Note: A link to the history of Lawler can be found at the bottom of this page.
The Depot is Gone
Those of you who have been around for five or six decades can fully appreciate my thoughts on looking back through the years. It is impossible to remember every single minute detail of an event, building, face, or conversation. Rather, it’s more like a decoupage of random, sometimes overwhelming, thoughts.
A rekindled emotion.
A color.
A smell.
A sound.
But the recollections intertwine, sometime pleasantly and sometimes with great sadness, in your mind. They pull you back in time. They are seductive. They are a gift.
That happens to me every time I return home (and Lawler will always be home), to visit family and friends. I cannot resist taking a half-hour to be by myself. To walk around town alone. To get lost in my thoughts.
In some ways, everything about Lawler has changed. In other ways, nothing has changed.
Most of the people of my youth no longer live there. They have moved away or passed away. Many buildings have been torn down. Main Street (which really isn’t Main Street) has suffered the same issues as every small town in America. Most of the merchants have closed their stores, as townspeople drive to New Hampton to do the majority of their shopping. Where there once was a gas station on the west edge of Main and another on the east end, there is now a home on the west and repair shop on the east.
Shekelton’s grocery burned down on a Sunday morning years ago. O’Connor and Burns grocery is a distant memory. Benny and Minerva Nulty’s grocery has not been in existence for decades. Lawler Hardware is boarded up. Jerry Meyers’ meat locker no longer exists. Millie Fencl’s Beauty Shop is no longer there. There are three fewer taverns. Schael’s Hatchery is closed. Sadie Knight’s Hardware is history. Chick’s barber shop is gone.
But in my memory they are still there. I can feel them. I can sense them. I can hear them.
Just as a song can stick in your mind forever, I occasionally find myself repeating the words painted in large letters on the east side of Red O’Connor’s store: “DON’T SAY BREAD. SAY KLEEN MADE BREAD!” I can still see in my mind’s eye the hand-written chalk signs on his windows advertising the week’s specials. Occasionally we would surreptitiously sneak in and cross out a letter or two, especially if we could somehow change it to a dirty word with the deletion.
I picture the Christmas decorations hanging across Main Street (that really isn’t Main Street) in December. They were simple and probably fairly inexpensive, but dearer to me than the multi-lighted Christmas tree in New York City’s Times Square.
I can imagine the depot, a stone’s throw from the stockyards. My friends and I were absolutely fascinated, watching cattle being unloaded from and loaded onto train cars. They were herded into corrals and we would stand on the wooden fences listening to them bellow and snort.
I walk past non-existent Mt. Carmel School where there are now nice homes and manicured lawns. I can still see Tom (Moose) Britt slamming a softball over the west fence on to the street, rolling onto the public school playground. I see Binky Urness taking black and white pictures with his Kodak camera from the fire escape of Mt. Carmel. He is doing his darndest to include as many of us as possible in the photo, as we line up for a May Day parade from the school to the church.
I walk past homes where I once delivered the Des Moines Register and Tribune seven days a week and try, sometimes without success, to remember who lived there at the time.
I go past the first home where I lived on the north side of the tracks. It is a half block west of The Park and protected by a huge evergreen tree, several feet higher than roof of the house. I am pleased that the tree is still standing. I was afraid in those July thunder storms and January blizzards that it would fall into our house. That gorgeous evergreen has to be a hundred years old, and it still quietly and proudly guards the front entrance to the home where I lived for the first four years of my life in Lawler.
Then I proceed south across the tracks, turn east for a couple of blocks, and head south again. I stand in front of the home where I lived the longest, on S. Depot Street, as memories flood over me. It was where Grandpa and Grandma Sheridan relocated from the family farm south of town. We moved into it after each of them died; Grandma in 1949 and Grandpa in 1950.
Special memories about each of my siblings and Mom and Dad fill my mind as I think back. And I’m glad to be alone for those few moments.
Joe Scally still lives across the street. For some odd reason, that gives me comfort. Like some things are still the same. Like not everything has changed. Like there is a real connection to my past. Maybe he and Mark and John and Joe will come running out and yell, “Hey Sheridan. We’re going to The Park! Wanna join us? Timlins and Leonards and McGreevey are gonna be there. We’re choosing up sides in fifteen minutes. Hey, see if Tom can come along. And bring your bat.”
Finally, I almost always end up at the Mt. Carmel cemetery where I stop and say “Hey” to Mom and Dad, Grandpa and Grandma, Aunt Stella, Uncle Chet and Aunt Annamae, my brother Mike and his infant daughter, Theresa. Along with so many other friends and neighbors.
I see names that have slipped my mind for years: Chick Leonard who gave me my first hair cut, and is the dad of my best high school friend. Gene Kuehner, whose nickname “Wally” is on the tombstone so he will be recognized. Gene and Jean Timlin, who are the parents of five boys who became dear friends. John and Edith Scally, wonderful neighbors and the parents of John, Patty, Joe, and Mark. And more. So many more who are part of the fabric of my life.
It seldom makes me sad, the cemetery walk. Instead, it reminds me of the smell of homemade bread from Mother’s oven. Getting ‘lost’ between Waucoma and Lawler with Dad. Remembering what little a five-year-old boy really can remember about his departed grandparents. Running home on Christmas Eve from Aunt Stella’s telephone office, trying to catch Santa going up our chimney. And just barely missing him year after year. Learning how to treat customers with respect at Uncle Chet’s gas station. Drinking my first beer at sixteen with older brother Mike, and feeling all grown up.
Today the depot is gone. The stores are mostly gone. Main Street (which really isn’t Main Street) almost does not have the same DNA as my Main Street.
But somewhere in Lawler, right at this very moment, there is a little red headed boy living an absolutely perfect life. He may not realize how terrific it is right now. Someday he will. He might be taking the people and events and buildings and sounds and smells and games and friends around him in Lawler for granted. But that’s okay. Because some day he will realize what a little slice of Heaven that small Iowa village really is.
He may move away and raise a family. He may develop new friends from faraway places. He may make millions, or barely pay his bills. He may become famous, or live a quiet, tranquil, anonymous life.
Regardless of what he becomes or where he settles down, a part of Lawler will always be with him. Just as it is a part of me.
In my introduction to this book, I said that my favorite singing group of all time is The Statler Brothers. There is a line in one of their songs that I absolutely love: “The man I am resulted from the boy inside of me.”
And that’s why I thank the people of Lawler-Past for helping me realize that: “The man I am resulted from the Lawler boy inside of me!”
Thanks for playing such an important role in my Depot Street Memories.
Bill Sheridan
The following link will provide a thirteen page history of our small community. The compilation was completed in June 1980–credit is provided on the last page of the file. The file is a PDF file; therefore, is printable if one wishes to do so. By clicking on the following link, you’ll be in for a treat if you have ever wondered where we came from! (Pat Sheridan)