Carpooling to Fort Dodge

During my school years in Gowrie my father was on the local school board and I recall him going off to the meetings. I also remember that prospective teachers would come around to the individual board members to make a personal appeal for a position. The most distinct recollection is when Archie Gerber came around in this fashion. Doubtless he had started out in his best sartorial style but he had become mired with his car and as a result his shoes and pant legs were all muddy. Nonetheless he got the job. Although the school board as a whole presumably did the hiring I’m sure that the superintendent’s opinion was the decisive factor.

When Leistra left and a new superintendent was to be selected there were a lot of applicants. I wonder just how the decision was made.

So I finished up my high school career. I don’t recall anything about the actual graduation — I suppose it was in the school gym. I do remember vaguely attending the baccalaureate service at the Lutheran church, I think it alternated between the Lutheran and Methodist sites. In those days there wasn’t the furor and dissension about the relationship between school and religion that there is now. Actually Gowrie was a rather homogeneous community so dissension was unlikely to arise anyway. Come to think of it I seem to remember that in first grade at least the school day started out with some sortof reading by the teacher, possibly religious in nature.

When I finished high school my prospects for college were uncertain and limited at best. By the time I graduated my father was working full time at the county treasurer’s office, driving to and from home and the treasurer’s office each day — I sort of think it was a six-day schedule. That income, plus what he earned as part time bookkeeper at the Johnson lumber company abd the advantage we had on the farm as to milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables made for a fairly steady livelihood for the family. But there wasn’t much extra for any items such as college expenses.

Clarice rode with my father to attend Fort Dodge Junior College for one year but I seem to remember that she was mildly dissatisfied there. Anyway by that time my Aunt Laurine was established as a primary teacher in the Dubuque school system and Dubuque had a four-year college there, a Presbyterian school called the University of Dubuque. So Aunt Laurine offered Clarice the chance to live with her and attend school there, which she took advantage of. And when Clarice finished, Vivian was newly graduated from high school and she followed in Clarice’s footsteps.

This year (1997) when Jean and I visited Vivian and family in Ames the subject of Vivian’s school years came up peripherally in the conversation and she indicated that her feelings toward Aunt Laurine, despite the advantage she had given Vivian, weren’t entirely cordial. Certainly not the feeling Vivian had for her Aunt Ruth.

So for Clarice and Vivian the route to a college education turned out to be fairly assured. For me the situation was rather different and I simply proceeded along the most obvious path at the time, which was to ride along with my father and attend junior college. The college had a curriculum that furnished essentially one year of engineering as far as the total credits were concerned, but with the need to make up in lated years those courses which were usually included in the freshman year at such schools as Iowa State College.

My parents of course provided me with room and board as it were and my father paid the tuition (in part) and of course also provided the transportation, but he was driving to Fort Dodge daily anyway. Part of the tuition was paid for by my working at the junior college under some kind of government work program for an hour or so several days a week. I recall doing typing and perhaps other clerical-type work in Dean Dickey’s office. Whether I had applied for this work or my need was recognized by Dickey I have no idea now. I wonder in retrospect if this contact I had with Dickey resulted in my being offered the small scholarship at the conclusion of my second year at Fort Dodge JC that enabled me to continue my engineering at the University of Iowa. I’m sure it was through him that the offer came to me.

The junior college at the time I attended was an integral part of the Fort Dodge school system and the classes were held on the third floor of the high school building. Most of the students were either graduates of Fort Dodge high school or graduates of nearby high schools (mostly in Webster County but there were a few from outside the county I’m quite sure) but there was a smattering of Fort Dodge high school students. Generally the students were better qualified than the students I had encountered in high school in Gowrie, but as far as class achievement was concerned I more or less matched what I had done in high school.

The high school building was constructed of dark colored brick and was located in a middle class residential area. Actually it was only a few blocks from the best residences in town and there was as I recall a city park in the vicinity. Oftentimes at the noon hour some congenial students (including those riding along with my father) would go for walks in the area of these better residences (some of which were reputed to be valued at $10,000, a high valuation for the time).

The building located sort of in the northwest part of Fort Dodge was a distance of about a fifteen-minute walk from the county courthouse where my father worked. In the morning after the ride from the Peterson farm we would be left off at the school; in the evening we would walk down to the courthouse in the central business district.

My father had been making the daily journey from the Peterson farm to Fort Dodge for at least two years before I started to rise with him to school. Certainly it had been two years as Clarice, two years ahead of me in school rode during the one year she was at JC. During this time several other students from the Gowrie vicinity also rode along, a service that my father provided gratis. As I recall a neighboring boy, Marcus Anderson, was one of these during the time before I rode, and my brothers and I used to tease Clarice about him.

During the time I rode with my father, the other riders included Howard Nelson (a year ahead of me in school), Harlan Anderson (two years ahead and in Clarice’s class who resided next door to us in the old original Woodard farm), Darwin Liljegren (Howard’s classmate), John Woodard who lived with his aunt Annie Lines across the road from us, and I believe Art Sigurdson, oldest son of the school custodian who was a year behind me in school. After I left for the University of Iowa I believe that my dad continued to have these student riders, but I sort of lost track of the situation as I was absent during the school year.

The first year I rode, the family car was the old 1929 Essex, brown colored and with a top speed of about 40 miles per hour. That, or somewhat lower, was the speed we went at over the 20 miles of so to Fort Dodge. The Essex had the designation Super-Six. It was a little crowded inside with six passengers seated (and when our family used it as on Sundays that meant that the two youngest members of the family, Verner and Marold, had to sit on someone’s lap).

I don’t remember for sure but I think there were just five riders during the time I commuted to Fort Dodge JC. They were Howard, Harlan, John, myself and my father. The rides were characterized by a geat deal of conversation and the surviving members recall them with nostalgia. Indeed in 1988 when I went back for my 50th high school class reunion, Howard had the idea for an Essex memorial drive from the site of the Peterson farm to Fort Dodge and back. He, Harlan, Darwin Liljegren and I participated (Darwin had been a rider the year before my first year riding).

The Essex was of course long since gone, we rode instead on Darwin’s car. He had driven up from where he was living near Kansas City. We assembled at the Peterson farm (what was left of it, only the well near the barn and the old chicken house) and followed the gravel road route my dad always took, past the Bohemian Hall, the county “Poor Farm,” and joining Highway 169 till it joined #20, thence past the Lutheran hospital, and into town to the courthouse. There we parked and went into the courthouse and up to the treasurer’s office.

In the course of conversation with the personnel it developed that the current treasurer had come to work in the office when my dad left the office and had indeed be instructed by him on the work he was leaving.

From there we walked to the high school building, and since it was open walked up to the third floor and viewed the classrooms. The building was no longer the site of the junior college which had metamorphosed into a community college with a campus to the west of the Lutheran hospital.

Then we stopped in briefly at the public library where we used to spend time studying on our way back to the courthouse. Amongst my memories of the public library was the time I read of the very early research in atomic fission and of the speculation in the article of its possible military uses. During WWII when I was working in southern California I recalled this article and wondered why since then the subject had dropped out of sight in the public and technical press.

Somehow or other our entourage was noticed between the county courthouse and the school building and we were written up in the newspaper, if not the Fort Dodge Messenger then in the Gowrie News. I don’t recall which paper. One thing we noticed was how the downtown area of Fort Dodge had suffered with a distinct deterioration of the business establishments along Central Avenue. Here as in most cities there had been the move of stores to suburban malls.