Born To Be a Newspaper Man

by Martin J. McGowan Jr.

Memorial Highway Signs

There is another sidelight involving Theodore Christianson. It occurred during my term in the Minnesota legislature.

There was the practice of naming sections of state highways as memorial highways for some deceased person. I found one named after some obscure general of the Civil War in northern Minnesota. Another was named after Gov. Floyd B. Olson, the first Farmer-Labor governor of the state. His highway ran through his home territory of north Minneapolis. There were other signs around the state as well.

Then I saw a bill proposing to name a stretch of highway in the Dawson area after Gov. Christianson. The bill was introduced by Sen. Faye George Child from the legislative district just south of mine. That did it. I decided to see if I could do something to block those signs and maybe others.

In addition to my father's dislike of Gov. Christianson I didn't like Sen. Child. He had once been editor of the Famer-Labor newspaper and when he left that job Gov. Elmer Benson, made arrangements for Child to become publisher of a newspaper at Russell, Minn., the Russell Anchor. And how did Child repay the favor? He became a Republican.

So I contacted the Highway department to get some information. I wanted to know how much each of those memorial signs cost, how far apart they were placed and how many signs would be needed to cover the area specified in the legislation, how large a crew was needed to install them, how many hours it took and how much did it cost to repaint them after some people used the signs for target practice.

When the bill came up in the House I made my case that there are too many signs along the highways and we didn't need more and that this was just political posturing to gain votes at taxpayer expense. My speech didn't have much impact. Sen. Child accosted me in the coffee shop just off the House chamber to ask why I was bothering to oppose such a small bill. I told him why and I said that as a Conservative legislator (the name given Republicans in the non-partisan legislature) I thought he would be in favor of saving taxes.

Nevertheless, the bill passed more as senatorial courtesy for a project in the senator's district.

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