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Traveling The Rural Mail Route With Franz Strackbein

    Franz Strackbein served the Lowden community as a rural mail carrier for a period of forty years, from Dec. 15, 1919 until Dec. 30, 1959. He began his service while Peter H. Jurgensen was postmaster. Following is some of the information which Franz shared with me.

     Rural Free Delivery was begun in the United States on Oct. 1, 1896, and the first men in the Lowden community to be rural mail carriers were John and William Lillis, John having the south route and William the north, the dividing line being the town. At this time the cost of mailing a one ounce letter was two cents. The two routes covered a distance of forty-nine miles.

     Following the Lillis brothers, Walter Baade had a route for a number of years before Franz took over. By that time the two routes had been consolidated into one, which covered a distance of thirty-two miles. Part of the original routes had been given to Clarence and part to Bennett.

     Needless to say, fifty years ago the roads were dirt, and although Franz had a Model-T which he purchased second hand for the price of $385.00 when the weather and roads were bad he used a team of horses. He recalls three teams, the first being a team of bays, the second a team of blacks and the third a team of grays. This latter team was considered to be one of the best road teams in the county. At first Franz used a regular top buggy, which was later replaced with an enclosed mail wagon.

     One incident, early in his mail-carrying days, took place on “Old-30” west of town. The road had been graded for paving, but snow, ice, and rain had made it treacherous. A freight train made the horses uneasy, the one pushing the other into the ditch, and with that the mail wagon rolled over. Rudolph Siebel was coming into town with his farm wagon, and he brought Franz and the mail back to the post office. Sometimes the weather was so bad and the roads impassable so that the whole route could not be made.

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    Besides his first car, Franz recalls that in his forty years he drove two Model-T Fords, one Model-A Ford, three Stars, one Durant, three Plymouths, one Chevrolet, three Studebakers, one Jeep, two Fords, two Chevrolets and one Volkswagen. He has not figured the number of miles driven during those years, but noted that the route which began with thirty-two miles had expanded to almost eighty by the time of his retirement.

    When using the horses, feed had to be taken along for a noon break. Franz also carried his lunch, but remembers that sometimes he had a meal with a family along the way.

    As a boy he recalls the day the post office building located just west of the now E & A Cafe* burned. The flames could be seen from his home, now the LeRoy Boettger farm**, and he was sent to the Charles Schmidt home to find out what building was burning. Apparently the fire began when a kerosene lamp was accidentally turned over, and the building was completely destroyed. Little did he think on that day that he would spend forty years traveling the rural mail route.

              Paul C. C. Jordan

    *The E & A Cafe is located on the northwest corner of the intersection of Main Street and McKinley Avenue at 600 Main.

     ** LeRoy Boettger farm is the E ½ of the SW ¼ of Section 3 in Springfield Township.