Do you remember when - Ava HILL OVERHOLTZER used to clerk at TUTTLE'S Store. She can remember that everytime the train came in, all of the kids would run for the depot to see who got on and off the train. When Floyd and Ava lived on the farm east of town, they could always see the train go by in the distance.

Marie ECKERMAN TROXELL can remember Joe BROWN taught her to ice skate when she attended the Ames country school north of where she lives today. Later her family moved to the present [1983] Harry SKARDA farm, the house having been moved from town. Marie, Ellen, and Marguerite attended Willow Shade country school down the hill north of them. (The big ditch north of Harry's today didn't used to be there.) When there was snow on the ground, the girls could start on their sleds at the barn and go down the hill north through the pasture and slide clear to the schoolhouse. Marguerite was 7, Ellen 8, and Marie was 11 about this time. They'd also take their ice skates to school with them to use during recesses. They were allowed 15 minute recesses morning and afternoon; however, they could only use 5 minutes in running outside to the toilet so they could save up the unused 20 minutes. That would give them an hour and 20 minutes for their noon hour to cut across the field a quarter of a mile to Grandpa WEEDA'S pond to go ice skating. Some of the other children were Howard, Florence, and Lloyd ENGLAND, the Lee BROWN children and the KESTER children.

Joe CLOUGH was the banker at Ellston. He had the first car in the Ellston vicinity. Everytime the ECKERMAN children could hear Joe's car coming from the east, they would hurry down to the corner to watch he go by. This was a fascinating sight. If Joe would happen to come along as the ECKERMAN'S were going to church in Tingley with the horses and carriage, Marie's Papa would pull off to the side and get out and hold the horses' bridles so they wouldn't get scared and run away.

Dr. McINTOSH related, "When Tingley first got gravel, the block where the post office and bank are located was the first block to be graveled (with old-time gravel, not crushed rock), as it used to get practically impassable, with ruts so deep the cars dragged. The rock was shipped in freight cars and unloaded and hauled by team and wagon to be spread by the road grader and by hand. Later, the second block past BRECKENRIDGE Store was graveled. The side streets were still mud, so we left our cars uptown and all walked down to the office. Also, we used to leave our good car at the gravel at [highway] 169 before the Mt. Ayr-Afton [Ayr Line] road was paved, and whilte the road into Tingley was still mud."

Marie ECKERMAN TROXELL remembered when she and her sisters, Ellen and Marguerite, the Lee BROWN children, Willie MARINER, Lawrence BORRUSCH, and George and Florence KESTER used to go down to the railroad track to play after school. (The ECKERMAN family lived where Harry SKARDA lives today [1983].) They would place pins or nails on the tracks, and the train wheels would smash them together into whatever shape they had laid them. Sometimes they would place two nails together to make crosses out of them. One time they were playing on the tracks and Florence KESTER go ther foot caught in the cattle guard. Wouldn't you know - here came the 4:23 train from the east. They hurriedly unbuckled her overshoe and pulled her foot from it. After the train had passed, they retrieved the overshoe. . .

Margaret EIGHME can well remember one time when she came to town with her parents. They gave her a nickel to spend and she accidently dropped it down a knothole in the boardwalk.

To settle a difference of opinion as to walking from Tingley to Mount Ayr in 2 hours, Floyd WOOLLUMS proved Tuesday, February 14, 1939, it can be done. He walked from the HICKS Store to the Mount Ayr Schoolhouse in 1 hour and 45 minutes.

In 1926, a $1 would open a savings account at the Tingley State Bank and also obtain a Liberty Bell Bank.

John BLAUER won 2nd at the State Fair in checkers for three years in a row.

SOURCE: Tingley, Iowa Centennial: 1883 - 1983. Pp. 37, 56. PSI, Inc. Belmond IA. 1983.
Courtesy of Mount Ayr Public Library, September of 2011

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, September of 2011