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October 3, 2024

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October 3, 2024

Volume 54 - No. 40

A Quiet Hero

For a Small Town in America 16 year old Max Morrow’s high school graduation photo.

By Tom Morrow It was a quiet Iowa morning when the Milwaukee Railroad agent on the mail car tossed the canvas bag half-filled with U.S. parcels and letters. Two more Milwaukee trains would be stopping later in the day with more mail deliveries. Seven days a week in 1940 the Milwaukee Road brought U.S. mail pouches each morning: the other at midday. On the other side of town the Rock Island Line’s passenger express stopped every evening at 7 p.m. heading for Kansas City. There always was a canvas pouch

coming from Chicago aboard that train. Freight deliveries could come anytime on either rail line which crossed each other in the center of town, Raymond Morrow was one of Seymour’s leading businessmen. He had been the town’s exclusive meat merchant and processor since 1910, raised five sons, was an elder in his church and deeply involved as a Free Mason. Life in Seymour during the thirties was a time of want and one of struggle. It was the Great Depression ... a

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worldwide calamity the likes never seen. Living in the Middle West, the center of the great “breadbasket of America,” there usually was plenty to eat, but cash was in short supply. Even the black storm clouds of soil blowing in from Oklahoma and Texas didn’t darken the bountiful harvests of Iowa and nearby Missouri. When work could be found, a dollar a day was considered good money for most laborers. Securing necessities such as clothes, shoes, tools, and many of the needs of every day were hard to buy when there

was such a shortage of cash. The merchants of Seymour didn’t take in as much money as in better times, rather a lot of their wares were bartered by farmers who brought their produce such as eggs, meat, and grain to trade what necessities needed for their everyday life. Sometimes a farm wife would realize a dollar from her produce. There might even be a dime or two left over so the children could go to the Saturday night movies at the Lyric, which always ran the weekend double feature twice to accom-

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October 3, 2024 by The Paper - Issuu