When a Steamboat Docked on Dunklin Street

What? A steamboat in the heart of Munichburg? How could this possibly be?

It’s true, and here’s how it happened.

The Nieghorn family of Cole County has in its family history an intriguing story of German immigrants coming to Jefferson City in 1844. This story was told to me by Gary Schmutzler of Jefferson City, a Nieghorn descendant. Gary heard it from his great uncle Andy Nieghorn, who heard it from his immigrant grandmother Hartenstein. It’s so unusual that it could not have been made up.

The Nieghorns and Hartensteins were among the first Bavarian immigrants to Cole County farms. The Hartensteins came through the port of New Orleans, then up the Mississippi by steamboat, then up the Missouri, also by steamboat. For the Missouri River part of the trip, they traveled in small, short steamboats more like a river ferry, not monsters like today’s Delta Queen or Admiral. The immigrants had to come by river, of course, because Missouri had no railroads in the 1840s.

When they reached the little town of Jefferson City, barely twenty years old, the boat left the Missouri River, entered Wear’s Creek, and continued upstream into its East Branch to where Central Dairy facilities are now, and then it moved south one block to Dunklin Street. That would put the boat with its immigrants into what is today the low "backyard" of Busch’s Florist. This is what that area looks like today.



The immigrant Hartenstein party got off the boat, transferred to wagons, and traveled southwest overland a few miles to the Zion neighborhood, where they settled among Nieghorns and other German Lutheran immigrants and became farmers.

If that family account is to be believed, how can it be explained?

The family account says the Hartensteins arrived in 1844. In that year, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Missouri River experienced its greatest flood ever in recorded history, by volume of water. The Great Flood of 1993, though somewhat less in volume, actually rose higher because of later channel engineering and levees. But the 1844 flood happened before the river had been so deeply channeled and walled in. The floodwater created ten-foot-high sand dunes in the river bottoms, and the river channel changed its course in several locations. Historical records tell of river pilots navigating their steamboats over the tops of submerged trees and croplands in the Missouri River bottoms.



With the Missouri River at such a high flood stage, water backed up into Wear’s Creek, as it always does in any Missouri River flood. If you remember the Great Flood of 1993 in Jefferson City, you remember water backing up in Wear’s Creek and flooding the Capitol Plaza Hotel and the parking lots around it. In fact, river backwater continued upstream in the East Branch channel past Central Dairy and even beyond Monroe Street. So the boat carrying the Hartenstein family could have come up into the Southside using the quiet Missouri River backwater just like moving into the arm of a big lake. In 1844 there were no bridges over the creek, either for a railroad or for wagons. The creek was totally unobstructed and would have been open water.



If you stand on the Dunklin Street sidewalk behind Busch’s greenhouse and lean over the railing, you will see how low the ground is there.



A small creek, visible in an 1892 photo, used to flow behind Busch’s greenhouse. Water from a flooded Wear’s Creek readily backed up into that low ground. In fact, the 100 block of East Dunklin, between Jefferson and Madison, was originally at that low level you see behind Busch’s.



It wasn’t until 1912 that the city decided to fill in the north side of Dunklin ten feet or so, to build up the street and make it relatively flat in that block.

If you lean out over that sidewalk railing and look back under the Dunklin Street sidewalk, you will see the original 1912 limestone retaining wall the city built to hold up the dirt fill that Dunklin Street is built on.



My conclusion is that the Nieghorn family story of the Hartensteins coming all the way to Dunklin Street by steamboat in 1844 is entirely believable. It shows that the stories we hand down from generation to generation may not be distorted or inaccurate retellings, tall tales, or figments of someone’s imagination, but actually could have happened, however unbelievable it seems at first.

But wait! There’s more to the story! When John Nieghorn (1819–1899), who came to Cole County about the same time as the Hartensteins, retired from his business as a tailor and farmer in the Zion community at age seventy-one, he came back to the same place on Dunklin Street where the Hartensteins disembarked from the boat in 1844. He built a three-story brick hotel there in 1892, called the Nieghorn Haus, and he spent his final retirement years living in it.



That hotel building, at 120-122 East Dunklin, and later called the Bassmann Apartments, was thoroughly renovated and updated by Phil Kolb and Steve Rollins in 2010 and is now on the National Register of Historic Places as the Nieghorn Hotel. Thank you, Nieghorns and Hartensteins, for giving us great Munichburg memories!

Hugo Busch and Busch's Florist

In 1890 German immigrant Hugo Otto Busch and partner Charles Purzner bought Mathias Nagel’s florist and landscape business on the corner of Madison and East Dunklin. Nagel had been in business there since at least 1873. Busch bought out his partner in 1902 and expanded the business, calling it Capital City Greenhouse. In 1909 he purchased 25 acres of farmland between the 1400 blocks of St. Mary’s Blvd. and Missouri Blvd. to raise plants and flowers. That land today is occupied by Jefferson Plaza and Busch St. In the 1930s Busch had eight large greenhouses: six were on Missouri Blvd., and two were connected to the sales room on Madison Street. He had a total of 50,000 square feet under glass. Busch annually raised thousands of poinsettias, roses, and carnations for his business and for wholesaling. Busch’s Florist served the general public with cut flowers and bedding plants and also decorated for weddings, funerals, and church events and for state government functions at the Capitol and governors’ inaugurations. Busch’s began FTD service around 1920 and rose to rank among FTD’s national leaders. Busch’s has long been considered Jefferson City’s premier florist.

Hugo and his German immigrant wife Lina (Carolina Jung) lived at 117 East Dunklin (part of the business property), where they raised eight sons and two daughters. Six of the sons worked with their father at some time. Son Arthur began working in the 1930s and in 1955 assumed control of the business when his father died at age 89. Art and wife Leota were known for their personal attention to customers and for their friendly, skilled employees. Art died in 1990, and Leota continued until 1997, when the business left the Busch family after 107 years. John Pelzer then owned it, proudly continuing the name Busch’s Florist. The business is now owned by Reid Millard, who in 2018 has renovated the landmark greenhouse on “the most beautiful corner in Jefferson City.”

Hugo Busch was a founding member of Southside Boosters that formed in 1912 to promote the Southside. Busch’s Florist has been an anchor to its business community for more than a century and is an active member of the Old Munichburg Association.

This piece originally ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune.

Copyright 2018, by Walter A. Schroeder

Photo of Hugo Busch, age 79 (1945), courtesy Trinity Lutheran Church, Jefferson City, Missouri

Mr. Hugo Busch’s Pansies

On June 8, 2013, the Old Munichburg Association unveiled The Historic South Side Mural, which the group had commissioned local artist Jim Dyke to paint. The 48-feet-long mural is designed as a pair of panoramic streetscapes; it depicts the long history of the Munichburg neighborhood via an overlapping potpourri of images from different time periods.



The location of the mural, 117 East Dunklin Street in Jefferson City, originally held the residence of Hugo and Carolina (Lena) Busch and their family of ten children. Built around 1900, the modest-looking brick house was one and a half stories above the street, but it had a full lower floor because the land the house was built on lay ten to fifteen feet below the street level. The house was really a two-and-a-half-story house. It is prominently shown in the mural and labeled as the Busch house.

The building that the mural is in was put up in the 1950s by Milo H. Walz to house Missouri state offices. Later, it was bought by Central Dairy/Prairie Farms and converted into a warehouse, with the first floor removed so that now, if you were able to open the sealed front doors and enter, you would drop ten to fifteen feet to the ground below. The mural is installed in the windows of this 1950s building. This building is not shown in the mural.

Hugo and Lena Busch, nineteenth-century German immigrants and members of Trinity Lutheran Church, were leaders in Muenchberg/Munichburg. In 1890, Hugo and partner Charles Purzner bought an existing florist and greenhouse on the corner of Dunklin and Madison. In 1902, Purzner sold his interest to Busch. Most of the ten children (eight sons, two daughters) worked in the business at some time, which was a tradition in Munichburg in those years.

The Busch family operated the business continuously until son Arthur Busch died in 1990 and widow Leota sold it in 1997. Reid Millard purchased the business in 2017 and retains the name “Busch’s Florist.” For more than a century Busch’s Florist has been Jefferson City’s premiere florist. The “Busch corner” of Madison and Dunklin is perhaps the most beautiful street corner in Jefferson City.

My mother liked pansies. In spring she always had pansies with their smiling faces in flower boxes at the front door. She and Grandpa sometimes called them by their German name Stiefmütterchen, or “little stepmothers.”

Pansies are hardy and among the first flowers to bloom in spring. Mom’s birthday was March 22, and it became a custom for me, when I was about eight to ten years old, to give her a dozen pansies for her birthday. I got them from Busch’s.

Mr. Hugo Busch, who by then was almost eighty years old, helped me out personally. His hot beds sat those ten to fifteen feet below the Dunklin Street sidewalk between the greenhouse on the corner and the Busch house on Dunklin. I went to them by walking down a ramp from the street sidewalk. The hot beds, each about eight feet square, were held in by 2 x 12 boards standing upright. The beds had heavy wood frames of glass panes for a cover, much like the roof panes of the greenhouse. The frames would be placed over the top of the beds in winter to protect against freezes. Mr. Busch set out his pansies in the fall, so that in mid-March, he could remove the frames from the hot beds and the pansies would be big enough for transplanting to brighten yards with their colorful stepmother faces.



Mr. Busch helped me pick out the pansies one by one. He sat on a board placed diagonally across a corner and patiently waited while I looked over the dozens of plants in one bed. When I picked out one, he gave his approval with a slight German accent, “Yes, Buddy, that’s a nice one.” He scooped it out with his trowel and carefully placed it with just enough dirt in a shoebox. He kept the shoebox tilted so that the little plant with its dirt stayed in place. Then I chose another and then another. We moved to a different bed and again inspected dozens of plants.

It was so hard to make choices! I wanted the showiest for my mother’s birthday, and I needed Mr. Busch’s expert approval for each. The whole process took at least half an hour. Mr. Busch’s patience was inexhaustible. He knew my family and knew that the pansies were for my mother’s birthday.



After we filled the shoebox with a dozen plants—they cost a nickel each, and I had sixty cents to spend—I walked up to the sales room at the back of the greenhouse, paid the clerk, and walked the four blocks home with my shoebox birthday gift of pansies. When I got home, Mom thanked me and planted her pansies in the concrete flower boxes at the front door so that all who passed by would see the bright, colorful faces of the “little stepmothers.”

Copyright 2013, 2018 by Walter A. Schroeder.

This Mother and Son Will Not Be Remembered Unless I Write This

Sometimes I wonder if people who have gone quietly about living good, decent lives will ever be remembered for having lived their good, decent lives. Here is a story of a devoted mother and her only child that was told to me by my mother.

In the first decade of the 1900s, Katharine and Johann Saar were members of the German Methodist Church on the corner of Broadway and West Elm, in the Munichburg neighborhood of Jefferson City. My grandparents, who lived next door to the church, were also members of that small congregation.



The Saars lived less than a block away in the smallest brick house I have ever seen. It measures not more than 12 x 24 feet. Remarkably, it is still standing in good shape with few modifications, like the addition of an indoor bathroom. It sits alone on its own very small piece of land behind the Schaefer House, 618 Broadway, with hardly any yard; parking and driveways surround the house.



Made of soft, porous brick, this little house was probably built in the 1890s. It had only two very small rooms, each about 10 x 10 feet with separate flues, and a microscopic attic above. Today it still serves as a residence. Sadly, the inconspicuous house was overlooked when the grander neighboring buildings facing directly on Broadway and Dunklin were put on the National Register of Historic Places as the Munichburg Historic District. It should have been included.

In 1901 the Saars’ daughter, Marie, married Franz Pietsch, which is pronounced “peach,” just like the fruit. The Pietsches had a son, their only child, Paul, born soon after.

Franz Pietsch, reportedly a railroad worker, died shortly after little Paul’s birth. Marie Pietsch was left to raise her son by herself. Those were tough times for a widow. Marie moved with baby Paul into the tiny brick house to live with her also widowed mother. Somewhat later, Katharine Saar moved south to the Brazito community, leaving Marie Pietsch and young Paul alone in the tiny house.

In order to make a living, Marie Pietsch took the job of charwoman, or scrub woman, at the old U.S. Post Office on High Street, which was across the street from today’s Arris’ Pizza Palace. My mother described to me how Mrs. Pietsch not only wet-mopped the rooms of the building but also got down on her hands and knees and hand scrubbed all the steps—cleaning them of spat tobacco juice and whatever else. Those steps were used every day, winter and summer, by hundreds of people. Everyone using those steps literally looked down upon her as just a simple scrubwoman. There was no more menial job in public sight, but Marie had a child to raise.



Paul attended Jefferson City schools and turned out to be a stellar student. He graduated from the high school in 1919 no less than class valedictorian and champion debater. He received the coveted A. M. Hough Medal given annually to the student who ranked highest in scholarship. According to the yearbook, his fellow students voted him the “greatest athlete.” Within a few years out of high school he had a respectable Missouri state government position as an assistant chemist. Marie Pietsch must have taken great pride in her son, having risen from such humble circumstances, and he, in turn, must have thought the world of his devoted mother.

In 1930, Marie Pietsch was the only non-family person at my parents’ wedding one block away on Elm Street. Mrs. Pietsch assisted my grandmother with the wedding reception for her daughter. Grandma’s and Marie’s friendship was based on their earlier years in the German Methodist Church. My mother blushingly admitted to me that she had had a teenager’s crush on the neighborhood boy Paul—handsome, smart, athletic—who was just a couple years older. Paul did not attend her wedding.

World War II came in 1941. Paul, still single at age thirty-nine, entered U.S. military service. Then no one heard anything more about him. When asked, Mrs. Pietsch, now living alone in that tiny house, said he was doing “just fine” and had not been sent overseas.

Mrs. Pietsch died while the war was still raging. She died alone. All alone. According to my mother, the U.S. military would not allow Paul to come home from wherever he was for his own mother’s funeral and burial. Not a single family member was there to mourn Marie, the devoted mother who scrubbed the post office steps on her hands and knees.

You see, Paul had a supersecret job with military intelligence, and he was so indispensable to the war effort that, though he was still in this country, he was not allowed any time off, not even for his mother’s funeral. That bothered my mother very deeply. As a mother herself, she imagined how grieving Paul must have been not to be able to say goodbye to his dear mother.

I don’t know what happened to Paul Pietsch after the war, but he did not return to Jefferson City. So this story has to end here.

I think about him and his mother whenever I see that tiny brick house, and I wonder if the devoted mother Marie Pietsch and Paul, her high-achieving son, are ever remembered by anyone else.

Now that I have told you their story, you can remember them, too.

Copyright 2013 by Walter A. Schroeder.

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IF YOU LIKED THIS ESSAY, YOU'LL WANT TO READ MORE IN WALTER SCHROEDER'S

Southside Sketches: Essays on Jefferson City’s Old Munichburg
200 pages, paperback
$12 (available at Downtown Book & Toy, the ECCO Lounge, J Street Vintage, and the Schaefer House, all in Jefferson City, Missouri)

Civilian Defense Corps and Air Raids in Jefferson City

The U.S. government responded to the early, spectacular successes of the Japanese and Nazi Germans at the beginning of World War II by creating the Office of Civilian Defense on May 20, 1941. This office was to protect Americans from the possibility of enemy bombing of our towns and cities. Clifford G. Scruggs, the lumber dealer, was the chairman of the Jefferson City Council of Civilian Defense and was in charge of administering the executive order locally.

My dad, age 38 when the war began, had been given a 3-A (exempt) classification for military service. My mom jokingly said it was because he had flat feet, but then she quickly added that he was the sole provider for five other persons, including his two young sons (my brother Richard and me) and Mom’s German-born parents who lived with us. With civilian status, Dad was expected to do his duty by civilian service. To do this, he became an air raid warden with the local Office of Civilian Defense.

Looking back seventy years ago, it seems incredible that we believed that Japanese and German Nazi planes could penetrate so deep into the heart of the continent to reach Jefferson City, Missouri, without being intercepted somewhere along the way. Nevertheless, at the time we took the possibility seriously . . . very seriously.

The kids on West Elm Street, six to eleven years old, learned how to identify enemy airplanes from silhouettes of them published in the newspaper and on the back sides of breakfast cereal boxes. (Airplane identification cards also came in packs of cigarettes, but no one in our family smoked.) With our binoculars we surveyed the skies, lying on the steep, grassy terraces or peering out of second- and third-story windows. We were sure we would spot a German Stuka or Messerschmidt or maybe a “Jap” Mitsubishi or Zero and save Jefferson City from air attack.

The Office of Civilian Defense distributed leaflets about preparation for air attacks: “Read and Save this Leaflet—it may Save Your Life Some Day!” The city held air raid drills to practice what to do. It was important to extinguish all lights inside houses, so that the enemy planes could not find anyplace to bomb. So we had to put out all lights in the house and pull all the window shades shut. We were not allowed to use any matches or flashlights outside. People were not even allowed to light a cigarette in the open. All streetlights were extinguished. If you were driving, you had to stop immediately, turn off the lights, and park close to the curb, but not at any intersection or fire hydrant. Police and firemen could use their headlights, but their headlights had to be mostly covered, leaving only a slit to allow a little light through. Detailed rules were in place for those caught in theaters and other meeting places at time of an air raid. We were also instructed, should an attack actually occur, to seek cover under a large table or under an overturned sofa. “Carelessness or negligence in observing these precautions may invite disaster.”

 

 Newspapers also printed information about what to do when an attack comes. Since gas was a dreaded weapon in World War I, there was fear it could be used again. In case of gas attack, we were to close doors tightly, stuff cracks, avoid the basement, and retreat into the attic. If we were caught outside, we were to cover our mouths and noses with damp handkerchiefs and “walk against the wind to get in the clear quicker. Above all, keep your head. Running around wildly results in much greater danger to yourself.”

 

 To be an air raid warden, Dad had to take a training course. It consisted of eight sessions, taught in evenings at the Junior College (now the Miller Performing Arts Center). He learned about chemical warfare, high explosives, incendiary bombs, and how to keep civilian morale up.

 

 Each session included first aid instruction, including how to care for casualties of gas bombs. “It is the responsibility of the Air Raid Warden to see that everything possible is done to protect and safeguard the homes and citizens within his area from the hazards created by attacks from the air.” On December 12, 1942, the class received certification of membership in the United States Citizens Defense Corps as air raid wardens. Dad was now an official air raid warden!
 

Jefferson City was divided into geographic areas for air warden patrol. Each area comprised about 500 persons. Dad was assigned to Lafayette Street between McCarty and Dunklin and connecting streets, the neighborhood known as “The Foot” of Lincoln University. It contained the black business district and many residences of both blacks and whites.

When an air raid drill was called in the evening, Dad put on his sleeve identification band, picked up his flashlight, and walked the eight blocks from our house on West Elm Street to Lafayette. He looked at all the windows of the businesses and houses to make sure no light was visible from the street. He told those walking on the sidewalk that they should go inside a building and those with cigarettes to put them out or go inside.

My brother and I waited up in our darkened house with all the window shades drawn until he returned to find out what was going on. He never reported anything unusual. He said that everyone was in full compliance with the regulations. We were actually kind of disappointed that no enemy planes had been spotted flying over Jefferson City. It had been just another drill.

 

 As 1942 turned into 1943 and then into 1944, the probability of enemy air attack on the 48 United States greatly lessened, although we kids still occasionally surveyed the skies looking for enemy planes. The Japanese temporarily occupied Attu in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and sent some incendiary balloons over Oregon, and German U-boats were sighted off the East Coast, but we in Jefferson City felt safe from air attack.

Dad, however, retained his air warden status and participated in more air raid drills. It was not until June 4, 1945, a month after Germany had surrendered on May 8, that the Office of Civilian Defense was terminated by executive order and Dad put his air raid warden sleeve band away. Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945.

Copyright 2012 by Walter A. Schroeder.

Cows, Hogs, and Chickens in Munichburg

In the good ol’ days, folks in Munichburg (Jefferson City’s Southside) kept barnyard animals on their properties. In those days, all families had vegetable gardens for their food supply, and more than a few raised animals for food. A property was like a mini-farm.

For a long while, well into the twentieth century, animals were given free rein to roam. Folks had to put up fences to keep roaming animals off their properties and out of their gardens. That’s why you see such a huge network of fencing in old photographs. Today those fences are gone, and when people put up fences today, they’re to keep other people out.

Hogs roamed all over town in the nineteenth century. In 1873 it was reported that “cattle graze and hogs root in the City Cemetery upon the graves,” though the neighboring National Cemetery, well protected by a stone wall, was free from roaming animals. Newspaper articles were still calling in 1919 for hogs to be controlled in Jefferson City.

Cows could also roam about. The congregation of Central Evangelical Church gathered outside its church one Sunday morning in February 1891 after worship service for a congregational photo.



In that sharp photo taken by professional photographer Carl Deeg, a cow is standing just behind the congregation in the middle of muddy Ashley Street, looking straight at the camera. A roving critter to be sure. It seemed to be saying, “Just what do you people think you’re doing, invading my territory?”



In the early 1900s, residents kept a cow in order to have fresh milk in those days before refrigeration. My mother related that, as a young girl, her parents would send her the four blocks over to Mulberry and Atchison to get a bucket of milk from Mr. Petry, who kept cows.

When I was a young boy around 1940, Affolter’s pasture occupied the hillside from the end of Broadway (where four-lane US 54 now crosses over it) up to Swift’s Highway and included the site of today’s South School and Pamela Street. Grandpa led me through the cow pasture on our trips to visit his old German friends on Swifts Highway. Dozens of cows grazed that hillside.

People kept horses, too. Before cars, horse-drawn wagons and carriages were the way to get around. If you had a carriage, you probably had a horse and stable in the back of your property on the alley, or else you had to rent one from the several neighborhood liveries. When a horse- or mule-drawn wagon came by our house on Broadway, Grandpa was quick with his shovel to go out and scoop up droppings for manure for his garden. Until motor vehicles took over in the 1920s, businesses had hitching posts and horse-watering troughs in front of them. Today we feed parking meters in front of stores instead of horses.



Every week a buggy or wagon accident occurred and made the newspaper. The corner of Jefferson and Atchison had more than its share. In October 1906, two women in a buggy collided with another there. “Both women were flung and the hardly three month old child of one fell between the spokes of a front wheel. Fortunately the horse was steady and remained in place, otherwise the baby would have been slit to death.” At that same corner, farmer Ulrich Zehender, standing alongside his wagon, slipped and fell and was run over by his own wagon. And on the adjacent Jefferson Street hill, in front of what is now the Salvation Army, a team of horses bolted, causing a woman to fall backward out of the wagon. Her head struck a rock, “causing the blood to flow freely.” One day in 1916, thunder spooked the horses of Crandell’s ice cream wagon, and they ran away. Crandell was heavily bruised, but no ice cream was lost. These wagon and buggy accidents of the past have been replaced by car accidents today.

In 1915, the newspaper reported that a band of gypsies had moved onto the low ground along Wears Creek at Washington Park. “The gypsies turned their horses and cattle loose and permitted them to roam about the country. Residents complained that the stock was devastating their gardens. The protest had little effect upon the gypsies, who in effect told them to go jump in the creek.”

Some folks, like the Pash family on West Atchison, raised pigeons in dovecotes. From what I hear, boys raised these for “homing pigeons,” but it is likely that some were eaten, if the tastes of the family were such. Likewise, some families raised rabbits in hutches. Of course, men would still go rabbit hunting out in the country, but domestic rabbits didn’t have the “wild” taste, and they were there to butcher whenever you wanted. Our neighbors raised white rabbits during the hard years of the Great Depression. They also raised chinchilla rabbits for their valued fur, which they shipped by rail to fur markets in the big cities. In those days, people out of work did not get unemployment checks, so they had to be resourceful in finding ways to make money.



Apparently no one raised turkeys. Turkeys are an American bird and not part of the customary diet handed down from German immigrants. Nevertheless, it was common in the few days before Christmas for grocers to give away fresh-killed turkeys to shoppers. A news item in 1912 reported that “thirty-five turkeys are to be given away at the Southside pool hall Wednesday night.” That pool hall must have been busy that evening! Even barbershops got in on the turkey promotional giveaways.

Geese seldom appear in the records. “Goose Bottom,” the name used for the low ground around the junction of the west and east branches with the main Wears Creek (the area around the present junction of Missouri Boulevard with Highway 50/63) either got its name very early from wild geese there, or later from geese being raised there by someone. Max Baer (no relation to the boxer or to his actor son), who had a junkyard at Broadway and Miller, advertised for goose feathers. Someone was raising geese.

Chickens were everywhere. Roosters came with them, and their cock-a-doodle-doo’s crowed out at the crack of dawn across Munichburg. Of course, everyone was already awake by then. In fact, in summer housewives generally already had done their three loads of wash, put it through the ringer, and hung it out on clotheslines by seven o’clock to avoid the heat of the day. Today, roosters have been replaced by alarm clocks.

Hungry folks and rascals stole chickens. Hardly a week went by without some family reporting chickens stolen in the Southside, and the thieves were hardly ever caught. Since dogs roamed also, chickens were lost during the night to hungry dogs.

Chickens were kept in fenced pens and coops. If the property was large enough, a couple dozen could be kept this way, providing eggs as well. Others kept just a few chickens in small cages for shorter times. The space under the back porch served this purpose. Today, many people don’t have back porches.

By time the 1920s came, families began to have iceboxes and refrigeration, so that keeping chickens was dispensed with and replaced by a short trip to buy fresh meat from Hott & Asel’s butcher shop or one of the chain groceries that were moving in. But when the hard times of the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, which were then followed by the frugal years of World War II, families returned to keeping chickens along with their “victory gardens.”

We kept a few chickens in a chicken-wire cage behind our garage on Elm Street. My brother and I took care of them. When it was time to kill one for Sunday dinner, Dad grabbed a fat hen, took it to the gravel driveway under the purple martin box, put the hen on a wooden chopping block, and whacked off its head with one blow from an axe. The martins would go crazy and dive-bomb us (we thought in terms of planes fighting in the war going on). Sometimes Dad wrung the hen’s neck: He grabbed the hen by its head and whirled it around his head several times until the head twisted off and the body sailed off onto the gravel. I watched the headless body flop around for a couple of minutes, spewing off blood in all directions. It was great excitement! Then it was Mom’s job to dunk the critter into hot water and begin plucking the feathers, cutting it up, and getting it ready to fry for dinner. We ate every bit of it, except the head and feet. Dinner doesn’t come any fresher than that! Today we buy processed foods instead of eating our home-grown vegetables and chickens.

Nits and Lice and Cooties

My father was a barber, so I learned about head lice very early. Here’s how it happened.

While my family sat at the supper table eating, we always talked about what happened during the day. One evening while eating, Dad related that while he was cutting a man’s hair that day, he discovered lice on his scalp. Dad, holding his fork in his hand, pointed to the back of his head to show exactly where.

Mom interrupted, “Oh, Walter! Not at the table while we’re eating!”



For the benefit of his young sons, Dad continued to describe how tiny the lice were and how they laid eggs, called nits, on hairs close to the scalp.

Following his training at barber college (and state law), Dad had to immediately stop cutting the hair of anyone with lice and ask the customer to leave the shop. He had to disinfect in formaldehyde his electric shears, cutting shears (scissors), comb, and anything else that had been touched.

He took the customer’s hair cloth, carefully folded it inward, and put it in a sack in his closet. While he did this, the next customer waited patiently on the bench and wondered if the disinfecting really worked. Nits and lice, as everyone knows, can be easily spread.

My own head suddenly seemed itchy, and I scratched it.

About that same time, Cole County Nurse Hetty Joach (pronounced Jo-ack) made her annual visit to Broadway School, where I was an eight-year-old in Miss Ruth Longan’s third grade. We pupils went singly into the cloakroom and sat on a stool while Nurse Joach looked at our teeth, throat, and a lot of other things and, of course, took a comb to examine our scalps for head lice.

I don’t remember if she found any in our class that year, but if she did, it was revealed privately to the pupil, the teacher, and parents. Nurse Joach told us all about head lice and reminded us to wash our hair often, which some kids didn’t do in those days. But my Mom and Dad made sure my head got washed more than I wanted.

We kids found out that cooties was another word for lice. It was common to tease someone, especially girls, by saying, “You’ve got cooties!” Teachers and parents frowned on this, because they knew it could be hurtful. People believed that contracting head lice was a sign of dirty, shameful housekeeping, and families were embarrassed when it happened.


Then one evening Mom’s bridge club met at our house.

I was allowed to stay up for a while and watch the “girls” play several hands. At one point, I heard one of them exclaim, “Oh, all I had in my hand was nits and lice!”--meaning that she held low cards, but I didn’t know that. I puzzled why anyone would be holding lice and their eggs in their hands.

I wanted to look, because I had never seen a louse, dead or alive, but I didn’t. Soon after, I went to bed and started imagining my head itching.

Then, the next Christmas, my Aunt Esther and Uncle Emil Kaiser came to visit. She told us about a group she belonged to in Kansas City called the Cooties of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Uncle Eme had served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, and the Cooties were veterans who brought fun and entertainment to sick and wounded veterans in hospitals. Women formed Cootie auxiliaries and had just as much fun as their veteran husbands did. My Aunt Esther was always singing, laughing, and cracking jokes, so I knew she could make vets in hospitals happy. The group was called “Military Order of the Cootie” because it poked fun at the lice that tormented troops living in trenches during the war.

When I learned all this, I started thinking of "cooties" as neat people who had lots of fun!

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And in the early 1940s, this is how an eight-year-old found out about nits and lice and cooties!