A special thank you to all those who have participated in our “I Remember Rippey” series. Your remembrances have allowed readers to share in our town’s history, activities, sports, school, church, and daily life covering 150 years.
We will continue posting online here, using “I Remember Rippey” remembrances received prior to April 30, 2020. If you would like to read more Rippey history, you may also click on the History tab of the Rippey Library website: https://www.rippey.lib.ia.us .
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Two Reflections by Dale Hanaman
Before Nancy and I were married, we came to the farm near Rippey to spend the weekend. This is where Nancy’s parents, Clark and Esther Bardole, and her grandfather, William Huber, resided. It was on or about the fall of 1966.
Being a city boy from Beloit, Wisconsin, I was familiar with a telephone party line for two families . I did have some suspicion of this family – thinking they were quite rude. Some of the time a phone call could be heard and no one answered. Other times when the phone rang, it was answered by one of Nancy’s parents. This went on for all of Saturday.
Sunday came, and so did a few phone calls – with the same response as witnessed by me on Saturday. So I finally asked, “Why is it that sometimes the phone is answered and sometimes not?” Nancy’s comment was, “It wasn’t our ring.” So I responded, “Well, I heard it ring.” Nancy further explained that they shared a party line with several other people, and that their ring was “two longs and three shorts”. I still thought this was a strange arrangement, but the explanation was clear.
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Clark and Esther Bardole, Nancy’s parents, owned a column stick shift 1960 white 4-door Ford Falcon. This vehicle would become a wedding gift from Nancy’s parents to us at the time of our wedding June 8, 1968.
I had not driven a stick shift car before, so Nancy was giving me pointers on using the clutch. I was getting used to my feet having to not only accelerate and break, but to use my left foot to push in the clutch to change gears.
We went to buy some groceries in Jefferson for Nancy’s mom. On our return home, we were stopped by a State Patrol officer doing a random check of cars traveling east out of Jefferson, near the cemetery.
The registration needed to be provided for observation. And then the officer moved around the car to inspect the lights – front and back. Then he said, “Put on the high beams.” I turned to Nancy and asked how to do that. She said, “Push down on the small floor button below the clutch.” I thought that was a strange place to put the low/high beam button. What if you needed to downshift at the same time the low beam was required? We did end up passing the inspection.
But had it not been for Nancy alongside me, I wouldn’t have known where the low/high beam button was located.