RUSHVILLE —

Rushville used to own the power plant that supplied the city with electricity. The local telephone company was also owned and operated by those in town who used it. The water and sewer works were also city owned and operated and were a bastion of political patronage. The Rushville Fire Department had four vehicles as well as the old horse-drawn fire engine that is in the museum today. They had a brass pole, my personal favorite aspect of the fire house. They used this pole to slide down from the living quarters on the second floor to the ground to get their vehicles to the fire. There were fire alarms all over town. Each had a number assigned to it. When there was a fire, the power plant would use the steam whistle to blast out the number of the closest fire alarm so the populace could know where to go to watch the fire. Phone numbers were only four numerals. Our phone number was 2775. Our phone was owned and maintained by the phone company. If we wanted to call outside our community we had to go to ATandT and, to us at the time, pay a huge fee to have long distance communication. If you had a problem, you called the phone company and they would come out and fix it. It did not matter if the problem was in the house or on the lines going to the house, it was the responsibility of the phone company. According to Charles Farthing, there were 29 family grocery stores throughout the city. We would frequent Stamms Grocery on Eighth Street. They would even deliver your groceries to your home for you. You would just call them up, tell them what you wanted and they would sack your request up and deliver it to your home. They would even be there at a specific time if required. You got fresh dairy products delivered to your door daily, or as often as required. The milk came in glass bottles and had pure cream on the top of the milk. You would use up the quart of milk left to you, wash out the bottle, then put it out in the supplied container for the milkman to pick up and replace with a full bottle next morning. The Republican was printed and distributed locally. I remember the “chachunk, chachunk” of the Linotype machines in the back of the Republican as they would put out the type for the daily paper. I was a paper boy for a time and that was my first real job. I had the route from the Republican north on Perkins Street to 11th Street, east to Cherry Street and Willow Street and then back to the Republican. I had to deliver the paper daily and collect weekly for the papers I had already delivered. Some of my older patrons tended to want me to stop and talk for a long time. Others tended not to be at home when I attempted to collect. And it was most important you collect your paper bills rapidly as you had to pay for the papers you got each day weekly. And you got your papers delivered in the same time frame you paid the Republican for your papers. If you were slow to pay, you were usually the last to get your papers. The downtown merchants would hire an individual who would walk around downtown on evenings, nights and weekends. He would watch out for the merchants, and if someone tried to break in he would immediately get a policeman to stop it. Dad had his shop on Third Street and gladly paid into the fund for the downtown merchant watchman. Most streets in town were chipped and sealed each year. This was where they would put down tar then small rocks on top of that and roll them down into the tar. My mother hated to see them do that in our neighborhood. It always meant tar on everything, including me. Raymond Gibson had a grocery at Seventh and Main and in the summer he always had a big metal horse watering trough out front of his store. He’d fill it up about half way then put in watermelons and ice so when you purchased your watermelon it was cold and ready to eat. In season the watermelons would be a dollar or less and came cold. There were nowhere near as many liquor outlets as today around town. Bars - yes, but only grocery stores would sell booze to take out and usually that was beer. Things have changed drastically since my youth, but I still enjoy thinking of the many things I did when I was young — the stupid as well as the realistic and good things I did. As I grow older I seem to like to go back more frequently and that good reader in me is how I got involved in doing this column. Thanks to Norm Voiles for getting me into this. Now you are retired and I am still going.