St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 109

eveipaiy ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 1976 SECTION M2G ILLINOIS fl 1:1 iitu) to I 8 EM I POR 9 'Viiinimin i i TIJ 1 1 1 ii' i mi iV Upper left: Wittenberg circa 1900 great plans for a picture postcard town. Above, Wittenberg today "The Depression started our troubles, the floods finished us off." Post-Dispatch Photos by Renyold Ferguson Two Company i 9 Eight A Town By Elaine Viets Of the Post-Dispatch Staff At Death clouds overhead. The river was speckled with dirty brown ice. Seven of the nine buildings on one side of main street were abandoned their porches sagging, windows broken or boarded, the wood weathered to a dingy gray.

Behind the Main Street buildings rose a steep tree-covered hill. The bare branches rattled in the wind. Rutted, muddy paths straggled through town. Three banty roosters and a hen pecked at the gravel. The stone cellars of an abandoned brewery, built into the hillside, are topped with a whimsical "Bomb Shelter" sign, but the letters are falling off.

Local legend says that the brewery was founded by two men, Brenner and Anheuser, but Anheuser left for St. Louis because Wittenberg was too small. Brenner went broke. A lone brick chimney towers over the town. It was part of the flour mill that was torn down several years ago.

Three mobile homes are the only new buildings. The United States Post Office is the only industry, besides the log landing for the East Perry Lumber Co. There are no groceries, gasoline stations, cafes or churches in Wittenberg. The school closed a few years ago. Wittenberg's founders had big plans for the town.

About 700 Lutheran immigrants from Saxony, Germany, landed there in 1839 and settled throughout the area. The settlers wanted to practice their religion in peace, and they named Wittenberg after the German town where Martin Luther first nailed his theses to the cathedral door. Wittenberg's founders wanted the town to be the hub of the nearby Lutheran settlements of Frohna, Alten-burg, Dresden, Seelitz, Johannisberg and Uniontown, and they laid Wittenberg out accordingly. Old survey maps show five good-sized streets and a town square. Wittenberg never quite lived up to expectations.

The streets stayed un-paved, and the forest was never cut down on the town square. At the turn of the century Wittenberg had a peak population of 400, and was a center where livestock and other farm products were shipped upstream, and groceries and dry goods sent down river. Wittenberg was a picture-postcard town in 1900 an attractive cluster of neatly painted wooden houses, a simple white Lutheran church, well-kept streets and lawns. It had the usual small-town industries a furniture factory, two flour miles, three hotels, groceries, a bank, livery stables and an ice cream parlor. The flour mills and furniture factory folded in the Depression, and a series of disasterous floods "after they started building those levees upstream finished us off," Mrs.

Theiss said. "The worst flood was in 1973. There were 29 inches of water in my post office. So many houses were damaged we had to tear down or bum 11 of them. There are more that could go.

That flood just about killed any chances for growth. Nobody wants to rebuild on flood land." You can tell when you're speaking to a Wittenberg resident. Conversations Cms AR BiAOCHISRUlta behind the counter, I wouldn't let them. That's my domain." Wittenberg residents weren't used to being interviewed in the early days. It was easy to catch them off guard.

When Mayor Wright ran a tavern (it was destroyed in the 1973 flood) a man stopped by for a drink and asked about Wittenberg's rutted roads. Mayor Wright said the potholes were an asset. "At least they slow down motorists so they don't pass the town entirely." That remark ended up in several newspapers. "I didn't know that the guy was a reporter until I said it," Mayor Wright said. "Ke asked if he could print it and I said go ahead.

It wasn't a lie." The Mayor's family makes up half of Wittenberg. Their house was also lost in the 1973 flood, and they now live in a mobile home. A brown dog was asleep outside the Mayor's door. A black cat See TOWN, Page 9 Postmaster Mrs. Viola Thiess: The Post Office is Wittenberg's only industry, and she makes everyone welcome.

MM- fiPRfAM. WITTENBERG CAPE GIRARDEAU wmifc rim. WMf WITTENBERG, Mo. Wittenberg is officially the smallest town in Missouri. And it's a rough title to hold.

Wittenberg has only eight people, and when Mayor Claude Wright's two sons aren't home and his daughter is at the Lutheran school in nearby Frohna, the population dips to five barely enough residents to handle all the questions from reporters who show up wanting to know what it's like to live in the state's smallest town. And then there are the graduate students. "They come by the carload to write doctoral theses about us," said one resident. Missouri has lots of whistle stops and wide places in the road. The Rand McNally Commercial Atlas and Marketing Guide lists plenty of places smaller than Wittenberg.

There are 13 towns that have five people, starting with Cottage Farm and ending with Zanoni. But it takes a certain amount of distinction to hold the small-town title. The Census Bureau had to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise any large family on a country road could call itself a town. The 1970 census lists Wittenberg as Missouri's smallest town because it's incorporated and the other places aren't.

Wittenberg is about 107 miles south of St. Louis, on the banks of the Mississippi River in eastern Perry County. According to the 1970 census and the bullet-riddled signpost outside town, Wittenberg has nine people. But that was six years ago, before Mayor Wright's wife died. When the summer people from St.

Louis are in town, Wittenberg's population jumps to 11. "People think Wittenberg's a ghost town, but there's a lot going on here," said Mrs. Viola Theiss, the postmaster. "Trucks come through all the time. You can hear the tractors on the landing unloading logs from the barges for the East Perry Lumber Co.

Six trains a day come through those tracks alongside Main Street. And all my customers who live around here stop to talk a minute and pick up their mail." The Wittenberg Post Office serves about 200 people. One-fourth of Wittenberg stopped by Mrs. Theiss's freshlypainted Post Office while we were there to pick up their mail the Mayor and Bud Clark. They engaged in the friendly, ritual small town greetings.

"Cold enough for you, Mr. Clark?" Mrs. Theiss asked. "Not yet," he said. Mrs.

Theiss is a small-boned, white-haired wren of a woman, and like many people who live in the area, she has a slight German accent. She lives about one mile outside Wittenberg, but she acts as the town's unofficial greeter. Mrs. Theiss welcomed us and brought out a stack of photographs and a briefcase of newspaper stories about the town. "I can tell by your faces what you think of Wittenberg," Mrs.

Theiss said. "It didn't always look like this." Wittenberg looked pretty dismal that day, but then the weather didn't show it off to best advantage. It was cold, about 15 degrees, there were thick lead-gray SONtSS. CRIME SQSRS. "Trie Mllw.

OASS begin, "Well, it happened the year they tore down State Senator Joseph Wein-hold's house." Or, "This must be an old photograph, because that building has been gone for 20 years." As Wittenberg's population declined, interest in the town rose. The first reporter from the Chicago Tribune wrote about Wittenberg in 1961, when the population was about 30 "if you counted a few squirrels," the Mayor told him. "Then all the newspapers had to do stories," Mrs. Theiss said. "The Southeast Missourian, the Perry County Republican, the Jackson Pioneer, The Jackson Journal.

Grit magazine did two stories. "And then the graduate students started coming," she said. "They heard that the Wittenberg settlers came here for religious freedom, and they wanted to write about that and small-town life. Mr. Charles Nennert was partly responsible for bringing them in.

He was a retired teacher who came back, and before he died he did a lot of research on Wittenberg. "The graduate students were here every weekend for months sometimes 15 at a time. They asked hundreds of questions, poked every where, photographed everything even my mailbox outside the post office. They wrote how the paint on it was caked and cracked with age. Then when I repainted it, the next group wanted to know where the old mailbox was.

"They photographed the floor and the old trademark on the post office counter. But when they wanted to come here mi AMA pRCtftfe IU TH MAJJUFACTURf of rajce? aup SPY AUP TO IBllliF Wl Mayor Claude Wright: His family makes up half the town. ann landers Life Not Fair DEAR ANN LANDERS: I was infuriated by the letter signed "The Other Woman" who was sick at heart because the man she had been sneaking around with for 11 years was dying of cancer. She bemoaned the fact that even though she was "first in his life" she would have to sit in the back of the church at the funeral while his wife sat in front, getting all the sympathy due a perfect wife. As an R.N.

who has seen more than one wife at the bedside of a delirious (or dying) husband and listened to him call The Other Woman's name in his delirium, I can tell you it is a heartbreaking thing to watch especially if children are present, and they often are. Most wives know about The Other Woman and do their best to hold their heads up while keeping one eye and one ear shut. Too bad someone can't put a gag in the mouth of a cheating husband or tie his tongue up so his last days aren't hell on his long-suffering wife. ON THE OTHER SIDE NOBODY CAN say this column doesn't give equal time to both sides. Thank you for writing.

DEAR ANN LANDERS: My wife has a 26-year-old bachelor brother who is becoming a real pain in the ankle. Six months ago we moved into this great new apartment. My wife gave Horace a key. When I asked her why she did it she said, "Because he might want to stay overnight when he's had too much to drink rather than drive to his apartment on the other side of town." I couldn't fault her for that especially after she added, "If I said no and he got picked up for drunken driving, or God forbid, if he should have a terrible accident, I'd never forgive myself." Now it has reached the point where I need advice from Ann Landers. At lease three nights a week when I come home the cm Jules Feiffer Looks At TheWcifld from work I find Horace sitting in my chair, smoking my cigars and drinking my Scotch.

Last night hw was wearing my new bathrobe: The big gorilla never brings anything but his unquenchable thirst and an enormous appetite. How can I put an end to his freeloading without running into a buzzsaw, namely my wife? MR. SUCKER TELL YOUR wife you've had it from the big gorilla and next week you are changing the locks on the doors. She should inform her brother that his key will no longer fit, but if he gets into a jam and wants to sleep over he can phone and there will be a bed ready for him. DEAR ANN LANDERS: I'm a girl, 16, who has been asked to pose nude for a boy who is a wonderful artist.

He is 17. Rick has shown me some of his paintings which are terrific and I mean terrific. What bothers me is whether or not I should do it. Rick tells me the human body is beautiful, nothing to be ashamed of, and that I have a hang-up. He says I should be proud he picked me out as a model.

I don't know what to do, Ann. He has been pressuring me a lot lately. What's your opinion? A BIG MAYBE IF RICK is such a terrific artist, he should be able to sell some of his paintings and hire a professional model. Keep your clothes on, girl. Teaching your kids about the facts of life can be easy or awkward.

Ann Landers's new booklet, "How, What, and When to Tell Your Child About Sex" can spell the difference. Send 50 cents in coin, along with a long, stamped, self-addressed envelope (13 cents now) with your request, to Ann Landers, in care of the Post-Dispatch. Ctt to worac IWPUSTRV Bill m. AMERICA..