Midwest weather and Iowa’s ‘prairie mud’ made courting complicated in the 1920s

In many ways, my parents couldn’t have been more different. My mother, Mabel Forrester, was an only child, raised by doting parents. My dad, Elmer Weyand, was one of eight orphans from Keokuk, Iowa, who I’ve described as the “Amazing Links,” due to their chain letter correspondence that kept them in touch for years.

Taken in by a Missouri uncle in 1900, Elmer grew up on his uncle’s farm and managed to prosper, eventually educating himself at a local college (Kirksville Normal School, now Truman State University) and establishing his own nearby farm about a dozen miles south of the Missouri-Iowa border. The only thing lacking in his life was a wife, something his siblings teased him about for years.

In 1926, Lola Miller, a cousin living on a farm near Kahoka, Missouri, had a friend, Mabel Forrester, who lived in town. Mabel, whose musical talents included piano, violin and voice, had received a degree and served on the music faculty at Illinois College in Jacksonville. Well-traveled, she had performed for three years on the Chautauqua circuit, notably as a member of the troupe, J.C. Lockhart and His Scottish Lassies.  Recently, she had joined the music faculty at Des Moines University – later absorbed by Drake University. At the end of 1926, she was spending the Christmas holidays at her parents’ home in Kahoka.

Lola arranged a blind date for Mabel and her cousin, Elmer. The two couples played bridge at a friend’s house at a New Year’s Eve watch party. Later, Elmer would attend a church service in Kahoka where Mabel sang a couple of Christmas songs. By the end of a week, a romance had blossomed, and they soon became engaged.

The engagement came as a shock to Mabel’s parents. Her mother, Carrie, intent on her daughter continuing her musical career, was devastated at the thought of her marrying a farmer. Charley, her father, who accepted the engagement with less anxiety, nevertheless questioned why he and Carrie had never even had a chance to meet her chosen partner. But a relationship that would last for nearly 60 years was well underway.

When Mabel returned to Des Moines, the couple continued their long-distance romance with regular letters, many of them involving the old house my dad was renovating on his farm. By Jan. 25, 1927, she was making suggestions. A good portion of a long letter was filled with arguments against a ductless furnace, and reasons for installing a conventional type. She expressed her desire to have electricity from Keokuk, as opposed to a "Delco home plant" that required appliances with different voltage equipment. And she emphatically urged my dad to consider installing a fireplace that she craved, and she even purchased a pair of candlesticks she thought would look good on the mantle.

How did her suggestions go over? Not so well. The furnace was ductless, with registers used to regulate the heat in each room. As for electric power, the couple had to use a Delco plant, which only gave them limited electricity for small appliances (When I was a child, my parents used coal oil lamps and an icebox in the kitchen that used blocks of ice delivered from town). The house didn't get conventional electricity until the Rural Electric Administration (REA) made it possible in the early 1940s. And the fireplace my mother pleaded for was never built.

But in 1927, the biggest problem for my parents-to-be was their long-distance romance. The unpaved roads and spotty railroad connections of the era added to the problem.

In later years, my dad described a trip he had made in the spring of 1927 to Des Moines to see my mother. Driving his Model T Ford, Dad made the approximately 150-mile trip on a day that was free of weather threats. But recent rains had made the country roads between the farm and Des Moines muddy and treacherous.

To make matters much worse, one of the Model T's narrow tires gave out enroute, and Dad had to do the tire repair in the mud. This would have been bad enough with today's technology. But drivers in the 1920s had to replace the tire tubes, inflate them, and remount the tires on the wheels—a far more complex job than today's simple tire changing. Any mistakes, and the tube or tire-stem would crimp and cause another flat. It could be a tricky job in good weather. It's difficult to imagine what an awful challenge my dad would have faced in the Iowa mud. Needless to say, he was less than courtship-ready when he arrived at my mother's residence hall at Des Moines University.

Ken Weyand is the original owner/publisher of Discover Vintage America,  founded in July 1973 under the name of Discover North.

Ken Weyand can be contacted at kweyand1@kc.rr.com Ken is self-publishing a series of non-fiction E-books. Go to www.smashwords.com and enter Ken Weyand in the search box.