Although the many tales passed on to me by an old man named Otto about my little home town may have seemed odd, the were also true.  Moreover, Crooked Springs, Indiana may be a make believe name but the little town is, or at least was, very real, indeed.

There are things that have occurred that Otto did not live to see including the demise of the economic structure of the community.   This happened with the construction of a new state highway leading to the county seat and its supermarkets and other businesses that put too great a squeeze on the stores in the little town.

He didn’t get to see the new firehouse.  When the bank failed in ‘29 the building sat vacant for years until the town acquired it.  Village fathers decided to house the fire truck inside so they widened the front door, buillt a form and created a concrete ramp right over the steps.  It was a steep ramp but they backed the old WWII surplus tanker in there and were proud indeed.  It sat there for months before being called into service. When volunteer chief Hank Billings finally got the truck cranked he failed to take note that all of tires had lost air pressure over time and were nearly flat.  As he drove over the door threshhold the oil pan hung up on the steep ramp and the truck was hopelessly stranded during the duration of Walt Peters’ barn inferno.  Total loss included 218 bales of alfalfa-timothy mix hay and two one-gallon jugs of hootch.

Some of my fondest memories of that little town center around the First Church of the Assembled Brotherhood.  That’s where I learned all the Bible stories and where I was babtized (all the way under) and where my early beliefs were formed.  My mother died when I was nine but I have some vivid memories of her related to that church.   Almost without fail, right on the front steps in the presence of men I admired when I  was a pre-schooler, she would whip out a hankie, dampen it with her tongue and scrub behind my ears.  Embarassing.  How my ears got so dirty between the weekly Saturday night bath and the Sunday morning service is beyond me.  When I was about eight years old I got into serious trouble with my mother when one Sunday I couldn’t keep my mind on the sermon.  I kept turning around to watch the proceedings in the very back pew.  There was Mrs. Havers breastfeeding little Davie.  I’d never seen anything like it before and I’d already heard about the prodigal son.