Old Settlers' Stories
by Eleanor Bremer
Old Settlers Stories
Eleanor Bremer
The town of Ocheyedan was only five years old when I was born on July 4, 1895.
My dad, Fred Meyer, had a blacksmith shop on Main Street, we kids spent much of our time playing near by and were able to see most everything that was going on, some of which I remember very well.
My parents came from two separate villages in Germany, but had not met until they were here in America. Dad came in 1887, and worked for the railroad to make enough money to build a house. This little shack was our home and Dad had a blacksmith shop. There was nothing but prairie south of the shop. Mother would tell about when they first came here, how the buffalo would come right up to our house.
I remember the tornado that rolled this little house and set it back upright some distance from where it originally stood. They left it there, straightened it out and continued to live in it. As the family grew, more rooms were added. When the tornado hit, Mother was standing at the window watching a dove flying against the wind. On the floor were five big sacks of potatoes, ready to be taken to the cellar. There was a door in the floor that opened up to go down to the cellar. Anyway when the house rolled over, the baby landed between the sacks of potatoes. A pendulum clock, brought from Germany, and a footed glass dish also landed among the potatoes. Everything else was gone. The baby was not hurt, but Dad had a big gash on his thigh. There was lard and syrup mixed together all over everything. It was a mess.
Dad had a pitch fork in the shop, which he displayed for a long time. During this storm a sliver of wood from the town hall went through the wall of dad's shop and right through the center of this pitch fork.
John and Mary Graves had the first grocery store in town. I remember her wearing a long skirt with large pockets. She always kept money in these pockets and all the kids knew it. Later on Gole's had a grocery store, there was a small meat market, Mr. Bowman had a saloon and the Tatums had a furniture store. Al Fritz built a building a couple of doors up from Dad's shop. Mr. Fritz called this building "the dream of his life". There were no sidewalks at first, then board sidewalks were built.
After the tornado rolled and moved our house, Dad built a new shop on Main Street. The large lawn between the shop and our house gave us a good area to play in. Every night the curfew bell rang from the town hall, which was also used for the fire bell. The kids had to be off the street by 8:00 in the winter and 9:00 in the summer, but since we lived right there on Main Street we were able to see everything that was going on after the curfew. Another thing we did after the curfew bell rang was to play on the hitching racks. They were located around town for the farmers to tie up their horses when in town. Tom Cramer, the town marshall, was a good natured guy and all the kids liked him, he let us play there, for we were quiet and didn't bother anybody even though the curfew bell had rung.
My brother Fred helped to build the new water tower in 1910. He was 17 or 18 years old.
Ocheyedan was just like the old western movies you see on TV. One time there was a group of men standing around in a circle down near the saloon. We kids went over to see what was happening. Two men were on the ground fighting. One hit the other on the head with a rock, blood was running out and nobody stopped them, everybody just stood there watching. The old time movies are not fairy takes, things like this actually happened.
Will tell about the school burning down. It was my first year at school and my class was writing at the blackboard, when there was a terrible noise. My teacher, Lucy Smith, ran to the door, opened it and as she did thick, heavy green smoke filled the room. She told us all to run outdoors and she went to the cloak room and carried all of our coats outside.
In one of the classrooms, two boys were acting up, the teacher was going to walk over and straighten them out, she stopped short and saw the boys sitting there fanning the smoke that was coming through the cracks. The fire had gotten such a start in this wooden building, it went up like a cracker box. I was in the southwest room, while my sister Theresa and brother Fred were in the northeast room. All ran out and within five minutes after they got out of their room, the floor went down. It was 30 below zero and the wind was blowing so strong that it was blowing the kid's caps and scarfs down the road. We then held classes all over town, in the Methodist Church, town hall and even in the old saloon building. From then on we had fire drills.
Trains came into town every day. We played on the tracks and put safety pins, washers and whatever on the tracks and waited for the train to run over them and smash them. I will never forget when Leo Miller caught his foot in the cow catcher. He was in my third grade class in school. The family lived north of the tracks. His mother heard the train whistle blow and blow and wondered why. Soon after, they brought her son home on a stretcher without his leg.
In the winter all the kids and some of the young married couples would walk out to Rush Lake and skate all evening and then walk back to town. We also walked out to the Ocheyedan Mound. There was an old foundation in the northwest area of the Mound and we kids from town played around it many times. Mr. Shuttleworth started to build a tile factory there, but was not permitted to finish building it, because it was found to be the highest point in Iowa, and building this factory would rein the Mound. The foundation was left there for a number of years. Many people did take gravel from the Mound for roads and yards.
The Gypsies would come into town with their wagons loaded with kids. They would be all over town. The women went into the stores and harassed the store keeper. One of the women got into trouble with Tom Cramer, the town marshall, he just walked away from her and wouldn't talk to her anymore. The men would take their gallon tin pails into the saloon and get them filled with beer. The kids would run all over town begging and some of them stealing things.
Our house was behind the shop and we had a sidewalk built from the front out past the house to the wood shed. We had some old boots and overshoes out there that were to be burned or destroyed. This little boy went in there, picked them up and looked them all over, now if he had been a little Gypsy boy he would have taken them and ran, but he came to the door and knocked. Oh, he had the whitest skin, well, he came and knocked at the door and said, "could he have some of those overshoes if he would sing a song for us?" So we told him he could, we just wanted to hear him sing. So he sang a song for us and went on and took what he wanted. No one can tell me he was a Gypsy boy, you know there were stories of how they used to kidnap little children. He was such a nice acting little boy. I'm sure he was not a Gypsy boy.
When word would come out "the specked apples are in town" everybody took their baskets to a little building that was located behind the Corner Cafe and get specked, bruised apples. Nobody in town had any apple trees yet, in fact, there were very few trees of any kind, so when a carload of apples came in we all had apples to eat, peel and can.
There was a lady named Lottie March who lived in a tiny house north of the old Methodist Church. She liked to have us kids come to her place, because we would do things for her. She would come up town pulling her little coaster wagon to sell cookies and all kinds of things like that. First thing she would do is stop at our house and the door would open and we would hear her say, "Can I use your privy?" We all got a kick out of that.
My older sister, Pauline (one of the twins), worked in the home of Mrs. Tatum. The Tatums had the furniture store. We were still in that small house when my sister was to get married. No way did Mrs. Tatum think my sister could have a wedding in our small house. Mrs. Tatum insisted on the wedding taking place in her house, but the fellow my sister was to marry, who was an Englishman, said "We are getting married in this small house even if the preacher has to stand outside and marry us through the window". I always gave him credit for that, he was a very nice guy.
There was always some pranks done on Halloween night. During a storm one night the wind blew the steeple off the Methodist Church and that left those four bare corners up there. The morning after Halloween there was a beer keg on each one of those corners.
Oh, and then there was this very large lady living in the east part of town. She was an old maid and wore large bloomers. Roy Underhill and my brother Paul were about the same age and went halloweening together. This Roy Underhill watched her clothes line and when he had a chance, swiped a pair of bloomers from the line. The morning after Halloween, a large pair of bloomers was seen hanging from one of those large telephone poles that were in front of Dad's shop. The wind was blowing and they hung there until the wind whipped them to pieces. Word got out and of course everybody knew whose they were, but nobody knows how hard those boys worked to get them up there.
On Memorial Day there would be a service at the cemetery to honor the Civil War Veterans. We would all meet up town, get lined up and march to the cemetery behind someone who carried the flag. I recall speaking a piece at one of the services.
The Meyers children are: twins Paul and Pauline, Meta, Fred, Theresa, Eleanor, Stella, Bill, Fran, Henry and Herbert (Pete).
The house that was home to the Meyer's family is no longer standing, but was located directly north of where by niece, Sibyl Seymour lives.
Eleanor married Chris Bremer in 1917, and lived on the farm now occupied by Eldon Heetlands.
The fall before we were married, Chris ordered a house from Sears and Roebuck. He hired a carpenter, Carl Lunsman to help us put it up. Many people came to see this Sears and Roebuck house. We later built a barn, corn crib and garage on the farm. Planted many trees and had a big garden which extended out to the road. My Dad was a gardener in Germany, and this was to be my first garden. Well, out near the road was this rare looking plant, I hoed around it and watered it, then didn't get out to that end of the garden for some time and when I did I found I had the most beautiful thistle.
With four little girls, I had a lot of clothes to wash. They always wore dresses, for we didn't have slacks in those days. I put the white clothes in a boiler of hot water on the stove.
We lived on this farm for ten years, then moved to a farm near May City, from there to Worthington until 1972, when Chris had a light stroke and then we moved to Hartley, to be near our son. Chris is deceased.
I, Elenor, celebrated by 95th birthday, July 4, 1990, in Hartley.
The children are: Gwen is deceased, Muriel lives in
Colorado Springs, Stanley lives in Hartley, Joyce lives in Des
Moines, and Virginia graduated from Ocheyedan with the class of
1950, and resides in Oakland, California.
-Transcribed by Roseanna Zehner