Those Places Thursday: Bullets in Booneville

My dad was born in Indiana and I never really thought about why or how they ended up in Indiana.  In fact, as a child, I thought that my dad must be an Indian, since he was born in Indiana.  While visiting Grampa, I finally remembered to ask. 

My grandmother’s sister, Peggy and her husband Bob Burbridge, lived in Booneville, Indiana and worked at the Chrysler factory in Evansville.  This was during the War, so it’d been transformed into a bullet factory.  “Chrysler’s Evansville, Indiana, factory literally produced ‘bullets by the billions,’ including some 485 million cartridges for .30-caliber carbines and nearly 2.8 billion cartridges for .45-caliber carbines. Just as Chrysler prepared for production at its Evansville plant in July 1942, the Ordnance Department ordered the automaker to substitute steel for brass for the cartridge cases. Although this last minute change required Chrysler to retool much of the plant, full-scale production began in October.”  (Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation by Charles K. Hyde,)

Life Magazine advertisement, Feb 7, 1944, p. 27

Both Peggy and Bob worked and needed help with their children.  My grandfather was working in California at Davies Auto, but wasn’t doing what he wanted to be doing.  So when Peggy and Bob asked if Grampa and Gramma could come to Indiana they jumped at the chance.  Gramma took care of the children and Grampa went to work at the factory.  

Grampa, Dad, Auntie Karen

The factory shut down at the end of the war to convert back to cars and Grampa decided to return to California and Davies Automotive where he became a mechanic and worked for several years.

Those Places Thursday: 3 Milk Street, Salem, MA

When Grampa was a teenager in the tiny town of Capa, South Dakota, the town’s Catholic priest had a car and family in Salem, Massachusetts. What he didn’t have was the knowledge on how to drive the car. But Grampa did…

Priest's garage in Capa, South Dakota

So the summer when he was 15 years old, Grampa and one of his friends, Clarence Petorski, drove the priest the 1,850 miles to Salem, to stay with his family for the summer. They stopped by my grandfather’s grandfather’s house in Russell, Iowa, where this picture was taken.

The next summer they did it again, only this time, using the brilliance that only a 16-year-old can pull off, Grampa talked the priest into letting his friend Pete come along. Pete knows how to fix things, said Grampa. Remember that trouble we had with the car last year? Pete could fix that!

From the 1937 yearbook of Pete, the friend who came along the 2nd summer

So for two summers, a car of teenagers and a Catholic priest road-tripped to Salem, Massachusetts where they stayed at 3 Milk Street.

The priest had a non-priestly brother who worked all day. Grampa and his friends would impatiently wait all day for the brother to get home and then they’d all head to the Salem Willows.

From the Salem Willows website (http://www.salemwillowspark.com/history.html):

This beautiful wooded and hill peninsula jutting out into Salem Harbor became a municipal park in 1858. Graced with majestic, 200-year-old white willow trees, Salem Willows, a public park since 1858, has a special place in amusement park history.

In 1906, Everett Hobbs & William Eaton offered Americans the first ice-cream cone; “Blind Pat” Kenneally introduced Spanish “double-jointed" peanuts to America from his cart at the Willows.

Bavarian woodcarver Joseph Brown created the famous Flying-horse Carousel in 1866. in 1945, the horses were sold to Macy’s Department Store in New York City , where they graced the famous Macy’s Christmas displays. While the original horses have been replaced, the carousel itself still offers a thrilling ride.

A young Duke Ellington played here in 1923; Count Basie and Louis Armstrong performed as well, at the old Charleshurst Ballroom, now the Willows Casino. A tradition of popular summer jazz concerts continues to this day; jazz vocalist Cassandre McKinley performed here in 2003.

Those Places Thursday: Zero, Lucas County, Iowa

My great grandfather, Thomas Orville Conner, was born in Zero, Iowa in 1896.  Zero has always fascinated me because it’s now a true ghost town with apparently not even a building left.  It began in 1883 due to the coal mining and railroad that was nearby, but never became incredibly huge. 

It was in Lucas County, Iowa, about 4 miles east of Russell off of Highway 34.  As Frank Myers says in his article, titled, “Ghost Towns and Post Offices of Lucas County, Iowa”:

“The 1978 book, ‘History of Lucas County, Iowa’ said, ‘Located halfway between Melrose and Russell, Iowa, is the ghost town of Zero. Only a couple of old wooden buildings and a few foundations remain of the old town that was platted in 1883 by the Zero Coal Company. There were 61 lots, 5 streets and 3 alleys drawn into the town.

‘Zero did have a post office operated by Aquilla Kern and there was a general store run by Henry Gettinger. The Zero mine was never a big mine. It never exceeded 20 railroad cars of coal a day and finally closed in 1886 because there was too much water in the mine.

‘Today Zero, Iowa, is losing its contest with time. Fred Schreck is the last person living there in 1978 and he is 78 years old. The few buildings that remain have deteriorated past the point of ugliness and have achieved a weathered beauty of their own. The lovely countryside is closing in on the once proud house and sagging barn, and the shingle roofs no longer hold back the rain.’"



From:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu9ibKwq1jRTUkjKscfofAi9ADu-O624kxOjaiss0hMBX7NoPb3um6L31ZKJIChVF1RnjI10oIY6qh6ypOVtJgRMcZJoGM8uxPxldKRNKd_nIi3YwufywUSJBfC2UUzvuhZ5g4RT7TOA/s1600/ZeroIowa1977.jpg

The Russell Historical Items blog also has a story about Zero, Iowa to go with this picture the I linked to:

http://russellhistoricalitems.blogspot.com/2010/12/short-story-about-town-of-zero-ia.html



Those Places Thursday - Capa, South Dakota

Sometimes the best way to travel through an old ghost town is to have someone who lived there drive you around.  Since Grampa lives in Washington State and I’m in California and “our” ghost town is in South Dakota, the next best thing is to have pictures from him that outline on the back exactly what each thing is…

So here is Grampa’s tour of Capa, South Dakota for us.  Grampa lived there in the 1920s and 1930s.  He attended the one room school house and Catholic Church for 11 years.

For reference, Capa, South Dakota is here:

There are some wonderful pictures of Capa that another person took here:

http://www.dakotagraph.com/2008/04/capa-ghost-town.html

And a number of them on Flikr:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=capa+south+dakota&f=hp

There is a book about Jones County called Proving Up and I scanned this photo out of the book of a 1917 class outside the school.  This is 2 years before Grampa was even born, but it looks like a different school house.  I wonder if there was a rebuild?  Another question for Grampa...

I also found this and it's one of his aunts but he can't remember which.

Without further ado, here is Grampa's tour: