Muscatine

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This is all most interesting to me as I'm not a Muscatine native. 

LJ...While I feel old; I'm a way bit younger than you. I was too small to make the ride up Green St....but I did ride then. We too, had vine swings behind our place and Froggy's place. It was another ravine if you recall.

Hiroad...Froggy was a distant relative to me. Your mom was exactly right about the rag pickers. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, however you look at it;) we were very poor. We did rag picking ourselfs when I was little. Our mom would then take the rags down to Skolniks junkyard on E. 2nd, now HON. They would buy rags for the junk yard and pay cash; or give you a credit slip to go just down the road and buy coal from Smith coal for the pot-belly stove we heated the living room with.

I was told years after the fact, by one John Fiedler, a court bailiff for the sheriff's office; that he remembered me as a toddler on Green St. I bent over in front of that same pot bellied stove and he watched me burn my a** when I was very little. He would never let me forget that years later. John was an honorable man that I miss since his passing; even though not connected anymore.

Anyone remember Kansas City Joe? This is good stuff...thanks for the memories.

I did know John Fiedler from when he was a kid until adulthood (and his brother, mom & dad).  You are right, he was a great guy!   I don't remember Kansas City Joe!  I do remember some other characters around town.  Sonny Green, Charlie Perdue, Odetta and Hester, and others (spelling?).  Hell, we ourselves, were all characters if you look back at it objectively!!

We were poor too!  But, like other kids at the time, we didn't realize how poor.  Just took it for granted, I guess.  Some of the stuff my Mom did for us, I didn't realize at the time how much she sacrificed!   Now, when I look back at it, it almost makes me cry.  Some of it was pretty pathetic.

But we knew how to have fun, and I believe my folks did too.  Simple fun, but maybe more than people have now?  One of my fondest memories is when all the neighbors or some of our relatives would come over with their kids.  We'd play hard until late in the evening or early night time.  The grown-ups would sit around and just smoke (most rolled their own or smoked pipes) or played cards.  (Remember how worn those old decks of cards would get?)  The folks wouldn't make us go to bed as early.  Maybe they forgot about us with all the people there.  Eventually we'd come in exhausted and lay down on the floor where the grown-ups were talking.  Listening to them talk and drone on, I'd fall asleep.  It was just a comforting feeling, if you know what I mean.

Do you guys remember catching frogs, tadpoles, minnows, etc.?  When we were very small, we just caught 'em to catch 'em!  Once saw a snake eating a frog!  The frog appeared to be stuck in its throat.  My sister, although she was afraid of snakes, pulled the frog out of the snakes mouth to "save it".  It hopped off, but with large pieces of it's skin missing!!  Kind of yucky, huh?  If we could look at a movie of us playing back then, we did a lot of things that would make my wife say "yuck" today!    It's crazy what lingers in your memory.

Did you guys play neighborhood baseball (unorganized - the fun kind)?  If so, where did you play it?  We played at "Fletcher field", Lucas St. Reservoir park, and a few times at Iowa field.   How many of you know where Fletcher field was?