Aunt Mary Ellen's memories

[larryJ]

I had been looking for this letter for months.  While cleaning out a box under my computer, I finally found it.  For those of you who knew Mary Ellen (Andrews) Snodderley, you will hear the wit in her writing.  For those of you who didn't have the chance to know her, all I can say is she had a very wry wit.  She could see humor in just about everything.  

Anyway, she sent this letter to me along with a map of the streets of Howard as they were in 1993.  I am assuming that Bill Redmond was her driver as she meandered around Howard taking her notes. This is somewhat lengthy and I may have to break it into segments.  

Many of you who are familiar with Howard will know the places she mentions.  One or two of you might even live in one of the houses she mentions. or at least know something about it or whether it is still around.  A lot of her letter is family history of the Andrews family and tends to go that route, but it is still interesting.

So, with permission--------------


______________________________________________________________


July 1993 by Mary Ellen Snodderley (in her words)

Not responsible for errors.  Would appreciate additions and corrections.  In genealogy class they taught that traditional family stories are not necessarily accurate.  They are just the ones you heard most frequently.

Not knowing how to draw up a tour and being a back seat driver that directs the chauffeur to sometimes go around in circles, you travel at your own risk.  Most of the time the directions start with Elk Street, the southernmost street and come North.  But sometimes I felt like taking a detour.

1.  Cherry street is the westernmost street.  On the west side of Cherry between Jefferson and Monroe is the old City Water Plant.  Pete Leonard was the City Water and Sewer Superintendent for several years.  The water came from Elk River until the Polk Daniels Lake was built around 1936-37. The water was pumped into settling tanks, was treated and purified and pumped into the water tower for use throughout the city.  Just last week, I was asked by a Howard visitor how the lake got its name.  Polk Daniels was the pen name of Tom Thompson, publisher of the "Courant" the local paper.  He was an influential Republican.  My guess is that he was instrumental in Howard getting the lake.  It was a federal government project and was built by young men who were part of the Civilian Conservation Corps.  That was a program to create jobs.

2.  Between Cherry and plum on Adams Street is the old ice plant.  Water was frozen in tanks to form 300 lb. chunks.  These were scored for 100, 50 and 25 lb pieces.  Each household had an ice card.  It was marked 100 and 75 on one side and 50 and 25 on the other.  The card with the amount desired in the top most position was placed prominently in a window.  The ice was delivered by truck (earlier by horse and wagon) .  The delivery man would break off the desired amount with his ice pick, carry it with ice tongs and put it in the customer's ice box.  The 100 lb pieces were carried on his back.  All the kids in the area congregated around the ice man and picked up the ice chips to suck on.  Fred Shepard worked at the ice plant.

3.  On Elk Street between Plum and Walnut were the fuel storage tanks used by Hershel and Gene Stephens.  They delivered gasoline and kerosene, etc., to the service stations and to rural customers in the area.  They sold White Eagle products which was later absorbed by Mobil.  Seems like everyone I knew had a small kerosene can with an Irish potato on the spout as a cork.

4.. On the east side of Chestnut Street between Elk and Monroe is (was) the home of Bill Redmond.

5.  On the northwest corner of Chestnut and Adams is the home that Albert and Frank Andrews built for their niece, Bertie Anderson Wisner.  She told me many times that all the grain in all the wood work matched, even in the closets.

6.  The block bounded by Chestnut and Pennsylvania and Adams and Randolph was the District 5 Public School.  The grade school building now standing was completed in 1937 at a cost of $45,000.  Bob Stephens did cement work at .35 an hour and Albert Andrews was a carpenter's assistant and was paid .75 an hour.  I don't know if this school was a WPA project or not.  The Elk River bridge south of town on Hwy 99 was and it was built about the same time.

Bob Stephens and Albert Andrews also worked on the bridge.  We lived three miles south of Howard on the highway.  The house has been torn down but the barn across the road is still in use.  The weather turned cold and Dad wrapped his feet in gunnysacks to help keep his feet from freezing.  He walked from our home to the bridge site carrying his wooden tool box with its long leather carrying strap over his shoulder.

The high school building that many of the family completed their education in was built in 1916 at a cost of $40,000.  This building was condemned by the state as unsafe and on the verge of collapse.  Not so.  The salvage company had a very difficult time of razing the building.  It had been built to stand.  Over eager administrators had encouraged the state to condemn the building.  A negro work crew of both young women and men from Coffeyville worked for weeks trying to separate the mortar from the bricks.  The bricks were still in very good condition.

This is the building where Emaline Andrews Leonard, Beulah Andrews Shepard, Iva Jane Andrews Jordan and Bernadine Andrews Weyrauch graduated in 1921 and became celebrities with their pictures in many papers.  At that time not many girls completed high school.  For one family to have four graduates was newsworthy.

It was also the place that I learned to type---but never error free.  The building that is now used as the ambulance barn and for government extension offices was built in 1953 at the cost of $122,000 for vocational agriculture and shop classes.  It also housed the school cafeteria.

_____________

More later

Larryj

[patyrn]

These are great notes, Larry.  Mary Ellen was a good friend of my mother's, and I was in school with John and Paul.  I look forward to continuing with her memoirs.

[Marcia Moore]

larryJ - can't wait for more - enjoyed reading it very much.  I am now wondering, if you were a nephew to the Snodderleys, do you, or do you know of anyone, who might happen to have a photo of Buck delivering mail that I could get a copy of?   

[larryJ]

continued.......

7.  Emaline and Pete Leonard lived in a house that was on the middle of the block on Chestnut Street across from the school house.  House has been torn down.  

8.  Two blocks west of the old school grounds is West Park with picnic area and play ground.  Reunions were held there for many years.

9.  On Elk Street between Pennsylvania and Wabash is a city park with swimming pool, tennis courts, playground, ball park and picnic tables.

10. On the north west corner of Elk and Pennsylvania is the house where Fred, Beulah and Lucille Shepard lived.  Bob and Betty Stephens lived there also according to Edith Zeleny.

11.  Edith and Albert Andrews lived and died in a house that has been torn down on the west side of Pennsylvania and between Randolph and Washington.  The small white shed that is still standing was used as a bedroom for Bob and Bill Redmond.  After Albert Andrews became ill, Edith, Bill and Bob Redmond slept nearby so they could help their Grandmother care for their Grandfather during the night.  Dynda And Randy Andrews lived there one school year.

12.  To those of you who remember reunions at the Mound Branch School, it has been moved to town.  It is now a tool shed west of Pennsylvania on Iowa Street.

13.  On the Northeast of Pennsylvania and Ohio is property owned by Bill Redmond.  This was originally the home of Amos and Emaline Rudy Andrews.  I believe that Emaline died there.  At the time I remember it was the home of Bernadine Redmond Weyrauch and her family.  I stayed there for two years while attending high school.  Clarice Andrews Anderson stayed there wile working in the Agriculture Office.

I was at Bernadine's house.  I was supposed to be watching Edith Redmond who was 14 or 15 months old.  All she did was sit in the yard and eat dirt.  That's not much to watch.

Then things began to happen.  Some men brought Forest Redmond home.  He worked for the telephone company and had been struck in the side with a pole.  Bernadine sent me to get Mom (Edith Andrews.)  My how fast my Mother ran to Bernadine's.  I didn't even know she could run and I didn't know that anyone could run that fast.

In a short time, Forest died of pneumonia and Bernadine and Edith came to live with us.  About two months later, Bill and Bob Redmond were born.  

Death wasn't new to me.  My teacher died. a classmate died, a classmate's mother died when I was in first grade.

14.  Richard and Florence Andrews lived across the street from Bernadine for a short time.  That house has been torn down.

_______________________________

to be continued.

Larryj

P..S. before posting I see there were some comments.  Marcia, Mary Ellen and Lyman (Buck) Snodderley were my Aunt and Uncle, Mary Ellen was a younger sister to my mother.  As far as pictures, I don't have any, but his son Paul might.  I will ask.  Might take some time. He doesn't answer to e-mails very promptly.

[Dignified Redneck]

Larry,
It took me awhile to figure out if Aunt Mary Ellen was teasing or just speaking her opinon (of which she had no problem sharing). I am thankful that I was welcomed as part of the family after I married & lived in Howard. If I was ever granted three wishes by a genie, sitting in the corner observing a dinner at Granny Andrew's would be one of those wishes. Thanks for the posting. Deb

[larryJ]

Continuing----and this part is mostly about family, but still interesting.

15.  Since we are getting close to an Andrews historic site, let's go over to Wabash Ave. and north of Ohio Street.  The big barn was known as the Hanna barn.  I have been told that it is put together with pegs.  Their ranch was extensive covering many acres in Kansas and Oklahoma.  The raised Hereford cattle  and had a dispersal sale of the breeding stock each fall when they held a huge sale.  A booklet was printed which listed each animal and gave its pedigree.  This was a very exciting time as so many buyers came to the sale.  Cars weren't too plentiful then and many buyers came by train.  The railroad crossing was at Iowa and Wabash.  The train would stop and let passengers off to go to the sale.  In the evening, the train would stop and pick them up again.

It was always an exciting time when the cattle were driven down the streets as they were moved from pasture to pasture.  We not only had cowboys, we had Indians.  One time some cars carrying the Chilocco Oklahoma Indian School football team stopped and asked directions to the football field.

16.  The second house from the north on the east side of Wabash was the birthplace of such important people as Mary Ellen Snodderley, Albert (Jimmy) Andrews, Lucille Shepherd, Edith Redmond, Bill and Bob Redmond and probably Marjorie Leonard and George Shepherd.

Now I'm going to tell you what the house was like and what the neighborhood was like while I live there.  There was a porch with lots of gingerbread trim across the front of the house.  There was a Dorothy? Perkins rosebush at the south end of the porch.  The living room was the width of the house with a bay window on the south and the stairway with a closet underneath it on the north.  Next was the dining room with "hard wood floors", two windows on the south and the bathroom on the north.  Between the bathroom and my parents bedroom was a walk through closet.  The kitchen was south of their bedroom.  Upstairs was one big bedroom and two small ones.  At the head of the stairs was a little cubby hole.  It was a good place to play and use your imagination.  There was a closet off the big bedroom.

Off the kitchen was a screened porch.  This connected a "smoke house" to the house.  This was where the laundry was done.  After the Leonards built their house, the laundry was done in their basement.  East of the screened porch was a dirt floor area that was kind of a patio.  The roof was wire covered with green seedless grape vines.  This was a delightfully shaded area.

There was a barn for the cow, an outhouse and a chicken house.  There were fruit trees a grape arbor and a strawberry bed along the wooden sidewalk in the back yard.

Along the east side of the smoke house was Dad's work bench.  He made great curls with his wood plane.  On the west side of the smoke house was the play house.

In 1928, Iva Jane ((my mother)) gave her mother an American Beauty rosebush for Mother's Day.  It was planted in front of the the dining room windows.  Dad would prune it back so severely that you knew it was going to die.  Instead it just grew up the side of the house for two stories and had long, strong-stemmed roses.  Many of the high school graduates wore one of these roses on the night of graduation.  Each time my mother moved she took a start of the rose with her.  We have one that was started from a rose she picked and gave to us just a short time before her death.  

Flowers I remember around our house were the red California poppies, irises, dahlias, daylilies and hibiscus.  There was a garden.

When this house was auctioned off a few years ago, it was advertised as a two bedroom house with a floored attic.  What used to be the front porch became a bedroom and the carport was built on the south.  It was a good place to be a kid.  Emaline and Pete Leonard had built a house just to the south.  That was Marjorie's home, but most of her waking hours were spent at our house.

Our world was two blocks north of the railroad tracks.  Recently a Sunday School teacher kept repeating how living on the wrong side of the tracks gave you an inferior complex and that you grew up never having any confidence.  After he said that enough times, I called him on it.  If there is one this this family has it isn't an inferior complex and I was never treated any different than other people in our town.

Across the street to the north was Mrs. Neff and her daughter, Mabel.  There was no sidewalk on their side of the street.  In muddy or snowy weather, they would wade across the street in their old shoes, change into their good shoes and go on to town.  They reversed the process when they returned home.

Mabel was married under an arch adorned with white crepe paper decorations and a big white bell.  Since her wedding took place out in the yard we just sat on the front porch and watched.

Just north of us were the Dicksons.  Mr. Dickson was a dray man.  He had a team of horses and a wagon.  He delivered freight from the railroad depot and groceries to the homes from the grocery stores.  That family had outstanding musical talent.  On summer evenings we sat on the porch and listened to their music.  They had several very attractive daughters who attracted the young men.

Mrs. Dickson was a beautiful whistler.  If everyone had neighbors like them there would have been no reason to invent the radio or TV for musical entertainment.  Mr. and Mrs. Dickson always did everything together.  He died unexpectedly.  She died upon hearing of his death.  So they still did everything together.

Some of the play equipment we had was a gunny sack swing in a cedar tree.  Even when it rained, it was dry under that big tree.  We made a teeter-totter from one of Dad's ladders and a 55 gallon steel drum.  Dad made us high jump brackets, stilts,  a scooter made of wood and roller skates and a sled.  There were lots of kids in the area and we played lots of games.  It was a dead end street which made a good place to play base ball.

Lots more coming.

Larryj

[larryJ]

Deb, even better than that was to sit at the table at Granny's house and eating dinner.

Larryj

[larryJ]

And more-----

Marjorie Leonard had a pair of roller skates, the only ones in the neighborhood.  It is not much fun to skate by yourself while everyone else is playing something else.  So she skated on one skate and the rest of the kids took turns skating with the other one.

At first we skated south to the railroad tracks.  Then Mrs. Moffitt, a Civil War Veteran's widow, demanded that we not skate on the sidewalk in front of her house.  "You kids are going to wear out the sidewalks with those skates."  I guess she was right.  All over town the sidewalks are broken and worn out.

Just north of the Moffitt house was the home of her sister, Mrs. Davis, also a Civil War Veteran's widow.  She has an unstable daughter, Jessie.  My big sisters worked with her at the telephone office and they knew how unstable she was.  Supposedly, she broke a bowl over her mother's head at one time.  Later, she spent some time in a mental institution.  She was our neighborhood witch.  Once while passing her home, Jessie was out sweeping the wooden sidewalk that joined the house to the concrete city sidewalk.  She was singing, "I may be ragged and dirty, but I'm just as good as you."

Mom always told us, "You are just as good as anyone and better than most."  I knew right then I was better than Jessie.  I wasn't ragged and dirty.

Jessie continued to live in her house until shortly before her death when she was in her late eighties.  She was still trying to convince the government that she should receive a pension as she was the orphan of a Civil War soldier.

She told me that Amos Andrews had built three different houses along Wabash Ave. including the one she lived in.  She moved into her house in 1907.  The house was not new at the time.  Her house has been torn down. One house she mentioned that Amos Andrews built is at 529 N. Wabash.

The neighborhood kids did a lot of parading up and down the street.  We had oatmeal box drums, comb and tissue paper and sometimes a Kazoo (?).  Jimmy, my brother, could get music out of a galvanized sprinkler can by blowing into the spout.  He was really the star of the band.

Another exciting event for us was a disaster for the bank robbers.  The robbed the bank, took off in their car, scattering carper tacks behind them.  They made the mistake of coming down our dead-end street.  I guess it was their "box canyon".  Tires must have been paper thin if the tacks were supposed to deter the law.

We didn't have a car until after I was in school.  Dad used to shovel snow wherever it ha accumulated all the way to school.  He also walked before me and the others to keep the sleet and snow from hitting us in the face.  So I could never tell my kids how high the snow was that I walked through on the way to school.

Another neighbor was Mrs. Christy.  She always visited with the neighbor kids.  Her husband was a blacksmith.  He had been a drummer boy in the Civil War.  I thought she was such a lady and I tried to be like her.  Their daughter married "well" and moved "uptown".  As an adult I heard this story many times.  Some ladies were cleaning a meeting hall on a hot and sultry day.  The daughter said, "I'm perspiring profusely."  The mother replied, "I'm not.  I'm sweating like hell."  So much for choosing role models.

Another special neighbor was Lily Hostetler.  As a child, a cat had scratched her eye and she was blind in that eye.  She was a widow woman who earned her living doing laundry.  Her speciality was professional men's white shirts.  She was raising a granddaughter my age.  When business was good, Lily had electricity.  Other time she ironed with irons that were heated on the stove.  To keep the garments from getting on the floor and becoming soiled, she covered the floor with newspapers.  She got these out of the area newspapers from the two local newspaper offices.  In those days the comics had paper dolls and doll clothes to cut out and play with.  I was always asked to come cut paper dolls.  After we played a while, Lily would put a starched white cloth on a piano bench and serve us hot chocolate from the most beautiful and fragile hot chocolate service I have ever seen.

Each Easter, Lily would dye lots and lots of eggs and invite all the children from the area to an Easter egg hunt.

17.  Pete and Emaline Leonard had a home on Wabash and Ohio.  It was here that their baby was born and died.  Carl Ray Leonard was also born here.

18.  Corner of Wabash and Michigan is the home of the Snodderleys.  This is sometimes know as Poverty Flats.

19.  There was a dry clleaning business owned and operated by Gene and Menzenita Stephens on Wabash between Illinois and Washington Streets.  It is a ceramic shop now.  Leona Stephens worked at the shop.

20.  On the corner of Wabash and Washington is the community center.  Formerly it was a garage and tire and battery business.  Bob Stephens worked here.

21.  To the left on Washington's north side was Shapland's garage.  Across the street to the south was Ransom's Mortuary.  Pete Leonard worked at both of these business'.  He drove the hearse which doubled as an ambulance and the taxi from the garage that ferried people to and from the depot and sometimes on out of town trips.

22.  Bill Redmond worked at Delbert Green's service station on the corner of Washington and Pine. 

23.  Back on Wabash we have two block of businesses.  I will try to list places of employment of members of the family.  Bill and Bob Redmond and Frank Zeleny worked at the Zeleny Implement business.  Frank had earth moving equipment and built many farm ponds in the area.
Clarice Andrews worked as a secretary in the U.S. Government  Agriculture Office. 
Betty Stephens and Edith Redmond worked in restaurants.
Bob Redmond once worked in Junior Perkins Electric store.
Beulah Shepherd clerked in Smith and Goodwin's Dry Goods Store.
Bill Redmond once worked in Bartletts's Grocery store.
Beulah Shepherd and Richard Andrews worked in McKinney & Barkley Grocery.
Bob Redmond once worked in Winn's Grocery.
Bob Redmond once worked at Mitchell's parts store.
Menzenita Stephens worked in her brother's coffee shop that was next door to the theater.
The Shepherds had a cleaning shop.  The Snodderleys bought the cleaning shop.
Bill Redmond once worked at the pool hall.
Pete Leonard worked at Munsinger's garage.
Edith Stephens worked in the First National Bank.  It is now the Howard State Bank.
Gene Stephens was the Farm Bureau Insurance Agent.
Lyman Snodderley carried mail from the old and new post offices.
West on Randolph--Edith Zeleny worked in Marie's beauty shop.
Beulah Shepherd worked for Dr. DePew.
Bernadine Weyrauch, Iva Jordan and Beulah Shepherd were telephone operators.
Bernadine told me that when the first gas well came in on the Morrow lease, she had to go out and empty the coin box on the pay telephone as so many people were making calls.
Gene Stephens and Bob Redmond worked as janitors at the telephone office.
Edith Andrews did house work at Perrin Photograph Studios.  She sometimes helped Mrs. Tomilson assemble the photograph orders.
Coming back to Wabash------East on Adams where some of the museum now stands was the carpentry shop of Albert and Frank Andrews.

more coming---whew!

Larryj

[W. Gray]

This is good stuff. Keep it coming.

[patyrn]

I love reading this....

KRI