My Aunt Florence was unique in her day. The oldest of eight orphans, she became a social worker and later a state employee in Arkansas, where she lived most of her life. One of the few women to become a certified Red Cross lifeguard, she enjoyed summertime swimming and outings with her friends. It was a road trip in 1921 that caught this writer’s eye.

That summer she accepted an invitation from friends (a husband and wife and two other ladies) to join them on a road trip in the couple’s new Essex. Their route was from Little Rock to Memphis, TN, where they dropped off two of the women, then up to the Missouri border at Mammoth Springs, and back. Arkansas roads at that time were nearly non-existent, especially in the hill country, and the Essex suffered several breakdowns, but it got them back safely.

I learned about the trip from an old photo album, little larger than pocket-size, with pages of black paper. Along with a few photos, Florence had written an account of the trip in white ink, in a “doggerel” style, which Webster defines as “poorly written, and not to be taken seriously.” On the first page, she wrote:

“This doggerel’s a tale of a party of five, who went on a trip and got back alive. Allow me, I pray, to present our good Essie, thru no fault of hers, her appearance is messy. But in spite of all that, she goes like a whiz, like the most worthy car that our good Essie is”

Although never published, my aunt’s album offered insights into the early days of motoring, when tire changing and breakdowns were common, gay meant something light-hearted, and a radio concert was something to write home about. My aunt wrote that the group “enjoyed swimming in the Spring River.”

The car was a brand-new Essex. Built by Hudson Motors, it was designed to compete with Henry Ford’s Model T, but a bit pricier. Like the T, it was well-built, with semi-elliptical springs and an 18-hp engine. Its 32-inch tires gave it enough ground clearance to handle most roads in 1921. But the rocky hills of the Ozarks were a challenge. During their trip the Essex suffered two broken springs, a couple of flat tires, and a cracked radiator.

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.

My “cedar chest of family history” produced another couple of items: a pair of college pennants, well over 100 years old. They were among the few things my dad, Elmer Weyand, saved from his college days in Kirksville, Mo.

His mother died in 1897. Three years later his dad died, and he was taken in at the age of seven by an uncle, Joseph Miller. For the next several years he would live and work on his uncle’s Black Oak Stock Farm north of the village of Granger in northeast Missouri. Miller, a graduate of Iowa Wesleyan University in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, had donated a part of his property for the construction of a country school. He named it Black Oak School, after his farm, and became its first schoolmaster in the 1870s.

Through hard work and his with uncle’s support, my dad was able to attend a three-year college, Kirksville Normal School, founded in 1867. His college career would be made possible by doing extra summer work on the farm for his uncle, doing janitorial work at the college, and pinching pennies while in school.

The school would become Northeast Missouri State College in 1968, then Northeast Missouri University in 1972. In 1996 it acquired its present name, Truman State University.

In later years, my dad often reminisced about his college days at Kirksville, where he had to compete with city kids whose high school background gave them a big advantage over a country school graduate.

At Kirksville, my dad didn’t have much time for sports, but he did play tennis, and kept his original racquet, heavy by today’s standards, with a wooden frame and catgut strings. I eventually donated it to a local museum.

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.

Growing up in the 1940s on a Missouri farm had its challenges, especially coping with the nearly four miles of dirt roads that separated our family from the nearest highway. But looking back, one of the biggest challenges was our phone system – a long way from the pocket-sized cell phones we take for granted today. Although our primitive telephone lacked the wonders of today’s smart phone, it gave us an important lifeline to the outside world.

Our house had only a single phone -- a candlestick type, about 15 inches tall, with a mouthpiece atop a vertical column, both with a black finish. On the side of the column was a metallic cradle supporting the receiver. Lifting the receiver opened the connection, which closed when the receiver was returned to its cradle. The phone rested on a wooden box containing a battery and a bell, which rang loudly when a call came in. On the side of the box, a handle could be cranked to activate the ringer and make a call.

We were on a party line, shared by seven other farm families. Two long rings meant the call was for us. Other families would be summoned by combinations of “longs” and “shorts.” But everyone on the line would hear all the rings, and could listen in to any of the calls – which frequently happened.

The system had its obvious disadvantages in its lack of privacy. And several neighbors sharing a phone call would reduce the volume and could make hearing difficult. I can remember my mother asking neighbors to get off the line so she could hear better. But there were times when she needed help with a recipe and used the party line to get advice from others. And any emergency, such as a fire or accident, was instantly shared throughout the community, with neighbors always quick to respond. In this way, a long tradition of mutual support in rural communities continued.

Other farm families had similar phones, but most were a bit newer than ours. Instead of the candlestick type, their phones were built into a vertical box, which contained the basic parts – mouthpiece, receiver, ringer and batteries. However, like us, they had to ring a series of “longs” and “shorts” whenever they made a call.

A telephone office, located in Granger, a small village about four miles away, connected us with long-distance callers and the outside world beyond our community. A single operator, who lived in a house attached to the office, worked at an old-fashioned switchboard. A large collection of connections, made by plugging in various lines to their receiving terminals, made it all happen.

Our telephone, and those of our neighbors, was manufactured by Western Electric, a company that dates back to 1869. The firm diversified into several areas, making products that ranged from teletypewriters to telephone switching systems and telephone booths. The company eventually became a subsidiary of AT&T.

In the days before many farm families had electricity, cranking a battery-powered phone was an important lifeline with the outside world. Although our farm got electricity in the early 1940s thanks to President Roosevelt’s Rural Electri-fication Administration (REA), World War II and the demands it made on major industries kept us cranking our telephone the old-fashioned way for several years.

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.

Rural Missouri in the 1940s offered challenges for a youngster. Our farm was separated from the nearest village (and paved highway) by four miles of dirt roads. Winter snows – and the resulting mud -- often left us isolated. But winter also inspired new adventures. Being an “only child” had its advantages, but it meant having to do most of my “exploring” on my own.

My parents gave me the run of our farm at an early age, even before I was a first-grader. I recall one frosty morning I decided to take a walk in the snow with my sled, an ancient fixed-runner from my mother’s childhood. I think I may have taken my teddy bear as a passenger, and plodded about a mile, to a one-lane bridge. When my dad finally tracked me down, I was seated on my sled at the edge of the bridge, admiring the frozen creek about 20 feet below.

A year or so later, my dad announced he intended to walk into town to pick up our ’39 Chevy, that was being repaired in a local garage. Thinking he had left without me, I hurried to catch up. After a couple of miles, I began to assume my dad had too much of a head start, but I kept going. When I finally reached the garage, it was closed. Disappointed, I began my four-mile return walk to our farm, as the setting sun turned to twilight, and it began to grow dark. I got to the creek bridge I’d explored with my sled a year or so earlier when I met my dad, who was on horseback. After a thorough scolding, I was hoisted onto the horse, and he took me home.

Country school days

Black Oak School, not far from our farmhouse, had been improved since its construction in the 1870s. The pot-bellied stove had been replaced by a furnace, and a vestibule had been added, making room for coat racks, a tiny kitchen area with a hot plate used for community oyster suppers, and a few shelves of books in one corner that served as a library.

The things that didn’t change were two privies – one for each gender -- located at opposite ends of the school grounds. On winter days a “nature call” often meant a snowy walk to an unheated privy. And sorting out the proper coats and overshoes in the vestibule could be a challenge at the end of the school day.

But a long hill near the school turned into a fine “sled run” that we were allowed to access on several snowy days. Our “noon hour” was sometimes extended a few minutes as we finished sledding and retuned to classes.

A sledding misadventure

When I was 8 or 9, my folks bought me a “Flexible Flyer” sled, a big improvement over the six-runner antique my mother had kept. Our farm was called “Hillcrest Farm,” named for the hilltop the house, barns and outbuildings occupied. To the west, a pasture area extended for about a half-mile, offering a challenging sled-run.

Earlier snows that winter had been disappointing, too skimpy for good sledding. But one day freezing rain covered the farm with a thin coat of ice. The roads were so slick our country school was even closed for the day.

My child-brain began to visualize a new adventure. The pasture west of the barn had turned into an epic sled-run. It would make the slope west of the schoolhouse seem tame. The fence at the bottom of the hill marked the end of the run, but there was a gap in the fence, offering a nice challenge for anyone wanting a longer run.

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.

Somewhere in my collection of “old stuff,” there’s a faded Kodak print showing the living room of our farm house at Christmas, sometime in the 1930s. A decorated cedar tree dominates the scene, with a nearby armchair featuring my mother’s favorite cat, Tux, taking a midday nap. Next to the chair is a small table with a Santa figure, brought out to celebrate the occasion.

The papier maché Santa, purchased by my mother from a dime store in her hometown of Kahoka, Missouri, was a seasonal guest in our house by the time I was born. It was one of the few “luxury items” my parents could afford when they married in 1928. Times got worse soon after that, with the stock market crash and resulting Great Depression -- still in effect when my photo was taken.

Along with the photo, the original Santa found its way to a shelf in the back of a small closet in my house. For several years it has taken up space, protected from any strong lighting that would fade its red-painted suit. I recall that it was occasionally an object of interest to my family at Christmas-time.

Online research turned up little about the origins of my Santa. Papier maché was developed in China in the 1800s. By the 1920s it was widely used in toy manufacturing. Lightweight and easy to mold, it was ideal for toys and decorative items that would be shipped worldwide.

Like most paper maché Santa figures, mine has no maker’s name, so its origin is unknown. An internet search yielded similar figures, with prices running in the $30 to $40 range.

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.