Anamosa - A Reminiscence 1838 - 1988

| 1
E»
I
. 1.-at ... .
=Irp;'?”" ‘A
~-a-1*‘
'1'
‘I \
T
handicaps. you don't notice them if the one having
them chooses not to.
Jimmy had a marvelous sense of humor and liked to
tell people. "My parents brought me up. but they didn't
bring me up very far."
When he was born doctors feared for his life. and
afterward. they told his parents he wouldn't be able to
walk. Jim proved to himself and everyone else that he
could. and that he could do just about anything else he
made up his mind to accomplish.
When he graduated from Anamosa High School. and
walked across the auditorium stage to receive his
diploma. he received a prolonged standing ovation.
Jim started playing the harmonica when he was a
young fellow and developed into a professional
musician. After high school he began his career
working for WMT radio in Cedar Rapids playing on a
weekly program. At the same time. he played stage
shows with Howdy Roberts and his band.
In I962 he had his own band. called the
Combonaires. He later worked with Jerry Mayberry.
and the last I0 years of his life he worked with Dale
Heeren and the County-Aires.
As hobbies, he painted. played pool. was an amateur
photographer. and cut and polished stones.
Jim rode horses. and drove a tractor for a time. He
drove a car which was equipped with extension
devices. He liked to tell that the worst problem he had
with driving was reaching the parking meters.
He was married for five years to a local woman.
Martha Whear. The marrriage ended in divorce. He
explained. "She was a very nice wife and a wonderful
person, but we just agreed to disagree."
Jim had many friends in Anamosa and eastern Iowa.
Jim Seeiey is shown walking up the hill to his
apartment. (Journal-Eureka)
‘\\4l
qr
‘$2-
Horace H. Soper Recalled Early Years
Read as if I940:
Having lived in and around Anamosa. Jones County.
all my life. I am writing my history as I remember and
as informed by my parents.
I was born in Anamosa. January 4. I858. near where
the M.E. Church is located. The small house still is in
use on Garnaviilo Street and owned by Alfred Remley.
At the age of about one year and three months old.
my father purchased 320 acres of land four miles
northest of Anamosa. There was about one hundred
acres of timber and he built a farm house on the south
side of the timber. This land was virgin soil. never
having been plowed. My first farm operation was
herding cattle with my lunch pail and little dog. I
walked back and forth along one half mile fence into the
com. I had no way of knowing the time of day but ate
my lunch when I got hungry. My next job was
plowing with an ox team at the age of seven. My father
marked out a piece of land and left me and the oxen. All
I had to do was to hold the plow up straight. The oxen
knew more about plowing than I did. We finished the
land and the oxen took a bee-line for the farmyard.
Found in his papers after his death in 1941.
305
dragging the plow and me with them. A yoke of oxen
were very handy. They seemed to know just what you
wanted them to do. You guided them with a whip and
any way you wanted them to go. they would follow by
the motion you made with the whip or stick you had in
yourhand.
Father owned some timber three or four miles west of
the cemetery and I. with the oxen. and he. with the
horse team. hauled logs on the sleds down the river on
the ice to the saw mill that stood where the Electric
Light Plant is now. Father would load the logs on the
sleds with the oxen and hitch the oxen to a sled and
drive them out of the timber on the river ice and then go
and get his team and load and down the river we would
go. unload the logs and load lumber and start for home.
I have hauled a great many loads of rock from the Dutch
John Stone Quarry northwest of Anamosa with the ox
team. One trait I found in the ox team. they never ran
away. which I found horses would. but as long as we
had ox teams. they were my team to work. but when
and how the oxen were discarded. I fail to remember.
The district school house was just a short distance