Archive for the ‘Pocahontas Grain Elevator I’ Category

Pocahontas, Iowa, in the Summer of 1949 (Part II)

January 23, 2011

To make sense of this post, it would probably help to refer to Part I. While Part I definitely is about the summer of 1949, this Part II post is more of a potpourri about the general location (past and present) of Arlene Brockney’s story of when she was a teenager in 1949. Also, referring to the post titled Pocahontas, Iowa: One Subject Equals Two Paintings will explain about Mother’s (Marion Gunderson) almost identical watercolors of the Pocahontas grain elevator, painted the same year as Arlene’s story…1949.

This is an eBay photo of Pocahontas, Iowa. The camera is at the east looking basically to the west. In the upper left corner is just a tad of Highway 3 with what looks like one car on it. Also at the upper left is what I'm thinking is a gas station at the location of the current Pocahontas branch building of the Rolfe State Bank. The water tower in this photo no longer exists. The grain elevator annex (the 2nd tallest large building in this photo) was not present at the time Mother (Marion Gunderson) painted her two Pocahontas grain elevator watercolors. According to the Pocahontas County History (1981) the 200,000 bushel annex was built in 1954. Also according to the history, a new 400,000 bushel silo (not in this photo) was built in 1970. From that, I assume this photo was taken sometime between 1954 and 1970. You can also see the car dealership in the bottom center of the photo. The train tracks in this photo run from southeast (lower left) to northwest (upper right) along the southwest side of the grain elevator. After looking closely at Mother's watercolors of the Pocahontas grain elevator, I see that the railroad cars were between her and the grain elevator. With that in mind, I'm assuming Mother painted her Pocahontas Grain Elevator watercolors at a vantage point south or south-southwest of the grain elevator. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

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My research about Mother’s vantage point for her two 1949 Pocahontas grain elevator watercolors included my talking with Bob Bellows, Rolfe State Bank Vice-President. Bob works at the branch office in Pocahontas. On my behalf, he conducted research of his own. According to Bob’s source, there had been a double-wide trailer where the Rolfe State Bank branch building now sits. Bob and I are assuming it is the same trailer in which Arlene Brockney lived. (Arlene’s story is in Part I.)

Bob also said there was a DX station (as Arlene also mentioned) closer to Highway 3. The DX station was owned by Jerry Hotovec. The DX station was sold and another building built at the same location in the mid-’60s. This building was the Superior 400, which later became a Gulfstream station, and then was the Pro Coop’s cartrol (i.e., credit card-only station.) The former location of those businesses is now the location of the current bank branch parking lot. It is sandwiched between the Highway 3 and the south side of the branch bank building.

The Rolfe State Bank branch in Pocahontas opened in September of 2001…in a trailer (different than the one Arlene mentioned) which was to the south of the current RSB building. On March 1st of 2004, the Rolfe State Bank moved from the trailer into the present branch building.

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(Click on photo to enlarge.)

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*In case you missed it, here is my oldest sister Clara’s comment from Part I about Mother’s watercolors of the Pocahontas grain elevator.

I remember going with Mother once when she painted the Pocahontas elevator. Although we probably were with other members of the Barr Art Association, I don’t remember if they were there or it was just Mother. Nor do I recall how old I would have been, but if it was this painting, I was probably seven.

One thing that we didn’t discover until recently is that sometimes Mother created more than one painting of the same thing. We think it’s the same, but when we look closely we discover differences. That’s true with this elevator painting. We don’t know if Mother was so intrigued with the painting that she did another, if she was trying to correct a flaw (she always thought of something that could be improved), or if she was creating another painting for someone else.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

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1940s Construction and Watercolors of the Pocahontas, Iowa, Grain Elevator (Part II)

February 18, 2010

(Click here to go to this blog’s home page.)

In 1949, Mother (Marion Gunderson) painted two watercolors of the Pocahontas, Iowa, grain elevator/concrete silos. (Information about those two and other watercolors is available at “View and Order Prints.”)

Mother's (Marion Gunderson) signature on one of her 1949 watercolors of the Pocahontas, Iowa, grain elevator.

Not long before Mother painted those watercolors in 1949, Mike Hood, formerly of Pocahontas, watched that same Pocahontas grain elevator being built. The following is a continuation of Part I of Mike’s recollection. Most of the information below is about Mike’s family, but gives a “visual” of the 1940s. Mike was 8 or 9 years old at that time. As you read the rest of his essay, try to imagine looking through his eyes as a child…more than sixty years ago.

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By Mike Hood

(continued from Part I)

We had a pony named Fancy and a lovely little four-wheel black buggy with yellow wheels, that I was the right age to use. I could harness the pony and would drive the rig for hours in a hay field of about 10 acres south of our house. That house still stands on the west side of the road one-quarter of a mile north of the Pocahontas County Courthouse. (Grandfather Michael Linnan’s name is on a wall in the courthouse because he was a County Supervisor when it was built in the 1920s.) I remember that sometimes I would meet my cousins and give them a ride for that last quarter mile on the little buggy. I remember, too, that they would be dead tired from the hard work of pouring concrete for those long 12-hour shifts.

Pocahontas Grain Elevator II prints are available in three sizes: Small (Limited Edition, 10" W x ~12.3" H, $25). Grand (Limited Edition, ~ 17.9" W x 22" H, $50). Largest (20" W x ~24.5" H, same size as the original). Click photo to enlarge.

Jim’s and Frank’s motive, of course, was money for college. Their father, Uncle Charles Linnan, of rural Laurens, rented a 160-acre farm and was not extremely money prosperous in those days. Both of those boys graduated from the University of Iowa. Jim Linnan had a successful career at Ruan in Des Moines, and was the mayor of Clive, Iowa, when he died suddenly of a heart attack in the spring of 1970.

My uncle Bill Linnan was the father of Donald Linnan, of Storm Lake and former County Engineer of Buena Vista County, of Fr. Roger Linnan, who continues as a popular parish priest who served at Jefferson, Manson, Spencer and even now in his 70s at Haywarden, and of Karen Brown, who is married to a retired dentist from Montana, now retired in Sioux City.

All of those cousins were college graduates and were an inspiration to me. I was an editor at Successful Farming and Country America magazines, and now oversee our several farms and photograph antique tractors for calendars.

I remember very clearly sitting on the roof of the chicken house on that Pocahontas farm and counting five concrete grain elevators in what must have been the summer of 1950. Those would have been at Pocahontas, Havelock, Plover, Rolfe and Gilmore City. Obviously, the concrete grain storage technology caught on very rapidly.

We moved from our wonderful Pocahontas 160-acre place to a 305-acre farm bordering Columbia, Missouri, in March of 1951, and in a few years I would be hauling wheat to an old-fashioned tin-sided elevator on hot July days and nights. The famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright called those grain elevators the skyscrapers of the prairies. Indeed!

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(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

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Pocahontas, Iowa: One Subject Equals Two Paintings

June 16, 2009

Pocahontas Grain Elevator I Limited Edition prints are available in the original painting size of 13.25" W x 17.25" H, $35. Click on photo to enlarge.

"Pocahontas Grain Elevator I" Limited Edition prints are available in the original painting size of 13.25" W x 17.25" H, $35. Click on photo to enlarge.

(Click here to go to this blog’s home page.)

In 1949, my mother (Marion Gunderson) painted two versions of the Pocahontas, Iowa, grain elevator.  For the longest time, my family thought there was only one version.  In her photo album, Mother had a snapshot of her watercolor I now call Pocahontas Grain Elevator I (Pocahontas I for short).  It is one of the watercolors Joe and Norine Reigelsberger returned last September.  (For an explanation, see  “If It Weren’t for Ruth Simonson and Reigelsbergers…“as well as another post.)

Decades ago, my mother gave to my husband, Bill Shimon, a different, but almost identical painting of the Pocahontas grain elevator.  I call Bill’s version/painting Pocahontas Grain Elevator II (Pocahontas II for short).

As mentioned, until last September, I thought Mother’s snapshot was of the painting she gave to Bill.  How excited I was to learn from Reigelsbergers that they had the “snapshot” painting of the Pocahontas grain elevator.  Both paintings are now displayed in Bill’s and my home.

Because the two Pocahontas paintings are somewhat similar, I am pointing out two main differences between the paintings. Click here to see photo of second painting.

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