Reminiscences of Oscar Mabon Wherry, written in 1964, when he was 80 years of age This is the story of a small village and surrounding country seventy years ago. It was a typical village of its day. A dozen houses, two stores, two blacksmith shops, a flour mill and a saw mill. Situated along Crooked Creek made a very picturesque and a very busy village for its day. People came for miles around to have their wheat or buckwheat ground into flour, and no money changed hands as the miller took only one-eighth for his toll. If the miller was a crook, some thought they were lucky if they got their sacks back. My mother said she never saw my father really angry but once, when the miller tried to short him on his flour. He raised cain and got his just amount. The stores were typical of their day. I remember being sent to the store for oysters. The storekeeper had them in a wooden tub with ice cakes floating around in them. You came home with a half dozen oysters and the rest ice water. The crackers came in barrels, and they were left open to flies and anyone that reached in and got a cracker. The pickles were in a keg and uncovered. One storekeeper, being chided about it, said it was the best flytrap he could get. Hanging from the ceiling would be horse collars, coal buckets, interspersed with a ladies' coat or a horseblanket. A pot bellied stove stood in the middle of the floor, with a wooden box for coal built around it. The farmers around the country would spend their leisure hours loafing at the store. They would perch themselves on the counters and nearly all chewed tobacco, and some could hit the coal box from their position on the counter. All the world problems were settled by these loafing farmers. They fought the Civil War over and over and usually the loudest talker was never in a battle or was home hiding in a haystack. New inventions were few and far between. I remember a man from the city brought a phonograph out to the country store to entertain the country boys. It was a small affair with a large horn and had to be wound up to play. The music was on a wax cylinder. We stood around or sat on the counter in utter amazement that a voice could come from a machine. I can remember one of the records. It was very uplifting and sounded like this: "The barber, Mr. Frazer, cut his nose off with a razor. And he breathes through his earlobes now." It was very enlightening and I never forgot that record. In summer, farmers would gather around the store, sit on the hitching railing or boxes, and while away the hours. If sixty, they thought they were too old to work, so they were like the story George Ade used to tell. He asked the old Hoosier how he accounted for his longevity, and the old farmer thought he was talking about his beard and answered, "I just let them grow." These farmers often had four or five boys at home to do the work. They stayed at home because they had no chance to go to public works, so they stayed home until they could earn enough money to start farming for themselves. I have known these boys to go to school when twenty-one or more years old. After the corn was put away and the butchering done, after Christmas they would attend school until the spring work started. They could at least keep warm until the spring. In the evening the boys would assemble at the country store, walking distances of two or three miles, loaf the evening away until about nine, when the storekeeper would close the store for the day. What a difference from today when the youth can not walk two squares to catch a bus. We would often buy a five-cent can of sardines and the storekeeper would throw in the crackers, and we thought this was a feast.