Odebolt - 1878 Old Timer's Recollections
By Frank Kelley, Keeline, Wyoming
Turning the pages of the "Book of Time" back 60 years, we view Odebolt as it was in 1878, a live town, building rapidly and surrounded by one of the best farming sections of western Iowa. During that year and the next carpenters' hammers made merry music from daylight till dark as the balloon frames of business buildings shot into the air. One of the early saloonkeepers coined a phrase, which was generally adopted as a shibboleth - "All times good times in Odebolt."
I do not need a photograph to show me how Odebolt appeared at that time for the picture is indelibly impressed on my memory. One street running south from the depot with a few business buildings on second street to the west.
I very much regret that I am unable to recall the names of many of the first residents, but personally I believe they were as fine a class of people as ever started in any western town.
George McKibbin was the proprietor of the largest general store. He was a tall, fine looking man with a long black beard. Farther down the street James Ross operated a general store and carried in stock almost everything except hardware. Later Mr. Ross moved to Calliope, a town in northwestern Iowa, and was elected Mayor.
In 1878 Odebolt had two drug stores, two hardware stores, two meat markets, two saloons, a furniture store, a dry goods store, and of course, blacksmith and carpenter shops, two hotels and a restaurant.
In 1878 Odebolt had no bank, but John Wright, who had moved from a farm into town the previous year and opened a furniture store, sold his stock and engaged in real estate and short-time loans. The rate was three per cent a month, interest deducted in advance. He found the demand greater than his limited capital could supply and had himself to borrow from friends to supply his customers.
One day he came to me and wanted to borrow a hundred dollars. I thought that he was only joking, but he finally convinced me that he was in earnest and offered me two per cent a month on money he would loan at three per cent. Seeing that this was profitable, I continued increasing the loan until I had his notes for $300. Some months later, after he had built a two-story brick bank building, he called me in and said that he could get all the money he needed for only 10 per cent. So I surrendered his notes and received a certificate of deposit bearing an interest rate of 10 per cent which he continued to pay for the next two years until I had drawn out the entire deposit. Every agreement he made with me he kept to the letter. What happened later to the bank and banker is no part of the history of these years.
With pleasure I recall my acquaintance with a gentleman name Martin who was the first station agent. Later he published a weekly newspaper, the Odebolt Observer, contemporary with the Odebolt Reporter.
For the first two years, Sac county did nothing toward establishing a public school in Odebolt so the citizens contributed a building fund and erected a small frame building which served also as a church. The first schoolteacher was Jake Gabel and his salary was raised by subscription. Later he became station agent with Mr. Martin, perfecting his knowledge of telegraphy. Later being promoted to a station down the line and in still later years served the C & NW as general passenger agent with an office in Omaha and a residence in Denison.
Odebolt had two doctors, Dr. Groman and another whose name I can not now recall. During the winter of '78 there were a few cases of diphtheria in a rather mild form. No attempt to quarantine cases was made and nothing was done to prevent the spread of the disease which many regarded as not contagious. The next winter the disease broke out again in a more virulent form, resulting in many deaths, especially among the children.
First Lawyer Ed L. Hatch was the first lawyer to locate in Odebolt. He came from Carroll and formed a partnership with John Wright under the firm name of Wright and Hatch. The firm's business was mostly as agents for eastern farm loan companies, and the partnership was dissolved after a few months. Later Hatch went to Sioux City where he became part owner of a gambling house, where he was shot and killed by his partner who accused him of "playing against the house."
The next attorney to locate here was John M. Zane, but as there was practically no legal business here, he taught a term or two of school. The next lawyer was a man from Calhoun country whose name I have forgotten. He invested in a washing machine and by its use he and his wife made a fair living for some months, when they moved to a homestead in Nebraska.
Two Cases Odebolt was a poor place for a lawyer. In nearly two years while I was a resident there were only two cases before the justice, both unimportant. Lawyer Hatch was employed in both cases. His opponent in the second case was Attorney S.M. Elwood, of Sac City. In his address to the jury, Hatch was reading from a law book in which the word "deceased" was frequently repeated and at each repetition Hatch pronounced the word "diseased." Elwood objected to this, claiming that Hatch was misquoting the law with intent to mislead the jury.
Later two other attorneys located in Odebolt. The first was Lawyer Stanfield from Sac City, and able and reliable attorney whose business consisted for the most part in collecting past due accounts. Then came a recent law-school graduate named Helsell, a son of the Rev. Jesse Helsell, a retired minister.
A man named Fairbanks operated a boot and shoe store. At that time the wearing of shoes was confined almost exclusively to women and girls. Men and boys wore boots. I took my meals for several weeks at the Fairbanks home before I learned that Mrs. Fairbanks was stone deaf. She was a very intelligent lady and conversed fluently with anyone as long as she could read their lips, something that seems to me impossible.
Their son, then a boy about six, named Eddie, later the next summer, used to pass my house in the western part of town twice each day delivering milk to a family across the street. As he trudged along he would sing, "A pint at night and another in the morning. A pint at night and another in the morning." If that little chap is still alive he is an old man today, and so Time marches on.
-transcribed by B. Horak, May 2002