May 31, 1987
People tell me that my mind wanders as I write, that I hop from one subject to another. This is true, because if I pin myself down to certain subjects I am lost and writing become difficult. As I have said, I write from the top of my head as I remember the place or happening. This is the fun part of it all. Someone disagrees with me almost every week, but they don’t have the facts to back up their argument. I delight in telling people that they are talking from hearsay, and I was there to see it. I am not infallible, and now and then I have to eat a little crow. But John Baldridge and myself sum it all up in the name of fun and say, so what. Again, I am deeply grateful to John Baldridge for putting “Bob Piper’s Corner” from the church newsletter in the local paper quite often. Everyday, as I have said, I get letters, phone calls and visits. I have heard from people in sixteen states. We checked with ten people locally and away who get the letter to see how many hands it goes through. We are thinking of one issue and ten persons. We found the letter passed from the first hand to a total of forty-nine people, and then back to the original person. Some passed it twice, and some seven or eight times.
Margaret Powell of Fort Dodge writes that she remembers her folks speaking of a steam engine that toppled over in Chariton while the Rock Island was being built. This did happen. The engine was standing just north of the most northern viaduct on a brand new fill. The crew was up town eating lunch. The fill gave way and the engine rolled down the west side. Since no one was in it, no one was injured and this was fortunate as a steam pipe broke releasing scalding steam. This rendered the engine harmless and a new track had to be built to the north to get the engine back on the grade. Don Lewis used his house-moving equipment to right the engine from off its side.
This evening I had three phone calls from local people. The first wanted to know someone’s maiden name, what her children’s names were, and where they lived. I knew all this. Another lady called to ask if Ida and Ola Hazlett were one and the same. This is true. She used both names, as her real name was Ida Viola. I think it was equally divided between Ida and Viola.
Today a man came in the store who had been to the courthouse to see if they could help him locate the house he was born in here in Chariton. They sent him to me. His name was John Wright and at once I remembered a John Wright who worked for us sixty-five years ago. I didn’t mention this at first, but quizzed him about what he remembered at ten years of age. He knew the house was on the road to the dump and the man next door was in the tire business, and he had a son that the children called Uncle Olive. The man said the neighbor’s name was unusual and if he heard it, he might recognize it. I mentioned the name Trautwein, and he said that was it. Oliver Trautwein, their son, was Uncle Olive. I directed the man to the house. It had been changed a lot. Will Trautwein had a tire repair shop and sold Fisk tires. It was located the first door south of where Dr. Davis’s office is now.
The Fisk Tire Company ad always showed a little girl in her nightgown standing beside a Fisk Tire.
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