The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
By Charles Buhl
I have had a long-distance interest in La Harpe and Hancock County since I was a child. My dad, John Buhl, was born and grew up in La Harpe and the surrounding towns as my grandfather (Edgar Buhl) farmed around the area.
We visited La Harpe for one or two weeks every summer. My dad looked forward to the chance to see my grandparents, his siblings and their families and the folks he knew in town.
He was a man of few words and did not say much about his youth, so the farmland and his small-town world were strange and wonderful to me. I tried to learn as much about it as I could. He subscribed to the Quill, and I read it front to back every week.
From the Quill I learned the names and locations of other Hancock County towns and villages – Burnside, Bushnell, Disco, Dallas City, Fountain Green, Roseville.
Dad was born in Stronghurst. I learned later that there were larger towns nearby, like Macomb, Carthage, Galesburg and a little further away, Springfield. I had relatives in some of those towns.
When Grandpa Edgar died in 1969, his obituary credited him as a successful and well-regarded farmer in the La Harpe area. He later spent several years working at the hardware store on Main Street where his storytelling and good nature earned him a wide circle of friends.
My dad’s older sister, Ethel, married Virgil Boone (from another old La Harpe family) and settled in Abingdon. His younger brother, my uncle Sheldon, moved with his wife Wylla to Springfield. I stayed with them at various times in those towns (more about that below), and spent time with their kids, my cousins.
My dad was the one who left Hancock County for the big city. Born in 1916, as he grew up there was not much money and the times were hard.
He had a lifelong dislike of spam and peanut butter, telling me that sometimes that was all his family had to eat. By the time he was twelve years old, he was driving himself and his siblings to school in a Model T.
At about the same time, in eighth grade, he scored the highest grade in the state on the 1928 Illinois state scholarship examination and won a college scholarship.
He was a fullback on the La Harpe High team, graduating in 1932. He tried a semester of college at Macomb Teachers’ College, but there was no money to cover his living expenses, so he came home, working on the farm and on Works Progress Administration (WPA) road-building projects with my grandfather.
In the 1930s, with Roosevelt’s New Deal and with World War II on the horizon, the government needed to hire a lot more employees.
Job offers were based on scores on a civil service test, and Dad was a good test-taker. My dad took the test and got a job offer in 1937, with the Department of Agriculture in Washington. He moved to DC when he was twenty-one.
He served in World War II, just like many other Hancock County men. He was a sergeant in armor (tanks) and fought in many of the big battles in Europe after D-Day.
Back in Washington in 1946, he met my mother, another Midwestern kid who came to Washington for a job (from southwest Missouri). Then they moved to the Maryland suburbs and had me – an only child. Dad and mom both had successful Federal careers.
I also cherish a book my dad left me, published shortly after World War II. Sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary and titled “Service Record Book of Men and Women of La Harpe, Illinois and Community.”
It has pictures and information on each of the La Harpe men who served. There are one hundred and twenty-three men listed alphabetically.
Many pages show two and even three brothers from one family who went to war. And there are an additional six who lost their lives.
They are in a section called “Gold Star Boys” and each one merits a full page. Nothing else I have read has brought the fact of the war home to me as much as that presentation of La Harpe families’ service and sacrifice.
All the businesses in La Harpe contributed to publishing the book. Sponsors included two car dealers (Ford and Chevrolet), a hardware store, two service stations, two dry goods stores, two groceries, two funeral homes, a motel, a beauty shop, a barber shop, and a blacksmith.
There were also three movie theaters (“The Todd Theater Circuit, AMUS-U (La Harpe), DIANA (Blandinsville), and DAWSON (Stronghurst)” ).
A number of those businesses were still operating in my years of visiting the town. I remember visiting one of them, Lavell Standard Service Station on Route 9. It was always the destination when Grandpa Edgar gave me my annual ride in his 1947 Chevrolet Fleetline.
My grandparents’ small house was on the edge of town. I remember a water pump on the back porch and an outhouse – using that was a new experience for a small child.
Then in the late 1950s my uncles installed indoor plumbing, a bathroom and shower. There was never a television. But there was a large 1930s-era Philco console radio that still worked.
I could see the whole family listening to Roosevelt’s fireside chats, and my grandparents listening to the news of Pearl Harbor, D-Day, and the end of the war in Europe and the Pacific.
When we visited, the family would gather and there would be food, conversation, and time with my cousins. Neighbors would see the car with out-of-state tags and know it was Dad, and they would stop and say hello, and talk.
As I got older, I found it funny – they would ask my dad “John, what’s the President going to do about dairy price supports?” Since he worked at the USDA in Washington, they thought he must be privy to the President’s every word on agriculture!
One family close to grandpa and dad was the Owlsleys, whose farm was up the road from Grandpa’s house. When we visited, their youngest son capably drove their Ford tractor to give me a ride.
Driving a tractor was no big deal to a farm kid, but I was amazed. He was not much older than I was!
I would spend time with my dad walking through town, saying hello to the folks he grew up with. There was H. Byers Bradshaw, publisher of the Quill.
His office was full of newspapers and in those days the press was in the back of the building. There was another gentleman (Miller?) who owned and ran the grocery store on Main Street. He and Dad were old friends.
My aunt Amelia lived in town, down the hill and around the corner from my grandpa’s (South F Street?). I would visit her every year.
At more than eighty years old, she could still talk about sports, especially baseball.
She and my grandmother Anna Buhl were two of the eight sisters in the Helmers family that Grandpa Edgar married into.
Her husband was deceased, and her only son was killed in the sinking of the USS Enterprise.
The big old Helmers house where my grandmother and aunt grew up was also in that neighborhood.
I had a few opportunities to spend time with my uncles and cousins in Abingdon and Springfield.
The time I will always remember was a weekend with Uncle Virgil and Aunt Ethel in Abingdon. My uncle was the maintenance man at the pottery in Abingdon (later I would find out it was famous for its pottery vases, lamps, and Art Deco artware).
The Boones lived in a house across the street from the pottery and that is where I spent the night.
It did not occur to them to tell me the house was fifty feet from a railroad track, or that there was a high-speed midnight freight that rolled through every night with its horn blaring.
Nobody else even woke up, but I know I rose three feet off the bed when the train roared by blaring its air horn.
The house shook, and the train sounded like it was inches from my head. It took the whole Boone family about a half-hour to calm me down.
Uncle Virgil was laughing so hard he could not talk. Even now I smile and remember that night when I hear a train sounding its horn!
Dad left me a large collection of photographs and documents he collected throughout his life. For many years, I looked through them every once in a while and did not pay much attention.
After we moved to a smaller home a year ago, I have spent many hours going through them and thinking about him and those times.
Growing up in La Harpe gave him a solid foundation to live his life, as it did for many other men and women in the Greatest Generation.
My own time in La Harpe always reminds me what the heartland of America is like. My dad would want me to remember. And they are happy memories indeed.