The home at this address is the house that the Williston Oksol children would remember. We visited Storm Lake perhaps every other or every third summer when growing up..
It was only later, much later, that I learned how lonely mom -- Ruth -- was for Storm Lake. The loneliness of the Dakota prairie is epic. It can drive people insane and it does.
But for mom, I think, loneliness and the Dakota prairie were only two legs of a three-legged emotional stool. The third leg was the desire to share the joy of her four, then five, and finally six children with her parents in Storm Lake. Only in hindsight do I realize that Grandpa Flessner and Grandma Reka did not see their Williston grandchildren nearly enough. And the reverse was true and emotionally, even more difficult. Ruth did not get to see her beloved Iowa enough -- where all her memories were -- growing up on the farm, among too-numerous-too-count German cousins, uncles and aunts; taking the train between Manson and Fonda, a memory that died with Ruth. Even her brother Don does not recall mom taking that train but she must have done it often. It was one of her stories she told later in life when most other memories were fading. When we visited Storm Lake, to the best of my knowledge / memory, Ruth never visited anyone other than her parents. If I understand her history correctly she graduated from high school in Fonda and went to nursing school in Sioux City after that. If that is correct, she never lived in Storm Lake. Her parents would have moved to Storm Lake after she left home.6
Compared to North Dakota, Iowa is a garden of Eden -- longer summers; less severe winters; more green; smaller iconic Norman Rockwell American farms; big lakes; trees and squirrels. And less wind; though more terrible tornadoes.
When the Williston Oksol children visited the house at 711 Elmwood Drive, one of our favorite activities was rushing to the front door of the house or, when we were older, actually running to the end of the street, when we heard the train whistle.
It's funny, but no one ever asked where that train originated or its destination. Only now, when I'm trying to piece Ruth’s history together, do I ask the question.
It turns out the Illinois Central had two main arteries: one from Chicago to New Orleans; and, one from Chicago to Sioux City. I believe the entire system was called the Illinois Central but it was composed of the two main corridors. The north-south line was the Illinois Central, and the east-west line, the Chicago Central, was from Sioux City/Omaha to Chicago. We never even thought of asking if the train stopped in Storm Lake but with a packing plant there, it may have. If not, its stops would have been Sioux City/Omaha, Fort Dodge, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, and Chicago.
The interesting aspect of that track for me is this: it would have connected Manson and Fonda and that would have been the train Ruth would have taken, visiting her two sets of grandparents, while growing up.
Interestingly, assuming there was a passenger train at the time, Ruth could have also taken the train back and forth between Sioux City and Storm Lake while in nursing school, another question we never thought to ask.
Reka and Ike lived on a short street, Elmwood Drive, that ran north-to-south, off W. Milwaukee Avenue. There were only seven houses on their side of the street between Milwaukee (Iowa Highway 7) and the railroad track. The Flessner house was the third house north from the track.
Sixth Street ran along the track for about a block before it ran into Vestal Street. I've long forgotten but it was probably on Vestal Street, about another block down the street, where there was a very, very small convenience store. At least once a week, during our school-age years, we would walk by ourselves to the convenience store to buy candy from the few coins Reka would give us.
From wiki the Illinois Central Railroad as of 1996, a freight train by then:
No comments:
Post a Comment