BRICKS & STAMPS: Bill Bauer of St. Marys added to our conversation about the Kushequa bricks.

The backward S that appeared was actually a misprint, according to Bill. It was supposed to be a forward S that stood for Shawmut, an old railroad.

Bill also has an old stamp book, and he wondered if there were any stamp clubs in St. Marys that would be interested in seeing it.

We know there’s an Olean (N.Y.) Stamp Club.

WESB: WESB went on the air on April 5, 1947. Clayton Vecellio of Lewis Run called us Wednesday night to make sure we knew about the anniversary.

Happy Birthday, WESB!

APRIL FOOLS: We talked the other day about some of the April Fools’ Day columns we’ve published over the years.

Bob Rusiewski recalls a few pranks The Era has pulled on readers, too.

“I fondly remember two good pranks pulled by the Bradford Era over the years,” Bob said.

“The one that really got me was around 1980 when you had a front page story about some oil drilling company hitting a ‘river of oil’ beneath the City of Bradford and a new age of prosperity was about to begin. I was completely fooled by this as I had just worked with Myron Crumrine at the Bradford High School Vo-Tech department on securing an $80,000 grant to purchase an oil drilling rig to train students on because there was a demand for young ‘roughnecks’ in the oil fields.

“The second fun story was about the Buffalo Bills relocating to Limestone, N.Y., and building a new football stadium there and how it might impact Route 219 and the entire area. I made it about two-thirds of the way through before I smelled the rat.”

BEAR: Marcia Strait of Port Allegany had an unexpected visitor on Wednesday.

“We had a bear on our porch sometime when it was dark,” Marcia tells us. “My dad discovered it at 6 o’clock this morning. He left a trail of garbage from our porch to the woods.”

It’s that time of year again.