Icon viewers:
Much as I try, I can't seem to put down this book I purchased on Amazon last week.
Good trick to keep people reading – sprinkle their name onto a page every now and then. Dang if it doesn't take me all the way back to the summer of 1958 when I moved to 150 Grove Street.
Rudi's essay hooked me right off the bat, but tell him for me that gasoline was not 30 cents a gallon, it was 27.9.
That off my chest, I am collecting a whole bunch of corrections to mistold stories.
Like for example, the failed reenactment of the Dillinger robbery told by Rick Emmert was just plain wrong.
The whole reason we started dreaming up such a skit was because of Tim Triplet's spanking new Ford Thunderbird (was his mom's actually). Shiney jet black with front and back doors that opened opposite each other – so that the back seat door swung open opposite the front (hinges on opposite sides) it was a sight none of us had ever seen...then, or since.
We thought that a bunch of well dressed guys jumping out of that car with all four doors open in the middle of Main and Church Street would be sight to make us famous.
In other words, Rick was all wrong saying we were going to rent a Cadillac. The whole inspiration was Tim's mother's Thunderbird.
But importantly, it was David Smucker who stopped us cold when he said that: "You know, Bluffton farmers are independent people who take matters into their own hands. What's to stop one of them from going into Grading's hardware and pulling a shotgun off the wall?"
Though we had discussed plans to warn Gaiffe ahead of time, it took us about a minute to realize the skit wasn't worth the risk.
Speaking of Dillinger, my grandfather, Sam Bixel, owned "Bixel's Dry Goods" with a front door next to the bank on Main street, and a back door next to the bank on Church street.
I've heard my mother tell the story many times how Sam, who tended to be excitable, called home to his wife, Fanny, down on South Main Street yelling into the phone: "The robbers! There're here!"
Then he quickly hung up. Poor Fanny and the kids – Willow, James and my mother, Elizabeth, didn't know what to do.
I'm skipping around in the book, David Smucker is up next so no doubt I'll have to correct a bunch of his memories as well. Stay tuned.
Eagerly waiting for the next edition of "A creek runs through it."
Jim Heiks
Somewhere in Wisconsin
