LeMars Globe-Post
March 10, 1949
"Give me an ounce of civil, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination." ~~King Lear.
More notes of the Iowa picnic: In an earlier report I told of arriving home and getting the fishy eye from my neighbor because he had heard over the radio that the picnic had been postponed on account of rain. I have since checked with Mrs. Florence Parsons, secretary of Federated State Societies, and she tells me that there was such a broadcast and that it had caused her office no end of trouble. It was made without authorization, just a bass canary.
-o.p.-
Mrs. Parsons also gave me a report on what happened to the picnic program. The weatherman had promised somebody that it wouldn’t rain, anyhow not until evening, and several thousand former Iowans gathered at the platform for talks and community singing. From the platform, Dr. Glenn J. Greenwood, president of the association, was about to present Virgil Pinkley, editor of the Los Angeles Mirror and principal speaker, when comes a shower. Folks just couldn’t have emptied faster if it had been a fire drill. And so, that part of the picnic folded right then and there.
-o.p.-
The Plymouth County delegation would have been greater had Mr. and Mrs. C. J. Klosterman brought along their 15 fine children. And it would have been still larger had they also brought with them their six sons-in-law and their three daughters-in-law. All of which leaves the Klostermans with six children still at home. The Klosterman home address is 401 South Poinsettia Ave., Compton, and they can be reached by phone at NE, 1-6970.
-o.p.-
Within a few minutes after my arrival at the picnic, I was told that Harry Hoyt and H. F. Clasen, fresh from LeMars, were at the picnic. I fully expected to see and visit with both, but somehow that pleasure was not to be mine. I blame it on that naughty old rain.
-o.p.-
At these Iowa picnics I nearly always manage a heart-warming visit with Mrs. H. V. Seppings, her sister Mrs. Elsie Scott, and other members of the Sydenstricker family, old timers in LeMars. Elsie and I pleasantly recall our days in the 4th grade in the old central building. We had for our teacher, the lovable Anna Wernli Lucke, now long dead, but still green in our memories. Names of classmates slip away, but I name a few: Jennie Bechtle, Mike Bolser, Alice Brace, Jim and Cal Deviney, Henry Gunther and Ernest Trafford.
-o.p.-
Among those who lingered at the picnic after the rain got in its dirty work were Mr. and Mrs. V. G. Adams of Akron. Asked if I knew anyone in Akron, I did. Of course, I knew Mrs. Byrd Ernest, a sister-in-law, and who happens to be quite a friend of Mrs. Adams. I mentioned old-time druggists in the March and Thorson, and the Cobb and Greenleaf stores.
Well, before her marriage Mrs. Adams’ name was Helen Cobb, and it was her father who was in the Cobb-Greenleaf store.
-o.p.-
Thus far the picnic. However, as I write there comes a tinkle at the phone and the voice is that of Mrs. Lucille Coad, calling me from the Town House. She was just in receipt of late copies of The Globe-Post and wanted me to know she enjoyed my story about her old teacher, Olive Shadle.
Lucille has been in San Diego the past month and will vacation in Los Angeles at least until the backbone of winter is pretty well broken back in Iowa. Reporting on my old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Art Pemberton, of Hallock, Minn., Lucille tells me they are spending the winter in Miami, Florida. Well, that’s a nice place, too. And something I positively refuse to keep hidden, is that Art reads the Globe-Post and mostly to get Olla Podrida news items.
