Ray S. Dix as a boy
(left to right) Ray, Maynard, Leslie, Meredith, Leland, and Myrtle
DID I TELL YOU THE STORY of my dad as a kid selling magazines door to door posing as a
one-armed waif? He pulled one arm inside his jacket and conspicuously
fastened the empty sleeve with a big safety pin in front. Allegedly, he
was selling a lot of magazines in Cedar Falls, Iowa until his suspicious dad, Ray Dix, previously mentioned in http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2011/12/grandpa-his-post-office-to-sever.html, driving by one day in
his jitney, (looking for him?) saw his armless, first-born son up on
somebody's porch. My dad was taking an
order, whereupon there was a wood-shed re-enactment later, and an end to
that.
That's the
same grandfather who pulled a Colt 45 from behind his bank cashier's window and
shot the meandering rat that had a lady customer screaming. I might have told
you that one too. He actually missed it in the bank and pursued it down
the dirt street in Ainsworth Iowa
Business at
the bank picked up after that. People from neighboring towns moved their
accounts there, for Grandpa thereafter had a fanning reputation
in rural Iowa
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I stood on the front porch at 2009 Clay Street, Cedar Falls IA practicing with my own gun in full cowboy costume. (Upper right photo) In the attic of that four-square house there were boxes of saved toys
my dad and his 3 brothers had played with. One was an old erector set assembly of a pick-up truck.
That rusty toy reposes in my office, and the gun-toting picture is co-framed with a similar photo of John Helt, also drawing a gun, in Burlington, Iowa.
........................................................
Personally, I myself would not shoot a rat to preserve the peaceful halls of any bank.
And truthfully, the rat shown in our yesterday post was a wooden one, dated Feb. 28, 2003,
a birthday gift to commemorate my being born in the Chinese year of The Rat.
That is not necessarily a bad thing.
