Today we’ll salute a man I greatly admired and is deserving of inclusion here. Unfortunately, many who read this do not have a living memory of him, so hopefully we can describe him in adequate terms. His grave marker can be found in the Sheldon Cemetery with the simple inscription “Vincent Meierotto 1903-1972.”
Without a picture of him in your mind, his severe physical handicap doesn’t appear.Vin went about living each day with a withered leg and arm on one side of his body. I don’t know the cause of his condition, whether it originated in birth, injury, or illness. Three of his sisters married into the Spiekermeier family, i.e. Laurence, Herman, and John, and possibly facts of it can be commented on by one of their descendants.
I remember him working at Eph’s garage where he fixed flat tires. Yes, I said he fixed flat tires. He would lay the tire flat to the floor and take up two iron bars with which he showed a mastery of manipulation. He would jam a flat end of one bar into the rim and lean into it breaking the bead. A practiced expert at working his way around the tire, he soon had access to the tube to pull it out. If there would have been such a thing as a contest fixing tires, he might have won with that one hand constantly tucked into his pocket.
Noon time found him limping over to Ida’s Cafe for dinner and limping back again when he finished. He lived his life as independently as he could, and overcame his frailties with poise and self-assurance. When I close my eyes and find him in memory, he is reaching over to lift a bib overall strap that had slipped off his sloped shoulder and fallen to his elbow. Vin was a quiet man who minded his own affairs, another person who made his way into the fabric of the community.
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