October 25, 1987
Mark Twain said some one hundred years ago, “What is so exhilarating to a person as a good listener?” I am sure he is right because in my case if I have a good listener, I can really turn it on. Blood transfusing didn’t come into use until the last ten years of Twain’s life. He quipped one day that he had a neighbor that was so stubborn he was sure they had given him mule blood by error. I have quoted this remark of Mark Twain’s before, but it is worth repeating. He said he had never hated any man, but if he had to, he had one picked out. Show me the person who couldn’t run that up to several.
Many of us remember Chicago Mike of the peak coal-mining days in Tipperary and Olmitz. A relative of his told me they ran out of gas a mile from home. Mike happened along and poured a gallon of Tipperary special into the gas tank of the Graham Paige car. There was a lot of backfiring, coughing and sputtering, but the car brought them home. Cars are too sophisticated today for this to take place. Back then it was different. To prove my point, a few years back a man bought a Whippet car made in 1927. He overhauled it from top to bottom, but couldn’t find a carburetor for the old car. Someone suggested to try a carburetor from a small Allis Chalmers field tractor. He did, and it worked like a charm.
A number of years ago Everett Thompson, a Lucas County farmer, told me he thought he had set a record. He was planting corn, husking corn, and putting up hay all at the same time due to a wet fall and spring flooding. It seems to me this could easily be a record.
After seventy-five of my eighty years, I have come to a definite conclusion what it is about railroads that I love. Believe it or not, it is the track and not the engines or cars. When I go home from work I seldom fail to go west to the Burlington Northern track. If I see a train, fine, and if not, it’s OK too. This is odd, but it’s true. Yogi Shrader is another one who loves the track. He told me several years ago that he and his wife on Sunday afternoons would walk four or five miles from their home just to be on the track. An old abandoned rail line where the rails are still there and weeds are everywhere really inspires me.
A few years ago two four-year-olds were helping me rake leaves. Help in this case was a loose use of the word. The little girl said she couldn’t help long as she was going to a wedding. I asked her what the difference was between a wedding and a funeral. She thought and said she really didn’t know, but people cried more at weddings. The little boy, not to be outdone in the storytelling department, told me his father had told him how you get to heaven. It seems you climb a long white stairway and enter a big long room. There are people behind a long line of tables. As you pass by, these people asked you questions. If you answered all the questions right, you went into heaven. If you missed one, a trap door opened and down you went into that other place. The boy said his dad said he wasn’t going up the long stairway but would just walk under the stairway and go right to that other place. Remember this is the story of a four-year-old boy. Maybe the smell of burning leaves stirred his imagination.
A lady from Iron City, Michigan, wrote asking where and what the Duddery was. She remembered as a child of her father speaking about it. The Duddery was a men’s clothing store operated by Alf Timmins and his son Quigley. It was in two places over the years. At one time it was on the west side of the square about where Paramount Cleaners is now. For several years it was where the Elite Shoppe was. Many people have a picture taken for Charles E. Fluke Bookstore, showing Alf and Quigley standing in front of the store.
This article is again proof that my mind wanders. I was in a group of people the other day when the topic turned to how many 100-year-old people were in and near Chariton. We came up with several. This led me to inquire about 100-year-olds in surrounding counties. It seemed for a moment we had a record. One man in the group was going to Leon, Iowa, the next day to take his 109-year-old father to the doctor in Osceola.
Chariton lost a very nice man in the death of Melvin Judd. It seems Melvin had been here forever. Many old-timers will remember Frank and Florence Whisenand. Florence was organist at the Presbyterian Church for years. Their son, Ray, was in town last week with his wife, Phyllis. They live in Colorado and read the Chariton paper. He remembered lots of things I have written about and brought some things to my memory.
A lady from Charles City writes saying years ago she knew a man from Chariton who had worked in a laundry in Chariton. She said she remembered this because he worked in a laundry there and naturally that household’s clothes were done at the laundry, much to other’s envy. That man who worked in Kestler’s laundry and went up north from here was Frank Tinder. This lady says they were through here last summer on a Sunday afternoon, but couldn’t locate the laundry or where it had been. The Frank Kestler laundry was right straight west across the street from the National Bank and Trust Drive-in Bank.
She also remembered the Miley Brothers’ garage being mentioned. Across the street south of the Catholic Church was the Gardener Boarding House. Next south was the Miley Brothers’ garage. That brings us up to the alley and just across south was Kestler’s laundry. Next south and attached to the laundry was the French Dry Cleaners, owned and operated by Ollie Cochran. Bernard Kelly worked for Cochran for years. Another person who worked in the laundry was Ruth Freelander.
Sign in front of a church said, “God Loves You and I Am Doing My Best.” When questioned by a lawyer as to how old his wife was, the husband said, “Twenty-four going on forty-nine.”
Be sure to read the speech Judge W. C. Stuart gave before the Rotary Club in Des Moines. It was given October 6, 1987, and was printed in the Register October 20th. A very good speech with lots of depth, as is his usual custom.
Another Chariton man passed away this week. George Kinkead had been in and around Chariton all his life. Was in the post office for years and was a great guy.
My father always said he wanted one of his six boys to be a preacher. He said this often and was sincere. As the years rolled by it was evident this was not going to happen. Rex Bonnett, a man many of us remember, asked my father why this did not happen. Father answered that he had pinned his hopes on me, but by the time I was two years old, I could swear like a trooper and I didn’t like chicken. Naturally, according to Father, that dream was lost.
Reverend Don Cooper, owner of the new print shop where L & K Insurance was, told me this joke. It seems a preacher was out to a farm making a pastoral visit. While he was looking down a well, his false teeth fell in. He said to the farmer, “What shall I do, as I have to preach this evening?” The farmer said not to worry as he would recover them. He went into the house and came back with a chicken drumstick tied on a long string. He dropped this into the well and the false teeth clasped onto the drumstick and the farmer pulled them out.
Tom Stone was in the store one Saturday evening a few years back and wondered if we cared if he parked his pickup outside and let people have free turnips. We had no objection and lots of people helped themselves. Tom said it never occurred to him that sheep would eat turnips. He had a large patch that the sheep could get to. Eat them they did. Thousands of them, but not the whole turnip, just the center, leaving you might say, a turnip cup. Tom said these cups filled with water and in the evening these frosty cups reflected the light of the moon and looked like thousands of stars. Ruth and I were moved that Tom Stone, an honest hardworking brusque-type man would pause to see this beauty of nature. In fact, he painted such an interesting picture we decided to go out the next evening and look for ourselves. The scene was such that you just couldn’t believe it unless you saw it yourself. It was a true beauty of nature. Several people who knew of the sheep eating the turnips wondered it was harmful to the sheep. Dr. Nolan, a local veterinarian of that time, said it was good for them and cleansed their systems. He did stress that it not be a steady diet.
A man who lives ten miles out of Chariton drives in daily. He was puzzled when he saw several large round bales of hay out in a picked field. His curiosity got the best of him and he stopped to inquire. It seems someone had rolled the bales down a hill into the field when the corn was about half grown. The farmer just worked around them and used them later.
I mentioned in an article a few weeks ago about Dick Kelley wearing a straw hat the first of March without fail, to show spring was here. Dan George, retired Burlington employee, told me he has one of these hats. Dan also wonders whatever happened to those spider web-like strands that swirled in the air foretelling the coming of Indian summer. We neither one knew what caused them, but they were much in evidence and now they seem to be absent. This perhaps bears out the old adage that nothing stays the same.
Our ride -
George Dunshee, Charles Prior and myself left here at 1:30 and arrived back at 5:10. We left a half hour early because dark comes sooner. We went out to the new water plant and then worked east to the area north of Weller. Back roads seemed to be dry. Our discussion today as we rode was mainly baseball and football. Found a big patch of bittersweet. I thought today there probably were never three men riding together that were as different. I didn’t ask Charles if I could say this, but here goes. Charles is a graduate of the University of Iowa as I am. George is a graduate of junior college, and yet I feel he knows more than both of us put together.
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