Then and now

NEW PROVIDENCE - Back in the late summer of 1956, then Hardin County Extension Director Dick Pulse sent a letter to reporter Merle Miller, telling of a New Providence farm family. He stated in his letter, “The Maurice Cook family is not average or typical - but who interesting is? They have a 235-acre farm near New Providence; there are three sons, Kenneth, Frank and Lisle, all of whom want to be farmers themselves. There have been Cooks on their land for four generations now, and it looks to me as if they’ve settled down for quite a stay - ‘farm problem’ or no farm problem.”