Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 231, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1917 — A Novel Dinner Bell. [ARTICLE]

A Novel Dinner Bell.

A camp cook whose only means of calling the members of” his party was pounding on a pan with a knife handle was unable to make them hear when they were fishing or hunting at any considerable distance from the camp. One of the party""toTwhoifrTie’ complained thereupon made what he called a “klepalo.” The “klepalo” was merely a piece of well-seasoned oak plank two inches thick, six .inches wide and four feet long. Through the center he bored a hole, passed a rope through it and suspended the plank from the branch of a tree. The cook “rang” the instrument by striking it with a mallet, first on one side and then on the other. The man who made the “klepalo” had seen similar contrivances in small Bulgarian villages, where they areused instead of church bells to call the people to worship. A test of the instrument used by the campers showed that in ordinary weather conditions it could be heard two miles.