DOCTOR C. E. AND MARGARET TINDLE

(Margaret speaking:) I was born in Knowlton, Iowa, a small town north of Diagonal. Both my father and mother had been married before - my father had three children, two boys and a girl; my mother had five children but only Alice, my mother’s daughter by her first marriage lived with us after the age of three. Dad was B.B. Ruby, known as "Mint“; Mama’s name was Winnie. They had five more children – my immediate family was Florence, Edgar, Loel (named for my mother whose maiden name was Loe), Fred; and I was the youngest.

In 1925 when I started to school at the age of five, we had moved to Shannon City and were operating the hotel. It was on the south end of Main Street. The same railroad that ran through Knowlton went through Shannon City and it was customary for salesmen riding the train to stop in each little town overnight, make their calls on the businesses of the community and leave the next day. The hotel was a good business.

March 1st was considered "moving day" and it was probably March 1, 1927 that the family moved to Diagonal and took over the Bunker Hotel, Florence was a senior in high school, and, wanting to graduate with classmates, she stayed on with friends in Shannon City and graduated from that school in 1927. She worked as a waitress in the hotel, which became the boarding and rooming house for a work crew of Iowa Southern Utilities who were erecting new lines. Among the workers was O. E. (Dick) Davison of Clarinda. He and Florence fell in love and in September 1928 they were married. The wedding reception with a big family gathering was held in the hotel in Diagonal.

The Bunker Hotel in Diagonal was on the west side of Main Street, directly across from the Burlington Depot, The Burlington Railroad came in to Diagonal, running east and west, their line criss-crossing with the Chicago Great Western tracks that ran north and south. For that reason Diagonal became the dominant community and Knowlton faded out completely.

The Bunker Hotel was a very long building with a wide porch that wrapped the full length around the south and east sides. There was a main lobby adjoined by private rooms for the family. My parents’ bedroom was the most convenient to the lobby so that Dad could get up during the night to admit a customer. The rest of the family had their own living— and bedrooms. There was a large dining room to serve the public.

There were wood and coal burning stoves in the lobby and dining room. There was no heat in any of the other rooms - even for the permanent guests of which there were several. A tire escape arrangement was below each window. It consisted of an eye screw with a large manila rope attached to it, the other end laid beneath it.

There was no plumbing. Several times a day my dad would carry water to a tank so that those who would use the washroom off the lobby could tum a faucet for water. As many times each day he would carry off the waste water that had run through the drain.

Guest rooms on the second floor were reached from a stairway in the lobby. Each room had its own wash stand with china bowl and pitcher, and a covered white porcelain slop jar which became my responsibility to empty at the same time refilling the pitchers and supplying clean linen.

I took the slop jars to a double outhouse behind the hotel — one side for men, the other for women. There was also a 2-story wash house and storeroom where my mother did all the laundry for the hotel and the family. A walkway on the second story of the hotel connected to the second story of the wash house and saved carrying the linens up and down the lobby stairs.

I am amazed at my mother’s activities and concerns. She was the cook; and her stove, also, was wood or coal burning. There was a long, tin-covered table on which she rolled out her many pie crusts, biscuits, and kneaded her bread daily. There were no cabinets, just open shelves protected by curtains made from unbleached flour sacks.

She bought all her supplies in quantity: 100# bags of sugar, 50# bags of flour; fruits and vegetables in gallon cans; large containers for lard for pie crusts, ten tins at a time. Dad’s garden supplied potatoes and some vegetables. He bought seasonal fruit by the bushel and Mom prepared all those fresh for the table or canned them. There was a Jersey cow, "Old Jers," that supplied the milk, whipping cream and butter. I remember churning. First there was a stone jar with a wooden dasher, then the glass Daisy churn.

Regular customers at the hotel were railroad men who came on the train from Clarinda, west of Diagonal, arriving about 1:00 each day. They came for the noon meal and Mom packed them a lunch for their evening meal. There were, of course, no ` thermos bottles to keep the coffee hot. They carried it in Karo syrup buckets.

In the evening Dad would play cards with the men, except on Sundays there was no card playing. One Sunday afternoon, however, they did have a game going when Dad suddenly looked up and saw the preacher coming. He quickly gathered up all the cards and shoved them out of sight. I came along and saw one card in the floor, picked it up and said, "Dad, here’s a card you must have dropped." He said that he hadn’t any cards so I said, "Then you don’t need this one," and opened the door of the stove and threw it in. That was the end of card playing because it was the only deck they had and they didn’t spend money buying cards.

Mama did all the cleaning, with help from the family. A niece came to help in the kitchen part time, and I remember that it was her father who came each pay day to pick up her check.

Mama was always alert to help when finances ran low. She took in laundry, especially if a family she knew was in some kind of crisis. When work got slow for Dad he started lunching sales for which Mama made lots of buns, and pies by the dozen-mincemeat, apple, pumpkin and gooseberry.

Another winter when we had a need, Dad went to a farm and bought corn, shelled it and Mama made hominy. The process was to put it in lye water in a big kettle on the top of the stove. As soon as it was done she drained off the lye water, washed and washed and washed it until the water was clear and there was no taste of that solution. Then we kids would take it in little pails around to customers. For each sale the buyers would ladle out however much they wanted to buy.

My mother was mid-wife for many babies and, when needed, a nurse. In 1918 she helped various families during the epidemic of Spanish Influenza. One family named Bird lost three members in one night but no one in the Ruby family took it. Mama was civic minded as well, and one time served as mayor of Knowlton.

It was typical of my dad and mama to open our home to those who needed it. Peddlers and tramps were fed. Permanent guests at the hotel were made to feel like family members. Grandma Loe lived there from the time she was widowed until her death in 1945. Two cousins were taken in after their mother died in childbirth. That was when I was 12. The fact is that I almost forgot who was the immediate family. There was always someone needing a place to live.

My half—sister, Alice, who is now 93, and I were very close even though there was a difference of 18 years in our ages. Alice’s son Hans was just three years younger than I and we were also good friends. Alice and her husband Bill lived on a farm northwest of Diagonal and I loved to visit there in the summer. Hans and I would go out in the fields with Bill. I remember lying on our bellies on the plow lays, one on each side, and Bill would take us up and down the rows. We would be filthy dirty when night came and, of course, there was no plumbing for shower or bath. But Alice always anticipated that and had a tub of water which had been sitting in the sun throughout the day.

Alice loved red hair. I didn’t, but on one of those visits she dyed my hair red. I bawled my heart out until Alice could assure me it would wash out.

On the lower land of the farm there was timber with the Platte River running through it. At night the wolves would howl. We could hear them in the house. I slept alone on the second floor in one of the three sparsely furnished bedrooms. Lying there at night I could imagine the wolves were coming right on in, and it was frightening! When I was 15 or 16 I heard about a plane landing in a pasture near town and discovered the pilot would take passengers for $1. I found a way to earn a dollar and took a ride. Mama was furious! She’d have killed me if it had been permitted, and it was probably as much because of the foolish way I’d spent the money as the danger.

There was a telephone exchange in Diagonal. Edith and Dick Herrington had a switchboard in the room where they slept in order that they would be available for emergency calls. I worked there after school for $3 a week. I invested in Postal Savings certificates which could be at the investment rate for $1 each.

There is a family story involving my brother Edgar being asked to play Santa on Christmas Eve, 1936. He agreed but didn’t go home afterward. His wife came to my folks to report that he hadn’t come home and they suspected that he had gone to Toman’s Shoe Store. Mr. Toman was a Bohemian who had a hospitality room in the back of the store where towns fellows gathered to drink. Sure enough Dad found him there. They walked the full length of the street with Edgar obviously drunk. Dad put him to bed. Ever after when there was mention of a need for a Santa Claus, Edgar’s name was always suggested.

Edgar and his family moved to California about 1943 or 1944 where he worked in a defense plant. He died in April, 1969. Loel served in World War II as Lieutenant in the Infantry. He died in Newton, Texas in 1959. Fred married Harriet Evans from Creston. They had two daughters. It was discovered that Harriet had cancer of the female organs. Mama, Grandma Loe and I took care of the two little girls. When Harriet died in 1939 at the age of 21, Dad remarked that he didn’t know why it wasn’t he instead of such a young mother who was needed so much more than he. In April he became ill with cancer and lived only until June 25th of that year. In time Fred remarried. They, too, went to California where he worked in defense. He died January 31st, the night before Alice’s husband’s death on February 1st, 1978. Florence died in September, 1955, the same year that Hans was killed in July. Mama died in November, 1950, just about the time we moved to Osceola.

Cletus Tindle and I were in high school together and became interested in each other. He was born March 23, 1919 on his patents farm home northwest of Diagonal. He, his sister and brother attended the country school near their home, always walking to and from school, taking their lunches. Following graduation from the 8th grade they obtained their high school education in Diagonal. Cletus made his home in Diagonal with his sister and her husband during the school years.

Cletus and I dated from the time I was 15 and throughout our school years. For my 16th birthday he gave me a lovely artificial corsage which made me the envy of my school girl friends. There was no florist from which to make the purchase in Diagonal. It made the gift special, knowing he had bought it on one of the rare trips to Creston.

Diagonal boy's basketball teams were very well known in those clays and had a following of nearly 100% of the community.  Cletus was one of the players. In 1938 they won the Iowa High School Basketball Tournament. This was a particular feat considering that in those days all schools were in the same class, regardless of the size of the school. Diagonal High School’s enrollment would have been 100 or less but basketball was the main activity of the school.

My main activities were in the Speech and Drama Department. I was editor of the high school edition, "Maroon Echos” of the weekly Diagonal Reporter. Both Cletus and I were in the casts of high school plays and operettas. After I graduated I went to Chariton to live with Florence and Dick and worked in the Montgomery Ward office.

Cletus was inducted into the Army on April 30, 1942 at Fort Des Moines. And when he was on furlough in 1943 he returned to Iowa for us to be married. I followed him and thus shared many experiences of wives of military men.

He was sent to St Louis and assigned to the Jefferson Proving Ground in Madison, Indiana. Cletus was a radio operator at the control tower. One of the captains while he was there was Capt. Charles Sweeney, the only person who flew both missions when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; He recently appeared on television and told about his missions in a speech at the National Press Associations annual dinner. There has been criticism of our having dropped the bombs but he defended it adamantly as having shortened the war, saving many lives.

His choice of career after the war ended was influenced by my developing an extreme pain in my lower back. That was in 1947, I had gone by train to Chariton and then with my sister Florence and her son, John, to Alameda, California to visit our brother Edgar and family. Edgar recommended that I go to his chiropractor. The adjustment I had during the two-week visit remedied the problem and while visiting in his office Dr. Harrosh talked to me about chiropractic college, suggesting Cletus might be interested. In due time that became our decision and from that point I will refer to the Osceola Sentinel Tribune of Thursday, Dec. 7, 1995.

The title of the article by Frank Morlan: He’s Seen Many Changes in Osceola. Subtitle: Chiropractor CE. Tindle stopped "for a minute", stayed 45 years: “Dr. C.E. Tindle stopped in Osceola for a few minutes in the summer of 1950. Instead, he stayed 45 years. Forty-five wonderful years, he adds. ’I couldn’t have picked a better place.’ reflects the chiropractor.

”Picking Osceola was little more than happenstance. He and his wife, Margaret, enroute to visit his parents in Creston, stopped in Osceola to wish Dr. Charles Norman a happy 80th birthday. The stop was supposed to be for just a few minutes. Margaret Tindle even waited in the car...Norman asked if Tindle would be interested in taking over his practice. Discussion and negotiations followed. A few months later Tindles moved to the Norman’s residence on Highway 34. A chiropractic clinic is connected to the house via a breezeway.

"Today, Tindle, active and in good health, is one of the senior members of the business and professional community in Osceola, He’s seen many changes in those 45 years. Some of the changes have been in his profession. Chiropractic is more appreciated and accepted than when he began in 1945. Patients have changed. He has several families who are five generations of patients. He’s seen many changes in rural Iowa. Farmers were the largest occupational group when he started. Farms have decreased and ’factory’ jobs in Osceola have multiplied. Snowdon, Inc. was the biggest employer when Tindle came to Osceola. Some 120 people manufactured garments, 'Aren’t we fortunate to have those good industries' he says. 'Near1y 1,600 factory jobs.'

“It takes someone with Tindle’s overview to appreciate the changes in Osceola. Every church structure in town, except the Presbyterian, has been built since he came to the community. Every school building has been replaced with new facilities. Streets have been paved, one courthouse torn down, replaced by another. Business owners and business operations have changed. Lifestyles and schedules have changed. For 21 years Tindle worked six days a week plus Wednesday and Saturday nights. The town was full of farm families on Saturday nights, he recalls. One thing hasn’t changed. Osceola and southern Iowa has always had ’good, honest, hard-working people,” Tindle says. 'And they are so friendly'.

"The Tindles are from southern Iowa. Both he and Margaret graduated from Diagonal High School. He is justly proud of being a guard on the basketball team that won the state championship in 1938, beating far larger schools, Cedar Rapids and Ames. He served in the Air Force during World War H. After he was discharged in 1945 he attended the Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport.

"The Tindles, married 52 years, have one daughter, Cindy. She and her husband, Jim Smith, are attorneys in Des Moines. Cindy graduated from Osceola High School in 1969, earned an undergraduate degree in three years at the University of Iowa, and met Jim while they were law students at Drake University.

"The Tindles now have two houses. They are in Osceola the first of the week. On Thursday afternoons they go to West Des Moines where they have a house just five blocks from the Smiths.  A perfect location for being grandparents to Jordan, 10, and Colin, 8." (Used by permission of Frank Morlan.)

Cindy and Jim Smith were married Jan. 4, 1975. Their son Jordan was born in 1985, Colin in 1987. In 1996 Jordan is certain that he is destined to play on the Bull’s Team — his concern being who will take care of his clothes when he moves to Chicago. Colin gives indications of becoming a writer, much like his mother. He is saving his money so he and his grandmother can go to Antarctica.

"Doc" and Margaret have traveled extensively to Europe — every country except Poland; to India, and twice to each China, Australia and New Zealand. They have taken the grandsons to Europe and marvel at their interest in historic sites.
Frank Morlan concluded his article, "As for his future Tindle has no plans to retire. ’As long as I feel well and can free my patients of aches and pains, I’ll keep on working’ he says."

The Tindles’ recipes for living are woven within their story. Margaret shares Doc’s interest in people and they have been helpful in quiet ways unknown to other than the recipients. Their "seizing the moment" and moving to Osceola when the opportunity was there is exemplary.  Many people let those moments go by and later regret it or don’t realize that they have happened.

(Christ, the beloved Son) is himself before
all things, and in him all things hold
together. He is the head of the body, the
church; he is the beginning, the firstborn of
the dead, so that he might come to have
first place in everything.
(Col.  1:17-18 Favorite Bible verses
Of Lourie Clarke)

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Last Revised April 29, 2012