Hays

59-year-old paycheck surprises rightful owner

A Hays man was surprised recently to receive a paycheck. He doesn’t remember doing anything to earn it, and the check was issued in 1944.

Staff members at the Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center found a yellowed envelope while going through some old files. Inside, they found what appeared to be an old paycheck for $11.91. It was dated Sept. 2, 1944.

The check was made out to “Jerome V. Schmidt,” and a check of the local telephone book turned up an entry for “Jerry V. Schmidt.”

Schmidt said he was 17 years old in the summer of 1944, and he spent a week or two working at the research center before the start of the school year.

“I worked there for just a short time helping take soil samples,” he said.

But Schmidt said it didn’t make sense that he was never paid for his work. At age 17, that would have been a big deal, he said, and he would have remembered.

In any case, he still hasn’t been paid for whatever work he did. The check lost its monetary value a year after it was issued.

Pennsylvania

Ice cream driver gets ticket for truck’s music

Mount Lebanon, Pa. — You can still scream for ice cream in one Pittsburgh suburb — as long you don’t use a loud speaker to do it.

For nearly six decades, 81-year-old Harold “Chuck” Greenberger has driven an ice cream truck around the streets of the South Hills, a group of Pittsburgh suburbs. Over the years, he’s found nothing captures children’s attention like a calliope-like rendition of “Turkey in the Straw.”

From early April to late October, the loudspeakers on trucks driven by the owner of Chuck’s Ice Cream and his seven employees fill the air with toots and whistles from about noon until sundown.

But last month, a police officer in the affluent municipality of Mount Lebanon gave Greenberger a warning ticket and threatened he could be fined $50 plus $107 if he continued to play music as he sold ice cream.

“I don’t go there any more because I don’t want the ticket,” Greenberger said. “They said I can come in and sell ice cream, but I can’t play no music. I don’t know any way that an ice cream truck can sell ice cream with no music.”