January 25
Thanks for joining this personal journey. I have decided to tell my tales in a random way. Considering chronological seemed boring. So I will choose stories from here and there, early and late, happy and sad. My memory is weary and worn as to what is real and what isn’t.
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson gives me some freedom to play.
Indiana has produced some outstanding people. Michael Jackson, Gene Stratton Porter (she is Indiana’s most widely read author), David Letterman, Jane Pauley, Hoagy Carmichael, Amelia Earhart, Bill Monroe, Jenna Fischer (The Office) and Shelley Long (Cheers) both came from Ft. Wayne, Cole Porter, Anne Baxter, Jim Gaffigan, Carole Lombard, and Red Skelton are a few that come to mind.
Oh yes, we have had our politicians. You name them.
My home town of Wawaka was founded in 1857. The post office has been in operation since that year. The name is said to be of Native American origin, meaning “big heron”. This is no joke. Just last week a visitor told me that Wawaka meant “mud hole”.
Wawaka and the nearby area produced two notable people. Ford Frick was the third Commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1951 to 1965. I played little league with Ford Frick III! In nearby Albion, Earl Butz, the Former United States Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon and Ford, was born. He is famous for ending New Deal programs. What a legacy! Again, I don’t want to get to close to Indiana politicians and government officials. Makes me Quayle, I mean quake. Get sorta Pence, I mean tense….enough weak Hoosier humor.
Wawaka is in Noble County and was founded in 1836. Wikipedia doesn’t list Wawaka as a town or city in Noble County. Come on. You might think it was just a wide spot in the road or some mud hole. Some time back I learned that the first Golden in Noble County, around 1848, was a woman from Tennessee. I like that. I grew up thinking that our family was from the Jewish community of Ligonier about 6 miles from Wawaka. I liked that as well.
In 1854 Soloman Mier and Frederick Straus arrived in Ligonier carrying peddlers backpacks. They were immigrants from Prussia. By 1900 Ligonier, with 300 Jewish folks out of the 2000 population, become known as “Little Jerusalem”. I remember the large sign on highway US 6 highlighting the Historic Jewish Community.
While in grade school in Wawaka clothes not made by my mother were purchased from Jewish merchants. Some years ago I was taken to the second floor over a former clothing store to see an elegant apartment with French doors and deluxe woodwork. The last Jewish resident of Ligonier died in a nursing home in 1981.
Kidd & Co. made Ligonier the Marshmallow Capital of the World for 50 years up to 1996. The odor of marshmallow creme would fill the air from the factory.
My first six years of school took place in three class rooms on the first floor of the school house. The second floor held grades 8 thru 12. First graders would ride the bus with seniors to see the Wawaka Warriors play basketball with other schools in the area. Here is a photo of the school.
Noble County and Wawaka run deep. Roots. There is a part of me that regrets leaving after the 6th grade. I remember the sadness of leaving. I walked the perimeter of Wawaka. Not a long walk, just a sad walk through fields on the outskirts of town. I did not want to leave. As I think about it now, future stories may give some clues as to why this was a big move for me. The move changed me.
Wawaka will return in future stories. Muskrat trapping, stuck in river bank mud that seemed like quick sand I had learned about in Westerns, pest contests, baseball, chamber pots….
The next post will begin a series of stories focused on my relationship to money from days in Wawaka to the present in Virginia.
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