The Town Talk from Alexandria, Louisiana • Page 8

ALEXANDRIA DAILY TOWN TALK, ALEXANDRIA-PINEVILLE, MONDAY, JULY 10, 1972 SECTION A-PAUE EIGHT H5ffi Life on he Mississippi Lindbergh Talks About His Boyhood 1 paigns, often getting sluck on the unnaved muddy roads. -J 1 ft I I- bail, once, the size of hen eggs. Walking to the barn in early winter could tell the approximate temperature by the bite of the air in my nose and the way the snow crunched underfoot; the next sign of cold would be the thickness of ice in the barn water trough." There was a garden, and Charles liked best the sweet corn that his mother cooked. "She cooked on a wood stove, a Majestic We used wood sticks and slabs from the sawmill in Little Falls because they were easy to get and cheap. Simple Dishes "My mother's dishes were icehouse road, dismount, and start whistling the call of the whippoorwill.

This was my signal to start running with my dog up the icehouse road to meet him. We would go for a swim, tramp over, the "Sometimes we would go down to the river and walk out on log jams. These were often quite big twice each summer the bateaux and wanigans came through to clear them. Then the 'river pigs would give exHibV tions of logrolling and oreaic up seemingly unbreakable jams." The Huck Finn boyhood by the river and young manhood of farm managing, animal handling, driving a three-wheel tractor, riding a motorcycle on his sales; rounds as a milking-machine agent, and his final nostalgic arrival back at the farm as a barnstormer in his first airplaneat the ripe age of 21 are detailed in "Boyhood on the Upper Mississippi." Five Installments The book, subtitled "A simple and wonderfully good. She fried, boiled, baked, and roasted.

We usually had meat three times a day. alone with vegetables, salads, and fruits. For dessert we had pies (apple, peach, berry, pumpkin, gooseberry), puddings (bread, tapioca, plum), cakes (angel, chocolate), and cookies of various "We made ice cream on occasion in a churn packed with cracked ice and salt. Mv mother usually baked our bread herself white, rye, white salt-rising, and potato bread. For breakfast she would bake biscuits.

It was seldom that we were without homemade iam and cottage cheese." From age 11, Charles drove his father on election cam- Eight ear-old Charles A. Lindbergh (photo at left) is shown with his father, Charles A. Lindbergh then 51, In a photo made about 1910. The senior Lindbergh was an agrarian reform congressman from Minnesota. At right, the future aviator is motorcycle in Madison, 1921.

(UPI Telephoto) (Editor', Notf: In May, 1927, an unassuming young man named Charles A. Lindbergh from the American Midwest astonished the world and won its warm acclaim by becoming the first man to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo, piloting a small monoplane. "The Spirit of St. Louis." He was 25 years old, and only five years awayfrom the farm along the Mississippi on which he grew up. Now, for the first time, he has written of those boyhood years in a nostalgic reminiscence that might almost have come out of the stories of Mark Twain.

The excerpts in the following article are published by special arrangement with the Minnesota Historical Society.) By H. 0. Quigg UPI Senior Editor Charles A. Lindbergh's mother liked to name things. He grew up among the white pine groves on the banks of the upper Mississippi with a succession of farm dogs named Sweet Snider, Breeze, Shep, Tody, Spot, Hunter, Dingo, and Wahgoosh the last being what tne Linaoergns were toio was me umppewa inuian wore ior iox.

Interspersed in the canine parade were a tame chipmunk, Shorttail, so called after an encounter with one of the dogs; a three-goose gaggle Fanny, and Matilda and a marvelous machine named Maria. Model Ford "Maria impacted on our farm we in mi, writes the man, now 70, who the world knows as an aviator, author, medical technologist, and conservation- 1st. "Pronounced as is the farm corp, rye, Maria was a Ford Model tourabout with standard foot-pedal father bought it partly for campaigning and partly for farm transportation." Charles A. Lindbergh Sr: was an agrarian political reformer who was congressman from Minnesota from 1907 to 1917. He had a 118-acre farm on the Mississippi and a law office in nearby Little Falls.

"In 1912 learning to drive an automobile was a formidable and extraordinary experience," the son says in a book of reminiscences, "more of a stunt than a learned to drive in 1913 at the age of 11. By. 1914 was driving most of the time (but) when my father drove, I usually rode the running "I could pick leaves off branches as we passed scoop up a stone from the road. I liked the wind on my face and through my hair." Swimming Naked The father taught the boy to love swimming naked in the river or in Pike Creek close by, at first carrying young Charley on his back by doing the breast stroke. The congressman would ride a bicycle from office to farm.

"He would turn in on the A Will Disputed for 14 Years! May Finally Be Resolved TRENTON, N.J. (UPI)- general moved in court; to When Stephan Binary, a collect the estate, the relatives Ukrainian immigrant, died in objected and the court ordered 1958, he left an estate of depositions taken in the Soviet $2,176.48 but no will. Union. Since his death his close The first set of documents relatives, all of whom live in failed to meet American the Soviet Union, have been judicial standards. The court trying to collect the estate and refused to release the inheri-have been vigorously opposed tance.

A second set of by the state of New Jersey. depositions was sent, but by Finally after 14 years of this time, the lower court had battling New Jersey law, ruled the case was closed. Reminiscent Letter," published by the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, is indeed a letter from Lindbergh. It was five sent to tne society in installments in 1969 and 197Q, written in pencil and ink from such locales as the split-bamboo floor of a grass hut in Luzon, a plane nearing Hong Kong, and a New York office building into which he had been, accidentally locked.

Set down in snatched moments for the guidance of the society's staff in restoring th ih r.inHhorah farm viai.c with no original intention of publication, it is a remarkable recollection of farm life before and rfiirinej WnrlH Uar I Lindbergh grew up with guns. His grandfather gave him a 22-caliber rifle when he was 6, and his father gave him a repeating rifle the next summer. (He was 7 when he shot his duck). Two years later he got a 12-gauge shotgun that was so heavy he had a hard time holding it to his shoulder. He hunted a lot with his father, as the many pictures in the book attest.

In winter the temperature would drop to 30 below, and once hit 40. "Then (walking to school in snow too deep for bicycling) frost would form on the front of my cap on nostril hairs." Caught in Blizzard Once he got caught at night in a blizzard and lost Prince, a pony, as. a result. of fatigue the animal suffered, on the trip, even though the boy walked much of the way leading his mount. i i "Storms of kind or another punctuate my memory of the farm and areas around it: the blizzards swirling snow against my face; the violent thunderstorms of summer with their lightning flashes and ear-splitting cracks and the sheet hghtning making luminous demon forms of clouds." And "One rainy evening in the country, he, two other men, and I got on a road that was so bad, and we got stuck so often, that we gave up trying to reach the town for which we were headed and spent the night on the parlor floor of a roadside farmhouse.

The farmer could give us only two blankets, but we kept the stove burning enough to stay warm in spite of half-soaked clothes," The Lindbergh farm had no electricity nor telephone. Kerosene lamps lit the house, kerosene lanterns the barn: "Both gave a soft and lovely licht-plentv of light to read by, to milk by, to feed by-if you kept the chimneys clean. Of course it is not as convenient, but personally prefer kerosene light to electric." In the fall of 1920, he rode off on his Excelsior motorcycle to enter the University of Wisconsin, at Madison In the spring of 1923, he bought his "Jenny" airplane in Georgia, barnstormed to Texas, and then north to Little Falls and landed on the west 40 of the farm. "I felt nostalgia then if I ever felt it in my life, for I knew the farming days I loved so much were over. I had made my choice.1! loved still more to fly." GET INSTANT RELIEF from spact problems.

Sell "don't needs" with a Clossitled Ad. Call 442-1331 now! (33D CTSa CEU qcbsb flags Annual Percentage Rate 14.13 14.13 14.13 America, Inc. of North Amorica 1 shown on his Excelsior in a photo made in June of 4 i ''Otters beginning Tuesday in Reykjavik with Boris Spassky, the world champion. Even though thousands of dollars of prize money are on the line, today's championship prize is chicken feed. Rognvald played King Louis for his head.

A woman was the prize In one knightly saga. A king put up his horse, falcon and sword for a maiden and engaged in a game, winner take all. The king lost. He left the game on foot, unarmed and unloved. "Little consolation do you derive from the game of chess for now I own your costly objects!" said his competitor.

FAMILY WASH LAUNDRY Beautifully DONE Blackman Laundry And Cleaners DIAL 442-6666 -ngV Jcnny ne bouRht lor lies smashed in a field in Glencoe, Minn. The crash occurred in 1923 while he was piloting his father, who was campaigning for the U. S. Senate. Neither man was hurt in the crash and the younger Lindbergh later wrote, "Damage to my 'Jenny' was very easily repaired in the field." (UPI Telephoto) it diplomatic red tape, American court rules and Soviet judicial procedures, adverse court rulings and differences in U.S.

and Soviet jurisprudence, the relatives' case got a boost Friday when the appellate division of the State Supreme Court ordered a lower court to review its ruling denying the relatives the money. The state had claimed the money under New Jersey laws providing that noninheritable estates revert to its escheat division. The state also contended that the relatives had not proven kinship with the dead man. After the state attorney JV to Repay 60 60 60 Total of Payments $2,799.60 $5,599.80 $9,799.80 1 11 vl- That's what homeowners can borrow for only $93.33 a month" i. A'wv.

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At left, his youth behind him, Lindbergh looks over family relics In his restored boyhood home in Little Falls, in a 1971 photo. (UPI Telephoto) Chess Bloodthirsty Game, History Shows Monthly Payment 46.66 $93.33 $163.33 Mos. Amount Financed $2,000 $4,000 $7,000 You worked hard for your home. Now let your home work hard for you. HAVING A GARAGE SALE? Let the Whole Town Know About It! Place a low cost Want-ad Today.

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Want-Ads Get Results! TRY ONE YOU'LL. SEE Call 442 1331 Todayl By Ann Hencken Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) The insulted egos and white-knuckled tensions before the Fischer-Spassky chess match may seem to be a blazing battle, but pale beside the tales of bloodthirsty games in Medieval Iceland. Chess boards in the 12th and 115th centuries weie often the center of treachery, revenge, intrigue and murder, according to sagas of the time. When a certain King Louis lost a chess game to Rognvald, he stood up in a fury, shoved his chessmen into a bag and smashed his opponent in the face with it, leaving him, a bloody mess. "Take that!" exclaimed the king.

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