Growing Up in Neodesha, Kansas

The following was written by Bonita (Bunnie) Killion Reece, born in 1924, married to Robert (Bob) Reece (deceased), born in 1925, both from Neodesha.

My dad was an oil well driller and there was not a steady flow of money in our household. I knew we were not rich, but never did I think of our family as being poor. My mother was a registered nurse when she married my dad, and was the first nurse at the Standard Oil Refinery. She left that job because she thought she should stay home to raise a family.

While growing up, the Methodist church was first in our lives. Sunday was the most remembered day. Saturday Mom cooked for Sunday dinner and that evening she laid out our Sunday School clothes. I had to go to Sunday School one time while catching the chicken pox because I couldn’t miss Sunday School! I didn't miss a Sunday for 14 years. We really dressed up for Easter and put my dad in much stress because he had three girls.

The refinery and railroads were the lifeline in Neodesha. The whistles from the refinery, more or less, told us when to get up in the morning (6:30) and when to leave for work (7:25) and to be at work (7:30) and again at 12:00 and 12:55 and 1:00; then at 4:30 and 12:00 midnight. At 5:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. the Missouri Pacific came in to the station, but I don't remember Frisco coming in because that station was farther away, across Main and in the south part of town.

We lived one block from Central and three or four blocks from NHS at 901 Lincoln Street. We never locked the house back then. Everyone walked to school because cars were not allowed in the high school parking lot. I remember the long brown stockings I had to wear to school and would roll them down as soon as I got around the corner of the garage; then the supporters would dangle on my legs all day! We wore the same dress Monday and Tuesday and another one Wednesday and Thursday, and I got to wear a “nicer dress” on Friday. 

Eighth Street was the street we walked to get to town. From our house we cut across the back of Central School to 8th and on to Main Street, and if we went all the way down 8th Street to the south part of town it stopped at a big open space. This is where the carnival and the big tent were set up for the circus when it came to town, and also medicine shows that sold a bottle of something that would cure anything from bad breath to cancer for around 25 cents.  In the summer a skating rink with a canvas top was there. I think it was 15 cents to skate (don't know where I got 15 cents) and I thought I was a great skater by the end of the summer. Sometimes we walked down just to watch the others.

Most sidewalks were brick. The bricks said “VVV”, which stands for Verdigris Valley Vitrification. They were made at Brickton. So to roller skate and play marbles we had to look for a concrete sidewalk. and I loved to do both. We had a little grocery store a block from us that sold things like milk or bread and penny candy. I would steal a milk bottle from our back porch once in a while to sell and then buy candy at the store.  McNair grocery it was called, and Mrs. McNair would bake Boston Brown Bread in a coffee can to sell for extra money.

Being a girl, we were not encouraged to play sports, but my dad somehow was able to get us a bat and a ball. Home base was on the little sidewalk in front of the garage. That was because the garage was the catcher. First base was a tree on the parking, second was a rose bush,
and third base was the pear tree - which, incidentally, was the tree my dad got the small branches to spank us with on our bare legs!

Sunday afternoons, before I was a teenager, we would go for a ride around the countryside, finally stopping to see my grandmother who lived at Bethel Store. We later found out she really didn't care if we stopped to see her or not and we always hated the fact that my mother thought we should! As a teenager, our Sunday afternoons were often spent going on a hike and having a wiener roast at Flatrock.  And on Saturday nights Arthur Starrett's parents chaperoned dances at the Legion Hall. At 12:00 midnight the last song was played (a record, of course) and the song was " I'll see you in my dreams". 

The Maypole Dance in May was also a highlight at Central School. Klan Hall was the cowboy dance hall where (when I was older I got to go one time) we drank beer and smoked – perish! – cigarettes. Another hangout was the duckpin bowling alley, where the balls were not much bigger than a grapefruit and the pins were smaller than the ones used today. The Methodist Church was a block from Main Street and the "law" read that there could be no dances closer than a block from a church. They tried to shut down the HS Legion Hall dances without much success.

And then there was Middle Dam. What a great place to swim! Only I didn't learn to swim until I was 60 years old. There was a rope tied from a big tree on one side of the river and we would grab the rope and run and swing across the river to the other side - not always getting to
land. I guess most of us knew how to dog paddle because we had to get back across the river to get home. I think only one person, Carl Garrett, drowned there and that’s because he somehow got caught under the dam.

We used to park at a place called Pinochle Hill. On our first date, Bob and I double dated and went to a movie. His mom gave him 50 cents for the movie and he had his dad's car (only car in the family). I could never find Pinochle Hill now!  We sat there for awhile and finally Bob said "I need to check the engine", so he got out of the car and looked under the hood of the car, checked the oil, (I think) and we went home. I had to be in by 10:00. If we sat in the car too long outside my house, my dad would flick the porch light on and off several times, and this meant get in the house right now! It seems we did get to spend enough time together, however, because we married in 1944.

Neodesha is my hometown and I love going back once in awhile. Thanks for the memories.

Reece family: Children of Bob and Bunnie Reece: Constance (Connie), Mark, Kim, Rebecca and Robb Reece.

Bob’s parents were Clarence (Pop) and Mayme Reece; mother’s parents were Charles and Lucile Killion, all of Neodesha. Bunnie’s sister, Gayle, married to Max Allen, resided in Neodesha all her life, and passed away February 2004. May Clark (deceased), sister of Lucile, taught 1st grade at Central. Doug Reece, attended high school in Neodesha (son of Bob’s brother, Carl). As you can see, we have deep roots in Neodesha!

From Kerry: Now that is the end of the formal account Bunnie wrote for us, but last year I put pictures of the demolition of the Fall River Bridge, or Rainbow Bridge, on the website. Bunnie sent me this e-mail about the bridge:

I have several stories about the bridge by the water plant. At one time my first husband. Bob Reece, lived in the house across the road from the water works. He loved it there because of the river and of course he was close to what was known as the dykes and that is where the guys went to hunt ducks.

I remember my younger sister telling of crawling over the bridge! It was years before she told that story! And coming back down was the scary part. She is not an adventuress and it gives me goose bumps when she tells the story.
         
Jim Catlin had a boat  tied by the bridge and anyone could use it. He was a very generous guy. My mother was having her church circle at our house and all her thoughts were on food, and if the house was clean and
everything was perfect in every way. I was free for a couple of hours anyway and Bob (Reece) and Homer Caskey and myself took the boat and all I remember was going down the river and through lots of trees that had been cut off or flooded. Of course the guys scared me by telling me if the boat hit a tree it would sink!! Those were the days.

And later, much later, in my life I was ready to have our third baby and left my 4 year old son with my sister, who at that time lived by the Mill Street bridge. We were in the process of moving from a farm near Brickton and trying to get settled before the baby decided to appear into the world. Our son Mark, now 55, walked west from Mill Street and down Main to the end, and across the railroad tracks. In the meantime a stray dog stayed with him and walked by his side next to the street. When police chief Jim Noels found him (we were frantically searching!!!)  he had just crossed the bridge and told Jim that he was going to the "tarm". Later I asked him what he did when he crossed the bridge and he said "Oh, I just got on my tip toes and looked at the water!!!!!!

Here is a picture of Bunnie and I at the reunion last year:

And here is her pretty daughter, Connie Reece Selgath: