Web site for Minburn
Minburn
This web site is a great treasure for those of us who live around Minburn and want to share with our family and friends near by and in other states the happenings of our community. Kudos to all that contribute and for the up to date information, photos, and functions of the community. It is great to be a Minburnite!! Jackie Landon
Great concert!
Thanks for a wonderful meal, homemade ice cream and concert on Saturday night. Having the kids skate during the concert is a great activity, and I'm sure the parents appreciate knowing where their children are!
Warren Allen Smith
Greenwich Village, New York City
I was born 27 October 1921, at which time the depot looked almost the same, although it had been built much earlier. The wooden structure just behind, however, was replaced by a loading pen from which animals were herded into climbing up a ramp into boxcars, to be shipped away. It was in that general area behind the savings bank in July 1930 that Town Marshal Virgil Untied was killed during a daring gunfight in which robbers successfully got away.
Harry Clark Smith, my dad and a member of the Town Council when streetlights were first put up, managed the Clark Brown grain elevator, just beyond the left side where the picture ends. The co-op grain elevator run by Bill Crawford was to the right on the picture. Bill's daughter, Thelma, was a 3rd or 4th grade teacher for many of us kids. Our other favorite teachers included Nellie Ober, Anna Shirley, Ivan Seibert, and Jim Duncan.
As a kid, I remember Depot Agent Nelson tapping Morse code messages to be forwarded and also transcribing incoming telegraphs for townspeople (usually bad news if it couldn't wait for a plain old 3¢ letter). In the winter, the depot was kept warm with a wood-and-coal-burning stove (and by teenagers with their occasional nocturnal necking and petting).
At the very right in the picture was where coffins arrived from afar or were stored for delivery - the scariest spot in town, I felt! When Mr. Nelson wasn't looking one day, I checked the wooden box in which the coffin was crated to make sure it was fastened tight and nothing would climb out.
To the right and just across the railroad tracks was a big stone on which I would sit and wave to Mr. Hungerford, the man in the M & St. L caboose who lived in Minneapolis, which I was told was a place even larger than Perry - what a thrill the day he picked me up and let me see inside the car at the end of the freight train, one that had a simple place to keep food and a place to sleep.
(End of Part 1)
Harry Clark Smith, my dad and a member of the Town Council when streetlights were first put up, managed the Clark Brown grain elevator, just beyond the left side where the picture ends. The co-op grain elevator run by Bill Crawford was to the right on the picture. Bill's daughter, Thelma, was a 3rd or 4th grade teacher for many of us kids. Our other favorite teachers included Nellie Ober, Anna Shirley, Ivan Seibert, and Jim Duncan.
As a kid, I remember Depot Agent Nelson tapping Morse code messages to be forwarded and also transcribing incoming telegraphs for townspeople (usually bad news if it couldn't wait for a plain old 3¢ letter). In the winter, the depot was kept warm with a wood-and-coal-burning stove (and by teenagers with their occasional nocturnal necking and petting).
At the very right in the picture was where coffins arrived from afar or were stored for delivery - the scariest spot in town, I felt! When Mr. Nelson wasn't looking one day, I checked the wooden box in which the coffin was crated to make sure it was fastened tight and nothing would climb out.
To the right and just across the railroad tracks was a big stone on which I would sit and wave to Mr. Hungerford, the man in the M & St. L caboose who lived in Minneapolis, which I was told was a place even larger than Perry - what a thrill the day he picked me up and let me see inside the car at the end of the freight train, one that had a simple place to keep food and a place to sleep.
(End of Part 1)
Warren Allen Smith
Greenwich Village, New York City
(Part 2)
Harry and Ruth Smith, my parents, lived nearby (407 Walnut), facing the depot. Mom had arrived from South Dakota via Minneapolis at this depot, having met my dad while he was scouting for the Chicago Cubs in her little town - she was the first to get a divorce in South Dakota, a secret my parents kept from everyone in town. Dad has stayed in the Minburn Hotel near the depot until their house was built, but neighbors and people arriving by train were amused when on the first day she arrived she built a huge bonfire in front of the house and burned all his junk and old clothes. Women admired this out-of-state woman’s independence.
On the right where the telephone pole is where livestock pens kept animals until they could be shipped. And just a few feet north was where vagrant bums would jump off freight cars, build a fire to cook something, and sleep overnight. My parents warned me never to go near the area and, of course, I had a few interesting discussions with bums who told me they had no other way of traveling for free. The 1929 Depression and 1937 recession stretched even to Minburn. The occasional hobo disliked bums and had a trade such as knife-sharpening - he'd ask at people's back doors to be paid in food for any chores he'd do, although a hobo often earned an extra two bits or more if you really felt sorry for the guy).
The photo certainly brings back memories to this Pinhooker who for six decades exchanged his birth town of 328 for one with a population of well over 8,000,000 (just counting the legal ones).
As folks sometimes observe, you can take the kid out of Iowa but you can't take Iowa out of the kid. Meredith Willson, whose "Music Man" with its 76 trombones was such a hit on Broadway, observed that Iowa's a good place to have come from! (Except he and I once joked that we emphasized the final preposition.)
Warren Allen Smith
wasm@mac.com
On the Web: wasm.us
Harry and Ruth Smith, my parents, lived nearby (407 Walnut), facing the depot. Mom had arrived from South Dakota via Minneapolis at this depot, having met my dad while he was scouting for the Chicago Cubs in her little town - she was the first to get a divorce in South Dakota, a secret my parents kept from everyone in town. Dad has stayed in the Minburn Hotel near the depot until their house was built, but neighbors and people arriving by train were amused when on the first day she arrived she built a huge bonfire in front of the house and burned all his junk and old clothes. Women admired this out-of-state woman’s independence.
On the right where the telephone pole is where livestock pens kept animals until they could be shipped. And just a few feet north was where vagrant bums would jump off freight cars, build a fire to cook something, and sleep overnight. My parents warned me never to go near the area and, of course, I had a few interesting discussions with bums who told me they had no other way of traveling for free. The 1929 Depression and 1937 recession stretched even to Minburn. The occasional hobo disliked bums and had a trade such as knife-sharpening - he'd ask at people's back doors to be paid in food for any chores he'd do, although a hobo often earned an extra two bits or more if you really felt sorry for the guy).
The photo certainly brings back memories to this Pinhooker who for six decades exchanged his birth town of 328 for one with a population of well over 8,000,000 (just counting the legal ones).
As folks sometimes observe, you can take the kid out of Iowa but you can't take Iowa out of the kid. Meredith Willson, whose "Music Man" with its 76 trombones was such a hit on Broadway, observed that Iowa's a good place to have come from! (Except he and I once joked that we emphasized the final preposition.)
Warren Allen Smith
wasm@mac.com
On the Web: wasm.us
