I’ve become the keeper of a pipe of Grandpa Clabe’s. He also smoked cigarettes but maybe he used a pipe at home.
My first story of Clabe and his pipe is from when little Danny Wilson had an earache, which seemed to be soothed when he blew warm smoke into his little ear. (It turned out to be caused by a mastoid and needed surgery! 1927, south of Dexter, Iowa.
During the Great Depression
After his two oldest sons joined the Navy in 1934 to have enough to eat and jobs to keep busy. When they’d save up enough to send home $5 to buy food or warm clothing for the five siblings still at home, they’d write their dad to spend some of it on his P.A., Price Albert tobacco.
Cora and John Parrish, who ran a Guthrie Center cafe, drove to Dexter in late 1937 to ask if Doris, who had to drop out of AIB, would like to work for them. She rode back with them, earned $1 per day plus meals, a uniform, and free rent in the apartment above the cafe.
As soon as she had the $10 she owed the landlady in Des Moines, she mailed it to her. The woman wrote back, saying she was the first person who’d ever sent money she owed, and that if Doris ever needed a place to live in Des Moines, to come to her first.
By Christmas she’d saved enough tip money to buy a few Christmas gifts, including a pipe rack for her dad, Clabe. She packed a few things and hiked to the train station. She hadn’t ridden the Liza Jane since she was a toddler, but she rode as far as Menlo, where she waited a couple of hours for the bus to Dexter.
World War II
The Wilsons were tenant farmers near Minburn, Iowa, from 1939 until all five sons were serving in the war. Leora didn’t drive. She quipped in one of her letters that Clabe was so busy that she probably wouldn’t get to town until he needed his P.A.
Clabe’s pipe in her dreams
One reviewer mentioned Clabe’s pipe in her winsome review of Leora books:
“Oh Joy – what a journey I have just taken with Leora, Clabe, the twins, the girls, the boys, the farm, the old John Deere….I can see Leora’s chickens and smell Clabe’s pipe in my dreams.
“I wept throughout the stories. And then, I wept when I had finished all the books. I felt like I had closed a chapter on my own life. It was bittersweet. Our stories are our greatest gift. A legacy is an inheritance of the most holy. Thank you for the painstaking research, the documentation and finally for the closure the boys deserved and the family (and I) needed.
“Thank you for sharing the strength of the American spirit, especially demonstrated by the Wilsons and their mammoth heartbreaking sacrifice in the name of our country. I was especially impressed by the utter generosity of all the children to their parents. Whether it be financial or just working to keep the family afloat in good and bad times, the children were obviously raised with generous hearts.
“Carry on, friend. Keep writing. I would love to read more and more about the mid-west and the backbone of the US. Thank you again and again.
“When I retire, soon, I want to visit the graves. I want to see Dexter, Perry, all of Guthrie County[,] the land Leora and Clabe finally owned. I feel like I know all of them and it has been my honor to learn about them and share in your story. What a gift! Thank you.”
What an encouraging review, Heidi D!
This blog post began as a result of a post by Sally Cronin, who has been sharing her father-in-law’s engaging stories from the past: Smoke Signals by Geoff Cronin.