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Unknown Newspaper Source
Unknown Author & Unknown Date [ca. 1938-1939?]
Transcribed by Kathy S. Bentley

Hamlet’s First Publication in Century on View Weekly in Post Office for All to Read.

ORAMEL, May 21 (AP) – For the first time in a century this fire-blackened hamlet in Allegany County has a weekly newspaper.
It’s the Oramel News and it –
Publishes only one copy, but is read by everyone in Oramel.
Isn’t circulated or delivered (the readers come to the newspaper, it doesn’t go to them).
Isn’t sold but it makes money.
Is edited by a Works Progress administration worker in his spare time.
Because Postmistress Mrs. Hazel J. Emery was worried over letting people know “Airmail week was coming” and asked Walter Fox “to do something about it” the Oramel News was born.
With the aid of a typewriter, Mr. Fox became an editor and publisher overnight. He typed a four-page “four column newspaper” and posted it on the Post Office bulletin board. It proved so popular he decided to make it a regular Monday issue and aided by his invalid wife gathered news items. Three stores and gas stations bought advertising space and made the project self supporting.
For the past five Mondays almost the entire of 100 has hurried along the fire-riddled Main Street (Oramel was almost destroyed by a fire a year ago and has been only partly rebuilt) to “read what Walter has to say.” They patiently wait in the Post Office lobby until the first and only edition of the Oramel News is “off the press.”
By the end of each week the paper has been read by everyone in the hamlet and most of the nearby farmers who come in after their mail.