Story submitted by: Joella Kermit, 1622 Andalusia Way, San Jose, CA 95125 Daughter of Craig Willy, author of this story, who has given his permission to put this story on the internet! Thank you Mr. Willy and Joella! Data transcribed by Terri Tosh No one, even in South Dakota, knows where Pukwana is or even cares to know. But in the 1920's, it was one of the fastest growing communities in the state. This was because Henry Ford was building Model-T Fords at an unbelievable rate and an inventor named Stransky lived in Pukwana. He came up with a way to cash in on Henry's success. He devised an attachment that he said would improve the Model-T's gas mileage by 50%. It was called a Vaporizer. It was mounted on the car's exhaust manifold and heated the gas before it reached the carburetor. I have no idea if it worked or even what it cost, but it was a very successful product. Because of Mr. Stransky's invention, my parents were living in Pukwana when I was born, October 18, 1920. My father and mother met at the University of South Dakota in 1912. They were in the same class but Dad was three years older than Mother as he had worked as a bank clerk before attending college. It was in 1916 that my dad was on the only football team from the University of South Dakota that ever beat the University of Minnesota. "The war to end all wars" had started by the time my father graduated the following spring. He was accepted for officers training and, ninety days later, was sent to join the "Lucky 88th Regiment", which was training in Ireland. Two months later, he was at the front in France. The 88th was lucky for him, also. He was promoted to captain. After the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, he was put in charge of a military police detachment. Their mission was to escort German prisoners by train from France back to their homeland. My dad often said he got shot at more times doing this than he had at the front. They ran the trains at night, blacked out and nonstop, through Belgium and Holland to avoid being killed by the local citizens, seeking revenge. My mother went home after she graduated. She lived with her parents and a ten-years-younger sister. She taught English in high school while my dad was in the army. His luck was still holding out and, in the spring of 1919, he was assigned back to Fort Dodge, Iowa, where he had gone to officer's candidate school. My mother left home on her summer vacation to go to Nebraska to visit her older sister who was now married. It was also worked out with my dad that he would get a leave and meet my mother in Sioux City, the halfway point, and the two of them would continue on the train together. It was all going as planned and Sister Florence and Husband Ben made them feel more than welcome when the unexpected happen. My parents-to -be were caught in "a close embrace" on Sister's parlor couch. I was told long after Aunt Florence died that she had said in no uncertain terms, "You two set a wedding date or leave my home tonight." They never left the house but did get married that summer and go on to honeymoon in the Indian ruins in New Mexico. After the honeymoon, my dad had to go back to Fort Dodge to get processed out of the army and took my mother with him. They had a Model-T and, while enroute to the camp, they hit a huge pothole. Mother bounced out of her seat and hit her face on the windshield frame. For years she reminded Dad of this every time he went over a bump while driving. "have you forgotten how you gave me two black eyes?" she would scold. Then add, "I was never so embarrassed in my life, having to meet your commander and all those other officers." My mother never did learn how to drive a car but she was one of the best back seat drivers in the world. Dad was discharged from the service in time for him to take a job coaching football at Texas State Normal in Amarillo. It must have been difficult for my mother to adjust as she had lived a much sheltered life with her relatively wealthy family. She took a job teaching children in an elementary school. Years later I remember my mother saying that the Texan children were all so dirty. The teachers had to inspect their students' hair each day and the ones who had head live were sent home with instructions to put kerosene on a rag and scrub their heads then wash with soap. Mother had one boy in class who had such a strong body odor that finally she sent him home with a note to his mother. The boy returned to school next day with a note for her. "My Bill ain't no rose," it read, "Don't smell him, larn him." My parents only stayed in Texas that one year. By then Mother was pregnant and wanted to return to relatives and friends in South Dakota. One friend was Stransky's son. The Vaporizer business was growing and Dad applied for a job. He was put in charge of sales. They put all their savings into a very small two bedroom house in Pukwana and moved in. The Vaporizer business boomed. Stransky built a large two story factory and office that is still standing empty and neglected on what is left of Pukwana's Main Street. Stransky, on the other hand, became a millionaire. In its day, Vaporizer mail order business was so big that it was written up in Ripley's "Believe It Or Not." Pukwana had more mail per capita than any city of its size in the U.S.A. About twelve miles or so west of Pukwana is the much larger city of Chamberlain. In the 1880's when tuberculosis was epidemic, doctors would send their patients out west in the hope that the dry, uncontaminated air would help them. Many sanitariums were built throughout the West to accommodate these people. There was one of these hospitals was in Chamberlain and this was where I was born. My mother's labor was especially difficult, as she told me several times, particularly when she was upset with me. When I was born the doctor said her heart stopped beating. He only saved her by sticking a needle in her heart and giving her a shot of adrenaline. My dad's brother Ralph was a doctor and his wife Katherine was a nurse. Katherine helped at my birth. She told me when I was born I was the skinniest baby and had the longest toes she had ever seen. Not a very good beginning. My brother Scott was born two years later. We lived in Pukwana for three more years. My memories of that period in my life are sketchy at best. I do remember that we had a car, Model-T, of course. The one highway that passed through town was graveled, as were most of the town's streets. Most of the country roads were just dirt, some graded, but many just two-track ruts in the prairie buffalo grass. Actually these two-track roads were better when it rained as you could just move over a bit and start a couple of new tracks. The graded dirt roads, when wet, would turn into a gooey mud called gumbo. Gumbo was a real driving hazard, it would stick to the wheels making them bigger and bigger until the mud rubbed against the fenders and stopped all forward motion. I remember more than once sitting in the car for what seemed hours while Dad was out walking to the closest farm house to find a farmer with a team of horses to pull us to a gravel road. There was a small lake south of two called Red Lake. I don't know why as it definitely wasn't red. Dad and I used to go out there, fishing for bullheads. I don't actually remember catching any of these fish and I know I never took one off of a hook as bullheads have very sharp spines on their fins and large, ugly mouths with whiskers on each side. I do remember how Dad cleaned the bullheads when we got home. He would put on a heavy leather glove and hold the fish while he gutted and washed it. Then he would take a big hammer and nail the fish's head to a board. He would make a couple of cuts with a knife and then with a pair of pliers he would quickly pull of the skin, pick up the knife again and cut off the head. Then onto another bullhead. I don't remember eating any fish in Pukwana. There were longer trips to the Missouri River to dig up cottonwood saplings. Dad planted these fast growing trees around the border of our treeless lot. My mother wasn't much for riding in cars but every spring she would get Dad to take us out to look for wild crocus flowers. She was big on May Day, and spent hours making May baskets. She was very clever at making crepe paper flowers which she pasted to crepe paper- covered paper baskets. Then, on May Day, Dad would drive her to her friend's homes where she would leave the flower- and candy-filled baskets on the doorknobs. I guess the other women of that time did this also but I don't remember getting any May baskets except from Mother. There was a train derailment just outside of Pukwana that Dad and I drove out to see and also a prairie fire that left a lasting impression of men dipping gunny sacks in large barrels of water and beating out the fire. And then there was the Agatha Christie type play performed at the local school gymnasium. I could not have been much more than four years old but I still remember one scene in the play vividly. Two young men were on the stage. One of the men had a gun in his hand. He aimed it at the other man. A shot rang out. Almost too fast for the eye to follow the man who was shot at put his hand to his face and quickly pulled it away. He showed the audience a ghastly, bloody wound before he fell as if he was dead. The catsup-to-the-face trick was extremely realistic to a young child. I kept screaming until my parents had to take me home. We did not have any black people in Pukwana. The only one I ever saw was when Aunt Jemima came to town, promoting pancake mix. Our family went down to the lunch counter in the local drug store and had free samples of pancakes and Log Cabin syrup. Dad bought a box of mix and also a tin Log Cabin syrup container, the first of many that I collected to use when playing with toy trains or cars. Most of the people in the Midwest at that time had their big meal of the day at noon. We were no exception. After dinner Dad would go back to work. Mother would wash the dishes, clean up the kitchen, read me some stories and then put me down for a long nap. Once when I was being naughty she gave in and read to me and put me down for a nap before she cleaned up the kitchen. When I woke I could not believe my eyes. To me only a few seconds had passed since I was put down for my nap, but now the kitchen was cleaned. My mother had changed her dress, combed her hair and was quietly reading a book in our living room chair. "Who cleaned everything up so fast?" I demanded, "The good fairies came while you were sleeping," she replied with one of her sweet smiles. Naturally I believed in fairies, the Easter bunny and Santa Claus much longer than most boys did. My mother wouldn't lie to me, would she? Before the railroads were built, the only settlements of any size were along the Missouri River which bisects South Dakota from the northwest corner to the southeast corner. In the two decades after the Civil War, the building of the railroads and the opening of the land to homesteaders changed all that. Anyone over 21 could claim 160 acres and, if he lived on the land for five years, the land was his. Along the railroad, every fifteen miles or so, towns were laid out to accommodate the settlers. Kimball was the first town east of Pukwana, one of the many built along the railroad. It wasn't a large city but almost a metropolis compared to Pukwana. My father's family lived there and once or twice a month we would drive over for Sunday dinner. My grandparents were Milo Amos and Mary Early Willy. Milo was the only doctor in Kimball. He and Grandma lived in a Gothic style house on a large lot at the edge of town. Behind the house was a big barn. When it was built Grandpa kept a horse to pull his buggy around the countryside to visit his patients. They also kept horses for my father and his two brothers to ride. When I was visiting in the early twenties, the only thing kept in the barn was a Model-T Ford. My grandpa was always joking and telling stories. I remember one of his stories was about Kimball's only bank robber. He came out of the bank with a sack of money and jumped on his horse. He was headed out of town at a gallop when a farmer picked up a shotgun from his wagon and shot the fleeing robber in the rump, knocking him off his horse. "Did they put the bad guy in jail for a long time, Grandpa?" I asked, "Well, I don't rightly remember," he replied. "But I do know the young man suffered quite a bit 'cuz I spent most of the afternoon picking buckshot out of his butt and swabbing it with iodine." Grandpa also told me about one of the first automobile accidents in the area. It seemed that this novice driver was going down a hill in his new car. He remembered that there was a sharp turn at the bottom of the hill but could not remember where the emergency brake was. The regular foot brake was not slowing the car down enough to make the turn. The car continued straight ahead into a ditch and bounced, throwing the luckless driver out on the ground. Later, when Grandpa was setting the man's broken arm, the man told him he didn't know what was the matter with that new car of his. "I kept yelling 'whoa' at the dang thing, but it didn't slow down one darn bit," he complained. Another of his favorite stories had to do with a Sunday dinner I am sorry that I missed. It seems my grandma invited the new preacher for dinner. She was serving roast beef with all the trimmings, including her special homemade horseradish which was wondrously hot. The preacher talked continuously while helping himself to all the food that was passed his way. He shoveled a huge forkful of Grandma's specialty in his mouth, thinking it was mashed potatoes. He realized his mistake too late. The preacher's eyes were streaming with tears. He held his napkin over his mouth and knocked over his chair as he made a mad dash out the back door. My grandpa loved telling this story and always ended it up with, "That was the closest I ever got to hearing a preacher cuss." Grandma Mary was a very serious lady and never seemed to laugh much. She was always reminding everyone that she was "a Virginia Early," and related to the famous Confederate general, Jubal A. Early. She was an active member of the Eastern Star and the Daughter of the American Revolution. When Grandpa would hear his wife bragging about her ancestors he would snort, "Humph! my pa was hung for a horse thief." Out West this was one of the worst crimes a man could commit. Many years later I asked my father if his grandfather had been a horse thief. My dad laughed. "Who knows," he said, "All I know for sure was that when my father was a very young man his father left the farm where they were living and never came back. Your grandfather was the oldest of six children, and had to stay on the farm and help his mother for several years until she remarried. I always suspected my grandfather left to join the Black Hills Gold Rush which was going on about that time. No one really knows what happened to him, but my father must have been really upset about it as when he left home to join the army, he dropped the 'e' in our last name." When Grandpa Willy left his mother's farm near Gettysburg, South Dakota, he joined the army and returned a few years later a doctor. How he managed to do this was never explained, but I don't expect it took too long to be a doctor of medicine in those days. He grew a beard to make him look older and set up a practice. He married my grandmother and had three children by the time he had moved on to Kimball. Both of my grandparents were very well read and their house was crammed with books and magazines. My mother always said she never understood why she and Dad drove over to his parents' house so often as no one ever visited but just sat around the house all day and read. She had no reason to complain as reading was her favorite pastime too. With no radio or television, reading was a habit of many people with time to spare. There was a strange woman who lived with my grandparents. Everyone called her Aunt Jessie but I never understood who she was. Taking in your homeless relatives was the way things were done in those days. Aunt Jessie was a little older than my grandparents, a small shrunken woman with a dowager's hump. She was always dressed in a long black dress and never seemed to sit down. She sort of shuffled around, always busy, setting the table, washing and drying dishes, and generally making herself useful. Poor Aunt Jessie also had a speech impediment that made it difficult to understand her. Whenever she saw me she would grab me and give me a hug. I did not like it as she sort of scared me. My father's older brother Roy was a lawyer. He and his wife Josephine were never a part of my childhood as they lived too far from us to visit. Ralph, the younger brother, was a doctor and, at this time was starting his practice with my grandfather. Ralph and his wife Katherine lived in a small house close to my grandparents. They were well on their way to a family of six children, one girl and five boys. Ralph Junior was my age. He was called Bill. I was always eager to go to visit all of the cousins. I have almost forgotten Cecilia. She was a very important person in my life. She was from a very large and very poor farm family and needed a place to live. She was just fifteen when she moved in with us. She worked everyday, helping my mother with the housework and taking care of my brother and me, as well as going to school. I can't remember the sleeping arrangements but since we only had two bedrooms I think she must have slept on the couch or on a cot in the basement. I know she became a much loved member of the family and lived with us for over eight years. One of the more crucial times of my early life was when we moved from Pukwana and I can't remember any of the details. It seems to me that one day we were in the little two bedroom home and the next day we were in a big three bedroom house in Mitchell, South Dakota, and I was going to school in the first grade. My father and Stransky's son decided to start their own automobile accessory business. Stransky came up with the idea and was to be in charge of manufacturing and my father was the business manager and in charge of sales. They formed the FACE A LITE Manufacturing Company and rented an office and a warehouse in Mitchell. The cars of that time did not have sun visors like all the cars do today. The simple solution that Stransky came up with was a green plastic visor that attached to the car's windshield with two rubber suction cups. The visor came in right and left side versions. The company was an immediate success.