Caledonia Argus

The kids those days

Posted: 2/4/03

By Aggie Tippery

This is a story a former classmate sent to me. He remembers what it was like to be a boy in Hokah in the 1930ís. Richard Reilly writes:

ìThe real attraction in North Hokah was the depot. Ray Miller (Sr.) was the town telephone expert, clock repairer and just an all-around clever guy. He also was a patient teacher and I learned a lot of basic electricity from him. He also taught physics in his own way, showing how one could hear the train coming from miles away by placing your ear to the rail and listening to the conducted ìclickedy/ clackî of steel wheels on steel rails. Then, when the train did come, you could put a penny on the rail and get it smashed into an oval. The noon train, a diesel-electric consisting of only an engine and a combination mail car/passenger accommodation, was too light weight to do a good job on the pennies. To get a real job done you had to go down in the evening when the freight came in. Powered by a real steam engine belching black smoke with a tender loaded with coal and water and followed by a string of freight cars, it would crush a penny to thin, knife-edged oval.

The hardware store was a great place to go and browse, looking at all the neat tools and things. Again, as with Lou Pilger, there was great patience displayed as I walked about handling everything at least twice and dropping it at least once. Here in the city these days the proprietor would either run me off or have the equivalent of ìGert Kellogî monitor for shoplifting. No trip to the hardware was complete without stopping to watch Ed Rudisuhle resoling shoes and doing other leather work. I especially liked to watch as he stitched harness with a great huge sewing machine driving a needle the size of my little finger. I always came away with a piece of scrap leather that was highly valued in my boyhood world but I canít recall why.

A lot of the growing-up world in Hokah revolved around the hardware/building supply operations. In our younger years a gang of us would descend on Oscar Bernsdorfís lumber building across from the Ford Garage. The lumber racks were great for climbing and playing hide and seek. It was great place on a rainy day and I can still recall the wonderful smell of the newly planed lumber.

When we tired of the lumber yard, it was across the street to Ben Enderís and later Neil Feuerhelmís Ford Garage to get the latest brochures on the new cars. It was there that I first learned about engines watching Gus Radtke assembling a V-8 after overhaul. He also explained about the dangers of ìcarbideî that was used to produce acetylene for the welding torch. Once in a great while, when Herb Wheaton was in a more relaxed mood, heíd invite us into the office of the ìHokah Chiefî to see how the paper was put together. Of course, most of the paper was in Herbís head so the only visible action was Bill Becker pounding away on the linotype machine.

For those of you who think that printing is done with computers and word processors, the linotype was a gigantic typewriter that melted lead on one end and cast out little lead slugs, organized into words and lines, on the other. The individual slugs formed the letters that put Herbís words on paper. Letter by letter they were assembled into the frames that went into the printing press that stood idle except for ìthe night beforeî the paper came out.

Having now done a lot of proposal writing against deadlines I donít know how Herb and Bill lived with a weekly deadline from which there was no relief. I recall Herb as being a bit more formal than the other businessmen in town; always impeccably dressed with his starched shirt, bow tie and straw hat. Few of these learning experiences are available to the youth of today. Not only are people too busy to show and explain what theyíre doing, in many cases, lawyers, liability and lawsuits have made it too dangerous and potentially costly for those who would share their knowledge.î

Thanks again, Richard. How true that last paragraph is.

Öby Aggie Tippery,

Special Correspondent

P.S. Richard went on to do aeronautical research in the U.S. and many foreign countries. He is a pilot and also did some test piloting on the new designs in aircraft. He lives in the Twin City area now and is ìsomewhat retiredî, doing consulting work now and then.

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