Ah yes, those Fertile kinfolks ...

Many moons ago, near the start of an obscure career in North Iowa newspapering, I was responsible for covering the Worth County village of Fertile for The Forest City Summit. 

In that capacity, I discovered one day that Miss America 1973 was the granddaughter of a woman who lived in Fertile.  (Actually, I don't remember the year, but need to use an approximate date to make this work.)

I wrote my little story and added a headline that went something like this, "Miss America 1973 has Fertile kinfolks" and it was duly published.

I had forgotten, as nearly everyone who lives and works in North Iowa does, that Fertile and the small town of Manly, just across Interstate-35 to the east, are more than place names. 

If used thoughtlessly, they can be sources of embarrassment (or amusement), as in the rather famous headline, "Manly man marries Fertile woman." Or "Fertile man marries Manly woman," I suppose.

For generations, amateur sleuths with too much time on their hands have been looking for that headline in print --- including my old friend Richard Johnson. And coming up dry.

Now some guy named Jeff Morrison, looking I suppose for his parcel of glory, has renewed the search. And once again, come up dry. And declared it to be the "headline that never was" in a piece for Iowa Captial Dispatch.

Well! That may be, but I'm unconvinced of the reliability of Mr. Morrison's source for this newest venture into an old story --- the search engines for digitalized files of North Iowa newspapers.

There are several issues. First, only a fraction of newspaper editions published in the immediate vicinity of Manly and Fertile during their years of their existence have been digitalized. Many, in fact, no longer exist. Second, the search engines serving databases that exist are helpful, but not necessarily reliable.

So I want to assure you this morning in these times of fake news that there's no need to accept Mr. Morrison's word as definitive. Feel free to keep looking for that headline --- if you've got nothing better to do with your time. It still may be out there somewhere. Hope springs eternal.