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Marjorie Appling Hough

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This is a note about my historical posts or original poetry on this group. I usually sign them off with a "copyright" notation, even those I wrote for the newspaper. That does not mean you cannot share them freely. It's to protect my poetry and essays as best I can, but I like to see the history columns (like the one I just posted about Jess Easley) shared on this group and you don't have to have my permission to do so.
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If you have lived in Lebanon long enough to remember Jess Easley, you are fortunate indeed. And if you ever got your hands on a copy of the transcript of the tapes he dicated about downtown Lebanon, you are doubly fortunate. Milan and I fall into both categories. Jess spent many days “gabbing” with Fred Pitts and Milan in Pitts’ Barber Shop in the basement of what we still call the Joe Knight Building on the northwest corner of Commercial and Madison.
That building itself has quite a history. The first building burned on Valentine’s Day 1943 but Joe rebuilt it in 1948. An elevator was put in which gave access to the basement and the other floors which housed doctor and dentist offices among other businesses.
Fred and Milan cut hair in the basement barber shop. Milan began working with Fred in 1968 and I hated the creaky old elevator which always sounded like it was going to quit somewhere in the middle of the shaft. It finally died a natural death in 2007 after we moved the barber shop.
But I digress. I want to share some of Jess Easley’s stories with you. When Jess wasn’t in the barber shop, he could be found at the Commercial Hotel with “just a bunch of fellas who drink coffee over there all the time” as he put it in an interview with Daily Record Editor Rich Brown in January 1977 where Jess was commemorating his 86th birthday with some of those “fellas”.
Jess had been told he was born on a bad blustery day in January 1891 and he took delight in talking about the Lebanon winters as he was growing up. One winter activity that Jess vividly remembers is ice-cutting which he believed began in Lebanon in the 1880’s.
Every grocery store in those days had a meat house which required ice for refrigeration to keep the meat fresh. The grocers hired people to cut ice out of a pond or river to put in their ice house and store for the summer. Jess said most of the ice was cut on the Railroad Pond. He remembers helping cut ice when he was just a little boy.
His favorite winter activity was ice skating. Again the principal pond locally was the Railroad Pond. Jess recalled seeing as many as 150 people skating there at one time. Jess said a few girls could skate although the majority of them were “no good as skaters.”
The boys would play shinny, a game like hockey but without regulations. An old tin can or block of wood served as a puck, and the boys used a branch from a tree as their stick. Jess said only boys played because the nature of the game was “pretty rough.” (I’m sure he didn’t take into account the way girls had to dress in the early nineties.)
Whenever ice covered the ground, skating was about the only way to get around. Jess would skate from his home on 704 Second Street all the way to school. “We skated everywhere.” Carl Barrows, Lebanon’s first mail carrier, carried his entire route on skates.
My information on the exact location of the Railroad Pond is a little sketchy because there were several ponds but we believe the Railroad Pond was located in the same area as Fast Eddie’s is now.
I look forward to sharing more Jess Easley memories with you in the weeks to come.
©Joan Rowden Hart 2017
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My grandma is in here. I'm guessing several of you have family members in this picture, too.
May be an image of 3 people and text that says 'LEBANON REBEKAH LODGE Lebanon Rebekah Lodge No. 680 officers are shown here in 1970. First row, from left, Lois Atchley, Irene Hill, Opal Todd, Isabel Amos, Sarah Smith, Delia Crismon, Rose Eilenstein secono lessie Peterson Nellie Damo Ola Caltan ambath'
Another really cool selection from the VHS that I digitalized from Katie Haney. The Star theater in Lebanon being built and opening day. Is that Gene Autry?! I hate that we don't have the original film reels but they are probably long gone at this point, unfortunately the VHS has a bit of damage causing the static in some of the clips... but at least we have this, enjoy!
0:00 / 3:36
Eddie Smith made the front page of the weekend edition of the Lebanon paper with a fantastic picture and story of the Lebanon High School Museum he is putting together. So much good information you will love. See if you can pick up a copy at the newspaper office or somewhere. Not letting you have mine, of course.
Ryan Clark, we have tons of information on the wholestore store and Dick's store on this group. My husband (the barber) and Dick Clark (men's clothing) were each other's best customers. My son-in-law would drive down from Jefferson City to shop there. I write historical articles for the Lebanon paper especially on Lebanon businesses and I wanted so much to sit down with Dick and do a long interview with him, but he would just grin and say he really wasn't in to talking about family history so I respected that. The following information from his obituary probably has as much information as anybody could get from him unless they knew him personally.
I recently put a notice in about the death of Dick Clark and mentioned his family history which goes back to the very begnning of Lebanon. Here is the obituary as published on Holman-Howe's web page. Notice the allusion to his family history.
Obituary for Richard “Dick” Demuth Clark (Lebanon)
Richard Demuth Clark, son of Henry B. “Bud” and Dorothy Demuth Clark, was born January 13, 1938, in Springfield, Missouri. He departed this life Sunday, May 8, 2022, in his home, near Lebanon, Missouri, at the age of eighty-four years, three months, and twenty-five days.
He was preceded in death by his parents; a brother, James Whitley Clark; and several aunts.
“Dick”, as he was called by his family and friends, is survived by two sons, Tony Clark, and his wife, Tara, of Boston, Massachusetts, and Ryan Clark, and his wife, Amy, of Kansas City, Missouri; four grandchildren, Hollen, Darren, Brendan, and Mason; as well as a host of other relatives and many friends.
He was born and raised in Laclede County, near Lebanon, Missouri, and was a direct descendent of two Lebanon Pioneer families, both the Clarks and the Demuths, who were instrumental in the development of the Lebanon Wholesale Grocers. Although Dick was very humble and quiet about his family history, he was proud to be associated with the business history that began with his family.
Dick graduated from Lebanon High School and then attended Drury University for a couple of years, where he played golf and basketball. He founded and operated Clarks Men’s Wear in downtown Lebanon, a business which he ran for fifty years.
He was a longtime member of First Christian Church of Lebanon, where again his family was a part of the church history for many years.
He belonged to the Lebanon Country Club and enjoyed playing golf throughout his life. He liked sports of all kinds and was a huge fan of the St. Louis Cardinals. He enjoyed listening to their games, and often had the radio playing in the background at the store whenever there was a game on. He was very faithful and devoted to his store which a fixture in downtown Lebanon for a number of years. He loved his family dearly and especially enjoyed having time with his grandchildren.
Dick was a loving father, grandfather, and was a caring neighbor and friend. We celebrate his life and know that his family and friends will hold tight to the wonderful memories he made for them during his eighty-four years.

A memorial has been established to First Christian Church and donations many be left at the funeral home.
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Kirk in his Looking Back column mentions several from 50 years ago, so if you are working on a timeline for Lebanon, these were some of the businesses in operation 50 years ago: Joe Knight Drug, Rechter's, Ben Franklins, I.L. Scott Clothing, French's Studio, Western Auto, Hough's Children's Wear, Casey's, H.W. Scott Shoes, Medley Drug, Ketner's Clothing, CaHail's Otasco, Appling Furniture, Fairway Department, and John O'Neil Variety.
I wrote this for the newspaper several years ago.
JESS EASLEY'S MEMORIES OF DOWN TOWN 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 .
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. It 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. He was a perfectionist and that's probably why I am also and if I made a teeny mistake on the original, I had to erase all 6 copies, or pull them out and start completely over. That's when I learned to proof read quickly before it got too bad.
© Joan Rowden Hart (working from Jess Easley's original manuscript.)
These two gals (Linda-Dean McGuire Nebo
Junebug Lisa Campbell, and Thomas Santillo Sr. and others have posted one of the most comprehensive pieces of history we have ever had on this group. It is an area about which I know practically nothing so I can't even describe it to you. Some of it is over the county line, but still close enough to count. It involves a place called Bloodland and concerns land which the military took when Fort Leonard Wood was built. I can't tell you much more than that because I don't know much about it but if this is an area which is meaningful to you, be sure and read this.
Not everybody I write about is dead. Here is a column I wrote in 2017.
Civil War History Preserved in Laclede County
Jack ”Bubba” Burgess is a man with a mission and he is passionate about sharing it with others. As a young boy he often tagged along with his parents as they searched for arrowheads in the Sleeper and Stoutland areas, and this was the beginning of his love for history.
He still enjoys looking for Indian artifacts but about four years ago he became fascinated with learning more about how the Civil War played out in Laclede County and surrounding areas. The more he learned about it, the more he realized that this part of the Ozarks is rich in Civil War history but so few people seem to be aware of it.
Thus, his second sense of mission came into being - the desire to document his finds and share that knowledge with others. He would like to see the young people in our school systems here in the county learn and develop an appreciation of this part of our past.
He told me that his passion for learning this part of our history has become so addictive that he has given up hunting and fishing in order to focus all his energy on using his metal detector to search in the soil and among the trees and bushes and along the fence rows for relics of the Civil War.. And lest you think these items are found only in the rural areas, he told me that not too long ago a twelve pound cannon ball was found in Nelson Park here in the city and a civil war rifle scope was found in the old courthouse square in Old Town.
Bubba is not alone in his obsession with Civil War history and relics. He is just one of a group of men and women who meet monthly to compare notes and discuss their finds and exchange information about the best areas to search. The Old Town courthouse square in Lebanon has been a treasure trove over the years with finds of bullets, buttons and other evidences of military encampment.
His biggest find so far is a sword belt buckle, but he was also fortunate to come upon the remains of a union camp off Tuscumbia Road near Sleeper last summer where he found more than one hundred .69 caliber bullets and some melted lead square nails. He is still hunting for the elusive cannon ball which would be the epitome of a successful hunt..
Metal detecting for Civil War relics is pretty much a year round hobby, even in the dead of winter, unless the ground is frozen too hard for him to do any digging. He said the detectors can pick up the presence of metal even in frozen ground.
The biggest challenge he and his detecting buddies face is gaining permission from landowners to search on their property. These men are professionals in what they do and they have a high respect for the land and it is part of their group’s ethics to leave the
​land in as good a condition as they find it and even better if possible. They will never enter and dig on land without getting the landowner’s permission first, and will often offer to share some of their finds with the owner.
The group has a Facebook page called Laclede County Treasure Trackers.
Lebanon Historian Frances Gleason in her book “The First Hundred Years” writes in detail about how the Civil War affected Lebanon:
“Up to this time (1860) the community had held together solidly by common ties of sympathy and understanding. The people originally coming from the same places had lived in all the friendliness of a pioneer environment. Although opinions differed on the great problems of the time, as yet there was no sentiment for disunion.”
She went on to write that the beginning of the Civil War changed all that. “Lebanon would have suffered far less had it been settled by people from (extremely different areas of the country). Never again did the little town on the hill recover the original good fellowship and unity which characterized the days of its early settlement as the worst spirit developed and neighbors became suspicious of each other.
In the early summer of 1861, Lebanon was occupied as a military post by the union troops until they advanced with the army to the battle of Wilson Creek August 10th. After the retreat of the federal army to Rolla following this engagement, the Confederate troops occupied the town until January 22, 1862 when the federal army under General Curtis again took possession. (Lebanon) remained in the hands of the federal army until the close of the war.”
Copyright 2017 Joan Rowden Hart
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This is a throwback to a cold January day in 2018 when I wrote this column for the newspaper so some content is dated, but still has some good downtown history featuring Bud Clark.

This week I enjoyed visiting with Lebanon’s Bud Clark about the Glory Days of Lebanon. If that is a new term to you younger readers, it is defined in the Urban Dictionary as a certain time when you reminisce about the” “good old days” however you define them. Another dictionary of colloquialisms says that Glory Days were the “most successful time that someone or something has experienced - a past period of better times.”
Your remembrance of Lebanon’s Glory Days will vary according to your age group. For Bud and for me and for most of you, if I know the majority of my readers as well as I think I do, we look upon the late 1940’s through the early part of the 1970’s as the best times to live and work and shop and play and yes, partake of Lebanon’s many good eating establishments.
I associate Bud and his wife Patsy with the Farm Supply Store in the 100 block of West Commercial. In fact, I didn’t know until this week that he changed the name to Clark’s Hardware about six months after buying the business in 1974. It was always Farm Supply to me as long as it was there. I never bought any farm supply items from him. In fact I didn’t even know there were any there. I just went in to see the beautiful dishes and other colorful ceramic items for home decor.
Some of you will remember that the previous owner, Ralph Butts, died the night before the sale was to be finalized and the deal was consummated with his son with the help of Lebanon attorney Dave Donnelly who is related to the Butts family.
Bud has always liked to collect and trade knives and he has some special ones. His favorite is the knife that Missouri Governor Phil M. Donnelly kept in his desk drawer in the Capitol building in Jefferson City. Another unique knife is called a “hobo knife” because the blade could be transformed into a knife and fork for eating when you were out riding the rails or living in a hobo camp.
Bud and his wife sold the business in 1982, and he went to work for Tony Thornton Auctions out of Springfield. Bud was licensed in seven states and conducted auctions all over the country. He would do the clerking and other paperwork as well as doing the auctioneering for many of the sales. They did all kinds of auctions, including large farm auctions. His record of which he is quite proud is that in 1984 he had sales totalling $3.7 million in just six hours in the Joplin area.
Bud grew up in the Tuscumbia area and attended Iberia High School, graduating in 1957. Some of the highlights of the school years there occurred when the school would put the kids on a bus and drive them to Lebanon for an evening of skating at the Roll-A-Rena here in Lebanon. Bud said it was real easy to slip away from the group, so he and his buddies would take the long trek to the far East end of Commercial to partake of Vern Wilkerson’s delicious local cuisine.
Bud said the Iberia seniors worked long and hard their senior year to earn enough money for their senior trip to Silver Dollar City in 1957. They were able to rent motel rooms and got their breakfast free, and each student was given $4.00 a day for food and other entertainment, like going down into Marvel cave at SDC. In fact the cave was basically all that was there in 1957.
Bud started his business enterprises in Lebanon when he moved here in 1964 and eventually he and his parents opened the Shepherd Hills Standard Gas Station on City Route 66. He bought Farm Supply in 1974 and kept busy taking care of both businesses with the help of his wife until 1981 when he sold the Standard Station and shortly afterward he sold Farm Supply.
Lebanon was good to Bud Clark, and he was certainly good for the town. And when it comes to the local family owned businesses in any small town, that is the way it should always be.

Addendum dated today January 16 2024. I can't remember what Lebanon business is now located in the old Farm Supply store but hopefully someone will see it and remind us. BJH
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We've been talking about old time barbers. Kirk did a whole spread on Fred Pitts in today's newspaper, good pictures, too.

Joan Hart

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One of Laclede County's heroes and veterans.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor stunned all Americans in every part of the United States including the County of Laclede, as our citizens sat glued to their radio sets in utter disbelief. As soon as the initial shock wore off, our young people here began to consider how best they could help. Patriotism was running strong throughout the nation and young men in Laclede County began to sign up for military service.
But it wasn’t just the men. Marjorie Appling had just graduated from Lebanon high school in the spring before the bombing. She had started working at Benage Dairy on East Commercial where her job included working with other employees in counting and wrapping loose change which had been dropped in unwashed empty milk bottles in payment of deliveries and picked up by the drivers and returned to the dairy every afternoon.
She also went to Marshfield regularly to help employees there wrap sticks of butter in a cooled room. Her favorite part of working at Benage was watching them make cottage cheese in large vats 5 feet wide and 10 feet long. It would come out in solid sheets and then be cut into squares.
But she wanted to help in the war effort by joining the WAVES, a unit of the U.S. Naval Reserves. However, the minimum age for enlistment was 21 so she would have to wait until 1944 in order to do that. Her father, being a veteran himself, was not too keen on the idea of her joining the military, so she traveled with an aunt to California and got a job working at Sears & Roebuck until she was old enough to enlist.
After enlisting she traveled by troop train from Los Angeles to NYC, a five day trip, and began six weeks of intensive training in boot camp at Hunter College. She was assigned to the Naval Supply Depot in Clearfield, Utah. The Clearfield depot was a massive supply and distribution center. They shipped 127 tons of supplies every hour, 24 hours a day, 400 carloads a month. It took six carloads of lumber each day just for packing. By the end of the war, the Clearfield depot was the largest supply center in the world.
The Navy believed that if Japan could have bombed the U.S., Utah would be much safer than a location on the coast and there was also a direct route from Utah to San Francisco and San Diego.
Marjorie’s job at Clearfield consisted of operating a Burrough’s Bookkeeping machine in a department with six civilian girls. Her pay was about $90 a month, but of course her expenses were minimal. She never wore civilian clothing the entire time she was in the WAVES. In fact, one reason she chose the WAVES over the WACS was because she liked the design of the uniform much better.
She was discharged in April of 1946 and came home to Lebanon where she and Dean Hough were married in 1947 and started dairy farming in the Oakland vicinity. Laclede County suffered a major drought in 1953 and she applied at the new Sears catalog store which was just opening up in Lebanon. With her prior work experience with Sears, she was hired that very day and with the exception of about a year when she worked for First National Bank here, she worked at Sears until she retired in 1979, with a promotion to Assistant Manager.
She loved the work there but there was no air conditioning so they used large fans and with all the orders coming and going and the need for extensive paperwork, most of their work consisted of keeping the papers in place.
I found it interesting that she mentioned all the orders arrived daily from Kansas City by the historical Campbell 66 freight express, with the logo on their trucks of a large camel and the words “Humpin’ To Please”.
Marjorie, who is now 94 years old and still active and in good health, has many great memories of growing up in Lebanon. On Saturday nights the family would come to town and park on “Main Street”, as most people called Commercial in those days, and visit with family and friends. On the way home, her dad would drive them over to Nelson’s Dream Village where they would park a while and watch the colorful lights in the fountain and listen to the music.
Marjorie was honored by being named one of Laclede County’s Hometown Heroes in 2002, a very well deserved recognition of a Lebanon girl who served her country with distinction.
©Joan Rowden Hart for the Lebanon paper.

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