Fried Chicken For Soldiers

DOWNEY

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes
Date: 7/20/2013 at 19:35:12

The Grinnell (IA) Herald
Sept. 21, 1926

FRIED CHICKEN
FOR SOLDIERS

Owing to the washouts on the Skunk bottom this side of Kellogg several westbound trains were marooned here Sunday. One train was a special train which was carrying veterans of the Civil War to the annual reunion at Des Moines this week. Mr. Downey had prepared fried chicken for fifty or sixty people and they received a telegram from headquarters in Des Moines that the special containing the soldiers had been stopped somewhere near Turner and would be brought back to Grinnell and that it was up to him to feed them.

The train backed in on time and the blue coats were rushed into the dining room and were fed up on the fried chicken and the other best things of the land, and others too, as long as the chicken lasted. Then came other people from the marooned cars until the hotel had been called upon to feed about 200. We presume others scattered themselves around town and got fed at other places.