Saturday, September 30, 2017

The Big, Stinky Moneymaker on the Hill

Yes, I'm talking about Armour and Company, sitting on the hill just east of town.  Others who grew up in Huron will relate to the "stinky" description.  Let's just say that depending on which way the wind was blowing, the air drifting through town could get fairly aromatic. But it kept the lights on and food on the table in many local households. 

While the Armour plant did not open until 1925, its roots actually go back to 1919, when a co-op of citizens and local farmers decided that the area could benefit from a meat packing plant, and money was raised to construct it just outside of town.  However, it didn't take long for them to realize that besides producing the meat, they needed a way to market their product as well, so the plant was dead in the water before it even opened the doors.

Armour and Company, however, had not only the ability to produce the meat, but had the necessary connections to market their product efficiently.  They purchased the building as it was, but had to make a substantial investment in equipment before opening for business on November 2, 1925.  They processed cattle, hogs and sheep.

They had two clubs for employees, the Armour Athletic Club and the Armour Men's Social Club.  The former sponsored a bowling league, and provided a kittenball diamond on Armour property.  They kittenball team they sponsored in 1938 won the South Dakota state championship.

I was an "Armour's Brat," enjoying the benefits of my father's employment there, as were many of my cousins and friends.  My grandfather, Adolph Hammer, started working there in December of 1950, and my father did as well after his military service, and made a career of it.  Several of my uncles did as well.  We paid $1 for our prescriptions for a long time, and I remember the consternation when the price went up to $2.  The money must have been good, but the work was hard.  I remember many extremely early mornings, when my dad would eat his breakfast around 4 a.m. before leaving for work, or talking about being cold all day when he worked in the freezer.  I remember his back pain, and his sore muscles.  I also recall the stories of practical jokes and all the friendships made with other Armour employees.  The Marvels, Connors, Gundersons, Boghs, Magers ... we all grew up together.


But all good things must come to an end.  The plant closed in the early 1980s, and since then the population of the town has been on the down-slide.  The once impressive, imposing building deteriorated and was eventually torn down, leaving only part of one of the structures.  The empty, gaping hole where it once stood still looks shocking to those of us who had never seen the landscape without it. 

But time marches on. 



Saturday, April 22, 2017

And if you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you…

[Note: George Knutz was my great grandfather's brother]

The year was 1906.  The place was Sedalia, Missouri.  George Knutz, ill after a dog bite, was taken by the night train to Dr. L. E. Stanhope in nearby Nevada, Missouri.  There were plenty of doctors in Sedalia, but none like Dr. Stanhope.  He had a madstone.

George Knutz
Knutz, a carman on the Third street line in Sedalia, was bitten by a local dog known only as “Tramp” on Friday.  By Monday night, his symptoms worsened to the point where he and friend Fred Koyl took the Monday evening train to Dr. Stanhope, who, for $35, would treat him with the controversial stone.

A “madstone,” as the name implies, was used to treat bites that might potentially transmit rabies, or “hydrophobia” as it was also known.  These porous stones were found in the stomachs of cud-chewing animals, but not all of these stones were created equally.  A stone from a white deer was said to be more effective than a stone from a brown deer, for instance.   The stone was boiled in sweet milk until the milk turned green, indicating all poison was removed from the stone.  It was placed hot on an open wound; if the wound had scabbed over, it was re-opened first.  The stone would then adhere to the wound, and draw out any “poisons” that might be present.  When the poison was gone from the wound, or when the madstone was full, it would drop off, and then it could be re-boiled to start the process all over again until the patient was purged of whatever poison had been in the wound.

The process had to be followed exactly, and there were additional caveats.  If the owner of the stone tried to sell it, it would negate the healing power; also, the patient had to come to the owner of the stone, and not vice versa.  Many folklore testimonials can be found attributing miracles to these madstones, while others suggested it was simply placebo, although no amount of placebo can stop rabies.

George Knutz had the madstone attached to the calf of his leg for nine and a half hours, afterward feeling so well that he returned to working his streetcar route on Friday morning.  Dr. Stanhope told him if he had waited another day, his outcome may have been very different.

“There are a great many so-called madstones that are bogus, and, of course, worthless,” stated Dr. Stanhope.  “I have a madstone that has been thoroughly tested, which I apply to bites at a reasonable price, with perfect confidence that it is a sure cure for hydrophobia.”  Besides his usual fee of $10 for the first hour plus $5 for each additional hour, Dr. Stanhope was offering stock in his madstone for the price of $1, which entitled the whole family the lifetime privilege to have the stone applied free of charge for all poisonous bites.


There was no word on the health of the stray dog, Tramp, who bit Mr. Knutz.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Those Bad Vibes

I love genealogy road-trips.  I especially love walking through cemeteries.  It’s so peaceful and quiet, walking past the graves and reading the headstones, and imagining the lives that were lived.  From time to time a family historian will tell of looking for a grave among hundreds of them in a cemetery, and will suddenly find themselves right there  – and they attribute it to their ancestor guiding them to the correct place.  What a lovely, warm-fuzzy, feel-good story.  But have you ever experienced the opposite?

I was doing some research for someone, and took a short day trip to take some cemetery photos.  I love going to new towns and poking around to see what’s there, but from the moment we pulled into this small town, I got the creeps.  Bad vibes.  I was fairly uncomfortable, but there was no obvious reason for having that feeling.  We easily found the cemetery, and I looked forward to getting out of the car and doing some stretching, enjoying the fresh air, etc., and most of all shaking off that creepy feeling. But the bad mojo only got worse at the cemetery.  Typically when visiting a small graveyard, we’ll walk the whole thing and photograph it for Find-A-Grave, but this feeling was so unpleasant that we found the graves we needed, photographed them, and got out of there as quickly as possible.

My research continued at home.  As I learned more and more about the family, I discovered that two of them had terrorized their families and eventually taken their own lives, some 50 years apart.  While both of these men were buried elsewhere,  many of the family members they left behind lived in this town and were buried in this cemetery.    


That is one town, and one cemetery where I’ll never go again.

Similar experiences?