Margaret Miller

My name is Margaret Miller.

I was a war maker, and I was born in Iron Mountain, Missouri, in 1931.

My dad was a miner, and in 1931, of course, the Depression was starting, and Iron Mountain was a mining town, and there was this strip of company houses across from the mines, and we lived in a big house.

So that was good.

And my dad lost his job with the mines.

I mean, everything shut down.

And he was a great hunter, though.

And so what he would do was to take people from the city on hunting trips, locally.

My mom and dad lived there for years and knew everybody.

So he could take them hunting on these different farms and things, and that's what we did.

And of course, he hunted and fished, and that was what we used for food all the time.

And my mom and dad made a garden, but I was the only girl, and so I got to kind of set off by myself.

I didn't have to do a whole lot.

Okay, I had an older brother, Charles was eight years older than I was, so he was pretty good-sized.

Well, then I was the only girl in the family.

I just had boy cousins, I didn't have any girl cousins.

So I think I was a little spoiled, I wouldn't swear to it, but I think maybe.

And then when I was six, my younger brother was born, and I had to take care of Terry.

That was it.

And I went to school in Iron Mountain, but between times I lived with my grandmother, or stayed with her a lot, out at Milemont.

And um, well, I don't know, they just, all of us at various times went and stayed with Granny, you know.

Then when my brother graduated from the eighth grade, my older brother, there was no high school in Iron Mountain, and the closest one was like Bismarck, and there was no buses, and we didn't have a car, so there was no way to get him there.

So he came to Milemont and went to high school, stayed with my grandmother.

So we were just kind of back and forth, and back and forth to St.

Louis, my aunt and uncle lived in St.

Louis, and they had only the one boy, and he was older, so I kind of got to be their kid too.

I mean it was just, it was just family things like that, that's what we did.

But at my grandmother's house was, every fall they butchered hogs, because I don't think anybody does that at their house too much anymore.

That was always big excitement, and a whole bunch of the family came and so that was it.

So then, I'm trying to think, we lived in Iron Mountain until I was probably about eleven or twelve, and then we moved, we moved down here, my dad, the Mines was beginning to open up, my dad went to work at the Mines, and we've been here ever since.

But both of my mom and dad's families, both, my dad's family came from Germany, and they came about 1865, something like that, and I'm not sure when my grandmother's family was because they, part of them were Moors out of St.

Francis County, and they've been here forever, and you know, it was just one of those things.

And my grandfather, Priest, came from Tennessee, and so we've just been here all that time.

This is it.

Could you say, where is Iron Mountain?

Okay, it's up on the other side of Ironton in St.

Francis County, and it's right on the railroad, just about, I mean, there was Iron Mountain, and then the next one would have been Ironton.

So, you started working here then, you said you were 11 or 12?

Yeah, we lived here.

I'm going to guess that the Iron Mountain mine never reopened?

No.

Or you would have stayed there?

Yes.

Yeah.

But the mine shaft and all that stuff is still there, and this whole line of company houses was right across the street, so everything is, they moved all the houses, and they're scattered all around in the area up there.

Yeah.

They moved the houses.

I don't know what happened to the land or anything, because you couldn't own your house.

The company owned the houses.

Was there a store also?

Yes.

In fact, there were two stores there and a big hotel, and the hotel and the stores were down next to the depot at the train station, and people would come down from St.

Louis on the train, stay at the hotel, and that's where my dad would, these people would come, and he would take them hunting, and they just did all sorts of things like that, yeah, in two stores.

I think that's brilliant.

Yeah.

To be a guide.

Yeah.

My mom and dad were real good friends with the people that owned the hotel, so when people came, they would say, okay, my dad's nickname was Peck, and they'd say, you know, are you interested in hunting, and they would go.

Right.

And then they'd come down and say, so we were cooperating.

Yeah.

And my dad always had a bird dog, and the one we had that was with us for years and years and years was called Dr. Pepper, and so Doc was the dog that, I mean, he was just famous.

Everybody wanted to go hunting with Daddy whenever he had the dog, so yeah, so that was kind of my life, and I went to school in Iron Mountain until we moved down here, and then I went, well, when I would come and stay with my grandmother, I went to school out at my Lamont, yes, the brick building that burned, yeah, only that wasn't there then.

It was a different building, it was a different building, and then they tore that one down and built the big brick that burned, but high school and grade school were together in this same big building, yeah.

So Madison County was, it had two districts?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Well, three, there was Marquand and Frederictown, and then my Lamont, yeah.

And the Thompson brothers, you know, Danny Thompson just recently passed away, well he's a relative of mine too, but so long as that's another story, and his dad and his uncle ran the bus lines, and they went all over the country, I mean, all over Madison County picking up kids, bring them into high school, yeah, because most of the kids who lived out in the country did not want to come into Frederictown to go to high school, because it was kind of like, okay, you're the country kids and we're from the city, and you don't, you know, it's like.

Intimidating?

What?

Was it intimidating for them?

For them, yeah, and so most of them came out to my Lamont, and then when we moved down here, well I still went back and forth because we had to help take care of Granny, and.

It sounds like people in your family see an economic opportunity and seize it.

I like that.

Whatever, my mom worked a lot, and.

You had two siblings.

Two.

Yeah, one older and one younger.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, so you were there until you were 10 or 12, you said?

Mm-hmm. 11 or 12.

Yeah.

So you came to this area, where were you living here?

Well when we came here, we lived down below town between here and Mill Creek, and then my family were real good friends with Dr. Barron, Dr. Harry Barron that was around town forever, and he had acquired this house out by Village Creek across from the Catholic Cemetery.

It's not there anymore, there's trailers and stuff there, but there was a real nice house.

And so I'm not really sure why we moved, but anyway, he talked to mom and daddy and said, you know, I've got this house, and if you would like to live here, be fine.

So we moved out across from the school, and I graduated eighth grade from the school at, it was Village Creek, Village Creek School.

There were all these little one-room schools, but ours was two, we were good, we had two rooms.

How long were you near Mill Creek?

Oh, probably about three years.

And you went to school there?

No, I went to school at Mine Lamott, I would stay during the week at my grandmother's, but I rode the high school bus out to Mine Lamott.

That was it.

Very different.

Yeah, that was, like I said, I decided my life must have been, or our lives must have been a little different than most everybody else's.

So whatever.

Well, it sounds like you had a really cohesive family life, thinking of transitioning from Iron Mountain to Fredericktown.

So that's sort of recapping, your dad worked at the mines until he was laid off, and he was sort of doing his own thing with people coming to town.

And your mom ran the household, so you came here, he transitioned to the mines here.

What was your mom doing during that time?

Well, at that time she was just staying at home, and then later, she did go to work here, she worked at a couple of the stores downtown.

That was it, that was our life, and between times then, we would go back and forth to my grandmother's if something was going on, you know, or big holidays, everybody came to my granny's house and the whole family was together.

What about school?

Any favorite topics?

Anything you remember about school that was special to you?

Well, first of all, I liked school, and it was a little intimidating though, when I had left this two-room school out here, and we moved back, we moved into town, and I was going to start high school anyway, and got thrown into this high school with all these kids that I didn't know, you know.

But I knew a couple of them through some other family members, just a couple of the girls, and they just took me in, and that was it.

And I can't imagine not ever going to school here, yeah.

So the high school in town was the only high school then?

Yeah.

For, but the elementary schools?

Well, my Lamont was still running then, but it closed, oh, I was trying to think, probably in the late 50s or the middle 50s or something like that.

When did you graduate?

48, 1948.

Mm-hmm.

Well, I was going to ask anything else you want to talk about, the 40s?

Well, it was not a good time, because that was the war, and my older brother went.

He went into the Air Force, and it was a bad time.

Charles had always been there, and he was, you know, and he was trained in Texas, and he was a gunner on a big whatever plane.

And he said he didn't want to be responsible for being a pilot.

He considered it, but he said he didn't want that responsibility, so he became a gunner on these planes, and he went overseas right away after, you know, the war started and everything, and he was through training.

And my younger brother and I hardly knew how that, because Charles had always been there, and he was anyway, and then he was wounded and came back to the States and then was sent back again.

So, but he served all of his time in England and over Germany and Italy and all of that.

But then I had like three or four cousins over in the South Pacific, and you know, it was just, they were all over.

When I graduated from the eighth grade, Charles managed to get home for my graduation, so we had, that was good, yeah.

So then after graduation, what, after high school?

After high school?

Well, I went to Cape to school at the, well, which is, you know, a university now, then it was just a college, and I went one year, and I thought, I don't think this is for me.

I don't know.

I'm going to do something else.

So I came home and, I stayed at Cape, yeah, and so then I came home after the first year, and Mrs. Engelhardt, Mrs. Melvin Engelhardt, he was a lawyer here in town, and she was the mother of one of my very best friends.

She was the county superintendent at that time.

They still had all of these little country schools, like one room or whatever, out, and here I am, I'm like 19, and she contacted me, and she said, we've got, I've got this school out in the country, and there's like, I think there were like 10 kids in it, and she said, we need a teacher, and that's when I had gone to school, so I had some classes.

And so Mrs. Engelhardt hired me, and I went out in the country to teach, and stayed with the family out there, and there was about, I think there was like 10 or 12, I can't remember the exact number, and so I did that, and then, did you enjoy it?

Yes, I did, and the kids were great, you know, we had a really good time, and then the next year I taught out at a school out close to the Ironton, out close to Ironton, it was still in Madison County, and there were two rooms there.

So I had the upper fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth, and a real good friend of mine had the lower grades.

So I stayed out there for a year, and then I went to work for what was then the Division of Family Services, and the Welfare Office, it was known as at that time, and I worked there for, I'm trying to think, about probably five or six years.

Now did you stay with the family for the second year teaching?

No, the other teacher had a car, and we drove back and forth.

That would have been 1951-ish when we were teaching?

Probably, yeah.

And where was the Welfare Office?

Okay, it was, when I started to work, you know where the city police department is now?

Okay, well.

Right in town, I mean, like on West Main?

Right in town, yeah, on West Main, there's stairs that go up, and upstairs, and our office was upstairs, and then we moved into this big brick house down here on the corner that is now the Civil War Museum, and we were there for several years, yeah, so that's what I did.

Now during this time, were you single or had you?

Yeah, I was single then, and.

So you were really kind of focused on having a career.

Oh yeah, yeah.

We were like Frederick Town's Marlo Tomlin.

Anyway, then I got married, and I still worked there, I worked there until I had our first child, which was in, I'm trying to think, Jim's, I always have to think, 54.

I had Jim, and then two years later, Terry Ann was born, and so I didn't work during that time.

After he was born, I didn't work.

Where did you meet your husband?

He was from here.

We went to school together, and like I said, his family lived in Mill Creek, and his dad drove a big truck and did hauling out of St.

Louis and everywhere, so it was A.G. Bill, and then I worked off and on, just little odd things as they came up, you know, while the kids were little, and I thought we had our family, and then here came Sarah Beth.

So the other two are like seven and five years older than she was, so she was kind of a surprise.

Nice surprise, but anyway.

So you have three kids?

Yeah, we have three.

Introduced a couple girls into the family.

Yes.

So, and that's been it, and then I did different things, and my husband got a job with, he worked for the National Guard and was in the armory down here, and I should probably work down there for, I don't know how long.

He was here when they built the new armory, and then he decided to do something different.

He got into the insurance business.

We moved around with that.

We lived in Oklahoma.

We lived in Illinois, and when we went to Illinois, it was only Sarah.

The other two had graduated from high school and were gone from home.

The thing that I guess made our life different was when he worked for the insurance company, he was like a supervisor, and so we lived in Oklahoma.

He supervised Texas and Oklahoma, but anyway, he was gone all the time, and my in-laws, his mom and dad, thought it was horrible that I was out in Tulsa, Oklahoma with these three kids, and Sarah was just a baby, and Bob would go off and leave me out there.

But it was great.

We lived in a real nice area, and Tulsa had made these plans, and in the middle of every housing development was at least a grade school.

So the houses were all built around, the school was in the middle so that all the kids could just walk practically across the street and go to school, so it was no big deal, and I loved Tulsa.

I just loved Tulsa.

Then, like I said, then he came back to Missouri, transferred back here, and he still did the insurance stuff, and he was still gone from home, and then when we moved to Illinois, he went into their central office and worked there for quite some time, then decided maybe he would like to have his own agency, so that's when we came back here and he opened his own agency.

What was the time frame when you came back here for that?

I think we lived in Illinois probably a couple of years, but he'd worked for this company for a long, long time, and that— So we're talking late 70s, early 80s, so I'm curious about having kind of grown up here and your dad worked at the mine, so you sort of saw Fredericktown at its peak I would think, kind of as it was coming in.

Oh yeah.

So what was it like, how did it feel when you came back, having been gone for a few years?

Had it begun to sort of shrink down?

I think the mines were sort of at that point on the decline.

They were, let's see, yeah, they were, and by that time, both of my brothers were in St.

Louis working, and so my mom was still here.

You know, it wasn't—I mean, we didn't have a lot of contact with people then from the mines because my dad had been dead for quite a few years, and so it didn't affect us like it did a lot of the families that were here, yeah.

Did you notice when you came back, as far as just how the town felt, that was a noticeable change, or did it still feel like— No, it was still pretty much the same, and you know, people were coming and going, and—but then, you know, the schools were growing and they were—the district was expanding and taking all these other people in, and they were running these—not buses, but vans and things back and forth to St.

Louis to the different big companies and hauling people on a daily basis back and forth, and so, yeah, that's what it— Still bustling.

Mm-hmm, yeah, wasn't too bad.

And what I always remember is there were all these grocery stores in town.

You didn't have to drive out to go, you know.

There was— IGA.

IGA.

Thaw's was right down here.

No, was Thaw's a grocery store?

At one time, yeah, and then the other Thaw brother built where Town & Country is now, and that was his store, and so that one was—there was all these big grocery stores right here in town, you know.

Not a lot of vacancies in the downtown area?

No, there was all kinds of stores downtown, shopping, you know, clothing stores.

Ivey's had this really nice men's store downtown.

Was that the name of it?

Ivey's?

Ivey's, uh-huh, because the Ivey family—Stirling Ivey and his wife and his sons— Kitten Ivey, was that the name?

Yeah, she was the wife of one of Jim Ivey, yeah, and there was Figler's down there, which was—well, they had both men and women's clothing, real—I mean, really nice name brands and all this, you know.

Swanner's store was over there where the furniture store is now in the corner, and they had groceries and dry goods, like material and all that kind of thing.

Where Seapods is now.

Yeah, mm-hmm.

And the Swanner family, you know, were— Local family.

Local family, yeah, big.

They've been—oh, they've been here for years, so, yeah.

Are they still around?

Some of them are.

Okay.

I mean, now, they're distant relatives, okay?

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

And over on Southwood, you know where that is?

Where I live?

I live on Southwood.

That was the Blanton Farm.

That was farmland.

All of that in— How far down on Southwood are you?

From college.

Okay.

I'm, like, a block, not a long block.

Oh, South.

South?

Yeah, South.

South of college?

Uh-huh, yeah.

But all that land back there was the Blanton Farm.

And I mean, they farmed it, and it was—anyway, and Mr. Blanton, the brother, and his sister had married a Swanner, and her husband died, and then they moved in the brick house that's right up the street from me, and that house is still there.

Somebody, I guess, Almeda and her brother, decided to sell part of the land.

And so somebody—I can't even remember now who built the houses—Bascum Revelle built some of them.

They put up all those houses along there.

There's the big yellow brick house down on the corner, across from the hospital, that's been there forever.

I mean, that's one of the oldest houses in town.

And all up where the hospital is now, in the nursing home, there were like two or three huge, big houses there.

All that came down then when they decided to put in the hospital and took all those houses out.

That was about the edge of town, and then they just kept building and building.

But all that land out there was the Blanton Farm.

Did it go as far as where Walmart is now?

I'm not sure if it went that far or not.

It went to the river.

I don't think it went on over.

I'm not sure if Mr. Perringer owned that on the other side of the river.

Right after you cross the river bridge, up on that hill, that was the Cook Farm.

Maybe that was the land that went on back, but that was the Cook Farm.

I have heard of the Perringers, though.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, Mr. Perringer was— Perringer?

Yeah.

It was on West Main, what is it called out there, that subdivision over there behind the banks and the funeral home.

Anyway, all that was his land.

His land ran clear to the hotel.

That was all the Perringer land, and he built this beautiful house back there.

I mean, it was ranch style, but it was beautiful.

That was just all farmland.

There was nothing there.

The big White House that's like the last one before you get to the bank on that side of the street, that was the last house in town on that side.

The rest of that land was Mr. Perringer's, all the way to the river, all up and down.

One question I had, back a little bit to when you came back to Fredericktown, your husband opened up the INSA insurance agency, and what did you do at that point?

Oh, well, in the meantime— Did you get older?

Well, before we left, I had gone to work for the Head Start program, okay?

And so we left, and I had to give up my job, which I loved, and so when I came back, there was an opening, and I applied, and I got to be back in Head Start again.

And I worked there, and I retired from there.

I retired from the agency.

Yeah.

How many years were you gone there?

Probably—I don't think we were gone, but about two, two and a half years, maybe.

At that time, the Head Start group and the agency people were—it was just like a big family.

And I had worked—when the program started and worked up until we left as a teacher in the Head Start classroom, and then when I came back, I went back to being a teacher.

But our center, our classrooms, were—the bank had started building this building.

They just had a basement.

Well, I don't think it belonged to the bank at that time.

I think one of the—like, the American Legion or somebody had built this basement.

And then the bank took it over.

Which bank?

New Arrow?

New Arrow.

Yeah, because, you know, they expanded on back to that.

And our classrooms were down there.

We had two classrooms in there.

And then I went into central office as a supervisor, and that's—I worked there until I retired.

So, yeah.

So that would have been like in the 80s, I'm guessing.

So really, you've seen the scope of Fredericktown in so many ways.

I guess I'm curious about some of your perceptions about how the town has changed when you first came here as a 12, 13-year-old to now.

You were probably also in a unique position as things were transitioning from the mines.

What to me was a more stable economy to something that kind of faltered a little bit.

Yes.

Is there anything that you noticed?

Well, you know, first of all, well, you could tell there wasn't near the people downtown that there had been.

Because people were having to leave to find work, and because of economics, we had a lot of kids in Head Start because that depends on your income.

We had always—we had at least two classrooms here.

It was just—I don't know, things business-wise seemed to kind of go down, and the stores began to close, you know.

But as far as the schools were concerned, they seemed to be growing, you know.

And the new high school building was built, and then they, you know, they added the other buildings and things just went from there.

So I never noticed that our income or anything was too much different, you know, really.

I mean, as far as my family was concerned, but I'm sure that there were families, because like I said, Head Start's kids just seemed to come from everywhere, you know.

Well, you know, a lot of small towns struggle keeping young people, and as we go forward in time, it seems like a lot of young people go to big cities.

And you were kind of in a unique position, I think, probably, to see some of them shut down.

Yeah, but I don't know.

It doesn't seem to me, and when I—I mean, I've got grandkids and whatever all in school and have had forever.

And Frederick Chung?

Yes.

In school.

Yeah.

And all three of my children graduated from here, and you know, my husband and I did.

And then I have two grandsons and a granddaughter who graduated from here.

And now I have four—no, three great-grandchildren who are in school now and two more coming on.

So it's like, okay.

And that's what I can't understand, is where are all of these kids coming from when there's no work?

So I don't know what their families do that— They.

Yeah.

Now, are— Armington seems to have a lot of job opportunities.

Yeah, but I'm not sure how many people do that.

I don't know.

No, there is—there are new houses that are being built, but they're not in the city proper.

They're out in Madison County.

Out.

Yeah.

So, you know, I don't know.

And I think back when things were really going, you know, they got the country club out here and the golf course and all that, and it kind of went down for a while.

But now it all seems to be coming back, and things just seem to be doing really well, you know?

Like that.

And I don't understand.

Right.

Do people work from home?

I don't know.

And I take the kids to school sometimes, and I mean, the parking lot is full, and all these kids are getting out of these cars and trucks, and I'm thinking, okay.

I don't know.

Something's still working.

Yeah.

Something is still working.

Yeah.

And there used to—there were so many restaurants around, you know, and every—and all of that.

And now it's all kind of—there are still restaurants, but most of them are fast food type things, you know.

There used to be really nice restaurants.

Do you remember the names of them?

There was Huff's Café up there where the steakhouse is, and that had—Mr. and Mrs. Huff had been here forever.

Her son-in-law owned the theater here, Mercer Theater, which is—the marquee and everything is still there.

Okay.

That was her son-in-law and daughter.

And by the way, at that time to go to the movie on Saturday for a dime if you were under twelve—if you were over it cost you a quarter—you could see two movies and all the coming attractions, plus they ran a serial, you know, and every week you saw a new thing, and the theater was packed.

Did they ever offer dishes or anything?

I don't ever remember them doing that here, but now when I would go to St.

Louis and stay with my aunt and we went to the movies, we got all kind of—you know, you got dishes and this week we're giving away plates and—people would get a whole set of dishes by going to the movies.

That's been a long time ago.

But anyway, yeah, Aunt Vi would say, okay, we're going to go to the movies and we get them.

That was something else we haven't really talked about.

So you did movies when you were young, and what else did you do for fun?

Celebrations?

Community celebrations?

Like azaleas?

No, no, not then.

There was always the Fourth of July picnic.

That was a biggie out here in the park, this park down here.

And then—and by the way, I work at the museum down here at the old jail, and I was reading in some of the old papers.

Some of the leading men in town got in big trouble because they ran a gambling game at the picnic and they all got—I think they got fined.

What kind of gambling game?

Well it was—they would have like bingo and, you know, things like that, and well at a certain time that was— Sounds like big prizes.

That was a no-no.

But anyway, the names—I knew a bunch of the names and I thought, this is hilarious.

I can't believe these people got— Anyway, they did that and they always had a big picnic on Labor Day.

It was two of those.

And I mean, they were big.

And they had all kinds of stands and games for the kids and the merry-go-round—we were talking about that the other day because we found some pictures down there.

And it ran by steam and early in the morning, you could—when I was still at home, we lived over on Virginia Street and it was like a block off—block and a half from the park.

And that would—when you heard the steam thing going and the music started, you knew it was time to go to the picnic.

And they did that at both the picnics and there was no big thing about it.

We just—yeah.

You know, we played tennis.

They got the tennis courts going.

But—and there was all—I mean, in the summer, there was lots and lots of men's ball teams and so there was always ball games going on.

And then they got the youth leagues going and there was all that going on.

And the pool was built.

And the pool was there.

Yeah, yeah.

Late fifties, something like that.

Seemed to remind me.

Did they cruise the town at that point?

When did that become a thing?

Like, you know, people driving around town, teens and stuff.

Oh, well, I'm not sure when it started because none of—when I was in high school, we did not have cars.

Right.

We did not have cars.

So it was later.

It was like, okay, probably in the fifties, I guess, when it started, yeah.

And my daughter, the youngest one, still tells me, Mom, we used to go downtown and see how many times we could go around the courthouse before the police said, you've got to stop this.

And she said, and we made this trip from in town out to the pig, because by that time the pig had opened.

It opened like in 40—like probably about 48.

And they would drive through town and out to the pig and back, out to the pig and back.

Seems pretty tame.

Tame, right.

Right.

So anyway.

Well, once the tennis courts opened—and there was just the one up here in the park—but like I said, all the kids played ball and, you know, there were all kinds of things going on.

Yeah.

When did you learn to drive?

Oh.

Well, I've told my kids.

I didn't learn when I was sixteen.

My older brother was very kind and must have been very brave, because he taught me to drive.

He would let me drive and he would go to St.

Louis to—his girlfriend lived in St.

Louis.

And we would go to St.

Louis and he would let me drive on the highway.

He didn't let me drive in the city, but he let me drive on the highway.

And I've told my kids, I also learned to drive forward and back at our house over on Virginia Street.

Our driveway was probably not even as long as the library, okay, but I'd drive up almost to the garage door and then back up.

So I can back up really well.

With a stick shift, right?

Oh yes.

Yeah.

Stick shift.

Yeah.

Now what was involved to get a license when you— We just went down and said— Did you have to take a test for them?

No.

So you just applied and you got— Yeah.

And yeah, you just went down to the license, you know, and said, okay, you're right.

Were there ever any activities on City Lake?

No.

Other than people going out to fish.

Do you recall, thinking about Main Street and Court Square, any of the businesses—one thing I was curious about—the businesses that—you know, the top stories of all those on East Main have been empty for years.

Were any of those open that you recall?

Okay, down where—well, on the corner was the Tavern Hotel, okay, and all of those rooms there.

And I mean, it was busy.

And it was all open and everything, private?

Yeah, yeah.

East Main.

Oh, where was the hotel there?

The corner there and the buildings that are right in front of you.

It's the corner, and I think there's a loan company or something in there now.

It's right on the corner up there.

It's real bright now.

Yeah.

And behind it, you know, where I—well, it's—somebody else's now.

Going back that way, and then Sonderman's was here, Sonderman's Store, over then—okay, here's Sonderman's, and there's the alley, and then this place, that has always been a bar.

Always.

Really?

Yes, always.

And then down from that is the hotel, and it faces on East Main.

Okay.

So, across from O'Brien's.

Yeah.

Yes, yes.

So, two hotels.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah, in fact, there were three at one time.

Where was the third?

Okay, there was that one.

There was one on the corner.

I think it's—the pawn shop, it's there—pawn shop.

That was a hotel, okay, and then down, and now it's a dress shop next to the flower box, or whatever that place is, flower—yeah, it's a flower box.

Yeah.

It's got the marquee out in front.

That was a hotel.

Yeah.

It's the same thing about Fluttertown having hotels.

I know.

And a train, of course.

Yeah.

Yeah, had the train, and the bus came through—I mean, there were lots of buses through here.

Train and buses used to come down here.

Yeah.

And they stopped at the hotel there on the corner.

Yeah.

And the street has always been a drug—or was always a drug store.

That was Rose's drug store, you know, where the door is cut off and you can go in that way.

Yes.

Yeah, that was a drug store.

It's beautiful on the inside.

It still has the original— It was—always they had a big fountain, and you could go in.

Yeah.

Did you have a favorite restaurant that you remember?

There weren't—there weren't a lot of restaurants.

I— Like, the steakhouse still has that old—did you ever go in?

Oh, yeah.

I worked there.

The sober fountain?

I worked there.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

That was Huff's Cafe.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

That was Huff's Cafe.

And that has been there.

And the ceiling, you know, it's still there.

Mr. Huff died.

He was gone a long time before I knew anything about it.

And Mrs. Huff married Mr. Malancrot.

And they lived upstairs in that apartment that was their apartment.

And there was a—and now I can't think of the name of it, but it was this restaurant guide that was put out, and they—I mean, they had restaurants all over the country.

Huff's Cafe was in that register.

And we had people coming in.

Some kind of a restaurant guide, yeah.

And Huff's Cafe was in that.

And they—people came from all over, you know.

We saw this and whatever.

Duncan Hines.

That's what it was.

Duncan Hines.

That's what it was.

Guide.

Oh, okay.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So you could—yeah.

I'm still—it's fun because I knew that there had been hotels.

Yes.

But it never really occurred to me to wonder about the kind of town and countryside that would—like, what had to be happening here that you could fill two or three hotels.

We were a destination.

Yeah.

And as you went on down the street, on down East Main—let's see, there was the hotel.

And then there was a jewelry store and a dime store.

And then there was Ivy's, you know, Mr. Ivy had that.

Then where Pizza Hut is, that was the B's store.

And that was a—they had clothing and, you know, both men and women's clothing, kids' clothing and everything.

And Mr. O'Brien, I'm assuming that's where the B came from, and his daughter ran it.

And then it turned—they sold it finally and it turned into the fair store and— Ben Franklin there for a while?

No, the Ben Franklin was back on this side of the alley.

Oh, okay.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And it had been across the street next to the Huffs, but then they moved—Ben Franklin moved across the street.

There was—Western Otto was down there.

Madison Otto was down there on opposite sides of the street.

There where the lawyer has part of his—the lawyers have part of their offices.

That was a drug store.

Really?

Yeah.

And then where the tax people are right on the corner next to the alley, that was also a drug store.

And then there was one opened later, beside the one over on the corner next to the moviehouse.

There was one down, I think, about where that furniture store, that used furniture store is opened on the square.

A lot of changes.

What?

I didn't know I knew all these things.

Yeah.

Once you get going, it starts— Yeah, it does, you know?

And even, you know, my grandparents lived at Mine Lamott, but there were no stores out there at that time.

Everything had closed down.

And at one time, Mine Lamott was the biggie, and Frederick Chalmers kind of—whatever.

And then that was years and years ago, and then, you know, the mines closed and everything went—and so things moved this way.

I'm having a hard time—'cause I live out there, and I'm having a hard time imagining there being any buildings, really.

Yeah, I'm thinking— At Mine Lamott?

Yeah.

Where was the central business district of Mine Lamott?

It was—okay, as you cross the bridge, you know, and the old school's over here, up on top of the hill.

On top of the hill.

Are the buildings still there?

No.

Well, I'm going to use these houses now, I think.

Yeah.

And the museum has taken over that little park-like thing that says, you know, first mines and all that, and that's being developed now by our group down at the museum, and that's—you need to go see that.

Is that right there by the bridge you're talking about, on 00?

Yeah.

You know.

There's the school driveway, and then that next little place and that big stone that sits there and says— Yeah.

So you guys are doing something with it?

Yes.

And there is also—this has nothing to do with what we were talking about, but Mine Lamott, you know, was one of the first mines, and they hauled their ore, first of all, to the St.

Mary's wharf over—above St.

Genevieve, and then later into St.

Genevieve to be shipped, and they went over the Three Notch Road.

So that's all going to—that's going to be the beginning for Mine Lamott over there with the ore.

Right.

Yeah.

The Three Notch Road.

Yeah.

Reading.

Yeah.

So—and that's, hopefully, going to, you know, be added to all this thing through Missouri and—the tourist thing, yeah, because the Three Notch Road is one of—it was the first highway in Missouri.

And now it's just—what remains is just, like, it's gone, right?

It's just like rock.

It's just—yeah, but it— Almost an old trail.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Real quickly, because you do have extensive knowledge, any memories of North Town or Pea Ridge?

Not really of Pea Ridge, other than there were these really nice houses up there where you live, yeah.

And my mother always said, you know, that was kind of exclusive if you went up on Pea Ridge.

But on—in North Town, first of all, that was the business section, to begin with, of Frederick County.

It was over there by the railroad.

There was a hotel over there, too.

Just the building, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And the Mills family had a store over there, a grocery store, that I remember.

And then there was a bar called the Black Bear, and I mean, that was like, okay, you didn't look as you went by there because this was like—oh, my God, you know.

Right.

You didn't know what you were seeing there.

And that's what I remember.

There were other businesses there, not a whole lot, other than the grocery store.

Did that turn into West Market?

No, this was— Closer to the train?

This was right across from the depot and everything over there, yeah.

Is the Black Bear building still there?

I'm not sure.

No, I think they've taken down all of those buildings, and the store building is gone, and all of that.

And they put in—they cleared that out and put in those apartment things that—but the Black Bear is what I remember, and occasionally, my brother would drive us over there, just to drive by.

Right, let's see what's going on.

Yeah, see what's going on.

Let's see what happens.

All right.

Whatever.

Yeah.

As if it were New Orleans or someplace.

But you know, and I mean, it was really—and when town was going big, you know, there were trains through there all the time, and that's why they had built the real nice depot over there, and it was quite a thing.

I don't remember any of that, but my mom did.

So the Mind the Mott, back to that just for a second, that would have been, like, back in the late 1800s, I guess, not early 1900s with a double O there, the original Mind the Mott town.

That would have been— Oh, yeah.

That far?

Yeah, it was early 1900s, yeah.

Oh.

And so by, let's say, 1930, 1940, everything really switched.

Pretty much when Dr. Barron came back to practice, he had his office out at Mind the Mott, up there on the—up on the hill.

The Mind superintendent had—his house was up there, big two-story.

In fact, there were a couple of big two-story houses there.

There was a post office, and I was trying to think.

By the time I came along, to be aware, that was about it.

Right.

Uh-huh.

Began to decline there.

Yeah.

And it— Double O, I guess, was the main—there was no 67, right?

It was all 67.

No, that was 67.

That was it.

Oh.

Yeah.

Oh.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

How did the offsets become a playground for adults?

I don't know, because the offsets were absolute no-no.

We did not—none of us went.

Was it Lake Johnson shut-ins or something?

No.

It was part of the Mines, and you did not go near the offsets.

Risky.

And then these people came out of St.

Louis and started to—I don't even know how they found out about it.

It's not something that I want to go swimming in or anything, because it's full of big rocks out of the Mines, you know, and I think there's even some equipment still down there.

So it was a no-no.

Nobody.

Not a natural phenomenon.

No.

Nobody went.

Now, the golden vein is that lake across that you can see off OO, and it's kind of across from the offsets.

That was—nobody swam there.

That was the fishing place, and then the lake on around next to the river down there, all that was there.

Right.

Lake Harmony?

Lake Harmony, I think, is what it's called.

I don't know what it's called now, but anyway, well, we call it the pond.

I don't know what it's called.

It's on up—as you go on up by the Mines, it's off on the left-hand side of the road, and now we can swim up there.

We can walk and—no, no, not the slime—no, no.

Slime pond was off limits, too.

We did not go into it.

Yeah.

That was developed by somebody coming in.

Yeah.

All these people later came down in these areas that were off limits, they were like, hey.

Yeah, they did.

I mean, you did not go swimming in the slime pond.

Right.

You know, it was out of the Mines and full of whatever and everything, you know, was a mess.

Yeah.

And they turned it sort of into a country pond.

Yeah.

Yeah, and now you have to pay a nice entry fee and whatever, you know, to get a key to the—whatever.

A twist.

Anyway, that was a no-no, but the pond was okay.

We could go to the pond.

Not by ourselves.

It was a real pond.

It was a real pond, yes.

It was a pond.

Yeah.

Do you know how big it was?

Yeah, it was pretty good size.

Was it bigger?

Oh, it was bigger than that.

It was big, yeah.

And I think they've—somebody's developed that.

I think there's houses or trailers or something out there now.

But when I would—my brother hunted all the time, as well as my dad.

And so I came home from school, and he said, I'm going to go duck hunting in the morning.

Would you like to go with me?

And I said, okay.

He said, I'm going over to the pond.

Okay.

So we went over.

And cold.

It was cold.

I still remember this.

And he—they started coming in.

Ducks started coming in.

And there was nobody else up there.

We were up there by ourselves.

And he started shooting.

And I said—he finally killed one.

And I said, Charles, I think that you drowned it.

I don't think you really shot it, I think you drowned it.

But anyway, we got the duck, and it was okay.

But anyway.

Did you have to wear special color clothes?

No, no.

No.

Hunting clothes were that— Camouflage.

No, no, no.

Just regular— Just brown.

Yeah.

They had— Natural camouflage.

They had—my dad and brothers had hunting coats, and they had big pockets where you could put whatever you killed into your pockets to carry and all that kind of stuff.

So you could shoot?

No, I didn't shoot.

I just went along for fun.

Oh, okay.

Charles would take me fishing so I could row, but he wouldn't take me.

Oh, right.

Would you like to go down to the lake and— Row me around?

He didn't say that.

He just said, would you like to go fishing with me?

So we would go, and he'd say, now honey, you row, you row.

And dummy, I rowed because I didn't really like to fish.

Besides that, my dad, when he took me, drove me crazy.

You cannot talk, you cannot throw rocks, you know, you can't do anything.

So I didn't go with him very often.

I also learned to skin squirrels and rabbits and pick birds and do all that kind of thing.

Pick birds because of the way they shot them?

Quail.

Because a lot of people, my dad and brothers, were quail hunters and duck hunters and whatever.

You couldn't hunt turkeys at that time.

But a lot of people skinned them, but that made them dry and whatever.

So we had to pick dry, pick the birds, because that left the skin on.

The feathers.

So you picked the feathers.

Yeah, picked the feathers.

Right.

Yeah.

And that left the skin on.

So, however Mom cooked them, they stayed moist.

Right.

Kind of like what we do with chickens or something.

Yeah.

Did you ever singe?

Yeah, after you picked them, no, you had to pick them first and then whatever was left, that fuzzy whatever.

You singed them.

Singed them.

How did you do that?

Well.

You didn't have a blowtorch.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

For a long time, we had a wood stove.

And so you took a piece of newspaper and rounded it up real tight and lit it and singed the birds over it.

Like, just take off the lid and hold it?

Yeah.

Okay.

So.

Some people ate so many squirrels, they didn't want to ever eat the skin.

Right.

Hey.

That was just part of our meal plan, you know.

Was whatever and I learned to scale fish and gut them and I mean that was when they brought the things in, everybody just went to do.

Now, was that also like you said when you were on our mountain that your dad was doing that with people.

Yeah.

Did that persist even here in Fredericktown once you moved to the city?

Not the guiding that part of it, but the hunting and everything and our eating all the game and everything.

And then they opened up the deer season, you know, finally.

And I never was much on deer, but anyway, we had that also.

When did turkeys?

It started a year or two, I think after the deer season opened.

You couldn't do, they didn't start both of them at the same time.

What were the biggest game that your father's clients went away with?

Well most of it was bird hunting, either with the quail or duck, but because at Iron Mountain, you know, there's the big lake out there and then from the mines, there was this place called the cut and what it was they had started from the top down and made this big cut and then in the ground, huge and deep and they had taken the ore out and then it filled up with water and became a big lake.

As you drive through Iron Mountain and the mine shaft and everything is here and then the cut was back on the other side of that way.

It wasn't close to the houses or anything and to walk up there.

Did you have anything else that you wanted to cover?

No, except I was, what I was thinking is when we were at Granny's in the fall, late fall, it was always butchering time, okay, pigs and I remember that because that was always another big family to do and my grandmother's brother lived right up the road from us and Uncle Will had, they had a big family and they had these three big, good looking young men who would come, my brother and my cousin would come and all the, anybody else that Granny could drag in to do this and that took place every fall and I thought, you know, I don't, even my kids don't know anything about that and I mean, you know, they had a smokehouse and everything was kept in the smokehouse and they, well, I don't know what everybody else did but Granny canned her sausage and so then you could through the winter get a jar of sausage and have it whatever and it was already cooked and all you had to do was heat it up so, yeah.

Was that like several days worth of activity?

No, it was one day.

Just one day?

One day to do the butchering.

Right.

Now, you know, the curing of the hands and all that took a lot longer and they had a smokehouse and they were hung and, yeah.

So you guys really ate pretty well between hunting and...

Oh, yeah.

You had a great time.

And I'll tell you something else, at our house and at Granny's, we always had like celery and all of that kind of thing.

Now, people did not eat celery.

That was, it just didn't.

But I really don't know now where they got it.

But anyway, Granny always had celery and we always had celery at our house and all that.

And the big family dinners, there was always, everybody came to Granny's house because she had another brother that lived and he had a bunch of kids too and everybody came to Granny's house.

And it was like, there was all this food and the table was always set.

You had your knife over here and your fork over here and you had to put the glasses in a certain place and all that at Granny's house.

This is something that has kind of tickled me because I've heard people talk and said, oh, well, you know, those people, they always let the men eat first.

Well, that was the rule.

All these people there, the men ate first.

And then the ladies got to eat and then we could sit at the table and talk and mess and do whatever.

But the men got fed and then they were gone.

So even on the days that we had, that they were doing the butchering, men got to eat first.

But there was always these big meals.

Were children separated?

Did they have to separate?

Well, they had to, they had to sit with the women, fewer.

There weren't a lot of kids in our family.

Where was this house at?

It seems like it would have been a pretty big house for somebody.

Not so much.

But I'll tell you where it is.

As you take the road that goes around by the slime pond, cross the bridge and up on this side of the road, I think there's a trailer there now, right?

You cross the bridge and right up here, be the next place up.

That was granny's house.

And then up on the hill over here was where my uncle Will lived, her brother, so 217 whatever that is.

Yeah.

217.

Okay.

Go 217.

Cross the bridge, across the creek.

Okay.

And the next, just the road goes like that.

Okay.

And I think now there's a trailer that sits right up there.

Yeah.

So the house no longer exists?

No, no, no.

No, they tore it down.

And as you come, as you come down in front of granny's house, there were these big flat rocks that you could, I could build my house on, you know, with all my, all my rocks.

And I played out there all the time.

We played up and down the creek and, you know, then on up behind granny's and that was on the way to this pond that I talked about.

There was, let's see, one, two, three, there was about four or five houses on up on the hill behind her that in this road went around to the pond then.

The pond, that wasn't, is that the lake that my, my, I live up at Lake Lamont, Bob Hincky's old place?

Is that where you were from out there?

Kind of like if you, so if you were to go down 217, another half mile.

Yeah.

It's kind of back in that, just back from there.

To the, to the left?

Yeah.

Oh, see, that's where I live.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's, that's, we call that the pond.

Yeah.

Okay.

And these big houses, not, not my granny's house, cause it was there, my great grandfather built the first one that was there.

And those big houses that were back there were, were like company houses.

Right.

Yeah.

It was a reservoir, they call it the reservoir now.

Yes.

When they referred back.

Yeah.

It was a part of the operation.

Yeah.

I'm not sure what they used it for.

I did.

I think they pulled water out of it for other things.

Back, back on around there were these big houses and, and there were still two of them standing at that time and they, but those were company houses, company.

And since there was no company, now I think, I wonder, did they pay rent?

I don't know.

You know, it was like these families just lived there.

The Ratcliffe family lived in one and they had a whole bunch of kids and the Westins lived in the other one and they had a whole bunch of kids.

They were big two story houses, huge, but all back there.

And they just disappeared.

There were several people that lived back there.

Well, I almost fell in a well back there, water well.

I'm not surprised.

I had gone back there, just walking and exploring and there's an area of pines that are still back there and it was just a really pretty area to be walking in.

And I had come across a shed and a well that was, it was sort of covered and I, you know, but maybe that's where there had been something.

Yeah.

Could have been.

Yeah.

Whoa.

Yeah.

I forgot to ask about electricity and like, did you always have that or that indoor plumbing?

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Electricity didn't come in, oh, until, I'm trying to think, probably the early fifties.

So you didn't have it in your first place, Iron Mountain.

No.

It wasn't in my Lamont either when you moved in.

No.

And in, I mean, in Iron Mountain, as long as the mines was running, everybody had electricity.

But when the mines shut down, everything went.

Yeah.

And then your grandmother's place?

Did not have electricity until probably the early fifties.

Okay.

Yeah.

And outdoor plumbing?

Yes.

Yeah.

And a well.

You carry the water.

We talked about the well, right?

Yeah.

Oh, her well was, their well was great.

Good water.

But, that was it, but no electricity, bad lamps.

Had to clean the, had to clean the chimneys, trim the wicks, had to be sure the chimneys were, you could not leave a fingerprint on them.

Your grandmother's?

Yeah.

Or at my house either.

No, no.

You could not do that.

How often did you have to clean?

Every day?

Every day.

I mean, I don't know how other people did.

We had to clean them every day.

And then we'd get dirty after.

Well, yeah.

Well, if you turned them down like you were supposed to and didn't turn up the wick real high, they didn't.

You can't read if you don't turn them up.

Well, and you either had to read or you had to just talk or whatever because, you know, there was nothing else.

You didn't have electricity.

Oh, really got good when we got batteries in the radios, you know, and then we could, can I ask about the radio?

Yeah.

Batteries in the radio.

And were you a library user?

There was no library, but at our house and at Granny's, we always got magazines.

We got the paper every day, you know, because, particularly in Iron Mountain, the trains went through, oh, several times a day and they threw off the papers and we always had...

Which newspapers?

Well, it was the Star, there were two papers in St.

Louis, the Star Times and the Post Dispatch, but the Star Times is what we got.

So anyway, we always had books and magazines and papers and everybody was encouraged to read.

When did you start reading about like world affairs and that sort of thing?

You know...

We had someone who had started reading about World War II when he was six.

Well, the thing about it is everybody in our family talked, we talked a lot, you can tell, but all of that was discussed, like at the dinner table, or, you know, daddy would be reading something and say, now, whatever, and they would talk it over.

And my mom and dad were always real involved with politics and they always worked at the elections and of course that's St.

Francis County and don't ask me how this happened, it just was.

My dad and mom knew everybody over in Farmington at the courthouse.

I don't know.

It just...

I mean, I just accepted it as that's what went on.

My dad knew the sheriff's deputy in Bismarck and then daddy got appointed to be a justice of the peace.

So then he handled cases where the guy in Bismarck who arrested somebody for whatever, then they would come to daddy day or night and they would do whatever.

And the people would come knocking on the door, we want to get married, and daddy would marry them.

And I just recently found the book from the marriages that he performed.

He kept a record, and so I have that.

But like I said, all of that was just...

I just thought everybody did that, and we always talked...

We always knew about the presidents and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and all that, and my mom cried and cried and cried because the baby got killed and all this.

But that was just part of it.

Everybody that I know and people who would come to the house, they talked and we weren't set off in the other room to do it.

We were just there and I think we just absorbed it through being there.

A lot of exchanges of ideas.

Yeah.

And I don't ever remember anything else.

And I was encouraged to read, and I said...

My family weren't a lot to talk about, you know, telling, okay, Margaret, you're going to be whatever, 13, and these things are going to happen.

But I was allowed to read whatever.

It did not matter what it was.

Granny got all kind of magazines.

I could read, they never said, okay, you can't see this.

Never.

So, I guess I became a little...

That sounds very open-minded.

Yeah.

I mean, there was no...

The only time we were shuttled off into the other room was if somebody had a good joke to tell, you know, and you have to go in the other room.

So the kids all have to go in there.

But the kids all sat in the other room and heard what was going on in the other room.

So it was like, okay, guys, send us out of the room.

Yeah.

Send us out of the room.

So that went on.

Yeah.

Okay.

Wow.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Thank you. you you