Grain Elevators and the Local Economy

While the little brown house was relatively close to my grandfather’s residence, my grandmother’s house was two-thirds to three-quarters of the way across the longer dimension of the town of Gowrie. Gowrie stretched for just a mile or so (in our early days in the little brown house) along an east-west orientation. Its width north and south was considerably less and varied from a block or s block and a half at the east and west extremities to perhaps four blocks at its widest point (or I suppose for half a mile or so at most). The widest point was at the M and St. L tracks as they passed north and south through the town. The CNW ran east and west more or less along or slightly south of the town proper.

The town economy had as one of its mainstays the marketing of farm products and secondly of providing food and manufactured items to the residents and to the farming families in the vicinity. The main farm product was grain (corn and oats). Soybeans came in during the 1930s and has displaced oats as a grain crop. What grain wasn’t used on the farms for livestock food was sold to one of the several grain elevators in Gowrie (or depending on the location of the farm in one of the nearby communities).

During my childhood days in Gowrie there were four elevators though operation of two of them was not continuous. The two principal elevators were those belonging to the Farmers’ Cooperative and to a private entrepreneur by the name of Bruntlett. Actually the latter business had been inherited by Bruntlett’s wife from her father by name of Bomberger. In the early 1930a Bruntlett was operating the elevator though Bomberger may still have owned it. The inheritance by Bruntlett’s wife may have come later on. Bomberger during this period was one of the county supervisors and I think it was through his intervention that my father got his work in the county treasurer’s office.

My scanty recollection of Bomberger was of a short, rather overweight elderly man with a rather gruff or brusque manner. Again my vague recollection is that his wife was reputed to be a very congenial person. Bruntlett was the sort of individual with more bluster than ability. He was one of the American Legion coterie.

Both the Farmers’ Coop and Bruntlett’s were located near the intersection of the CNW and Mt and St. L railroads. The two other elevators with less impressive facilities were adjacent to the Mt and St. L tracks, one of them being right off the main street in Gowrie, the other about a block north.

The latter was later acquired by the Johnson lumber company (for whom my father worked for part-time for years and which he ended up working full-time in his later working years) probably sometime in the later 1930s. When they acquired it they asked my father if he wanted to manage it, perhaps recalling that at one time he had worked at the Farmers’ Coop (this was before he went to work at the bank). As I recall he considered it for a while but decided against it, perhaps because deciding that he didn’t really have the experience of the temperament for the buying and selling of grain. How long the Johnson firm operated the elevator I don’t know.

The last elevator was the least impressive of them all and though I think it operated during my childhood it had ceased operation early on. Eventually I think the structure was acquired by the Johnson lumber company also whose property abutted it, but it was only used for storage, etc.

I think on of the two latter elevators had been operated and owned by one Pirie. Competing with the Gowrie elevators were the elevators in the adjacent communities. Some of these communities were very small — perhaps not more than half a dozen families (maybe even that number was on the high side). One of these was the little hamlet of Lena which was located on the M and St. L tracks about a mile south of the main part of my grandfather Strand’s farm. I think my uncle Reuben’s farm extended close to it. It had an elevator and because of the convenience I’m sure my grandfather and my uncle Reuben used it to market their farm products.

The elevator has been inoperative for years now but the associated buildings are used for a fertilizer supply business. During my visits to Iowa I have sketched the old elevator and I have made one watercolor of it. Now (2004) it is gone, burned down as an exercise for the Gowrie fire department. Sad. During WWI there was a grocery operating in Lena run by one “old man” Klippel. Sugar was scarce during the war and my mother was able to get a 100 lb. sack from Mr. Klippel to augment her supply. Whether this was a favor, an oversight or simply negligent behavior on Klippel’s part I don’t know.

As I wrote the old elevator in Lena was a picturesque object for sketching. Vincent’s wife Jean has said that their son Joel and his friends used to get inside and climb to the top of the abandoned structure — I guess to Jean’s consternation.