On Pop

Yesterday as I was trying to remember when Pop Lindsay was born, Mom, Nana or Aunt Jo (take your pick) who usually remembers everything was of no help. So, no longer having Bryce, who was "The Great Rememberer," I called my sister, Marian, also a great rememberer, a great grandmother who remembers the names of all of her 50 plus great grandkids. Alas! This GR was clueless! However, she said that she would check the dates on their grave stones the next time she visited the cemetary where they are buried... which was not much help at the time, because I was pretty sure that she would forget to do that.....

So, the three of us bounced that question around and tried to remember just how much older Mom Lindsay was than Pop... and how old Pop was when he died. We disagreed, and out of modesty, I'll not mention who turned out to be correct on the former question, but none of us were on the latter. Got that? However, it did uncover a gem of history that bespeaks somewhat of how judgemental people were back in the day. Marian remembers that Pop's Mom, another Elizabeth, did not want people to know that my Mom, her daughter in law, was older than her son. Or was it my Mom who did not want his Mom to know that she was older than her only son (and child). So it goes with stories of the past that rely on memories. (Side note: maybe memories were better and more necessary back in the day when the written word was less available and less used.)

Marian remembered a lot of other cool stuff re back in the day as I was pumping away trying to find out what kind of man that she thought Pop was (while AJ, listening only to my side of the conversation, was urging me to take notes). Marian came up with some gems, but unfortunately I did not take notes, (never have, never will) and now today, other than that he was a "good man" a "leader" "well respected" and a "stern disciplinarian" his more specific attributes, according to his second child, are escaping me this morning...

So.... I was thinking that there must be dozens of you who have no clue about the two progenitors of the Lindsay side of our extended family...

Then I remembered that Bryce, The Greatest Rememberer, had recalled and collaborated on some of those specifics that had now escaped me, AJ and Marian.... if I could only remember how to find it. Which, lucky for you, I did. Here it is as remembered by Bryce and edited by me just before our last reunion in Estes Park (If I remember correctly):

Lindsay Chronology, by Bryce, 2001

Pop was born in Crawfordsville, IA on June 19,1893 and lived with his parents above the drug store there. After the marriage failed he and his mother, Elizabeth, lived with her father just north of Brighton. Grandma Lindsay became Grandma Speer in 1909 or 1910. They lived on a farm south of Fairfield.

(She died before I was born. T)

Pop went to high school at Franklin School in Fairfield. That site across from the CB&Q RR station is now a city park known as Franklin Park. (It is one block south of our house on N Court and two block north of "the Square." T) He left Iowa State College at Ames for the army, finished requirements and graduated in 1937. Army dates?1918 to 1919, I think.

Mom, born in Stoughton, WI on March 25, 1892, later lived in Sun Prairie, where her parents are buried...early schooling unknown, but she was a graduate Reg. Nurse from UW, Madison. Tom Mandt, cousin, probably has (or had) the best background on this. (3728 Oakwood Dr., Cottage Grove WI, 608-839-4608)

She was an Army Nurse at Fort Dodge, near Des Moines, during 1918 and 1919, where she and Pop met. They married shortly after being discharged at the end of WWI...1919, and Pop farmed with Uncle Jim Speer from l919 to ‘28 on his farm, seven miles of dirt roads south of Fairfield. (Where I was born on the kitchen table. T)

They moved to an acreage south of Fairfield when Pop became County Agricultural Extension and Farm Bureau Agent from 1928 to 1939, and as an agent for Iowa State College tried to influence farmers to adapt to progressive ways of farming... and also fought voracious cinch bug and grasshopper chompers.
After renting five different houses in progressive upgrades (in eight years) they bought a Victorian on North Court Street house in 1936 for about $2,500.

Pop raised one (ONLY) batch of chickens there. (400 chicks, but no chicken house. Think: basement!)

In 1930 he bought into the Fairfield dairy (in New Chicago a 30's precursor strip mall in Fairfield) with L. Don Wilson, who absconded in 1936. A dairy that introduced pasteurization to Fairfield. Dairy was sold in late 30s or early 40s, but Pop had continued as County Agent during its life.

He was Ass't Mgr at Iowa Poultry Producers Marketing Ass'n in Ottumwa, IA in 1939. It went south in’41, when the chickens flew the coop. (IPPMA was a Co Op, a cooperative, more or less socialized operation of many farmers, but it went broke when The Armour Co. offered farmers a penny more per dozen eggs!)

Pop went from a desk job to carpenter at an army camp in Rolla Missouri 1942 but left after three weeks because he was not up to the physical work. His bad knee didn’t like the weather or the 300 mile commute. ("A brief scary time at the end of the Depression for me with Pop briefly out of work." sez T)
Then at the Iowa Ordnance Plant in Burlington, fifty miles away... arming mortar shells with TNT which was mixed in huge vats. This was in 1942/1943.
Then to Loudens as a book keeper in 1943 or 1944 after a short time with a federal job in Fort Madison. He was screwed in FM, because Ed Linder, Pres of Fairfield's Iowa State Bank and local Democratic Party head wasn’t consulted. Linder provided false info re Pop to whoever confirms political appointments. It took some doing to clear Pop’s name. ("None of that was discussed much, but Ed Linder and Democrats became anathema to me." T)

Bought the burial vault company in 1946 ("After he became acquainted with the owner while I worked for him during my senior year in HS." sez T)
Was teaching farming for the Vet’s Admin.1946,9, day visits & night classes at FHS. (Sometimes, not always, he'd drop by the gym for my BB games, T)
(I made and delivered those vaults while in college, as Bryce did when he was in Fairfield's Parsons College for a year or two. T)

Bought the 80 acre Michigan Farm in 1951.
Sold the house and vault co. in 1955 ($17,000)
Bought and moved to the 160 acre farm by Harm and Marian in 1955 (something he'd wanted to do all along, but against the preferences of Mom, age 62.)
Bought the Decatur house on two acres in 1969 or 1970 and moved to town after fifteen years of hard work and successful farming.
Sold the farm in 1969 or 70
Pop died on October 6. 1972 after several months of battling Acute Leukemia.
Mom lived there by herself for almost four years and then moved in with Marian in 1976. (As Grandma Mandt had done with us in Fairfield) She turned her property over to us children a few days before she died. We sold it soon thereafter and after saving what we wanted, had the furnishings auctioned off.
Mom died on September 12, 1976 (Info supplied by Bryce and edited by Targe, 07/30/02)

There you have it in a nutshell or by the numbers, more or less, by the Greatest Rememberer. Thankyou, Bryce!

So.... lets see what those numbers tell us: He was a soldier for a year or so, farmed someone else's farm for nine years, was a County Agent for eight, a dairy co-owner for four and owner for two, a budding Coop administrator for two, a carpenter for three... weeks, a munitions maker for a year, a bookkeeper for another year, a small business owner/operator for nine while teaching for nine and a farm owner and farmer again for fifteen.... Some thirteen occupations during fifty or fifty one years, averaging four plus years each. However he lived on a farm 10 years before entering the Army, studied agriculture at ISC for three or four, taught farmers for seventeen and farmed a total of twenty four years! So, it looks to me like he was basically a farmer, a teacher and a manager.... but wait! He was an entrepreneur and a manager of a newly formed Coop for two and thus a risk taker for at least thirty nine years... but wait, add another risky jobs as munitions maker and soldier... so that makes 40 years of "laying it on the line" plus three years or so of "making do." in between at the end of the depression.... and a few weeks of unemployment, during which we, and I do mean we, painted our house. No wonder that he was Bryce's hero and a man that I trusted, looked up to and loved all those years... and no wonder where Bryce (more than his younger brother) was innoculated with "the Iowa Work Ethic."

Which brings up a memory of my 13th birthday, when Pop was on the road a lot, and when Mom told me that she had a surprise for me that evening... and how disappointed I was when it was only a party with some 8th grade friends... not my dad coming back to celebrate it with me.

Other memories by Marian and some thoughts by The Notso Great Speculator from here on: No clue there as to what a cunning and sometime mischievious kid Mom L was, or how Seargent Robert Grant Lindsay got lucky with nurse Lieutenant Eva Dorinda Mae Mandt when both broke the fraternization rules of the USArmy. How daring or scary was that, we wonder! How did "straight arrow, Pop" manage that? Who made the first advance...and how.... and when...and then what? One can only imagine, with Pop being a life long Presbyterian and Mom a strict Lutheran as were her ancestors for 400 years. My guess: Both were virgins. How long that lasted is anyone's guess. Clue: Mom was due to go overseas, but a bad case of Poison Ivy kept her stateside, and the war was over before she was clear of the PI. Also, they met at night outside the Fort grounds. That's the story she told me... with a smile on her face... just about the PI, not where exactly she made contact with the vines. Most likely, they were just out for a walk in a park.

Some clues from Marian now come into focus as to what farming with horses and having the first tractor (3 wheeled) in Jefferson County was like, or how dirt roads became quagmires, and how typhoid almost devastated our family... and how Pop traded milk for my child care when Mom L was in the hospital for several weeks with life threatening typhoid fever... and how Marian and Elizabeth, as kids, held their tin cups under the milk cow's udder while Pop squeezed off a cup full of the freshest milk on record... and that he only had Jersey cows because, although they gave less, their milk was the richest... and that Pop was overwhelmed with a new job, a new move to town, and four kids to take care of when Mom L was at death's door in the hospital.

The GS speculates that Mom's six brothers and two sisters wondered why she would marry a Presbyterian prospective dirt farmer in Iowa... and Southern Iowa, at that, and to be partners with a one armed bachelor step uncle whom their sister would have to cook and wash for!

My guess: Although they were married soon after their discharges, he most likely in uniform, tall and handsome, a feted wedding, perhaps on the lawn of Eva's parents' stately 19 room stone home that later became the Wisconsin Governor's Mansion, a house on a 200 acre dairy and tobacco farm with huge barns (some of which are still there near the Interstate Eschange that wiped out the house).... given Wisconsin's innate disdain for Iowa and the Lutheran Mandts' for Presbyterians (at the time)..... there was probably some doubting going on, although Robert Grant was a sterling looking guy well on his way to a college degree from Iowa State. Still the prejudice was inbred, but unstated, and it took years before Eva's sister, Thea (who lived to be over 100 years old) forgave her for leaving the Lutheran Church. Thankyou Marian for the some of facts above, but not the speculation.

Next up: Eva Dorinda Mae Mandt Lindsay Hopefully, I can find some more of Bryce's and Marian's memories.

love to all 150 or so of you, D/Dro)UT

 

Several of you have mentioned considerately that Bryce and his family are in your thoughts and prayers.  Here are some thoughts I recalled about him for his birthday last February as I realized that he has been a lifelong role model for me and many others whose paths he has crossed.  He is three and a half years older than me.  UT

Happy birthday again, Bryce!  Awesome moments of yours are surfacing through the hazy past.  You were awesome:

     * when I was very young and you seemed to know everything.
     * when we both had bikes, but you knew how to fix them
     * when you made that guillotine to behead the losing mice
     * when you worked at Pop’s dairy making early morning deliveries
     * when you worked at Theron Erickson’s gas station for ten cents an hour
     * when you were bringing home all those good grades year after year
     * when you bought your first car (or a new car)... and let me drive it
     * when you did not go bonkers the night I burnt up its engine
     * when you did not insist that I pay for it 
     * when you were accepted into the USNR V12 program.
     * when you brought that ship/boat back from Okinawa
     * when you came home in that officer’s uniform and with that 45 pistol
     * when, after a year or two, you chose Iowa State over Parsons
     * when you got your first teaching gig in Des Moines
     * when you ventured into after hours capitalism via your photo store there
     * when you chose service over profits
     * when you were accepted into the PhD program at Iowa U.
     * when you and Dot lived in a trailer home there (I think)
     * when you were awarded your PhD Degree.
     * when you became a principal in Cedar Rapids
     * when you painted your house there the week before we came to visit
     * when you made my car and your trailer trip worthy
     * when you traded up into that impressive home in CR
     * when shortly thereafter you became a professor at Mankato State
     * when you helped me fix my car at M&P’s fiftieth
     * when you became Dept Chair at MS
     * when you worked statewide on salary schedules or some such, and
     * when neither rain, snow, sleet nor hail kept you from driving near and far
     * when you delivered those meals on wheels all those years
     * when Tom Rowe’s TOY wife designated you as her most valuable mentor
     * when you invested in those first penny (?) stocks
     * when those stocks paid off big time
     * when you gave each of your kids a piece of that action
     * when you made all those trips to Vermont bearing gifts and tools
     * when you worked on the Begley house or houses
     * when you bought that Leech Lake cabin ... sight unseen
     * when you made it habitable through your know-how and labor
     * when you made those five hour drives up there each summer
     * when you were the “go to guy” for your neighbors up there
     * when you mowed that huge lawn year after year
     * when you cleared those two acres of fallen elm trees
     * when you caught all those most cagey of fishes, the Walleye Pike 
     * when you rebuilt the landing and pier in front of your cabin
     * when you decided to demolish that cabin and start from scratch
     * when you shingled the new one by yourself in freezing weather
     * when we worked together for a week to finish the inside trim
     * when you did all that work with rudimentary tools and equipment
     * when you decided (on the spur of the moment) to sell it
     * when you helped Marian and Harmon each time you visited them
     * when you did the same for Mom and Pop each summer... and then Mom 
     * when you upgraded your Mankato house year after year
     * when you traded up but down from four stories to a ground level home
     * when you changed your diet and lost weight after diabetes was diagnosed
     * when you voted for Ross Perot... something we all should have done
     * when you worked all those post retirement years at Sears
     * when you assembled all those Sears products
     * when you decided not to buy a house to build on your Arkansas lot
     * when you bought those two great Chrysler autos
     * when you drove through that blizzard on icey roads to San Antonio for our reunion
     * when you gave Carol & co. several (?) car
     * when you converted early on from typewriters to a computer
     * when you brought your church bookkeeping into the 21st century
     * when you served there as finance and bookkeeping guy for 20 years
     * when you quit that and taught the new guy the ropes (I think)
     * when you upgraded several of your own computers and bought that Ipad
     * when you walked two miles a day year after year after year
     * when you were care giver for Dorothy (with one functional hand) lately
     * when you decided to go to Mayo’s for treatment of your other hand
     * when you received their diagnosis of ALS
     * when you turned down the offer made by VA to buy you a new car
     * when you decided to maintain your lifelong optimism and practicality. 

Wow!  You made awesome look commonplace all those years.  Summing up, it looks like a work ethic, loyalty, family ties, know how, generosity, understatement, foresight  and decisiveness are exemplified throughout the many awesome efforts and circumstances of your life.  None more so than your equilibrium and your practical approach post diagnosis.  love, Targe

That was almost a year ago.  On Feb 2 he will be 89 years old. For almost a year he has been a valiant, considerate, gutsy, thoughtful, practical, realistic, uncomplaining and loving role model.  IMO, he ranks right up there with Pop Lindsay ( his hero), Mom L, Lyle, Harmon, Elizabeth and Flo... all family icons.

 

 

 

2014 Silver Bay

Dates to be arranged

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Weather

 

The reunion has been moved from 2013 to 2014. The 2013 information is posted below in anticipation of 2014. Lindsay Jo and Carolyn will reserve Silver Bay for us, but they location may change if someone makes alternate plans.

Info for 2013:

 

It's time to start making plans and reservations for the Lindsay reunion this coming summer. We're trying a new place...hopefully the temperature will be a little less extreme than it was at the last reunion, but no matter what the weather, it'll be another fanastic reunion of catching up with our great big wonderful family!

We will be staying at Silver Bay - YMCA of the Adirondacks from July 3rd through July7th, 2013. Please refer to the attached contract for all the details of the stay.

I've also attached the campus map, program guide and the Breeze newsletter from last summer for about the same period of time that we will be there next summer as an example of the fun to be had. We also have Gullen Lounge in the Inn for our meeting space as well as McFeely Lounge in Bayview that we can now use for a common area. Also, the contract doesn't specify ages with the rates, but this is the breakdown: youth ages 13 - 17, children ages 6 - 12, kiddies ages 5 and under are free.

There are three rooms at the Inn for the elderly folks in our group and everyone else should reserve their rooms at Bayview. We have the whole Bayview Lodge to ourselves as long as we fill them up! The cafeteria building is right next to the Inn.

We are set up for individual reservations. Each family should call Lori for reservations at 888-758-7229 ext. 350, M - F 8am - 4pm EST. Please make your reservations by 2/1/13 which is approximately 150 days prior to our reunion start date according to the contract cancellation policy. On approximately 2/1/13 we will need to drop rooms that are being held for our group if they are not reserved to avoid paying a guaranteed minimum fee.

We will need volunteers to run activities and plan the fun nights and coordinate outings. We'll have a meeting when get there as we always do to plan out all our fun, but if anyone has some great ideas ahead of time, we could do some pre-planning! If anyone wants to head up preplanning, please reply to all so we can flood your email with tons of great Lindsay ideas!

This is a great time to talk about the reunion with your families while you're all getting together over Thanksgiving. So, with that being said have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Love you all and hope to see you all at the reunion!
Lindsay Jo