Still More Real American Stories

By Bob Quirk

The book contains almost fifty stories whose topics are drawn from world history, local history and family history. They cover the author's travel adventures and those of his family members. He writes about the local impact of big events such as World War II and of smaller things like a graduation ceremony or a drive-in movie. Big-city life and rural America each have stories included. Articles on sporting events are scattered throughout the book and include players and games ranging from local high school basketball through professional baseball.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496901606

Bob Quirk

Bob is a retired teacher and school administrator who has traveled extensively. He is a natural story-teller who likes to reminisce about events in the past two centuries with his stories often tied to members of his family or people and events from the central Indiana area. His style is is designed to make the past relevant to his reader by relating it to something they know and understand. If there is a story to be told that he finds interesting, Bob tells it.

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© 2014 . All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  04/21/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0159-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0160-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014906405

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Family

Childhood Memories

Grandmother

Grandmother and History

Grandmother and Inventions

1942

Ireland Trip

Ireland Travels

Life in Ireland

19th Century

Indiana’s Start

Settling Montgomery County

Early Montgomery County History

Murder in Montgomery County

Silver Island

Erie Canal

Attica and Covington War

Bricks

20th Century

Orphan Train

Veteran’s Day and December 7, 1941

Trip to Ohio

1906

1927

1935

Drugstores

Growing up in the 1930’s

People

Isaac Coen

Ambrose Whitlock

Whom would you like to meet?

Common people?

Kickapoo Ed Summers

Reverend Leigh Wright

Brett Sheldon

School and Sports

Sectional Basketball Tournament

Six-man Football

100 years of Wingate Basketball

Richland School

School Field Trips

Universities

Graduation

Days of Yore

Fun time Saturday

December

Local Highlights from 1910

1913

Social Life Changes

Farm Life

More Farm Life

4-H Memories

Spring in Indiana

The Drive-In

Fountain County Courthouse Murals

Introduction

Still More Real American Stories is Bob Quirk’s third book, collected from articles he has written for the Fountain County Neighbor of Attica, Indiana and the Crawfordsville Journal-Review.

Bob’s maternal family has resided outside Newtown, Richland Township, Fountain County, Indiana since 1830. Bob graduated from Richland Township High School and Wabash College and farmed for several years before beginning a 24-year teaching career and a ten-year administrative career in the North Montgomery school system. He lives in the 1891 family home where he was born and, with his wife, Jeannine has raised three children Jeff, Jerry and Jill on the family farm. Bob has a sister, Pat, who is married to Bill Rivers and lives in Greenwood, Indiana.

His love of travel and of history was inherited from his parents. Bob’s father was born in Ireland and served in the Merchant Marines. Bob’s mother Grace met Captain Griff Quirk aboard a ship returning from China where she had been teaching music.

This collection of articles and previously unpublished pieces interweaves Bob’s love of history, travel and local stories and trivia.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following people who helped in this project:

• My wife Jeannine for her help and encouragement.

• My daughter Jill for typing each article.

• My son Jerry for coming up with the book title.

• My son Jeff for editing and helping research the book.

• My friend Greg Flint for his guidance, editing, assembling and encouragement to make these books possible.

And lastly, thanks to all the people who have said they enjoyed my articles and that I should put them in a book.

Family

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Jeff, Jill and Jerry Quirk

Bob and Jeannine Quirk

Childhood Memories

As I was growing up, my grandmother, Belle Harvey McKinney, lived with my parents and my siblings in the house I still call home. She was born in 1858, two years before the Civil War. She had wonderful memories of events from her childhood. She would tell me stories that interested me. I am now the same age she was when I was a young boy. It bothers me now that I didn’t ask her more questions. Of course, as a very young boy I wasn’t interested in those things from her youth.

As I got to thinking about this I wondered if at some time in the future my grandkids and great grandkids might wonder what life was like in the 1930’s and 40’s.

Here are some memories of events that I remember from my childhood. Some of them are so unimportant that I wonder why remember them.

One of the earliest memories that I have was when I was 4 ½ years old and we visited my Uncle Gerald who lived in Montreal. I don’t remember the drive there, but I do remember that when we arrived that there was no bed for me! However, I thought it was really great when they made a bed for me by putting together two straight chairs for me to sleep on. There weren’t air mattresses like those that people use today to accommodate houseguests.

I can remember standing in line to see a movie in Lafayette and the people were talking about John Dillinger being shot outside a theater in Chicago.

In 1933, when I was 5 years old, I went to our next-door neighbor’s, the Quigle’s, quite often. One day I asked why they were building such a fancy stone end post in their driveway. I was told they were hosting a state corn-husking contest and wanted it to look nice for the people coming to visit that day.

When the day of the contest arrived, I was shocked when Mom told me I couldn’t go down there by myself. As an adult now, I can see why she didn’t want me to be there by myself since 20,000 people came to see the contest.

After the contest was over and most of the people had gone home, I was allowed to go down to Quigle’s by myself. I thought it was neat to go to the field with the photographer who was taking pictures of the winner, Lawrence Pitzer of Attica.

My school was in Newtown and had all 12 grades in one building. On the first floor were four rooms. Three of the rooms held grades 1-6, which meant that teacher taught two classes in the same room.

Grades 7-12 were upstairs and in the basement. The second floor was thus off limits to grades 1-6 but when we got to be 7th graders we thought we were somebody special because we were now able to go up those stairs to the second floor.

A huge change for the school at Newtown took place in the year of 1941 when the schools of Newtown and Mellott consolidated to form Richland Township School.

My freshman year was the first year for the new school. Since construction for the new gym and additional classrooms was going on the upper six grades went to school in Mellott. The next year, even though construction was not completed for the new school, we went to school in Newtown.

An event occurred that school year that still upsets me. They cancelled the basketball season! They told us that the gym was not completed and since World War II had started, they could not find a coach. Those were very poor excuses we thought then and still do.

I can remember during my freshman year the high school students voting to have red and white as the school colors and to have Red Devils as our school nickname.

During my freshman year, on December 7, 1941, I was in my upstairs bedroom listening to a Chicago Bears football game on the radio. They kept interrupting the game with a news bulletin that the Japanese were bombing a place called Pearl Harbor. I had no idea where it was, but Dad told me it was in Hawaii. Of course, we all know how that event changed world history.

The next day at school, we all gathered in the assembly to hear President Roosevelt address Congress with his Day of Infamy speech asking for a declaration of war against Japan.

Two other tragedies I remember were when we were at the 4-H fair when word came that Will Rogers was killed in a plane crash in Alaska and on another summer day we heard that Amelia Earhart’s plane was missing somewhere in the South Pacific.

When I think of 4-H, I always think of the pigs I had to show. At the end of the fair, we just brought them home, as there was no sale at the fairgrounds. In 1939, World War II had started in Europe. On September 1, I took my 4 H pigs to the Attica stockyard, which was on North Perry. They told me that the price had been a little over $5 a hundred pounds but because the European war had started and they were my 4-H pigs, they would give me $6 a hundred pounds. They said that was the highest price they had paid in several years. I thought I was rich with the money I got for each pig.

These are just a few of my memories of years gone by. It doesn’t seem possible that those things happened 70-80 years ago!

Grandmother

How many times have people thought of something you wished you had asked your grandmother? My grandmother, my mother’s mother, lived with us until I was married. I had had many opportunities to talk to her, but there are still many things I wish I had asked her. When we are young, we don’t think these things are important, but as we grow older, we realize the opportunities we missed.

My grandmother, Belle McKinney, was born September 12, 1858 in western Illinois. The Civil War started in April 1861 when she was only 2 ½ years old. Although she was very young, she remembers some things about the war. Probably the first memory she had was when her father joined the Union Army. She remembered this because he carried a picture of her in a little red dress that he had bought for her. We still have this dress.

Another vivid memory she told me several times occurred when she was an innocent first grader. She said that every Friday afternoon the students were required to recite a poem.

The poem she recited had been taught to her by a man hired to help on the farm while her father was in the army.

I wish I could remember the poem she recited to me so many times. However, the poem said something about Jeff Davis (the Confederate President) sitting on a fence when along came a crow and pecked him on the nose.

Being an innocent little girl, she had no idea that her teacher was a Copperhead or Southern sympathizer. She was proud that she was able to recite the poem and was scared to death when the teacher threatened to beat her if she ever did something like that again.

The next important event she remembered was something that brought great joy to her and to all people in the North. General Lee had surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox. She was thrilled that her father had survived and would be returning home.

However, she remembered how the joyful feeling of the people in the North was turned to sadness when only a week later they received the news that President Lincoln had been assassinated. It was hard for them to believe that after four long years the war had ended with victory for the North, but now someone had shot President Lincoln.

An interesting incident occurred in her early teens. She became ill and her doctor advised her to drop out of school and spend her time outdoors. She was told if she did not do this, she would not live very long. The diagnosis must have worked, because she lived until 1954, just a month short of her 95th birthday.

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Bell McKinney bringing lunch to her kids on the way to school.

During the 1870’s, which would have been her teenage years, events occurred that are still talked about today. Remember, at this time she lived in western Illinois near the Mississippi River. Of course, this was long before radio and TV. She told me that in early October of 1871 the sky grew dark for 3 days. They later learned that the darkness was caused by smoke and that Chicago had been on fire. It was hard for them to realize the extent of the damage that had been done.

As terrible as the Chicago fire was, with all of the death and destruction that occurred there it is hard to believe that a fire in Wisconsin on the same day killed more people. There were 300 people killed in the Chicago fire while 1,200 people lost their lives in Peshtigo, Wisconsin in a fire that also destroyed 3 million dollars in property.

In 1876, when she was 18 years old, two events occurred that would have been instantly reported on TV today. I’ve often wondered how long it was before my grandmother heard the news. One was the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. He received the patent that year. I wonder if even he realized how his invention would change the lives of people throughout the world.

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Our first phone

It was about 25 years before the telephone was developed and could be installed in her home. I can