Sepia Saturday – Carrying Bricks

Posted on November 24, 2018 by kathy

Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind become the launchpad for explorations of family history, local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images. If you want to play along, sign up to the link, try to visit as many of the other participants as possible, and have fun.

I’ll start here.

Granted, it says blocks, not bricks, but let’s not be picky. I don’t know who Sherrely (?) is, but here she is carrying a cement block.

Next …

My grandfather unloading blocks from the back of a pickup truck.

I believe I have successfully matched the theme. I could stop here, but I’ll try to piece together a stack of photos from this time and place.

The photographs above were developed in September 1956. The “set” spans August 1956 – February 1957. The location is the junction of highways 63 and 149 in southeastern Iowa. The subject is the construction of a new and improved truck stop owned and operated by my grandparents, Charles and Abbie Smith. My grandmother did a fair job of documenting the event in photographs and I appreciate her effort. She left a few notes, but I wish there were more.

I’ve written about my grandparents’ truck stop and home a couple of times before, all responses to Sepia Saturday prompts, of course!
Charles’ and Abbie’s Place
One Moment Please
Signs of the Times

This is what the place looked like in 1950.

There had been some remodeling prior to 1956, but this project involved tearing down the old building and replacing it with a new one. They constructed the new building adjacent to the old one and continued to live and work in the old one as long as they could.

A photo dated August 17 shows what I suppose is the frame for the foundation.

And one dated August 19 shows me playing in sand that now filled the frame.

I spent lots of Saturdays with my dad(Jerry) and grandparents at the Hedrick Y, so I show up in several photos and can only speculate about how valuable my contributions were. There are a few other photos from August that depict life inside the truck stop.

My cousins and me drinking orange juice at the lunch counter.

And me, shining my grandmother’s shoes.

A little peek into the living quarters.

And my cousin nursing her “sick” mother. She did become a nurse, by the way.

Grandma Abbie wrote on the back of some photos, so from here on, I’ll use her words as captions when I can.

Charles
Sherely Hammond and
Ward Rhodes truck
load of sand

How did that tractor get in there? Did Great Uncle Norman come up with the plan?

Norman troubling

A makeshift ramp

Lewis Jacobs

Made it!

Another load of sand

I believe cement came next.

Loyd Burgas
hauling cement

This looks like my dad(Jerry) kneeling in front, my grandfather bending over, and possibly Sherely Hammond (identified in other photos) on the right. I don’t know who the man on the left is.

working with cement

One more photo from the “September” batch.

October found me hard at work.

too much work for such a small gal

My grandmother typed up a couple of notes about the progress in October.

Let’s see if I can match any photos to her notes.

Around Oct. 4th. “They finished the walls except above the windows.

Wall with windows and door frame

” Oct. 5th Charles fell from a platform on the north side of the bldg. Norman pulled nails all day.” There is no photograph of my grandfather having fallen from a platform, but there are a couple of pictures that look rather precarious. I don’t know which is the north side.

Someone on the roof. It could be my grandfather.

This doesn’t look very safe.

“Oct. 8th was the last of the blocks that was set.” No photograph seems to depict the last block being set, but several show continued progress on the new building.

Wait. Maybe I set the last block?

“Lucy and Mary and I carried all the things from upstairs. Kathy Raye came out and asked what was wrong with the upstairs and I took her up to see.” I don’t find a photo of the upstairs or their belongings outside, except for the phone.

“From there on until the 10th they tore down on the old bldg.”

“The 10th they started on the new roof.”

“Norman still tearing on the old house. Kathy R. and Judy picked up nails. Charles, Gerald working on the new bldg.”

I have vague memories of hanging out during all of this. My only relatively clear memory is of picking up nails. I think I used some kind of magnet-on-a-stick tool. The nails went in the box.

“That night Hammonds came and we really moved out the old bldg. into the new.

Abbie’s notes continued on a second card.

I don’t know if this note comes before or after the previous one, but I’ll guess after – even though it seems like there were some windows in, but not the door. Looks like Uncle Norman just inside the doorway. The building on the left is my dad’s motorcycle business. It says “Indian Sales” on the front.

Hopefully they weren’t trying to sleep here with all that lumber to trip over – although I imagine it would deter thieves. And I’d like to acknowledge that it can be pretty chilly at night in Iowa in October.

I’m sure my grandparents needed to be frugal and reuse as much as possible. Some of those nails Norman pulled and I collected were probably reused. And this door, yet to be installed, is from the old building.

My birthday fell in the middle of October when all of this moving out and tearing down was happening, yet there are pictures of us celebrating in the house. Maybe we celebrated early?

These might be pictures of the house being torn down. Although some of them were printed in January, my grandmother wrote October 29 on the back.

It looks like Grandma didn’t take any more film to be developed until January and February. Things were finished by then on the outside

And the inside

Ethel or Lucy? (When I was little I thought it was funny that one type of gas was Ethyl.)

Taking a break.

This photo appeared in the Oskaloosa Daily Herald on 30 Jan 1957.

I called my Dad today to try to fill in some gaps, but he will be 91 in two days and just doesn’t remember the details any more. I did get a little background information from him though.

Charles and Abbie had been farming for years. Prior to moving to the Hedrick Y, they were farming in north central Iowa, near the town of Clarion. Tenant farming might be the best description of their situation. They rented the land and farmed it. When they sold their product, 50% of the value of the crop went to the landowner. My grandfather owned his farm equipment.

In 1946, my grandparents sold their farm equipment and took out a loan from a bank in Richland, Iowa to purchase the land and business at the Hedrick Y in southeastern Iowa. Not long after my Dad graduated from high school that year (he stayed in Clarion to finish out the school year), he rode his motorcycle to California to visit his grandmother. While he was away, he says there was a fire that destroyed the building. He doesn’t know anything else about it since he wasn’t there. Pictures show the 1956 building looked much like the original, but with some modifications. Perhaps the damage was not that extensive and they were able to remodel rather than rebuild after the fire.

Dad recognized the names my grandmother noted on the pictures – neighbors from nearby farms and the town of Fremont. The Hammond sisters, he said, stayed with my grandparents for a month when their parents went to California and they never forgot it. He assumes that is why they were around helping so much.

There are more pictures of the Hedrick Y and I have many fond memories of time spent there, but those are for another day as this has gone on nearly as long as a construction project.

Please visit other Sepia Saturday participants and see what they have built around the theme.

Sepia Saturday – Our Soldier Laddie

Posted on September 1, 2018 by kathy

Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs.

This saluting boy had me thinking “military” as a response and I was reminded of a photograph of my great uncle in uniform. Although obviously much older than the boy in the prompt photo, Uncle Norman has such a boyish appearance in the photograph.

John Norman “Norman” Webber circa 1918

John Norman Webber, who went by his middle name, was the eldest of nine children born to M. D. and Dorinda Strange Webber. He registered with the Jefferson County draft board in Fairfield, Iowa on September 12, 1918. Norman was 19, just a couple of weeks shy of his 20th birthday.

A report of the Adjutant General of Iowa provides scant information about Norman’s service in the Iowa National Guard.
1. He enlisted a few weeks after registering for the draft – on October 7, 1918.

2. Norman was first assigned to the Machine Gun Company, 4th Infantry.

3. He was transferred to Headquarters Company January 23, 1919.

I guess Headquarters Company was organized before it was “federally recognized.”

4. And one little bit of information regarding an inspection of Headquarters Co. in 1920.

Norman was not among the 20 married men. That first notation regarding Norman’s service states that he was promoted on May 25, 1920. That’s all I know about Uncle Norman in the National Guard during WWI.

Although Norman did not see combat and did not even leave his hometown (from what I can determine), his younger sister Hattie, who would have been about fourteen when Norman began his service, wrote a poem that expressed her thoughts about seeing Norman in uniform.

OUR SOLDIER LADDIE

Late in the fall, when the apples
Are turning a beautiful red,
And the leaves of all sizes and colors
Are drifting down from o’er head,
When a boy in overalls and shirt
Stood looking down the street,
He heard the sound of music,
And the tramp of soldiers feet;
He waited for the company,
And bravely stepped in line;
His face was bright as the morning,
His eyes were blue as the sky,
His cheeks were like spring roses,
He was a catch for any eye.
So, late in the fall, when the apples
Are turning a beautiful red,
Our laddie is marching away to war,
With the stars and Stripes o’erhead.

By Hattie Webber

Hattie sent a copy of her poem to her grandmother with the following note on the back:

“Grandma, I wrote this when Norman enlisted and do not know whether I sent it to you or not. Papa say it is’ent much but I like it anyway it is what I thought at the time.

I am getting along nicely in school I think. Abbie is better now and expects to go to work tomorrow.

Well, I will close write to me some time Lots of love to both Hattie

Although I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Great Uncle Norman, he always impressed me as a gentle man, concerned with the “simple” things in life. He did not seem driven by want of material possessions nor by ambition. He and his wife might be called “minimalists” in today’s jargon, although not really, because that term implies having some wealth but choosing to downsize – or furnishing one’s home with a sleek and spare design aesthetic. Of course, these assumptions are based on the memories of a child who did not know the innermost motivations of her great uncle.

In learning this little bit about Uncle Norman’s service in the Iowa National Guard, I was thankful that domestic service during a time of war was an option for him, for I wonder how he would have fared if he had seen combat.

Uncle Norman sometimes wrote down his thoughts or a little detail about his life. I’ll close with something he wrote dated October 22, 1947.

This is where I usually ask you to visit the other participants in Sepia Saturday and follow the links to what they have prepared in response to the prompt photo. Unfortunately, the links are not there today, but you can access several from the sidebar on the blog or in the comments. Hopefully all will be back to normal by next week.

World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Registration State: Iowa; Registration County: Jefferson; Roll: 1643119, obtained at ancestry.com
U.S., Adjutant General Military Records, 1631-1976 obtained at ancestry.com

On This Day – March 27, 1927

Posted on March 27, 2017 by kathy

John Norman Webber and Beatrice Irene Jensen were married March 27, 1927 in Tyler, Minnesota.

Norman was the first child of Myron David Webber and Dorinda Rebecca Strange. He was my grandmother Abbie’s older brother and my great-uncle.

This quote from a Webber family newsletter sheds light on how Norman, who lived in Iowa met Irene, who lived in Minnesota:
Their first summer in Iowa City, Myron, Dorinda and 6 of their children lived in a tent in City Park – with no sleeping bags. It was a momentous summer – here in the park, Norman met Irene, who was in town visiting her cousin Phil Norman.

And here we have a picture of Irene, Norman, and a woman whom I would guess is Irene’s mother. The photo is identified with these words:
1926
In Tyler
Showing my ring
Irene
Irene looks really happy, but she’s not giving us a good view of that ring!

Twenty-three guests signed the memory book at the wedding. There are no names from Uncle Norman’s family.

N-Guest List wedding Norman&Irene Webber363 (1)

Attendees of the wedding of Norman and Irene Webber

Cousins have been emailing back and forth the past few days helping me by sharing information and documents. (Thank you, thank you, thank you!) Some had heard that there was a rush to the altar, but no one knows for sure. Whether or not this was a “shotgun wedding” – perhaps due to a false alarm – it was a marriage that lasted and all agree that their love for one another was genuine.

The photo on the left was taken on their 1st Anniversary. The photo on the right on their 22nd Anniversary in 1949.

And here we have Norman and Irene opening gifts on their 25th anniversary at the home of Ersel Webber Addis and Laird Addis.
Uncle Norman was known to have rather unruly hair.

Norman and Irene lived in West Lucas Township, near Coralville in Johnson County, Iowa for many years. They appear there in both the 1930 and 1940 census. Norman and Irene lived a simple rural life as described in this undated story by Norman:

“Goat Island” Click to enlarge

Uncle Norman may not have given a monetary value to his home, but the 1930 census taker valued it at $300. To give some context, other homes on that page were valued in the thousands. Uncle Norman earned his living as a plasterer and it was not full-time work.

I love Uncle Norman’s sense of humor and writing style. “After leaning lean-tos completely surround the house and lean-tos leaning lean-tos to the lean-tos, we are beginning to feel just a bit crowded again. Shall we repeat the cycle?”

Norman’s words: “We have learned to live with the two of us” seem to echo their sense of loss in having no children. But this story also makes clear that Norman and Irene felt great joy in having nieces and nephews come to visit and be a part of their lives. As cousin Yvonne wrote in an email, “We are their children.”

In later years, Norman and Irene lived with Norman’s parents in Iowa City. They also lived in a house on the property of Norman’s sister Abbie and her husband Charles (my grandparents). I wrote a little about their home and business in Charles’ and Abbie’s Place.

One more story for this wedding anniversary post. As a wedding gift, Uncle Norman gave one of his nephews and his bride a “kissing stool” because of their height difference. As you can see, Uncle Norman was well acquainted with this particular problem.

Abbie and Eveline

Tag Archives: John Norman Webber

Sepia Saturday – Carrying Bricks

Sepia Saturday – Our Soldier Laddie

On This Day – March 27, 1927