Jule (Jewel) Lamore’s Mobil Station was at the south end of town. Jule was a quiet man who had club feet. That is what we called them. Mom said it happened at birth and there was nothing that could be done about it. He had to get special shoes made, and we kids stared at his feet, even though we were told not to.

When we were in high school, we had religious instruction every Monday night at St. Patrick’s Church. One early evening in 1958, Jewel Larmore’s wife, Gertude Mary, was struck and killed by one of our classmates. She was crossing the street, walking from their Mobil station, when she was struck by a pickup truck. Because it was nighttime and she was dressed in dark clothing, the driver didn’t see her. No blame was assessed, but she was missed by the community.

The town provided a valuable service for the farm that would be unusual these days. We did not have a freezer on the farm. We had a refrigerator and a small compartment inside was a freezer, but it couldn’t hold much. We used it mostly for making ice cubes. For that reason Dad and Mom rented two big bins at Jim Honzel’s locker plant. Located across from Johnson’s Grocery Store, it had a rounded concrete roof. From behind his counter, Honzel greeted people coming through the door. Patrons picked up the keys to their locker, opened a heavy wooden insulated door, and immediately stepped into sub-zero temperatures. Oh, how we loved visiting the locker plant, scurrying along behind Dad, shivering, while picking out the packaged meats, with the names of the cuts ink-stamped on the plain brown wrapping paper. Those frozen cuts of meat were harder than a baseball! We’d pick three or four packages and quickly depart.