first volume of the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia for 9 cents with every $3 purchase. The rest of the 25 volumes could be purchased for $1.69 each.

• The Odeon Theatre screened the World War II adventure film “Where Eagles Dare,” starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton. The Canal Drive-In showed the comedy spy-fi film “The Ambushers,” starring Dean Martin, and “The Mad Room,” a horror movie starring Shelly Winters.