While cleaning out some old crowded files, we ran across this postcard received in 2012. It brought back a flood of memories to this Sheldonite. The old town hall was the center of our lives for a long while. We played our basketball games in there, acted in our class plays, marched to graduations on its stage, attended school carnivals, two-stepped and waltzed at public dances, roller skated, and so much more. Bobby Vee who went on to international stardom played there with his Shadows once, but I remember feeling bad that so few attended.
Next door the building I knew as Newton’s stood where we could buy so much and haul our cream cans, buy chicks, feed, and twine. It went through different phases as a newspaper office and hardware before Newton’s operated their business in it. George and Marlene Bunn ran their business in it for a short time, but, alas, the farm population had declined too much to support it.
Sometimes I’m given to fits of writing poetry to commemorate some occasion, and here is one titled “City Hall Fell.”
October 10, 2005
Bewildered ghosts rose
amid bird-flurry
the day city hall
fell. Heavy steel hands
punched and clawed the bricks
until they succumbed.
Standing there, watching,
one could hear ancient
amalgams of echoes
choking in the dust
as the roof and walls
fell. With their sanctum
destroyed they whispered
their final good-bye.
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