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Jess Easley's Memories of Lebanon 07.11.12


Jess Easley’s Memories of Downtown Lebanon

I’m going back into Jess Easley’s book about early Lebanon to share some of his memories with you.  Jess was born in 1891 and died in 1983, and sometime around 1980 he recorded his memories of Commercial Street from 1896 to 1900.  The tapes were transcribed by volunteers at the Laclede County Historical Society but  the last time I checked the book was out of print.

The booklet is full of interesting details about life in Lebanon and its people at the close of the 19th century, details that only someone living here in that time period would know.

For example, Jess tells about a Racket store located on New Street which is the alley currently running west from Madison between the Knight Building and Wehner’s Bakery.  In Jess’ time it went all the way over to Jefferson and there was a two story frame building  facing Jefferson which housed a hotel on the corner.  The Racket store was located in one of three business rooms inside that building.

I had no idea what a racket store was but since unfamiliar words intrigue me, I researched and found  the name referred to a five and dime store, or variety store.  (It was about this time that Woolworth’s opened its ten cent store in New York City.)

In my growing up days in Lebanon, I guess one of the local racket stores would have been O’Neil’s Variety Store on W. Commercial.  I loved that place!  I need to do a column on it sometime, about the time school starts maybe, because that was my favorite store to buy school supplies.

But I digress.  Jess Easley goes on to say that a man by the name of  Buchannon owned the Racket Store on New Street back in his boyhood days.

Jess refers to a newspaper office just north of this two story frame building.  He identifies the newspaper as the Centinal operated by W.D. Cogle.  My research shows a Lebanon newspaper during that time period called The Laclede County Sentinel which was purchased by  H.B. Cowgill in 1881. 

The similarity in the names of the newspaper and the editor during the same time period would indicate they are one and the same.  I realize that in trying to tell these stories of Lebanon history I may sometimes raise more questions than I can answer, but one of my goals is to involve you readers who know more than I do about the  matter, and we can use our collective knowledge and memories to put together a more accurate history for future generations of Laclede County history buffs.

Jess describes a “hitching lot” about 100 feet square on the northeast corner of Jefferson and Commercial at the alley. Just east of it  there was a livery stable with a lean-to on each side running the full length of the building.  The lean-to on the east side contained straw and was used for keeping horses.  The lean-to on the west side was used by people coming into town from the country to stay a day or two.  They would drive into this lean-to area and park their wagons there.  They would actually sleep in their wagons, or anywhere in the barn they could find to bed down.

It seems like I remember reading in Jacob Blickensderfer’s diary about him using this livery stable to house his horse and wagon when he came to Lebanon to meet the train, kind of a fore-runner to  airport parking lots, I guess.

Jess also makes a brief reference to the Rice-Stix factory which aroused my curiosity.  I was raised by my grandmother, Nellie Dame, who supported us by working at Rice-Stix.

Jess says that Dr. Al McCombs lived in a square two story house on the corner of Adams and Commercial and when “they” built the Rice-Stix factory there, the McCombs house was bought by Ward Owen and moved to the corner of  Third and Washington and made into an apartment house.

I have done some research but have been unable to find out who “they” are who built the factory building (which was Reliance before it was called Rice-Stix, I think) and when it was built. I have not had time to check the H.D. Lee records to see if that information is available there. 

I had just started working for John F. Low in the early sixties when H.D. Lee began to negotiate with the Trustees for the Citizens of Lebanon who held title to the building, as I recall.  Mr. Low was heading up that project.  I believe he was President of the Chamber of Commerce at the time.

One thing I do remember is how I got initiated into the legal secretary business right away because I had the job of typing all the contracts and related documents for the Trustees.  I worked on an old manual typewriter at my desk just in front of Mr. Low’s office.  He would dictate all the documents and I would take dictation in shorthand then transcribe it, making an original and five carbon copies on legal size (8 ½ x14) paper.

If I made a typographical error it was usually easier to start all over with a clean set of six sheets of paper than it was to erase the error on all those sheets, so I would estimate I filled my wastepaper can full of trashed paper hundreds of times  during the process, which took over a month as I can remember.

I’ve often wondered how many times Mr. Low contemplated firing me just to save paper.
And I would also love to have that typewriter in my antique collection!

But I need to get back to Jess’ comment about the Rice-Stix building long enough to close this out by saying that I’m still looking for information about the building itself.  If any of you have information in that regard I would appreciate hearing from you.  My email address is joanrowdenhart@gmail.com and I’m on Facebook as Joan Hart.

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