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 l
ong 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?
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