Doing business in a small town.

[reuben_j_cogburn]

As some of you know I avoid Talkeetna like the plague... I do however do business in "Sunshine"... which does not technically exist.. but still, there it is!
I went into the hardware store the other day to pick up some small items. They are a Stihl dealer, so I cruised the saw isle...
I really need a bigger saw. I am down to just my ms250, which is old, and has been rebuilt. (By me which is REALLY scary!!)....
It runs well, but I can not be dependent on just one saw, livin so far out in the sticks.
I don't make a ton of money during the summer work season. It dribbles in enough for me to get by. So I do the best I can with it.

At the counter I joked with the guy at the Till... You know... The guy you go to first when you have a question, because he really knows hardware!!.. Yeah.. That guy!!
I jokingly said they should have a lay away plan for guys like me who have trouble with big purchases....
He said, "no trouble"... we'll set up an account, and when it is paid off you can take it home"....
Why the heck didn't I say that last year!!!..... :roll: :lol:
So that is cool!! Next paycheck, I'll go drool over saws and pick the one that suits my needs and budget....
Boy it that one monkee [spelling IS correct!] off my back!!......... :D

Das Vedanya homies.......

reuben.....

 

[Mobuck]

All sorts of perks for being local. I was on a parts run this morning when Son called to ask if I could stop at the farm store and get him a bottle of vaccine. If I'd known this was on the list, I could have taken a small cooler. When I was checking out the girl asked if I needed an ice pack and since I had nothing but a raincoat to keep the bottle cool, I said "yes". One of the older women brought the ice pack to the check out and when the cashier asked how much she should charge for that, the older woman said "He's been a good customer since before I started working here and that's been a long time. Don't charge him for the ice pack".

 

[bogus bill]

I was raised in a small village country general store my mom run during world war two. My grandpa built it. When she was a teen grandpa made a delivery/sales truck model T. My uncle did the driving at about 12 and she was about 14 and they had a grocery route to outlaying farms. Would deliver grocery and hardware and buy eggs etc.
She never met a stranger. Seemed to knew everyone for fifty miles every direction. After the war my folks sold the store. Mom loved selling fruit & vegetables for many years from a tent/stand out in front of our house on the highway. She also would load up a pickup and hit various small towns on their "farm market days". The newspaper did a feature on her when she still was doing it in her seventy's.
Dad & Mom on their wedding day in front of the store.
https://i.postimg.cc/bY5dmkgB/Merril-s-Mom-Dad-s-wedding-1937.jpg
Grandpa & me having a pipe smoke together in front of the store.
https://i.postimg.cc/SNV10QX3/Grandpa-Bruhn-Merril-1945.jpg

 

[contender]

I've had a saying for many years.

"Do you know the definition of a small town? No? A small town is where everybody knows who's check is good & who's husband isn't!"

 

[mexicanjoe]

Well folks I married Mrs JOE in a small town of 700 people ( more or less)and I remember going to the Five and Dime and getting ready to check out. Guess what? No wallet! No problem, they told me " come back tomorrow, we close in 10 minutes for the high school football homecoming game." Went up the next morning( Saturday ) and asked to pay my purchase........ They had to look for my ticket, but I paid them on the spot and then went back to work.........Nicest place in West Texas to work....You know its a small town when you know everyone and THEIR DOGS NAME! Or people would drop off their house key when the went on vacation and ask you to pick up any mail and feed the dogs........ Gonna go back some day.

 

[Ale-8(1)]

Yup, small is great. Grew up in a typical late-fifties neighborhood. From the time I was twelve or so, I mowed several lawns there, and shoveled the snow off of a lotta sidewalks in the winter. When folks were gonna be away from home for some period of time, they'd give me the key and have me check their homes out for potential problems like pipe leaks, etc, and care for whatever critters they had. I even got paid for most of that. :mrgreen:

 

[bogus bill]

Ever hear of Ed Gein? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein
My mom caught him peeking in her bedroom window! It was around 12:30 AM and she was up late making her bed as dad was due home from working swing shift. She ran a roadside vegetable stand and he was hanging around that day acting stupid and had commented on it. He had his face pressed against the window and she recognized him from that day. I was upstairs and heard her screech at him, "why you old devil". Dad kept a revolver handy for her but she didn't think to grab it. Instead she let Pete, dads dog on him. He ran off. Shortly dad came home. Said he had seen a guy running down the road towards a parked truck, went back to look for him but he was gone.
A couple years later Gein was arrested by moms cousins husband. Mom instantly recognized his picture in the paper. My folks were also close friends to Specks Murdy who caught him. Once Specks (Leon) had dad go with him to look for two lost deer hunters that were NEVER found. They had tracked them near Geins farm. They later figured he also had killed them but couldn't get Gein to admit it. Back around 1980 I went home on vacation and the folks and I visited Specks and wife Helen. That afternoon Specks went in detail on the case. I wished I had a tape recorder. Besides the two women he murdered and butchered Specks was sure of at least another three unsolved cases he did. Gein did give him a list of I think 48 graves he had robbed over the years. They dug up one or two at random and they were empty! Specks died about a year after we last visited. Specks knew who torched the place and so do I. Anyway he is long gone. Small town life.

 

[Ruger Packer]

Ever hear of Ed Gein? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein
My mom caught him peeking in her bedroom window! It was around 12:30 AM and she was up late making her bed as dad was due home from working swing shift. She ran a roadside vegetable stand and he was hanging around that day acting stupid and had commented on it. He had his face pressed against the window and she recognized him from that day. I was upstairs and heard her screech at him, "why you old devil". Dad kept a revolver handy for her but she didn't think to grab it. Instead she let Pete, dads dog on him. He ran off. Shortly dad came home. Said he had seen a guy running down the road towards a parked truck, went back to look for him but he was gone.
A couple years later Gein was arrested by moms cousins husband. Mom instantly recognized his picture in the paper. My folks were also close friends to Specks Murdy who caught him. Once Specks (Leon) had dad go with him to look for two lost deer hunters that were NEVER found. They had tracked them near Geins farm. They later figured he also had killed them but couldn't get Gein to admit it. Back around 1980 I went home on vacation and the folks and I visited Specks and wife Helen. That afternoon Specks went in detail on the case. I wished I had a tape recorder. Besides the two women he murdered and butchered Specks was sure of at least another three unsolved cases he did. Gein did give him a list of I think 48 graves he had robbed over the years. They dug up one or two at random and they were empty! Specks died about a year after we last visited. Specks knew who torched the place and so do I. Anyway he is long gone. Small town life.

Lived in Wisconsin from 1978 to 2004.... heard many a story from different people who knew that Gein fella. He was on creepy SOB. Made lamp shades out of human skin among other things.....

 

[bogus bill]

I have a cousin who is a retired deputy. She may have been kidding but the last time I seen her we got talking about the Gein case. She said, you know what he did in the state hospital? No. He was the butcher!
Specks told me he took Gein for a lie detector test at Madison. (About 70 miles from the Wautoma SO) He got there towards the end of the day and they wanted him to bring him back the next day. Rather then do that Specks said I will stay overnight with him here in a cell. He said they gave him sort of a wing of empty cells. He finally faked sleep, said Gein got up and looked him over and went and tried the cell door which wasn't locked. He then walked to the end of the row and tried that door which was locked. Gein came back and Specks acted like he just woke up. He gave Gein a smoke and they talked. Gein said he couldn't control himself on full moon nights.
and would go dig up a grave!
Specks was sheriff from about the war. Due to term limits his wife Helen was sheriff in between. She really ran the jail cooking etc but voters knew that. Specks finally gave it up stayed as town constable at Wild Rose where they lived. Art Shly became Waushara county Sheriff but wasn't experienced. When Mrs. Worden was found murdered in their hardware store (by her son who happened to be constable of Plainfield) Shly called out Murdy.
We lived at Auroaville, maybe 20 miles from Plainfield where Gein lived. Specks looked things over and told Shly, if we solve this one, we also will have solved that one over in Adams county where Mrs Hogan disappeared.
Specks found where Mrs Worden had started to write up "Kerosene". A book or two on Gein says antifreeze but had it wrong. Specks knew Gein who was a oddball local who still used lanterns. He went out with his old favorite deputy, "Dan Chase" to Geins farm about a couple miles from Plainfield. He and Chase found her strung up and gutted like a deer on the back porch. Gein wasn't home but they went in and found all the horrible stuff Gein collected. Gein, Specks & wife Helen, my dad, mother and probably everyone else that was connected to the case is long gone but there has to be many relatives of the victims alive yet. Specks also believed a baby sitter that was never found was also a victim. It was a different county but Specks seen a old levi faded jacket near the scene. It was very faded but had criss cross marked straps where the owner had must have plowed with a horse or mule and he thought Gein was about the only one to still farm that way. So, they got Gein on killing two business women but Specks thought he had also murdered his brother many years prior, the baby sitter and the two hunters. Got him on two, but suspected he killed at least four more. My mother was very feisty or he may have got her too. Gein picked business women. One tavern owner, the hardware store owner. Forgot to say, he brought a few rounds of .22 ammo in his pocket and shot Mrs Warden with a display rifle while she started to write him up for kerosene.

 

[Acorn]

And now for something completely different!
Went to the ATM in the little town where I work. I parked on the street at a meter and walked up towards the ATM. Behind me I hear a voice saying “Sir, Sir”. I turn to see an elderly lady who then says “your parked at a parking meter”. I replied I knew I was but I was only going to be a minute, and in all the years I’d worked there I had never seen anyone tagging cars. Then I realized she WAS the “tagger” and I was about to be the taggee. I fumbled in my my pocket mumbling I didn’t know if I had any change. The woman said “I can lend you the dime”.

 

[DHD]

The Gein information made me look it up. That's some weird stuff there.

 

[Ugly Hombre]

Bill to bad your mom did not shoot that devil dead on the spot.. a helluva close call.

And that's a helluva story. I remember people still talking about that evil monster in the 60's/70's in the mid west.

 

[bogus bill]

Yeah. She could have saved at least those last two women he murdered. I once stuck my foot in my mouth. I was working in Yosemite NP in 1960. Saw a lady tourist with Wi plates. Asked her where from and she said Plainfield.
Old Ed`s stomping grounds, huh? She started crying and told me Mrs. Worden was her best friend!
Mom did know how to shoot. She would deer hunt with dad and I. She was feisty and I never seen her scared of anyone. Shame she didn't but of course had no idea of how bad he was or his history. She grew up in a general store and waited on customers from a kid up. My folks once ran a resort with a bar etc. A guitar player made the mistake of calling her a "B". She grabbed his guitar and broke it over his head!

 

[Armybrat]

I was raised in a small village country general store my mom run during world war two. My grandpa built it. When she was a teen grandpa made a delivery/sales truck model T. My uncle did the driving at about 12 and she was about 14 and they had a grocery route to outlaying farms. Would deliver grocery and hardware and buy eggs etc.
She never met a stranger. Seemed to knew everyone for fifty miles every direction. After the war my folks sold the store. Mom loved selling fruit & vegetables for many years from a tent/stand out in front of our house on the highway. She also would load up a pickup and hit various small towns on their "farm market days". The newspaper did a feature on her when she still was doing it in her seventy's.
Dad & Mom on their wedding day in front of the store.
https://i.postimg.cc/bY5dmkgB/Merril-s-Mom-Dad-s-wedding-1937.jpg
Grandpa & me having a pipe smoke together in front of the store.
https://i.postimg.cc/SNV10QX3/Grandpa-Bruhn-Merril-1945.jpg

Say BB, your parents were a mighty fine looking couple, especially your beautiful mom. Were you adopted?
:lol:

Seriously though, I have enjoyed reading your many interesting stories over the years here and on the Colt forum.

My dad was from Graham, Missouri (far northwest corner) where my grandpa owned & ran the local party line telephone exchange during WW1. Afterwards he owned & ran the town’s biggest business, an auto repair garage with a little cafe in the corner run by my grandma. They finally retired & sold the business in 1958.

My dad made the US Army his career, so we could only get back to visit during some summers when we were stationed overseas. That little town of 200 was heaven for a kid like me.... fishing at a nearby pond, walking around the local woods & country roads shooting BB guns & .22s, riding my cousin%’s ponies. Peeking at the girls in the old out houses that were still in common use. That was in the late ‘40s into the 1950s.

Back in the 1970s & 80s the county badman was a big burly oaf named Kenneth McElroy of nearby Skidmore - hog rustler, bully, thief of anything that wasn’t nailed down, backshooter and the like. Someone wound up shooting him dead in broad daylight in the middle of town in full view of a bunch of witnesses, none of whom could recall seeing anything when questioned by the county LEOs.

There was Actually a tv crime documentary made in the late 1980s about his execution murder, which was never solved... even after the FBI came up from Kansas City to nose around “undercover” dressed in their new boots and pressed coveralls. Lol

You can google up his name + Skidmore for that story.

 

[Bear Paw Jack]

I considered Anchorage a small town of 250k people, but the town I live in now is much smaller but still in the 100k neighborhood. When I went looking for another vehicle to replace the one that I totaled a couple of months ago I didn't bring a check book. I found a vehicle I decided was worth buying and told them I'd have to go get my check book. They said don't worry about it, just drop the check off in the next couple of days. They helped me deliver my rental vehicle to the airport and I took the one I was buying home. I suppose if I hadn't paid they could have come and towed it off but to me that's awfully trusting. Had never done business with them before either.

 

[Armybrat]

Hey Bear Paw, when my dad was stationed at Fort Richardson, my mom gave birth to my middle brother in 1942.... just before all military dependents were evacuated down to the lower 48.

Dad remained behind, taking part in the Aleutian Campaign of 1943 to kick the Japanese off Attu and Kiska. He wound up spending 7 months in a tent on Adak, IIRC.

My brother inherited most of the Alaska artifacts purchased by Dad back then, including a collection of walrus tusk ivory... most of which was carved into doodads & scrimshawed. I think he still has a whole raw tusk that is untouched. Legal since it has been in the family for almost 80 years.

 

[Bear Paw Jack]

I'm not really educated in the ivory thing with the natives. I think you are correct. Got to be worth a fair amount of money for that tusk. I know a fair number of pilots fly around the beeches, looking for dead walruses. If they find one that's died on their own they can cut off the head and have the ivory tagged.

That carved, and scrimshawed ivory could be worth a fair amount. The way it's judged is the art work has to be worth at least the value of the ivory itself. So you can't just do some scratching on a tusk and consider that art. There are some tricky in's and out's to deal with. I bought a few pieces, of Ivory and soap stone, but not many. I wish I hadn't sold the big piece of baleen that hung on my wall over the fireplace in Anchorage. Pretty cool stuff.

 

[Ale-8(1)]

Is there a difference in the legality of walrus ivory as opposed to elephant ivory? One would think there might be since the banning of ivory was supposed to be a conservation measure for elephants.

 

[Bear Paw Jack]

The major difference is that it's illegal to transport Elephant ivory out of the country it's killed.

With Walrus Ivory, Inupiats are allowed to kill walruses and use the ivory for traditional art. White people aren't allowed to, with the exception stated above. There are a lot of folks in the Washington area, that would like to limit the number of walruses what are eating all the fish. That's not going to fly.

 

[bogus bill]

Armybrat, I read about that bully many years ago or seen the show. I basically was raised in two small villages in Wisconsin. Auroaville and Eureka. Both villages had a couple grocery stores when I was a kid now nothing except the bars that were there back in the 40`s & 50`s. The bigger towns may have grew but the smaller villages seem to have shrunk! The store we ran is now a residence. The two small grade schools I went to are abandoned and they bus kids to bigger towns. My dad bought one and made a upstairs and downstairs apartments out of it for retirement income. I haven't been back in fifteen years but when I did everything seemed to be drying up in the farming areas out of the small towns. Years ago it was mostly small farms but most of them were bought up, condensed into bigger farms as today you cant make a living on 40 acres.

 

[Rick Courtright]

Back in the 1970s & 80s the county badman was a big burly oaf named Kenneth McElroy of nearby Skidmore - hog rustler, bully, thief of anything that wasn’t nailed down, backshooter and the like. Someone wound up shooting him dead in broad daylight in the middle of town in full view of a bunch of witnesses, none of whom could recall seeing anything when questioned by the county LEOs.

There was Actually a tv crime documentary made in the late 1980s about his execution murder, which was never solved... even after the FBI came up from Kansas City to nose around “undercover” dressed in their new boots and pressed coveralls. Lol

Hi,

I remember the story of Skidmore, perhaps from that TV documentary. Not sure. Didn't the story go that McElroy died with something like 46 bullet holes in his body, and nobody saw a thing? It seems the program I saw made it clear that if anyone ever "needed shootin'" he was high on the list.

Rick C

 

[Ale-8(1)]

He was shot twice, but there were 46 witnesses who were "unable to identify a shooter" except for his wife, but that case was settled out of court. -- Wikipedia

:D

 

[Bear Paw Jack]

https://patch.com/us/across-america/who-killed-ken-rex-mcelroy-town-keeps-its-secret-38-years#:~:text=SKIDMORE%2C%20MO%20%E2%80%94%20Four%20decades%20after,in%20the%20small%20farming%20town

 

[blackhawknj]

"In Broad Daylight" by Harry McLean chronicles Ken Rex McElroy's life and crimes-and demise.

 

[bobski]

call me old, but isn't that what use to be called............layaway?