From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Feb. 13, 1974:

• Placards indicating that the houses were “substandard” had recently been attached to six Lawrence dwellings. Housing inspector Ed Covington and City Manager Buford Watson said this week that the houses, on the 1100 to 1300 blocks of Ohio and the 1200 and 1300 blocks of Tennessee, needed to be vacated within a short time. Covington cited electrical and plumbing systems as the reasons the houses had received the designation.
• As the result of the recent release of the movie “The Exorcist,” sales of the book upon which it was based were booming in Lawrence as well as across the nation. Several local stores were temporarily out of stock; Dave Baird, manager of the Town Crier, 930 Massachusetts, called it the most “volatile” book on the market.