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A new year - a new decade - reflecting on a better time - Hodson's Garage
This entry was posted on 12/31/2009 4:00 PM and is filed under Reminiscing, Lima Center.
Ya, I know people argue about when a decade ends and when it starts. What ever, it is close enough to the end of the '00s. And, good riddance. The decade of 2000 to 2010 emotionally beats a person into thinking about better times. This past decade should be arrested for abuse. It chases us back, emotionally kicking and screaming to more amicable times.
I remember living in an old farm house on the edge of New Glarus, Wisconsin back in the '90s. The village could not have had more than 1000 people. If you lived in town, you had to pick up your mail from the post office. Heide and I had both came from small Wisconsin communities. As well, we had both lived in big cities later. It was not a stretch to make the transitions then, several times in our lives from one to the other.
That farm house in New Glarus reminded me of my childhood home in rural Lima Center, Wisconsin back in the 1950s and '60s. All we had back there was a gas station and a post office slash, general store - a village of 90 people if lucky. Lima Center is the kind of place now you drive through and continually think about what used to be where.
Ol' Guy Hodson ran the gas station back in Lima Center. His bunker style shop sat next to the town hall and the rail road tracks. By the way, I do not ever remember seeing his name written. I remember a Marathon Gas sign however. If someone remembers a bit about the history of Lima Center or Ol' Guy Hodson, please post a comment. I can find reference to him no where on the Web. I almost envy that accomplishment. None-the-less, being the nature of blogs, if I find more people who remember him or information that references him, I can always update this posting with accurate ages, spelling, and time-line.
I remember riding my bicycle past Ol' Guy's gas station garage when I went to the three-room school in Lima. The school was up the street a couple hundred yards from the gas station. The school housed First through Sixth grades - there was no kindergarten in those days, for us anyway. The old school building is a ruddy apartment now - some of the play equipment frames still haunt the property. Those were the days, play ground equipment was charmingly dangerous.
There was a bench along the gas station outside wall between the building and the gas pump at the street. And, there was always some old men sitting on that bench. The garage door was always open and as well, it always looked dark and ominous into the dark work shop. The dim shadows in the shop looked mysterious and a light bulb hung from a cord. There was always a hint of old oil smell, even out into the street.
The street itself was merely a township road. It was and still is, the narrow kind of farm road that has no shoulder and when the grass gets tall enough and the weeds get big enough, they fall over the edge of the cracked pavement. The foliage whooshes around as the cars and pickup trucks pass down the road.
Anyway, Ol' Guy drove a Model-T Ford his whole life. He drove it not as a novelty, but it was just his gig. I heard he had to finally go to the Veteran's nursing home, but we were living away then and I only have hearsay as reference. The Whitewater, Wisconsin Public Library says a reference to Hodson dates his death in 1987, at 90 years old. I always remember him as very old.
So back to Ol' Guy. He would limp out of his cinder block shop, cigar in mouth, to pump gas from the one pump which damn near touched the edge of the road. He had a wooden leg. People thought he lost his real leg in World War I. But, my dad claimed he had lost it in a motorcycle crash after he came home from the war. Anyway, he would come out with end of cigar glowing like a blow torch. Then he would spill gas as he finished up. When I got old enough to drive, I loved to bring new girl friends there in my pickup truck to watch their reaction to the whole presentation.
"Hey, Keith, I knew your grand dad. Get your damn ass in here and help me put this part on that tractor over there," he would growl with a perennial stubble of whiskers on his old chin.
I remember holding a rear view mirror in place in a Model-T Ford for him once as he bolted it down. That would be a moment he would take to interject some pontification.
"The economy collapsed in the '30s boy. You sissy boys don't ever think it will happen again. When it comes around again it will kick your asses like it kicked ours," he said in a gravel voice while he twisted the bolt.
How prolific those words are now nearly forty years after he said them. In those days we thought we had the world by the tail. Then I thought of him in the recession of the early '80s. But all was forgotten in the '90s. But now, his words reverberate again. I wonder what he would say now?
In the winter there was always a bit of a drip coming from his old nose. He was a tall man I thought. It seemed like in those days, all the old men I knew were short and hunched over.
I would leave girlfriend du jour in my pickup truck as I vanished into the tomb-like shop to help old Guy. There, one would find tools and machines Edison and Bell surely would have appreciated. There was always a farm tractor or old car in there. He had hanging on hooks and nails, tools constructed to fix machinery that people had long forgotten had ever been in America's economic inventory. There were old auto parts in their faded original boxes - you never know when you might need a part for a 1940 Farmall H tractor or a 1934 Chevy truck.
If girlfriend smiled when I got back to the truck with grease on hands, I knew she was a tough cookie. If she pouted I tucked that nuanced symbol into the back of my brain to recall later if a decision had to be made regarding holding on to the relationship. One tough young lady asked him for a light for her cigarette while he pumped the gas into my truck. She was either very naive about gasoline or trying to one-up me. Wonder what ever happed to her in life?
For some reason, I snapped a picture of the old gas station when I got out of the Army. When I came home for a visit from a job in Texas a few years later, the station and Ol' Guy were gone. His house down the street was abandoned with a couple of broken windows. I believe the house in its dilapidated state is still there.
I am sure I can find that picture, I know I can, even after having moved in life a dozen times. I will insert it on this posting directly.
Here's to you Guy Hodson. In a current, bleak economy, frought with miseralbe experiences, you are a fond memory from a better time.
Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
(each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan)
Staff Sergeant Todd Olson, 36, died December 27, 2004, at the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Tikrit, Iraq. He had sustained wounds a day earlier from a roadside bomb detonated in Samarra, Iraq. Olson's home was in Loyal, Wisconsin. Todd was killed two weeks after his Wisconsin National Guard unit arrived in Iraq. He died on patrol when hit by the bomb in Samarra, a town north of Baghdad. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Olson had studied finance at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; he was married and the father of three teenage boys and a five-year-old girl; he was a member of the Loyal School Board; a loan officer at the M&I Bank in Loyal and Neillsville; a youth group leader at Trinity Lutheran Church in Loyal; and, a youth football coach. Staff Sergeant Olson joined the National Guard after he graduated from Loyal High School in 1986. He was attached to the Neillsville Unit Detachment 1, Charley Company, 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry Regiment, Wisconsin Army National Guard. They had been activated for training in Mississippi in June of 2004 and arrived in Kuwait in November. The Journal Sentinel went on to say, Olson's unit was a part of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, a combination of soldiers from the Tennessee Army National Guard and Guard members from other states. The 278th made the news a few weeks before Todd's death when a soldier in the unit asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld why some American military members were forced to forage in Iraqi junk yards for armor to weld to and "up-armor" their Humvees. Staff Sergeant Olson was the 33rd Wisconsin military service person from Wisconsin to die in Iraq since spring 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
94,939 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,351 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,373 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
937 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
317 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
609 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
31,613 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,737 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
101 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
16 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
139 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
17 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Wisconsin military service person special mention of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; and, icasualties.org.
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