Nostalgia

Train Stalled; Roads Plugged As Fourth Storm Strikes NW Iowa During Weekend

That was the headline on the March 22, 1951 edition of the Sibley Gazette-Tribune. But by the time the weekly paper came out, everyone in our little community already knew there was more to the story than a stalled train. My family had gotten the scoop the night it happened, from my mother, a cook at the Palace Cafe.

She plodded into the house later than usual, shucked off her coat, headscarf, boots, and gloves and stood warming her hands over the oil heater in the dining room. "There's a train stalled at the depot," she said, bringing only a spark of interest from us kids and my father. "Someone famous was on the train," she added.
Our collective antenna rose. Someone famous--in Sibley? To my sister Shirley and me, ages thirteen and fifteen respectively, famous meant movie stars, while my brothers were more inclined to think of sports figures.

Ma fed us more information. "I cooked supper for him."

Okay, so it was man, but that didn't narrow the field much.

"Guess who it was," Ma teased.

We tossed around names, while she kept shaking her head. Finally she said, "You'll never guess. It was Henry Fonda."

While we kids gaped at her and a chorus of questions began, my father scoffed, "So it's a movie star. No big deal."

Poppy often told Shirley and me, when we spent our babysitting money on movie magazines, that actors and actresses were not respectable and should not be idolized. Now, seated by the radio, he added, "Pipe down, all of you. I can't hear my program."

Ma motioned us to the parlor, where she explained that the cast of a play called Mr. Roberts was on the train, headed for Omaha. She said the actors ate at the cafe and then went to the Garberson Hotel for the night. "Henry Fonda was the only famous one," she said, "but you should've heard people, saying this one or that one was so-and-so."

"Did you get his autograph?" Shirley asked.

"Gosh, I didn't even think of that. Anyway, we were too busy for me to stop. I did carry out the food for his booth while the waitresses were busy. When I put down his plate, I accidentally touched his hand."

"Accidentally on purpose," I said, and we females laughed.

Ma held out her hand. "Anyone want to touch the hand that touched Henry Fonda?"

Shirley and I did; the boys thought we were silly.

"He's real handsome." Ma rolled her eyes. "And he seemed nice. Not like a big bug at all."

Poppy came to the doorway. "Nice? He's been divorced several times."

"Just once, I think," Ma said.

"Oh, more than that, but once is enough."

Shirley and I exchanged raised eyebrows. How did he know so much about Henry Fonda? Had he been reading our magazines?

Ma would know more about movie stars than he would.

"Anyway," Ma continued, "he acted like anybody else, just
visiting with folks. And then Lavonne Woodward from the paper came in and interviewed him."

Poppy yawned. "Kids, time for bed. I'm turning in, too. Movie stars might not have to work tomorrow but I do."

In school the next day, dozens of kids who I knew weren't downtown on a school night claimed they'd seen Henry Fonda. Or Loretta Young, Dana Andrews, Bette Davis, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart. To hear them talk, a cast of hundreds had left their footprints on our snowy streets, making us the Midwest's equivalent of Grauman's Chinese Theater. I said nothing, certain that I, through my mother, had come closer to a movie star than any of the kids.

Before long, a story circulated that Fonda was coming to visit our school, looking for teenagers to be in one of his upcoming movies. Boys came back after noon recess wearing letter sweaters and ties, and with their hair freshly greased. Girls had freshened their makeup and hair and donned their prettiest angora sweater sets. But our English teacher burst all dreams of stardom by reporting that the train had left hours ago. "Mister Fonda, never intended to visit our school," Mrs. Forbes said.

In time, the movie star who'd been in our midst became yesterday's news, except at our house. Ma liked to remind us that she had cooked for one of Hollywood's princes. If we complained about having to eat hamburger, again, she'd say, "My hamburgers and fries were good enough for Henry Fonda, and they're good enough for you."

************

Lightning Strikes Twice

"Struck by lightning."

Those were frightening words to me, growing up in Iowa in the 1940s. Fierce thunder and lightning storms, or twisters that uprooted huge trees, sent us scrambling to the storm cellar. It was there that my mother sometimes mentioned that her grandfather had been killed by lightning. "And little Essie, too," she added, speaking the words "little Essie," with a kind of reverence.

As a child, my mother's grandfather was too far back in time for me to imagine him as a real person, but "little Essie" intrigued me. From what I gathered, she was taking lunch to her father in the field when they were both killed by lightning. I envisioned this little girl, perhaps my age, skipping happily through the field, then being struck down. Who died first, daughter or father?

It wasn't until many years later, when I began doing genealogy, that I learned the full story. And I learned a valuable lessen, that oral recollections are not always the way they seem. Using my great-grandfather's name, his death date, and the information that he had been killed by lightning near Britt, Iowa, I wrote to the Britt-News Tribune. Britt is a small community, and surely such an event would have been worthy of an account in the paper. Indeed it was. I received a copy of the fact-filled obituary, written in the flowery prose common in those days. When I finished reading about my great-grandfather's life and death, my eyes were filled with tears. I felt as if I had met him and then lost him all within minutes.

August 5, 1909: Struck by lightning and instantly killed at the farm of his son, Linford, 7 miles northwest of Britt, August 5th at 5:45 p.m., Henry O'Brien, at the age of 70 years, 1 month, ll days. Mr. O'Brien and his son had been in the harvest field all day, but were compelled to leave hurriedly at 5:30 p.m. on account of an approaching storm. The old gentleman was driving when, suddenly, without a moment's warning, he was hurled from this earth to eternity by a tremendous bolt of lightning which struck him in the back of the head, throwing him from the wagon among three prostrate horses which were also stunned.

The story related that the son, shocked, too, by lightning, jumped from the wagon to aid his father, "but he was even then beyond recall."

Oddly, there was no mention of the child Essie. It wasn't until I received another obituary for Henry O'Brien that the pieces fit. This brief account stated: "Twelve years ago, a daughter was killed by lightning near Garner."

So, she hadn't died at the same time as her father. A bit more research netted me little Essie's obituary. [It turned out her death had been 17 years earlier, not 12]

Garner, Hancock County Iowa, 28 July 1892: Hester Kate O'Brien, daughter of Henry O'Brien who lives on the old Cusick place, was killed by lightning yesterday afternoon about four o'clock. She was a bright little girl, about twelve-years-old, and was a general favorite with all who knew her.

Perhaps it's true that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place, but it struck twice in the same family, a rare coincidence, it seems to me.