No one had more fun in life than Charlie Mammen and we will always be grateful for his poems and the colorful history above which was written shortly before he died. There were others who could always see the humor of every day life, and one of these is Mrs. L. Roy Klatt (Ludy Pecks) now living at Vermillion, S.D. We are grateful to her for the following bits of humor "Mr. Kennedy (manager of the creamery) hired a half-breed Indian to haul cream. The stranger shared Shorty Irwin's apartment with him and on weekends they would get drunk on lemon extract. One night early in the Spring, Shorty went over to Ott Peck's house (drunk) and wanted Ott to come down and help him, as he said the Indian was going to kill him. Ott told him to wait, that he would get his clothes on and go back with him. The only clothes Shorty had on was a necktie, and it being rather cool, no doubt he decided that he didn't want to stand out there in the cold and so he wandered down to Sam Diediker's house. Sam was in no mood to be disturbed from his sleep at that hour of the night so he tied Shorty to his porch post with the necktie, where Ott found him and took him to the jail for the rest of the night.
On Saturday nights after the dance there was always a mad scramble to get to Richards for lunch. One time Mike Flaherty, who used to be the depot agent at Dalton went with us as he had no date. We all ordered hamburgers and Mike ordered an egg sandwich. They had a girl helping in the kitchen and no doubt in the rush of things, she over fried the egg. (In those days Charley and Dolly served those big buns and the hamburgers were of equal size.) The new girl put the shriveled up egg on one of those oversized buns and brought it in and put it on the table. When Mike lifted up the top side of the bun and the egg was fried down into almost nothing, he looked at the rest of us and said, "Say, just look at this, they slipped me the joker."
Adolph Haak, a bachelor and a rather odd character, used to come to Brunsville quite often and whenever he did he had the habit of racing his team down thru main street. This irritated Ott Pecks, who was the town's mayor, because he thot Adolph was abusing his team, so one day he had Adolph arrested for speeding. This made Adolph kinda mad and so the next time he came to town he stopped his team on the edge of town, got off and walked his team down through the streets of town just as slow as they would go.
One day Charlie Mammon and Ed Eilers were in Boysen's bank after a farm sale. They were talking things over and Charlie said that the conversation reminded him of a story. It seems that this farmer had a real good dog, but the dog got very sick and the farmer being afraid that the dog would die sent for a veterinarian. The Vet. examined the dog and said he didn't think that there was anything that he could do for the dog, that it would die very slowly, by the inch. Several weeks later the farmer went to town and met the Vet. on the street. The Vet asked, "How did the dog come out?" The farmer said, "Oh, he died all right, but not the way you said he would." The Vet. said, "How did he die then?" "Oh," the farmer said, "you said he would die by the inch, but the dog went towards the barn and died by the yard."
Brunsville, Iowa
51008
