From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for July 14, 1915:

• “The mischievous automobilists who have been flashing the lights from their cars around too promiscuously had better be careful for the cops will get them if they don’t watch out. At the regular meeting of the Board of City Commissioners this morning Mayor W. J. Francisco said that he had received several kicks from irate property owners and residents of Lawrence who claimed that late joyriders, with the use of the reflecting mirrors on their cars and the electric lights, were flashing beams into bedroom windows and diverse other places where they shouldn’t. The commissioners agreed that the electric lights on cars as they are used in Lawrence are a nuisance and instructed City Attorney Thomas Harley to draw up an ordinance covering their use and recommending dimness for passing cars to prevent the bright lights from blinding drivers.”
• “Just before the heavy rain storm began a miniature tornado struck the neighborhood in the 1600 and 1700 blocks along Tennessee street coming from the northwest and blew down several trees. The fruit trees in the yard of Mrs. Peter Emery on the corner of Seventeenth and Tennessee streets were severely damaged and on Fifteenth street the limbs almost covered the street. In the yard of Prof. DeWitt Croissant in the 1600 block on Tennessee, the trees were damaged. Limbs were torn off in all this neighborhood and the wind blew with great violence. At the Kappa Sigma house in the 1500 block the wind was noticed. The storm came from the northwest and went southeast across Massachusetts street. It lasted only about one minute.”
• “With the water on Rhode Island street so deep that it is impassable, farmers living north of the city think it is high time that something be done. The matter was brought to the attention of Charles Starkweather this morning, who immediately called Mayor Francisco, who said the road would be drained as soon as it was deemed safe to cut the Union Pacific roadway. It has been suggested that it would be well, when the roadway was cut, to have a lot of sacks filled with sand on hand with which the break could be filled on short notice should the Kaw begin rising.”
• “Roads north of the city are said to be nearly all under water and overland traffic with Midland cut off. Terry Gaskill tried to go to Midland last night, but says that just north of the city limits he ran into deep water that extends in a lake over several acres. All roads in this direction are under water and Mud Creek is the highest in its history.”
• “The failure of somebody to know just how to count, when he measured the length of the present Massachusetts bridge across the Kaw, and his consequent report to residents of the north side and Grant township that the bridge was 100 feet longer than it really is, was the cause of all the trouble which made people north of the river present a petition to the War Department at Kansas City that the new bridge be 100 feet longer than the plans now call for. As soon as the error in the measurement was explained by the firm of consulting engineers to the north siders at the hearing held before the war department yesterday, the error in their way was shown them, and they withdrew their objections. They had gained the idea from the false measurement that the new bridge was to be shorter than the present bridge and that it would not have as much waterway owing to the greater width of the piers…. When the real facts of the case were shown and the positive statement made by Mr. Hedrick that the bridge would carry a flood as great as that of 1903, the north siders gave in and admitted that they were wrong and the whole party came back to Lawrence.”
• “A young golf phenomenon has been discovered in the person of Gordon Gustafson, the eight year old son of Broer Gustafson. While the latter was engaged in a golf match at the Country Club this week, his son picked up a club and followed him around the course, also playing golf. While Mr. Gustafson made the course in 70 his son made it in 107.”
• “A letter from Henry Perkins says that he has plowed through as far as Herington, and that the roads have been terrible. In one place, Mr. Perkins writes, it took four horses and seven men to pull the car out of the mud.”