Tenney Things

In the greater scheme of things, it’s not the THINGS that make a difference in our world. But at the same time, sometimes it’s THINGS that serve as reminders of the truly important things. I am a picture-taker and love to make scrapbooks and reminisce about the things that those photos represent. I guess it’s just the story teller in me that makes me enjoys such things.

Do you have Tenney THINGS? Throughout the course of my Tenney adventure, I have heard a few of you talk or write about THINGS that you have from Tenney or that remind you of Tenney. An email from my mother’s cousin, Muriel Lee (Edner) Fagan, whose name appears on the Tenney Quilt, told of a few treasured THINGS that she has which remind her of Tenney and thus, her childhood. One is a velvet dress that she wore, as a toddler, to her aunt Audrey Polifka’s wedding to A.N. Larson in 1930. Another is a postcard she received from her beloved Grandpa John Polifka (my great grandfather) from Chicago’s World Fair in 1933, complete with 1¢ stamp. She also remembers a pencil box that her Grandpa John bought for her, noting that “I’m sure it cannot be as magnificent as I remember.” Both Muriel Lee and my mother have spoon jars from the Tenney Hall. Two doilies handmade by Tenney stalwart Gertie Kapitan are tastefully framed and hang proudly on my mother’s bedroom wall. A painting of a stag that hung on the wall at the bottom stair landing in Grandma Helen’s house in Tenney now hangs on the wall in my parents’ home. And perhaps my mother’s most magnificent Tenney possession is the old organ face from the organ that stood on her Grandma Helen Polifka’s porch—refinished and made into a display shelf for her collection of floe blue dishware.

I spoke of Grandma Helen’s organ in THE TENNEY QUILT, indicating that not much music was produced on that organ once it hit Grandma’s porch. It came from my great great grandma Emma Ready’s farm and was parked on the John and Helen Polifka porch for decades. Though I would prefer to visualize a happy scene on a summer evening with Grandma and Grandpa and the kids and grandchildren gathered around the organ singing “Yankee Doodle,” or perhaps “The Old Rugged Cross,” I am afraid the reality is much less idealistic. From all accounts, the organ was used primarily as a dust collector, bread cooler, and probably a jungle gym for the grandkids. When it was finally relegated to the shed, Grandma Helen, in her thriftiness, broke the darn thing up and used the ivories as markers in her vegetable garden. Thank goodness the organ’s front face was salvaged, eventually to find a place on my mother’s living room wall.

Polifka family lore tells of Grandma Helen selling Grandpa John’s old mail wagon for $10, a sum of money which made Grandma feel as though she had won the lottery. You see, Grandpa John Polifka was Tenney’s first postmaster, the guy who established Tenney’s 26-mile rural mail route and the first rural carrier. What a thrill that would be now to have that mail wagon.

I have a few treasured Tenney possessions myself. My cousin, Neil Polifka, sent me an old baking powder can with a metal cover on it, in which several holes were punched. Al Manthie, as chief keeper of the Town Hall, used this can to shake the sawdust onto the floor in the Town Hall before the dances. Because of that little self-fashioned sawdust applicator, many a foxtrot, waltz, and two-step were made an effortless slide across the Tenney Hall dance floor. I have previously made mention of a war ration book I have from Grandpa A.N.’s store in Tenney, and my mother has several things that were once in the A.N. Larson Store. My sister has an old wooden bench that sat in the store in Tenney for customers to sit down and try on shoes and boots. On the back of the bench was a red circular logo of some sort which my uncles, Andrew and Ralph Larson, used for target practice at least on one occasion, as evidenced by the tiny BB holes.

The one Tenney THING I long for is the big black Bible from the old Tenney Church (shown in photo). This Bible was given to the church in memory of my great great grandmother, Emma (Mrs. John J.) Ready, from her children—my great grandmother Helen (Mrs. John) Polifka, Ray (and Esther) Ready, Vesta (Mrs. Ray) Gore, and Blanche (Mrs. Edgar) Waite. The inscription in the front of the Bible appears on the second photo. It was presented to the church on October 11, 1942, the year that Emma died. As renovations to the former church happen all around it, this Bible still sits on the pulpit, slowly succumbing each year to the wind, dust, snow, rain, humidity, heat, and cold that make their way through the unprotected [former] sanctuary. Surely this treasure will someday either just disappear as so many other Tenney treasures, or it will disintegrate and fall apart from neglect and exposure. How I wish I could change the course of that Bible’s remaining history!

What Tenney things do YOU treasure?

That Zum Mallen House Again

A while back, I posted a photo of a home that was in Tenney at some point, and asked for input from my wonderful Tenney readers to find out if they knew where this house sat in Tenney. Obviously, it is not there anymore, and there were no clues in the photo to determine its location. A gentleman from New Jersey related to the Zum Mallens had sent this photo to me, thinking I may know something about it (I didn’t). It was the home of Christ and Helen Zum Mallen. Helen was a cousin of Annie (Mrs. William) Kath.

After posting the photo on this blog, I heard from Dawayne Novak, saying this Zum Mallen home looked like the one that used to sit on the east side of Tenney, just to the northeast of the Highway 55 gravel road entrance to Tenney. If that is indeed the place, in later years it was the house of Dawayne’s aunt and uncle, Ernest and Verna Jacklitch. Some of you may remember that Ernest and Verna later moved to a home west of the Larson Store and south of the Tenney School.

If any of you Tenney people out there think this may be the home that Ernest and Verna Jacklitch once lived in on the east side of Tenney, please let me know.

Fritz's Accident

A recent story I wrote in this blog about the railroad and its importance in Tenney sparked a few Tenney railroad memories from Jeri Nowak, the daughter of Fritz and Leona (Kath) Novak. Jeri vividly remembers riding with her dad as a young child to the elevator to unload harvested grain, where she remembers seeing Jack O’Laughlin working. Mr. O’Laughlin was a popular, well-respected guy in Tenney, and has been mentioned as a part of many Tenney stories I have heard over the past few years. What are your memories of the O'Laughlins?

A different Tenney train story brings up much less pleasant memories. At Christmas time in 1937, Jeri’s dad Fritz was bringing his sister-in-law and her children home to Tenney after they’d spent the evening at the Novak home in the country. It was snowing. He dropped them off at their home in Tenney and was leaving town to return to his own home. There was a train going through town at the time, so Fritz waited for the train to go by. When he thought it was clear, he proceeded across the tracks.

What Fritz didn’t realize was that the train was actually still there. The snow prevented him from seeing that the part of the train in front of him was a number of empty flatbed cars going by. The train hit Fritz’s car and dragged it about a half-mile before the car detached from the train. Luckily, he had already dropped off his sister-in-law’s family, or they certainly would have been hurt or killed. Fritz, alone in the car, was injured quite seriously, with a broken leg and a major face injury caused by the steering column going through his cheek. Now that’s a train story that would make an impression on a young girl.

In the process of doing research for the Tenney book, I read a LOT of Breckenridge newspapers for the time period of the 1920s and 30s. It seems as though train wrecks or car-train wrecks occurred at an alarming rate during that time period. The crossing in Campbell, in particular, seemed to be the scene of many a wreck. While the railroad was the lifeblood of Tenney and Campbell, it also left many scars.