Lowry Area History - The Great Story Teller

Is this heaven?

My Swedish mother's family emigrated from central Sweden to central Iowa in the early 1900's, americanizing their traditional Swedish name Persson - "son of Per" - to Pearson. Over time the accumulation of Pearsons in Greene County drove my grandfather's brother Carl to change his family's surname to Nyren, which I have been told is Swedish for "new line", although Google translate disputes that. Google translates it to "new clean".  At Iowa family reunions I always wondered who those Nyren party crashers were.

Well, it turns out Carl's idea was not unique. North of Lowry are a concentration of family farmers of Czech origin, known as Bohemians due to their families' immigration from the Kingdom of Bohemia - rather than the "unconventional social habits" associated with the term bohemian. In fact, at the time most of them immigrated, the country of origin was Austria-Hungary, as Czechoslovakia did not come into existence until after WWI. In any case, among this close-knit clan, there are several Hvezda families. Some were known as "Hvezda" and others as "Starr" - "star" being the english translation of the Bohemian word "hvezda".  Why the extra "r" on the name, I do not know. Confusing. As I stem from the Lowry Scandinavian ghetto, I am no expert on Bohemia.

Which after that long introduction brings me to the point of this post. Frank Starr was a renowned Reno Township story-teller and always concluded his stories with "..never would have believed it if it hadn't happened to me".  I know there are dozens of these stories but I can remember but 4.














#1 I was driving across the ice on Lake Reno when I realized I was about to go through. I took matches out of my pocket and put them into my mouth. When my truck hit the bottom of the lake, I got out and started walking the bottom of the lake until my head hit ice. I got into a crouch and heaved up to break the ice. I crawled out, went on shore and found some drift wood and started a fire with the matches from my mouth, got warm and then walked home. Never would have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me.




#2 I have some property on Cass Lake. I was working along the beach one day and huge mosquitoes attacked me. I ran for the cabin but saw I couldn’t make it, so I crawled under a wooden boat that was upside down on sawhorses. The mosquitoes landed on the boat and ran their stingers through the boat. I took my hammer and bent the stingers over and suddenly there was blue sky. The mosquitoes had flown off with my boat. Never would have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me.



#3 I noticed my cows milk production had dropped and I couldn’t understand why. So I went out to the pasture. There was plenty of grass and water available from the lake. The cows were standing in the lake with water up to their bellies. I chased them out and found mud turtles hanging from their teats. Never would have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me.


#4 Up at Cass Lake I had a tree I wanted removed so I climbed up the tree and hooked a hay rope high in the tree. I hooked the other end to the double-trees hitched to my team of horses. I said giddy-up and the horses pulled the tree over. Suddenly the tree was back to vertical and I was standing holding the lines and the harnesses were up in the tree. Never would have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me. 




{Editor note:  if you know any more of the great story-teller's stories, send them to me and I'll append them here.}