Grandpa was called back to take care of his parents around 1925, his duty as the youngest. He farmed their little patch plus worked off-farm, then bought the place next door. Still worked several jobs, building roads or loading train cars with fruit.
He was working for one local general store, when they had a fire in late 1929 or 1930. The family that owned the store couldn't scrape the money together to rebuild, but the insurance company man offered the business to Grandpa. He bought it for less than the value of the inventory that was salvageable, I can't remember if it was $300 or $3000. They cleaned things up and moved into a building across the tracks. He took one of the original family brothers on as partner, because he was the butcher and Grandpa didn't know how to cut the meat.
The store was his life for the next 35 years, providing a decent living, in exchange for long hours. He would talk of all his customers as we drove around the area, times when he loaned a family $300 to get a new well, or $2000 for a downpayment on the farm. All while never making more than $10K in a single year.
Most all the customers were on credit, some by the month, some by the year. When he retired and sold out in 1965, he kept the receivables as part of the deal. We cleaned the attic out to remodel 40 years later, and found the box of ledgers and letters to and from people who still owed money, most so thankful for carrying them through those tough times. Most of the folks who beat him out of money were family members.
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Today's Featured Article - An Old-Time Tractor Demonstration - by Kim Pratt. Sam was born in rural Kansas in 1926. His dad was a hard-working farmer and the children worked hard everyday to help ends meet. In the rural area he grew up in, the highlight of the week was Saturday when many people took a break from their work to go to town. It was on one such Saturday in the early 1940's when Sam was 16 years old that he ended up in Dennison, Kansas to watch a demonstration of a new tractor being put on by a local dealer. It was an Allis-Chalmers tractor dealership,
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