When did you get your first car?

Butch

Like several of the other topics I’ve been sent by this service, the thing to talk about could be one of several things. In this case I have three vehicles that could fit the bill. The first car that I used quite a bit didn’t actually belong to me. It was a 1951 Hudson Pacemaker. The second vehicle did belong to me, but it was a motorcycle, a 1962? 305cc Honda Dream. And the third qualifier was a 1954 Ford F-100 Panel Truck.

Hudson Pacemaker

My aunt and uncle, Ralph and Helen Thorpe lived in Dewitt, Iowa, in the mid 1960’s. I think my uncle retired and they were going to move to Medford, Oregon. They didn’t want to take all sorts of stuff with them so they gave us a number of items; some furniture, books, and the Hudson Pacemaker. Uncle Ralph bought the Hudson new. He loved it and babied it. When the push buttons for the radio developed a little rattle, he carefully folded some strips of thin cardboard and pushed them under the buttons to eliminate the sound. He also had a number of natty accessories; curb feelers, a knob for one-handed driving on the steering wheel, and the best, a spot light just like the police had. Luckily, the light was located at the lower left corner of the windshield where is was difficult, but not impossible for my friends to get to. They took great joy in shining the piercing light on someone at the most inappropriate times.

Since it was a second car for my folks, they didn’t drive it all that much. I had the use of it in high school, but they didn’t let me drive it to school. I used it to drive myself to my extracurricular activities and for goofing around on the weekends. I remember riding around in the winter one time and stopping by at the Giant store to buy a copy of the new Beatles album, Beatles ‘65. It’s odd what you remember. Another time I was in a hurry to get somewhere. Someone had pulled into the driveway behind me, a little off to the right. If I pulled forward, it looked like I could back around them and not get into any trouble. I missed them all right, but I dragged the left front fender along a telephone pole that was next to the driveway. I got out of that one some how but why I didn’t get in more trouble, I don’t know. By that time the car must have been feeling its age a little. I heard a loud bang once and the car stopped. It turned out that it had blown a head gasket. Luckily it was a flathead straight six so the repair could be done by a talented amateur who knew what to do. Roy Pugh, a fellow tool and die maker of my father’s from Square D was just such a man. We scrounged all over town and found the gasket at Rapoports on the corner of 16th Avenue SW and the Cedar River in what was called Bohemie Town. In later years it had been renamed the more gentrified “Czech Village.” All the job really required was to take out all the head bolts, remove the old gasket, clean up the surface of the block and valve cover, reseal the new gasket, and rebolt the head to the block. Not all that much, but care needed to be taken. Roy had brought a torque wrench and we tightened all the head bolts to the exact proper pressure. All, that is, except the one we missed. When we cranked it over, there was another loud bang and all our work had been in vain. Can you imagine how hard it was to find another 14 year old gasket for a car that had been out of business for 8 or 10 years.

Honda Dream

Several of my friends had bought motorcycles. They went with the image this created, street bikes or dirt bikes. I never could afford one of them so I had to settle for a “Dream.” Honda made 3 versions of their 305cc models. The CA was the Dream, the CB was the Super Hawk, and the CL was the Scrambler. The CB and CL were a lot alike performance wise. The CB was made for the street while the CL was made for “off road” use. The CA or Dream was kind of a dog compared to the other 2. It had a heavier front end to add stability and a smoother ride that highway driving required. Instead of big, dual carberators it had a small, single throat carb. This yielded much better gas mileage and coupled with higher gearing a much farther driving range which a highway bike should have. But they definitely were not sexy.

I tried to do a wheely with it once. Big mistake. I revved it way up and popped the clutch. The front end raised up as expected, but the higher it rose the less stable it became. It started rolling to the left and crashed down right on top of me. Remember, this was a heavier than normal motorcycle for its class. Luckily, I did not get hurt and put that foolishness behind me. I never tried another wheely again. After I dropped out of college, one weekend I rode it to Ames to visit my friends. About halfway there it started to rain and only got worse. I was soaked to the skin and freezing. I tried slowing down to see if it was any more comfortable, but it wasn’t. So I sped up again. It was more dangerous going faster in the rain but I thought to myself if I got into a crash maybe I would kill myself and the miserable driving conditions would be over. Unbeknownst to me a screw had worked loose in the alternator and methodically started turning the rotor wires into a dandy little metallic bird’s nest. The motorcycle died before I could come back to Cedar Rapids. I could not afford to have it fixed. Somehow I got it back home but it was the end of my motorcycling days with the Dream. I can’t say my dad liked me having it anyway. I picked him up from work with it one time. He behaved with dignity, climbed on the back and rode the mile home without complaint, but told me to never pick him up with that “damned” motorcycle again. In the end, Roy Pugh who helped us with the Hudson’s engine bought the bike from me and repaired it. I don’t know if he rode it himself or sold it.

Ford Panel Truck

After Karen and I were married we needed some kind of vehicle. I only made $2.75/hour so it couldn’t be anything too fancy. We looked in the Sunday paper and saw an ad for a panel truck. The guy who was selling it was heading to Alaska and said that several people were interested in it and that he would sell it to the first one who could put $100 in his hand. It was Sunday so we thought we would be ok if we got to the bank first thing in the morning. Karen thought about it and said, “You know what? I bet my dad has $100.” We went over and sure enough, he had the money. We took it back to the seller and were now the proud owners of our first car. We had lots of adventures with it. It was a utility van and only had a driver’s seat. Karen, who was well along in her pregnancy with Lance, sat in a folding lawn chair on the right. The wipers didn’t work properly. When it rained, they would only return to the left. We had to rig a string to the right wiper and give it a little yank for it to sweep back. And that was while hanging out the window in the rain. Lord only knows what would have happened to Karen if we got into a wreck.

The van was white when we got it. From the picture above you can see I painted the fenders blue. After this picture was taken I painted a gold stripe with white stars below the windshield. Very patriotic. Later on, Easy Rider came to the theaters. We didn’t know about the surprise ending. When it was over we sneaked out of the theater and hugged the wall till we got to the truck and made it home. We were sure someone with a shotgun was waiting just around the corner.

I was working at Collins Radio as a draftsman. Next to me a sat guy named Paul Traudt. On the way to work one morning I heard another loud bang. Always the loud bangs. The radiator had blown apart and the truck ground to halt. I was telling Paul and he said he would buy it from me. Sold. He got it repaired but when his friend was working on it he said the joints at the end of the tie rods were shot and could have fallen apart at any minute. With the nuts missing and having the bolts on the topside had kept them from falling apart.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

How did you choose what college to attend?

Butch

My dad was a veteran of World War II. He enlisted before Pearl Harbor, but I have never heard why he did. He graduated from high school in 1936 so he had been done with school for 5 years at the time of his enlistment. I think he was living a fairly easy life. I know he spent a certain amount of time at the pool hall. When the war was over and he had married my mom, I think he decided to buckle down and improve his life. He wasn’t without skills. He at least had the beginnings of a career as a machinist. But I think he wanted to be an engineer like his Uncle Clyde. So with the GI Bill available to him, he decided to attend Iowa State College. He and Mom lived in married student housing, Pammel Court. My sister Carol Lynne was born at that time, but she died unexpectedly and brought their world crashing down. He dropped out of school. He tried again the next year after I was born but things just did not work out for him and he entered the workaday world as a tool and die maker.

All through my childhood my folks hinted that they would like it if I became an engineer. My junior and senior high school coursework included the underpinnings for that kind of career, math and physics, and I developed a talent for drafting and other technical skills. But engineering seemed just a little dry for me. I did like the castles and cathedrals I had seen when we went to England so being an architect seemed like a choice that would make everyone happy. I know I was looking forward to it. To make matters easier, Iowa State University which was still a college when my dad attended there, was just a couple of hours west of Cedar Rapids, another prime consideration. At the time ISU was supposed to be one of the three best Architecture schools in the country, ranking only behind MIT and CalTech. The deal was set.

I spent the first month of my summer after high school in England, checking out the castles and cathedrals once more, but also taking an interest in other famous buildings. I even took the train up to Edinburgh to see about attending their world famous architecture school. They told me I had to have completed my sophomore year in college and have at least a “B” average. Having not started yet, I didn’t know if that was realistic or not, but at least I had some idea of what might be expected of me.

I spent the rest of the summer in our stifling, unairconditioned living room reading all the James Bond novels that had been published up until that point and my new found thrill from my English trip, Sherlock Holmes. September rolled around and I was off to Iowa State.

I stayed in the dorms, Beyer House in Friley Hall. It was the biggest “house” on campus and on the fifth elevator-less floor, six floors if you count going down the basement cafeteria. I had two roommates, Stan McAninch from Indianola and Nyal Hodges from Panora. Our room was at the bend in the hall and so was a little bigger than most after accommodating for the unusual corner.  In Winter quarter I switched rooms to the far end of the house. I can not for the life of me, remember my roommate’s name. I do remember he was from Illinois. Then in Spring quarter I switched rooms again. This time my roommate was John Hawn. We have remained friends for the last 55 years (2021). Our dorm was fairly crawling with guys from Indianola. My roommate Stan was one of them. Parker Swan who taught me the basics of musical chord structure was another. Duane Nielson was a third one. For some reason I don’t know why, everone called him Leroy. He moved off campus in the Spring and showed us the absurdity of living in the dorms. And last but not least, Jeff Kragskow who lived in another dorm but hung around all the time because of all the other Indianola crew.

In high school I was in advanced senior math. Among other things, we studied differential calculus. This proved a little bit of an undoing for me. The first quarter of math turned out to be differential calculus. Great! Most students in the program had never had calculus. In fact, most had to have a couple of quarters of remedial algebra. I just breezed right in and skated through the course. I was just resting on my laurels. Second quarter was integral calculus, which I had not had before. Unfortunately, I kept my same study methods which were, none. The quarter did not go well for me and I managed to be able to drop the class so as not to get a real bad grade and drop my grade point. But it came at a price. I was now a class behind schedule. 

When I arrived at ISU I was only 17, but only for a week or so. When I turned 18 I had to register for the draft. I went down to the Selective Service System and dutifully signed up and was issued  a 2S, student, deferment. The deal was you had to maintain a load of 15 quarter hours of classes to keep your deferment. If you didn’t, you were eligible for the draft and could be sent to Viet Nam. I wasn’t in too bad a shape because architecture required a normal load of about 18 quarter hours, but my margin of error was narrowing.

I completed my first year and went home to Cedar Rapids for the summer. At that time, if you got a good summer job, you could earn enough money for your next year of school. I set out looking for one and started playing soccer in the evenings and on weekends. I was the goalie for the newly formed Cedar Rapids soccer team, the Comets. As my luck would have it though, while executing a phenomenal flying save, brushing the ball away with my fingertips, I landed flat on my stomach. I started bleeding internally and I could hardly walk. A friend’s dad gave me a ride home. The next day I couldn’t get up very easily and the day after that, I was under the knife. There were 2 months of recovery ahead and therefore, no summer job. This made the draft situation really, really bad. I needed to take my design courses in sequence and the next one wasn’t offered in the winter. Even if I could get it then, I had to take one or two extra courses per quarter and take a full load in summer school just to meet the draft’s mandatory credits requirement. It looked like a lost cause. In the late summer, after I could get a job again, I was hired by Quaker Oats on the swing shift. They were supposed to give you two weeks on days, two weeks on nights, and two weeks on graveyard. They started with the two weeks on days alright, but the third week was nights which only lasted one week. The fourth week was another single week of graveyard. By the end of the month I was a walking zombie. Then I heard that I could get my design sequence in winter quarter. I applied for a job as an office boy for Brown, Healey, Bock Architects. This company is another great source of memories but I will take them up in a later installment. After 3 months of making money and doing work that actually complimented what I wanted to do for a living I was going to be able to return to ISU and maybe be able to take enough classes to keep me out of the draft.

I studied the class offerings and found a way to add 2 courses, Life Drawing and Beginning Russian. When I submitted my schedule to my adviser, he hit the ceiling. It all added up to 25 quarter hours. 15 is the normal load. Even for architecture it was 7 credits more than normal. He said I could take one extra class but I had to drop one. I agreed to drop the Russian. I don’t know what I was thinking, there was no way I could have handled that kind of load.

The quarter started out ok but right off I started having problems with that darned old calculus. I got in deeper and deeper and when I went to the professor she said, “Sink or swim, Buster.” While doing ok in my other courses I was destined to fail the math. I tried to drop the course again, but the Dean said he couldn’t just let anyone go around dropping courses when they felt like it. I don’t know why not. I was paying for them and not getting credit so why should they care. So, a lower grade point average and 3 less quarter hours that I absolutely had to have. Spring quarter I started my next courses, taking the math over again. There was no second grade option in those days so I just had to lump it. I wasn’t doing much better in the math the second time around either.  When the Government course I was required to take started looking “iffy” I realized I should just drop out of school altogether. The draft was going to get me anyway and there was no point in having a lack luster transcript if I ever wanted to do better in the future. When I went to the Dean again, he put on his sad face and told me he hoped to see me again some day. I knew in my heart of hearts that he wouldn’t. But I had hope and I tried pretty hard to create life situations that would include me finishing up in architecture. In the end, that just never did work out. Not that I didn’t go on to other things. I eventually ended up with an Associate’s degree, a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree. But again, these adventures are parts of other stories..

Karen

My generation of my family was the first to attend college. My parents did not have educational opportunities. They both came from large families of modest means. My older brother went off to the University of Iowa in Iowa City before I even went to kindergarten. His plan was to become an engineer but he never finished. He married and entered the world of business and management for his career. My sister Diane also chose business. She got a job with the telephone company and ultimately moved into a management position. My next oldest sister, Sue, decided to be a teacher and chose the University of Iowa. When it was my turn I can’t say that I really contemplated any alternatives. I chose the University of Iowa in Iowa City as well. My youngest sister, Linda, went a totally different way and chose Iowa State University in Ames. She met her husband Dan there and both of them graduated with their Bachelor’s degree. Linda made a career as a fiber artist.

While the choice seemed obvious to me there were some very solid reasons for attending school in Iowa City. First, I wanted to go someplace big. There were loads of small colleges across Iowa then with nice tight knit homogeneous student populations. When I thought about going to college I knew I didn’t want a place that seemed a lot like high school in size and environment. The University of Iowa was known to be a more cosmopolitan atmosphere with students from all over the United States and from other countries as well. I knew my classes would be a lot bigger and that I would be learning with people that had different experiences and viewpoints than mine. It would be impossible to know most of my classmates so I was sure to meet new people everyday.

I graduated from high school in 1967 and began my freshman year that fall, choosing to live in Carrie Stanley dorm. The University of Iowa fairly pulsed with 60’s politics and the rebellious attitudes of young people. I was no rebel in high school but I came from a family who cared about what was going on in the world. We were a family of informed and loyal voters. I grew up during the era of racial unrest and had followed the fight for equality and fairness on the nightly news. I wanted to be informed and on the right side of social issues. The war in Vietnam was hotly debated both in classrooms and everywhere on campus. Protests were forming and most people had an opinion they wanted to express. Young college students are the perfect age to begin to form deeply held idealistic views and the atmosphere at the University of Iowa was the perfect environment. During my time there, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated and the campus lit up. There were many protests about the war and about military recruiting on campus or the visits of companies who were producing the weapons of war. It was a passionate time.

My major was Elementary Education. Career options for young women at the time were not too varied. Most of the people I knew planned to get a degree and teach for a living. The University of Iowa had a large and respectable education college that would provide me with a good knowledge base and practical experiences in schools. My older sister, Sue was finishing up her degree in education when I was getting started. It was a logical plan for me to choose the same program. Both Sue and I eventually finished our degrees and had long and satisfying careers as teachers

Finally, I knew that I needed to attend a public University near home that I could pay for myself. My family was not going to be able to pay for tuition, books and room and board out of the regular family budget. I had held a part time job since I turned 16 years old and had saved a high percentage of my earnings to prepare for attending college. A state University tuition bill for a full time student was $327 with room and board in the dorm coming in at a little less than $1000 when I was a freshman. It was possible for a kid to work and save enough over a summer to pay for the next year of school. That was dependent on the modest tuition at a state school and very careful spending and saving. There were no extras for travel and private tuition bills. Again, the nearby University was the best option financially. I paid my own way with the help of a small scholarship, Pell Grants, and small loans. My parents sent me small amounts of extra spending money when they could.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

What was your Mom like when you were a child?

Butch

I had an older sister who died before I was born. She was only 8 months old when she died. I came along 11 months later and must have been a Godsend indeed. My grandma Grace came over from England to be with my mom at my birth. I must have been cuddled and kissed and squeezed, but I don’t remember much of that as I got older. It could have something to do with looking after the new arrivals, my sisters Judy and Lisa and my brother Ray (Bunny). Or maybe I just wouldn’t stand for any mushy stuff. Perhaps it was some sort of stoic training for making me more self-reliant or independent. At any rate I don’t feel like I had a warm physical relationship with her, although I did love her and I know she loved me.

We lived in Webster City when I was born, but moved to the Des Moines area shortly after that. Iowa State College had a campus at Camp Dodge and we lived in Johnston, just a little north of Des Moines while my dad attended on the GI Bill. The army base had a huge swimming pool. I remember going there when I was a little older, but Mom must have taken me there when I was much younger too. I recall one time, I was by the side of the pool with Dad and Mom got up, dove into the deep end. She swam out to a raft in the middle. It was a huge distance, especially for a little guy like me. I was very impressed.

In 1950, for some reason that was never made clear to us, Mom took me and my newly born sister, Judy, back to England for 6 months. A long time. We sailed on the Queen Mary, so we rode the train to New York before the Atlantic crossing in October.

Maybe my mom was homesick for England and the support her family could give her that she wasn’t able to find here. Her mother did visit in 1948, only two years after she arrived. But Mom had lost her baby in that time too. Interestingly enough, while being the second child in her family, she had three children (Carol Lynne, Me, and Judy) before any of the English cousins arrived. She also had the last grandchild born (Lisa).

Being from England, my mom had many different ways that she did or said things. I don’t particularly remember that she had much of an accent. Why should I? It was what I heard all of the time. I did notice that in later years, when she came back from a trip to England her accent was much thicker for a month or so. My friends always thought she had an accent. They even thought us kids had a bit of one. Why would I think you shouldn’t say “whilst” or pronounce the word khaki like “kah-key” instead of “kack-ee”? Or, hold your knife in your right hand and your fork upside down in your left. Not to mention a ton of manners that seemed to be a little bit off compared to what my friends did.

We moved to 3117 Merle Hay Road in 1950 and except for the time in England, we lived there till 1958. There were lots of kids in the neighborhood, the Larsons, Bradens, Leflers, and McCoys on our side of the street. On the other side were Ohnans (sp?), Vanessa and Vonetta, and Braffords. These kids were a little older than us. The Strains lived there too. Craig Strain was my best friend at the time. We often played “Red Light, Green Light” at dusk until we had to come in because of the dark.

My folks built a new house at 4111 52nd Street in 1957-58 and that brought another whole circle of friends; Frys, Fishers, Lohrs, Kendzoras, and Barlows. But these friendships didn’t last as long because we moved to Cedar Rapids in 1960. Again, new friends.

I’m sure Mom had a lot of culture shock when she got here. She came to Webster City, a small midwestern town, from Peterborough in England which was a larger, more industrial town and my grandad was the sales manager in a furniture store, white collar so to speak. Most of my American ancestors were farmers only a generation or two before Mom came here.

My folks never seemed to hesitate to see that I had lots of educational or developmental opportunites. In their mind I should have been an engineer. I preferred to be an architect and that was close enough for them. I had one of the first 10-speed bikes in Cedar Rapids. I got a pair of expensive hiking boots when I went to Philmont Scout Ranch in 1963 and my dad rigged up a light weight aluminum pack frame for me to carry my pack on. They also sent me on a trip to the 1964 New York Worlds Fair to work in the Boy Scout Pavilion.

Mom liked to dress us up funny which I wasn’t so hot on. She used to clothe my brother and me the same in matching outfits and did the same thing to the girls. One of her fashion schemes was to have Bun and me in flashy red blazers. I did like that. They had a cloth badge on the breast pocket with a wreath design on it. I thought it looked a little too generic so I embroidered the letter “T”, for Thorpe on it.

Later on in the 60’s, bell bottom trousers were the rage. There were never enough of them in the stores. One remedy for this lack of inventory was to buy a regular pair of jeans, split the seams of the lower pant legs up to just below the knee, and sew in a triangular piece of material to make the bottom of the legs much larger in diameter. This was usually done with paisley cloth but in true hippy fashion, I got some bright, psychodelic, orange velvet from a friend. I asked Mom to sew them in for me, but she took one look at the flashy material and said, “Not on your life”. Not to be thwarted, I got out her sewing machine and taught myself to sew. My brother Bunny insists that I wore these jeans to my wedding, but he is wrong. I had a genuine pair of bell bottoms that my cousin Sue bought me on Carnaby Street in London. They were a bright golden yellow color that matched the rest of my wedding attire perfectly.

Both my parents were artistic, my dad in kind of a technical, drafting sense. My mom drew pictures of people. During WWII she wrote letters home to her parents and illustrated them with pictures of what life was like in the army. She could often be found sitting by the phone, doodling profiles of people.

All the time I was a kid, Mom would say, “Look, there’s a Baltimore Oreole”, or “That’s a red-headed woodpecker”. I never gave it a thought beyond learning which birds were which. Then one day I realized that none of those birds and all the others she told me about were native to England. She had to have learned them all since she came to America. Who knew, the secret Onithologist.

Mom died in 2015, just a month and a half short of her 90th birthday.

Karen

My mom was a stay-at-home mom for a good part of my childhood. I remember a happy, safe and secure childhood in a loving home. I have four siblings and we are quite spread out in age. My brother Dick is the oldest, born in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression. Next came my sister Diane, born in 1942 during WWII. Sue is next, born in 1946 just after the war. Then me, born in 1949 and finally Linda born in 1955. I have often thought how hard it must have been to have had children spread across over 20 years. But I suppose there must have been some advantages too. Each of us had a chance to be special for at least four or five years – and the baby of the family. Later I figured out there had to be some planning involved!

When I was older, just after I was married, I asked my mom about the gaps between the kids in our family. I asked what she did about birth control which was not something that she would ever have discussed without a direct question. She said that her doctor had given her a recipe to make. The main ingredient was paraffin wax which she melted. She added a drop of rose water to give it a nice smell and then a drop of kerosene as a spermicide! The whole batch was spread in a foil lined pan then sliced into suppositories. She added that if she got too much kerosene they burned when she used them. Sheesh!

My mom took great care of us as kids. She sewed pretty dresses for us girls and always made sure we were neat and clean. She believed that kids should be outside playing as much as possible and often sent us out to play when our chores were done. Our jobs included keeping our toys put away, keeping our rooms and beds neat and tidy, and as we got older, we were in charge of doing the dishes and tidying the kitchen and general house cleaning each Saturday. She took great pride in our home and many of my friends commented about how clean and tidy our house always was. She was a stickler for doing our jobs well and many times we had to do a job over if it did not meet her standards. She could be crabby when we didn’t measure up. Mostly we tried to do well so we didn’t have to do things twice.

My mom came from a family of 12 kids and much of my parents’ socializing was with my aunts and uncles. When they got together, there was always a lot of fun and laughter. Most times the adults had a few beers and they teased, laughed, and told stories about when they were kids. All my cousins were always there too so it was super fun for everyone! My mom had a great sense of humor and I loved her laugh. Though a lot of the time she socialized with her sisters, mom also had some neighborhood friends. All the moms on the street were somewhat responsible for everyone.

We had some freedom in the neighborhood but had well defined boundaries for how far away we could go. We lived a half block from the school so we spent a lot of time playing on the school grounds. We were supposed to tell my mom if we were leaving the street in front of our block and let her know where we were going. We would often be outside for hours just coming home for meals or bad weather. We also had to ask for permission to go into anyone else’s house. No crossing busy streets until a certain age and no going to play by the railroad tracks(though we still did occasionally). As we grew in responsibility, we were allowed to walk to the book mobile, and walk or take the bus downtown. Free Range Kids!

Once, my neighborhood friends and I were roller skating on the sidewalk on our street. We saw a big owl (probably a great horned owl) perched in the tree in front of my best friend’s house. As we skated under the tree, that owl would occasionally swoop down out of the tree and fly toward us. All kinds of panic and shrill screaming ensued every time that happened. My mom and my friend’s mom came out to see what all the ruckus was about. They stuck around long enough to see the owl swoop for themselves. Since it was the middle of the day, they figured this behavior was odd. They decided they would throw a rock up in the tree to see if they could scare it away. Mom went first and found a nice sized rock to throw. She was not known for her aim or throwing ability but apparently luck, good or bad, was with her. She threw the rock and it hit that owl square in the head. The owl teetered a bit and then fell out of the tree right into the street. Everyone was stunned. My mom and Mrs. Gieskieng hustled all the kids off the street and into their houses. One of them called Animal Control and told them there was a big owl lying in the street. By the time they came to investigate, the owl was gone. None of us kids saw it fly away but we were all relieved that Mom didn’t kill it! They laughed about that great throw for years after.

When I was about 3 years old, my mom went to work at Richter’s Bakery which belonged to my Aunt Maxine and Uncle Bob. She took me with her since I had to be looked after. I spent a lot of my time sitting in the front of the bakery playing with my dolls and singing little songs. Customers would come in to buy bread, pastries, or cookies and would ask my mom if they could give me one of their cookies. I was all in favor of that of course and earned the name “cookie kid”, cookie for short. I was called that for many years and Butch still calls me that.

When I turned 16 my mom was working at Bishop’s Cafeteria in downtown Cedar Rapids. She was one of the hostesses and was in charge of all of the tray carriers and made sure everything ran smoothly. The other hostess was nice but could be a little strict. Once I got a job there, several of my friends got jobs there too. Mom made sure everyone followed the rules but it was clear that she liked kids and joked with the teenagers and got along well. It was fun to see that side of her and I was proud that she was popular with my co-workers. At the time, Bishop’s had a deal worked out with the Coe College football team. Guys on the team, called Coe Boys, could come in and work for a few hours and would then be able to choose a good meal to eat in the evenings. Mom liked to tease and joke with them too. Years later when I worked in the central office at Prairie Schools my mom was sick. I often had to take her to the hospital in the middle of the night and stay with her until I had to go to work the next day. My boss and my co-workers knew how sick she was and how stressful it was to take care of her. When she passed away, my boss came to the visitation at the funeral home. As soon as he greeted me he said, “Karen, I just realized that I knew your mom. I was a Coe Boy!” He went on to tell nice stories about how fun she was and how much he liked her. I was very touched.

When I was in high school our house was a gathering place for our friends. We lived near Kingston Stadium where HS football games were played. My friends often came to my house and then we all walked to the stadium together. Afterwards friends gathered again in our kitchen where we made box pizza mixes, played games, and laughed and talked. My friends always were welcomed by my parents. HS years were filled with girlfriends, sleepovers and eventually boys that I dated. My mom made a point to get to know everyone. Later when I became a parent it was a model for me too. I loved getting to know my kids’ friends and knowing the kind of people they were hanging out with. Also, it was an excellent way to keep track of what they were doing.

All my brothers and sisters eventually moved away from Cedar Rapids except me. Mom and I continued a close relationship with much joy and also some hardships until her death. I feel very lucky to have been able to share so much of life with her.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

What were your grandparents like?

Butch

I am happy to say that I met all four of my grandparents, but I don’t remember anything until the early 1950’s.

My earliest memory is running with a bunch of kids and climbing up the gate at the level crossing on Marholm Road in Peterborough in 1950. It is all very indistinct so perhaps it is some sort of mental creation. Perhaps brought about by having visited that location when I was older. Still, I remember it, so perhaps it is in some way real.

My grandparents were Uriah Blake Thorpe, Lenore Hetty Tallman, Grace Caroline Thorogood and James Archibald Bellamy.

It is hard to talk about what your grandparents were like. First, you have your actual memories, second, you have the stories that you have heard, and last, you have the things you have learned from research. This is an important thing to those who are genealogists. Oftentimes, memories and stories are not accurate reflections of the truth. That is not to say all historical records are 100% accurate, but they can usually be relied on.

Uriah Blake Thorpe

UB Thorpe was born 14 July 1878 in Conrad Grove, Iowa, now called just Conrad. He was the youngest child of William Monroe Thorp (no “e”) and Sarah Annett Lemmon. He was named for his grandfather, Uriah Blake Lemmon. His mother died when he was just 8 years old and he went to live with his older sister, Nettie who was married and 23 years old at the time. His older sister, Gertrude who was only 9 went to live with another sister, Hattie, who was also married by then and was 26. His brother Clyde was old enough that he set out life on his own. Clyde wrote an autobiography and is the source of many interesting facts. I have a copy of that autobiography which was dedicated to my grandpa and is “coppy” number 7. Clyde produced about 20 copies of this work. Each one was hand typed and since that took a while to do, they all had new information about what had happened to him after he finished the last one. I came in contact with some who had later copies and was able to get photocopies of the pages that covered the end of his life.

In the picture above Grandpa looks on as my mother shucks peas, while I was doing time in the playpen. The colander she is using is somewhat of a family heirloom. I have it still. All sorts of children used to wear it as an army helmet. My dad did. So it is at least 100 years old. On the playpen there are little wooden balls running up the center bar. I have a memory of trying to climb up them like a ladder.

Sometime in the 1950’s I think, my grandpa had a stroke and could no longer speak. I don’t remember his voice at all. But when we would visit him, he would sit on a bench at his nursing home with my sister Judy and me with his arms around our shoulders. I could tell how much he loved us and was so frustrated that the words he wanted to say to us just wouldn’t come out. How terrible for him.

Grandpa died 21 May 1959. I was only 10 years old, but my mom and dad thought I was old enough to go to his funeral. I think only my dad and I went, not Mom. It was the only time I saw my dad truly cry. It’s funny, his crying was exactly like when he was fake crying, like if he was telling a joke.

Lenore Hetty Tallman

My grandma was born 1 February 1879, in Cherokee, Iowa. She was the youngest child of Miller Mathias Tallman and Elizabeth Plomey Ault. My great grandfather might have been named Mathias Miller Tallman since that was the name of his grandfather. In the 1870 Census he was listed as Matt. All the rest of his life he either went by Miller M. Tallman or M. M. Tallman. My grandparents were married in 1903 in Sioux City, Iowa, where Grandpa was working for his brother Clyde at the time. They must have moved to Armour, South Dakota not long after that because my Uncles Ralph and Jack were born there. Later, they moved to Belle Plaine, Iowa, where my Aunt Louise and Dad were born and then to Webster City, which is where my sister Carol Lynne and I were born (1949 and 1948). My grandma died in 1953 while she was living in Grand Mound, Iowa. She and my grandpa are buried in the Evergreen Cemetery there.

James Archibald Bellamy

James, who everyone called Arch, was born 6 December 1888 in Peterborough, England. He was the third child of Henry James Bellamy and Emma Kelly. He spent most of his life in Peterborough with the exception of when he served in the army during World War I. He served as a carpenter in King George V’s First Own Sappers and Miners. I suppose he was involved in constructing trenches. He was first sent to India and then to Mesopotamia. After the war he moved to Chelmsford for a while where he met and married his first wife, Annie Gertrude Thorogood. She died in 1921 and he married her sister Grace in 1923. By this time they were living in Peterborough again where they both stayed till they died.

Grandad was a proper gent. He was a furniture salesman, then operations manager for Alexander Thompsons. He always dressed in a suit and tie and his shoes had a high polish. He was fairly successful, but he was just Grandad to us. When he and Grandma visited the USA in 1965 he sat in the back yard with a TV tray eating a hamburger with a knife and fork. He bought me a bike to travel around on when I visited in 1966.

He had diabetes and later in his life he lost his sight to “white blindness”. I saw Grandma and him for the last time in 1971. I wanted to get more family information from my grandparents and set my kids to asking them questions about their lives during the 32 years it took me to get back to England again. By that time both of them were too old, so my attempts were unsuccessful.

Grace Caroline Thorogood

Grace was born 24 September 1894 in Chelmsford, England. She was the second child of three born to Frederick Thorogood and Emily Munson. I first met them when they lived on Lincoln Road in 1950. We all went to England in 1960 while they were still living at the same house. Part of the family stayed with them, while others were farmed out to my Aunts Joan and Barbara. I spent part of my time at each of their houses.

When we arrived at the airport the whole family was there to meet us. My grandma came up to me and said, “Hello, Butch, I’m you grandma”. I knew that of course. Then she said, “You can call me Grandmother, or Grandma, or even Gran, but you are never to call me Granny. Ok.

When I visited there in 1966 I rode the bike over to their flat on Swale Avenue. I don’t know where Grandad was but Grandma was at the sink shucking peas. She was quite a smoker. So much so that the wave of white hair above her forehead had turned yellow from the nicotine. England had strange regulations about what could be added or not added to cigarettes so just about every smoker had some sort of smoke discoloration like my grandma’s hair. My uncle John’s two fingers that he held his cigarettes with were bright yellow/orange. They also taxed their cigarettes by the length. So if you smoked filtered cigarettes you got gypped twice. First, the filter took away tars and nicotine that could be corrupting your lungs and second, the length of the cigarette which was longer because of the filter, contributed to the amount of tax you paid. Most of the people in England that I knew to be smokers smoked unfiltered cigarettes to avoid this extra tax. Back to the pea shucking. Grandma was standing there with a cigarette in her mouth and her hands all involved with the peas. Since her hands were wet, she didn’t want to touch the ever shortening butt and she smoked it till it was about 1/4” long. She was a real pro and got every last drop of tar out of each one.

In 1971 I took my pipe to England but because of import limitations I couldn’t take enough tobacco to last the whole vacation. I ran out a week or so in. My grandad took me around to his tobacconist and bought me a tin of his brand, St Julien’s shag cut. Most English pipe tobacco is dreadful due to the previously mentioned limitations for additives. Since my Uncle Jeff took snuff, I asked him about that. He gave me a couple of recommendations and I started buying different kinds whenever I found something new. By the time we went back to the USA I had 27 different varieties. I even got Karen’s elderly aunt Martha to try it one time.

Karen

My grandparents on my father’s side were:

George B(onaparte) Spicer 9/3/1864 – 5/15/1938
Hattie May Risden Spicer 3/29/1877 – 3/11/1967

My grandparents on my mother’s side were:

Oliver Warren Prior 3/15/1880 – 5/29/1949
May Aleen Palmer Prior 5/1/1886 – 5/21/1979

I don’t have many memories of my grandpas. Both of my grandfathers had passed away before I was born. Most of what I know of them is from facts or stories told to me by others.

Grandpa George:
My mother told me he was a stern, hard man and said that she didn’t like him much. My dad rarely said anything about him which is strange since my dad was a storyteller. I know that he had a knickname, just as everyone else in my dad’s family. His knickname was Snack, but I don’t know why. An unconfirmed source said his middle name was Bonaparte. I know that when his family came to Iowa they originally bought land and settled in what is now the Amana area. The story goes that when the German settlers from the Amana Colonies arrived, they systematically forced others out of the area to gain more land. My dad grew up on a farm near Palo, IA, with his parents and siblings. Pictures I have seen show a very poor family. I try to think about the times in which he lived and it boggles my mind. He was born in the last year of the civil war and died the year before WWII started in Europe. It is a time in America that is hard for me to relate to.

Grandpa Ollie:
My mother was pregnant for me when my grandpa passed away. She told me that it was a very hard time for her and that she grieved for him at his death. That tells me that she loved her father. I know that Grandpa had vivid read hair. He passed that trait along to a couple of his sons, some of his grandchildren, and his great grandchildren. He was called Red by his friends. He worked for Iowa Steel and Iron Works for many years. I have an iron elephant that Grandpa made and I consider it a family heirloom. He is said to have cast a life size figure of a German Shepherd dog that was owned by a prominent Howard Hall family in Cedar Rapids who built the Brucemore mansion. It can’t have been easy for Grandpa to provide for such a large family, 12 children in all. They lived in a small house on Memorial Drive that is still standing today

I did have the chance to know my grandmothers but did not have the kind of loving relationship with either of them that I wished I’d had.

Grandma Hattie:
I have no memory of Grandma Hattie as anything other than a very old woman. She was already 72 when I was born and had lived a very hard life. I believe she was very poor her whole life. She and my grandfather lost 3 babies before they had a chance to grow up. Another son, Jerry (Charles Russell Spicer), was buried alive in a construction accident and was killed as a very young man. I’m sure she had many griefs. My Grandma told me that when she and her family moved to Iowa when she was a girl they traveled here in a covered wagon. She said she was worried about encountering “wild Indians” but they had no trouble from those they met. I used to go to visit her in her little house in Hiawatha with my dad. It seemed like it was way out in the country at the time. She had planted hollyhocks up against the back of her house and I was allowed to pick the flowers and make them into dolls in frilly dresses. I remember being very shy with her (as I was with all adults) and didn’t interact much with her. I wonder now if that pained her. She was always a very sweet and gentle lady and my dad looked just like her.

Grandma May:
My memories of Grandma Prior are difficult. By the time I knew her she was suffering from memory loss and dementia. When my mom and my aunts and uncles referred to her illness they called it “hardening of the arteries.” Which I assume meant lack of blood to the brain. Probably we would call it Alzheimer’s these days but I’m not positive it was the same thing. My grandma also had a hard life. She bore twelve children and all of them lived to adulthood. My mom’s brothers and sisters were very close and loving and always had a good time when they were together. That seems like evidence that they came from a happy and loving home. My grandma always referred to my grandpa as “my Ollie” which makes me think they had a loving marriage too. When I was little my mom and her siblings determined that she could not live on her own any more and decided to host her in their homes for a week at a time on a rotating schedule. That tended to confuse the poor woman even more so she hardly knew if she was coming or going. She carried her few belongings in a big suitcase and her purse which she was always very protective of. Many times she would ask one of us kids to find her purse and bring it to her. She would always warn us not to steal anything out of it in a very stern voice. At the time, I was very hurt that she would think any of us would steal, but now I understand that she had so few things and was very confused about where she was from week to week.

I did have some pleasant memories of her. When my mom was cooking, Grandma would often sit at the table watching and would reminisce about cooking pies, homemade noodles, putting up canned goods, and making big dinners for her big family. I liked to hear those stories. Also, when I was a teenager, I would wash her hair, set it with curlers, and style her hair in a pretty way. She loved the feeling of having her hair washed and combed. She always beamed when we told her how pretty she looked with her styled hair. I regret that I did not understand her illness when I was younger but it was probably because I really never knew her when she wasn’t ill. To my shame I just think of her as stern and crabby.

Being a grandmother is one of the greatest joys of my life. In some ways, I felt that I had missed out on something special by not having a close relationship with my grandmas. When I found out my first grandchild was coming, I knew that I wanted to be a part of my grand kids’ lives and wanted to create lots of loving memories with them. I hope that they will remember me with smiles, pleasure, and love.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

1963 – Are you still friends with any of your friends from high school? How have they changed since then?

Butch

In high school I had 3 main friends: Keith Andrews, Jim Cada, and Mike Shahan.

Keith Andrews

Keith was my oldest friend in Cedar Rapids. When we moved here in 1960 my mother took me up to Wilson Junior High to register. They assigned me to classes and the first one I went to was language arts. They were in the middle of an activity. Mrs McNeill had divided the class up into groups of about 5 or 6 people and we were to pick and practice a song. Keith was in the group I was put into. Our song was “Bingo”. B-I-N-G-O, etc. Keith was also in most of the rest of the classes I took. This lasted clear through high school.

Keith’s birthday is November 3rd and Mike Shahan’s birthday was November 4th. Keith says their mothers were in the hospital at the same time and his mom named him Keith in honor of Mike’s father Keith.

Jim Cada

Jim was my best friend. He came to Wilson our 8th grade year. His family lived in a house just a few blocks from where we lived, on Outlook Drive. But they moved to 16th Avenue before too long.

I became interested in working in dramatics in 7th grade. Jim worked at it too. I mostly did work on the technical side of things; lighting, set building, scenery changes during the performances. Jim did that too but right off, he went for acting parts. He has been an actor all these years and has been in several movies and countless plays.

Jim’s parents were Vaclav and Marie Cada. He had a younger sister, Marie, and a younger brother, Jerry. Vaclav and Marie were from Czechoslovakia and Vaclav fought with the Czech resistance against Germany in World War II. I was told that they escaped the communists in Czechoslovakia by swimming across a river, under gunfire, while Marie was pregnant with Jim [1948]. They made their way to Sweden where Jim was born and eventually to Chicago. They moved to Cedar Rapids in about 1962.

When Karen and I got married, Jim was my logical choice to be best man. My sister Judy was Karen’s maid of honor. Later, when Jim married Suzanne Egli we took to her immediately. No matter how long it is between times when we get together, we carry on just like we’ve seen each other the week before.

Mike Shahan

I didn’t meet Mike till we were in high school. He worked on the plays too, so the 4 of us, Keith, Jim, Mike, and I hung around together. After high school Mike and I had many collegiate adventures, practically all of which shall remain unrecounted. Some things maybe should be left behind. Mike was a troubled soul. He never seemed to find peace of mind. He died of over medicating himself in 1993.

Ron Sheriff

Ron or Bub as I called him, was another friend from high school, but not one of my main friends, not to hang around with as it were. He was the son of George and Betty Sheriff who lived across the street when we lived at 3023 Schaeffer Drive SW. There were 7 Sheriff children; Georgie, Ron, Cathy, Rick, Gary, Tim, and Nancy. The Sheriff family figures in many stories in their association with the Thorpe family. My mother invited them to join our church, Grace Episcopal Church. When we moved to town I became involved with the choir and serving as an acolyte or alter boy. Ron was an acolyte too and together we served as the ongoing attendants at Saturday morning mass. Doing this week in and week out, we came to be thoroughly familiar with the service and our performance was more of a drill team show. I continued to serve as an acolyte till I went to college. My choir days had long since ended when my voice broke years before.

In another adventure, Bub and I rode our bicycles to DeWitt, about 60 miles away, to visit my aunt and uncle, Ralph and Helen Thorpe. We decided to travel at 15mph and had a whole set of procedures for dealing with the sometimes heavy traffic on Highway 30. We both had speedometers, bells, and rearview mirrors. We would trade off on who took point at at regular intervals. The person in the rear kept an eye out in his rearview mirror for cars approaching from behind. When one came along, he would give a signal, 2 rings, and both of us would pull over onto the shoulder while continuing to pedal. When all the cars had passed, we got back on the pavement for a better ride. The front biker would set the pace. We made it in 4 hours like we planned but got some sunburn on our arms along the way. My uncle remedied that by lending us some long-sleeved T-shirts for the drive home. Who else but my uncle would have a long-sleeved T-shirt?

George Vignovich

Technically, George is not a friend I had from high school, although we were still friends at that time. We met when we were in fifth grade at Moore Elementary School in Des Moines, IA. I had only known him for two years when we moved to Cedar Rapids, but we came back to Des Moines all the time for my folks to visit their friends, When that happened, I would visit George and others from my childhood, including Bob Lohr. George married his wife Kay shortly after they graduated from high school and when I started at Iowa State University I would often hitchhike down to see them and stay with them overnight. Their daughter Petra had some problems with her ears and when they took her to the University of Iowa Hospitals to have them looked at, they would often drive up to Cedar Rapids for a visit. Karen and I still see them from time to time. Most recently at our 50th Wedding Anniversary in 2019.

Karen

I had a core group of friends in high school that did not vary much across those teenage years. We had an amazing good time together doing lots of teenagerly things like attending high school sports events, having sleepovers, going to dances, shopping, and even working together at Bishop’s Cafeteria with some of them. I had a happy high school experience for the most part. I was not a member of the most popular groups but didn’t care much about that. I had several boyfriends and enjoyed dating. I liked those boys just fine but never had much angsty drama.

My best friend of all was Judy. We were as close as sisters and we each spent enough time at the other’s house that we both eventually became part of our two families. The best part was that I fell in love with my husband Butch who is her brother so now we actually ARE sisters. Judy is a very talented artist and was always drawing, painting, and creating. She is also really smart, clever, and fun to be with. She is, of course, aunt to our children and spent a lot of time with us in the early years of our marriage. My family and Butch’s family grew very close and often spent holidays and special events together. we continued to see each other all the time after Butch and I married, socializing with a common group of friends. Judy eventually married Bill who was a college administrator and the two of them moved to various parts of the country for his work. We visited them in Maine, New Orleans, and Tucson over the years. They live permanently in Maine now but we keep in close touch.

Linda Stumpff Rutherford was loads of fun to be around in high school. The two of us hung out together in our group and she, along with Judy, also worked with me at Bishop’s. There was lots of fun and hijinx during our shifts there. My mom was one of the hostesses so she often had to keep us in line. Linda was always adventurous and once, in high school our basketball team was in the state championship games. Linda convinced her parents to let her drive us all to Des Moines in her family’s car for the final games. Our parents said we could stay at my older brother’s house in Marshalltown but not in a hotel. That trip was definitely the highlight of all fun times in high school. We were delightfully free from supervision during the day and had a fun sleepover every night at my brother’s house. He and his wife were great for hosting. Later after both Linda and I were married, the two couples became close friends and socialized almost every weekend for years. Linda and Lynn eventually moved to Chicago but we visited there and maintained our friendship. When they separated, Linda moved back to CR to be near her family. The two of us picked up where we left off and enjoy getting together often. She is still great fun to be with and is game for anything!

Diana Pameticky Tharp has been my friend since 3rd grade. I started school at Taylor Elementary school in kindergarten and Diana moved to our neighborhood later. She is beautiful, smart, and funny and we became friends. She lived several blocks further away from my house than I was usually allowed to go but since the school was just a 1/2 block from my house and the center of our world, we found opportunities to play together. We stayed friends all the way through high school and beyond. Diana had a steady, serious boyfriend in high school which meant we didn’t hang out as much as some friends but we maintained a friendship through her first marriage to Dave Cronbaugh. We reconnected later when Dave passed away. Now I see her frequently in person and lately mostly through pandemic Messenger calls.

Terre Angerer Britt came to Jefferson from Catholic school and that’s how we met. It is crazy but I can’t remember how she connected with our group in high school but I do remember hanging out at football games and at my house during high school. I lost touch with her after graduation but we connected again at our 50th class reunion. She now lives in Minneapolis but still visits her mother and sister regularly here in Cedar Rapids. After the reunion we started a lunch club and Terre would drive here to join us. We planned our meetings for when she was in town. Now we meet by Messenger chats because of the pandemic. Terre has a great sense of humor and loves to laugh which is one of things I remember about her. She also shares the same political views and is great about keeping on top of the latest stories and filling us in. One funny thing is that when I was teaching, her sister Debbie lived in the College Community District where I taught. I ended up having Terre’s nephew in my class. Later Debbie became a para in my building and I enjoyed getting to know her too.

Susie Kadlec Rokarek was someone I met in junior high at Wilson. She was part of a group of six of us girls who all hung out together. Linda Stumpff, Kay Kilgore, Susie Kadlec, Donna Bedell, Judy, and me. Susie was lots of fun but often quiet and a private person. She is still like that today. After graduation we all went our separate ways but Susie became a teacher like I did and occasionally we would run into each other at various teacher meetings. She worked in the Cedar Rapids school district while I taught in the Prairie district. Linda and Susie were on the planning committee for our 50th class reunion. We all reconnected at the reunion and that’s how we started our lunch club.

I feel really grateful for these friendships that have lasted over such a long time. It is nice to be able to talk and laugh with people who share so many of the same memories. I love the time we spend together more than 50 years later!

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

When I put up my blog entry a couple of days ago, I meant to include Karen’s first job story at the same time. So here it is. In future I hope to upload hers at the same time I put up mine.

How did you get your first job?

In Iowa, most jobs for teens opened up when a person reached the age of sixteen. That was the age when all the kids in my family got their first job. At that time in my life my mom was working at Bishop’s Cafeteria in downtown Cedar Rapids. It was a very popular family restaurant and she was the assistant hostess. Her job was to supervise during each meal period and manage all of the workers who helped customers in the dining room. It was a natural place for me to apply for a job.

I’m sure my mom influenced the decision to hire me but I was a good kid and very conscientious so I may have been hired anyway. When I started out I worked several days after school during the dinner hour and at least one day on the weekends but often both Saturday and Sunday. I usually worked from about 4:00pm until about 7:30 or 8:00pm each night. On weekends we started at around 11:00am and worked until 1:30 or 2:00 pm. Then the place closed for two hours and we came back at 4:00 to work the evening meal. When I first started I was paid $.50 per hour and they deducted $.50 per shift for a meal whether we ate or not. Not too long after that we made $.80 per hour then $1.00

We had to wear extremely ugly uniforms made of stiff pale gray fabric. They had long sleeves and a high buttoned neck with a bright yellow collar, cuffs, and apron. These uniforms had no connection to the styles of the mid 60’s which called for short skirts among other things. We were allowed to hem our uniforms to knee length though we often tried to sneak them up an inch or so. When we got a uniform that fit we took it home to wash and iron it so we could be sure to keep the one that fit reasonably well. At about the same time I got hired, several of my friends also got jobs there. My best friend Judy (now my sister-in-law), Linda Stumpff and others worked there with me. That made our shifts a lot more fun.

Since it was a cafeteria, patrons proceeded along the food line collecting various dishes of food on their trays. At the end of the line a cashier totaled up all the items they’d selected and gave them a printed ticket for their bill. Most of the teen workers met the customer at that point and carried their tray to a table that fit the number of people in their group. We had a set way to place their meal dishes on the table with main dish, silverware, salad, sides and dessert just so. At the end of our shift we had various jobs for cleaning up the restaurant like changing tablecloths, filling salt and pepper shakers or vacuuming between the tables.

Most of the customers were very nice and a lot of them were regulars. Bishop’s was right next door to the Allison Hotel which had long term residents as well as overnight guests. A lot of the cafeteria regulars lived there. Many were older people who, in hindsight, seemed lonely and poor. I remember one older lady who always dressed neatly and fixed her hair nicely though sometimes did not smell exactly fresh. She often came in and ordered a cup of tea and had hot water added several times. If someone left food on their table near her she would get up and take their plate, carefully cutting off the part they had touched, and eating the rest. The first time I saw her do this I was really grossed out and told my mom what I had seen. She told me she was probably hungry and could not afford to buy anything for herself. My mom seemed to feel sorry for her and looked the other way. She was always a very dignified person otherwise and it was quite an eye opener for me to see a person who had such a hard time. I always tried to be extra nice to her after that.

I worked at Bishop’s for several years working close to full time during the summers. Eventually, I moved up to working on the salad counter and later to working on the steam counter. Once when I was working on the salad counter I had a terrifying experience. It was during the Sunday rush which was always the busiest time of the whole week. I was starting to run out of several salads and no one was available to get more from the cooler for me. The cooler was in the basement and I had to run down myself to get what I needed. Since it was a very old place the walk-in cooler had no door handle on the inside. I was always afraid to go in by myself but since no one was around, I put a bucket of fruit salad near the door as a stop and went to the back to get a tray of jello salads. As I picked up the tray, the door swung closed and latched. The bucket had not been heavy enough to hold the door open and I was locked inside. I knew that no one would come down during rush and I panicked almost immediately. I began to scream for help and bang on the door. I had always been a bit claustrophobic and this was my worst nightmare. I lost track of time and had no idea how long I was locked inside. All at once the door opened and I practically fell out. One of the dishwashers was on his way back from the bathroom and heard me shouting. He thought the whole thing was funny and laughed at me for being scared. I had to get myself under control and go back up to finish the shift. When I got home I found that my hands and forearms were bruised from pounding so hard. I don’t think I told anyone what happened.

Overall I think my job there was a good experience. It taught me how to get along with a variety of people, how to be responsible and dependable, and at times was a lot of fun. Through this job I was able to earn and save enough money to pay for tuition, books, and room and board for my first year of college at the University of Iowa.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

For Christmas 2020 Wendy and family gave me a subscription to StoryWorth. It’s a service that sends me suggested questions to answer. Wendy usually picks the questions. They are along the lines of, “How did you get your first job?” or “What was your mother like when you were a child?” I submit my answers to StoryWorth and they distribute them to a very limited number of recipients. The distribution process is kind of cumbersome so I decided to do a wider distribution with my Butchieboy blog. So, here is the first story.

How did you get your first job?

Shortly after we moved from Des Moines to Cedar Rapids in 1960, I made friends with Jim Pitcher. He had a paper route and he asked me if I would like to be his substitute. So from time to time I would deliver his papers for him if he got sick or went on vacation or otherwise couldn’t do it. The Gazette liked this because when a paper boy quit, they had a ready-made replacement.

Jim quit and I got the job. I was about 14 at the time. The route was bounded by 29th Ave SW in the north to 33rd Ave in the south, and from J St on the west to Bowling St on the east. I had all the customers within those boundaries except the few houses on Bowling.

The Gazette was an afternoon paper at that time. After school, they would drop off my papers on the corner of 27th Ave and J St. I would cut the wire on the bundle and spend a few minutes folding the papers. Folding papers allowed me to throw them on the subscriber’s front steps or porch or just in their front yard according to their desires.

Before Jim had the route, the papers were delivered by car. The Gazette must have determined that the expense of doing this was too much and the route was converted to a walking route. It was pretty big, probably about as big as could be handled by one paper boy. The route was sparsely populated and the houses were on fairly big lots. So it couldn’t be made smaller because there would be too few customers otherwise and the carrier wouldn’t make enough money to be worth his while.

Because it had been a car route in the past, the Gazette allowed the carrier to “collect” once a month instead of every week. This was kind of a deviation from the way they normally did things and they tried several times to get me back on the weekly schedule. The customers had become used to it though and preferred to be bothered only once a month instead of every week so I got to continue the practice.

There were several treasured customers on each route that were called “Regulars”. They paid their bill by mail directly to the Gazette. This was great for the paper boy because he did not have to collect from them all. The expense for Regulars was deducted directly from the bill the Gazette sent us. We went to great lengths to keep these folks happy.

I did most of the delivery myself, but from time to time there would be bad weather or it was particularly cold and my folks would help me out by driving me around in the car. I liked those days. One snowy time I had a number of deliveries clustered along a ridge top between J St and Woodland Drive. I grabbed a few papers and headed off between the two streets. I had my mother go down J St to the corner and meet at the last house on Woodland. As I came over the ridge I slipped on a particularly slick patch of snow. I landed on my tailbone and it knocked the wind completely out of me. My mother saw it happen and ran to help me out, but I had to take a few minutes to recover. In the the end there was no harm done and I continued with the route.

All of us carriers went down to the Gazette on Saturday morning and paid our bills. It was always a fun outing. I would catch the bus and ride downtown. I headed up to the circulation department. Oftentimes, the paper boys’ boss, Ed Alderman, would be there keeping an eye on things.

The company had a strategy to get carriers to save. You were required to put a certain amount of your profits into a program. If you lasted six months and you didn’t have any complaints against you when you quit, the company would match what you saved. At the time, the daily paper was 5 cents and the Sunday paper was 15 cents. I had to collect 45 cents a week from each subscriber or $1.80 for a month. I don’t remember how much of that was my share, maybe 25 cents. At that rate I made about $18.75 a week if I had 75 subscribers (which is about what I think I had), minus my mandatory savings plan.

After the business part of the morning, my time downtown was my own. I would usually visit my favorite model shops. A special treat was stopping at the soda counter at Kresge’s. I had one particular waitress that I especially liked. She was a middle aged woman and would make me “Suicides”. I found out these were sometimes called “Suicide Suzys”. They were a cherry Coke at heart. The fiddle on the part of the kids was to get them to put a little bit of each flavor; cherry, lemon, pineapple, chocolate, etc into the drink. You would tell the waitress that she was only supposed to put a portion of the squirt in at a time so the total amount of flavoring was equal to one full squirt of a single flavor. Because of the mechanism of the pump, she couldn’t put one fifth of a squirt in at a time. You usually ended up with about five shots of concentrated flavoring, hence the name “Suicide”.

We normally timed things so by the time we were finishing up the drink, we just headed across the street to the RKO Iowa movie theater. Always a double show at the RKO. I think it cost us a quarter or 35 cents to get in. Quite a bargain for two movies back to back.

I’m pretty sure I only kept the route for the required 6 months. It was a lot of work for the return I got and I had to work every day with no time off. I got my savings bonus, by the way.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.

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