Elizabeth and Gifford Tuttle Story

Note - this first part is Elizabeth telling about her book. The second part, which starts on the bottom part of this page is the Gifford & Elizabeth Tuttle story.

    Elizabeth Tuttle on how the title to her book came about. 

    We talked about what we wanted to do with the money from this book and the first thing is I want the proceeds from the book to be used for handrails at the Museum. We really need them.

     How I came to get the title of my book, “To Get a Prairie Chicken”. I have been a staunch believer that the hand of God is in the prayers of men. I have seen it so many times and I have to believe it even if I didn’t want to believe it.

   When I was a child I was never any good at naming a pet on the farm, we had little dogs, little calves, and little colts. The rest of the family had to name them. I didn’t even name my doll. I just called her Dollie.

     When we got the green light from the publisher, it almost paralyzed me because I had no title for the book. I agonized over that for a few days and one day I was in the kitchen preparing our dinner and all at once, like an arrow had hit me, it came - To Get a Prairie Chicken and I knew I had it. 

     Those words are really in the book because the Badger family, when they came into this area and after they had got close by, probably down south of Chariton there were several wagons traveling together and they all went there own ways going where they had family or relatives. But the wagon that came north had a family in it and one of the members of that family was named Alec and he was a young man. He got out of the wagon and walked behind some distance. They kept saying, “Alec, why don’t you come and ride.” No, he said, “I want to get a Prairie Chicken.” And when I was writing that it never dawned on me that would be the title. I never thought of it until a power above myself said it to me and that is how the title came to be.

- - - - - - - - - - - 

Fred Gay - 
    KYRS news department’s “Under the Looking Glass” in continuing our oral history interviews I have two very interesting people, Gifford and Elizabeth Tuttle, people that were in Chariton in the hardware business for over 35 years. They became locally famous, not only for the kind of store that they had but the service they provided and some of the interesting things that came out of that store. I thought it would be interesting to look at the hardware business and their lives, because they have had interesting lives.

Elizabeth -

     I was born on a farm in Missouri. My brother and I walked to our country school, which was a mile and three quarters, but we didn’t mind, as our young legs were good & strong. We went summer and winter and I graduated from the 8th grade and I knew that I wanted to be a teacher, which I had wanted since I was a little girl. I wanted to go to Rockport High School and I did and I wanted to work for my board. I found a nice place in a nice home with nice people and I stayed there and worked for my board in Rockport. Then when I graduated I took the county examination for teachers. I applied for a school within riding distance from home and I was hired and I stayed there two years. I had from one of my high school teachers the thought that after you have taught two years it might me well to move on and move into another neighborhood and have a new, wider experience. I respected my teachers and their thoughts. I thought I would follow that although I had two very fine years at that school. I went over to another direction in the county and applied for a school over there. I got it and I stayed there two years and all those years were happy teaching. 

   Meanwhile we had gone, my brother & I had walked to our Sunday school a mile away and never missed a Sunday unless the snow was too deep. I loved our little church and I had joined as a little girl. About the time after I had finished teaching four years from home our little Presbyterian Church went out of business. The smaller farms had been sold to larger farms. We had big, big farms around there and they owned lots of land. That depleted somewhat the population and closed our little church. Of course we would go to another church so my brother, mother and I. We had lost our father by this time. So we went to a church in the opposite direction and mother didn’t always go. It was the custom there, since the minister drove out from Tarkio and delivered his sermon, it would be too much for him to drive the 15 or 16 miles back to Tarkio to get his dinner. So, it was the custom among the congregation to take him to a home to dinner. The ladies league would meet and whomever was presiding would say, OK, who is going to take the preacher next Sunday. Someone always volunteered. We had been going there some of the time and I had not yet offered because there seemed to be so many other offering before me and one day I said, “We will host the minister the next time.” 

     So, we went into the church and had our Sunday school and then here came a strange man, it wasn’t Rev. Tiney?, so we took that in stride because at times there had to be a substitute. This was a young man. Tarkio had a college there and there were many students. It was a fine religious college. Here was a young man that came out to take the pulpit. I had said I would take him so I approached him and said that we were inviting him out to lunch today. And he said Thank You. I said we would be out to our buggy and you will see us, and you may follow us with your buggy. So he followed us and when we got to our place I quickly went in to tell mother so she could put another plate on the table. I told her there was a young man from the college to have lunch with us. He was very nice and said he enjoyed the lunch and he had to be on his way because he had a 16-mile drive back to Tarkio. We told him goodbye and it was our pleasure for us to have him as it was all in a days work. 

     In the next few days my mother received a very nice letter from this young man. His name was G. R. Tuttle. He thanked her for the nice dinner and enjoyed being in our home. I was always brought up to be very courteous and that I should write him back. I did and I will let the rest up to your imagination. He is sitting right across the table from me as he has always been. We have had a really happy life.

Gifford -

     I was born & reared in Colorado County, Missouri - Hamilton, Missouri was our address. I was the youngest of eight children. My family was rich in children and ideas and character and very short of money. My parents never stole, they never cheated and they never had any aid. There was no Government aid in those days. If you couldn’t take care of yourself there was a county home. We foraged a lot on what was available in the neighborhood. We had wild game for our meat supply, we would go to the woods and get wild grapes and mother would make jam or jelly. We had wild hops that she would use to make yeast to make our own bread. We had some wild plums and we never went hungry. We were never cold and we were able in sickness to have a doctor and we lived without the luxuries. I remember one night going to bed and mother patched my only pair of overalls, as I had nothing else to put on. All eight of the children survived into maturity and we all enjoyed life. None of them ever had trouble with the law. 

Fred Gay - 

    Gifford, you told me earlier that there was a fellow in your hometown that really made an impression on you. He was in the hardware business and at an early age you had decided that was what you wanted to do.

Gifford -

     In our town there was a man my parents traded with, and before my memory started. He was a very reputable man and his word was as good as the Bank of England in the early days. He supplied the cooking utensils in the home, largely the tin ware that were made by hand. Not made by a big factory and shipped in like now a days. He was a good workman, very reputable, and he made a good living. In due time he expanded and repeatedly and finally he got a two room brick building. On one side he operated the best hardware store in town. He had a brother in the grocery business. He was a very good businessman, very reputable and he operated his store there also. There was an archway between the two rooms and you didn’t have to go outside to go from one store to the other. That inspired me to be a hardware man because I would see my father and other people hand him money. That was why he was so prosperous and we were so poor. That was my boyhood analysis. 

Fred Gay - 
     You had both indicated to me that was what you wanted to do with your lives. It just wasn’t possible and when you did marry, you were teaching at the time. Elizabeth, is that right? Had you finished college at that time and were you working? Explain to me the day you were married and that was a unique day in American History.

Elizabeth - 

     We were married June 28, 1914 and that was the very same day that Archduke Ferdinand, of Austria, was killed by Serbian students. 

Fred Gay -

     For many young people, they may not know that this is what started WWI.

Elizabeth - 

     Yes, it was the start of WWI and Gifford has said every since. Until the day that we were married the whole world was at peace but since that day it has always been in pieces. Sure enough the war did go on. Of course we didn’t start it but it was remarkable that it started that very same afternoon. 

Fred Gay -

    Were you called into service, Gifford, or what were you doing?

Gifford -

     They were taking soldiers and women and officers to Washington. I was head of the smoked meat department in the Swift Meat Packing plant in St. Joseph. One day I was registered and a rather high official of the main office came out to see me and asked if I would object to putting in for a deferment in my classification. He said I was worth more to the Armed Forces in getting out the food for them than I would be in uniform in trenches. They said it would take three years to train a man to replace me. I told them I did not object if they had that view and I applied for a deferment. I was placed in class 4K. Of course, if I was called, with that low a classification, I never was. 

Fred Gay - 
     After the war was over the two of you stayed and lived in St. Joe, Missouri until what time?

Gifford -

     Until 1923. 

Fred Gay - 
     Elizabeth, you had quit teaching at the end of the war. Is that right?

Elizabeth - 

     I taught until the time that I knew we were going to move to Iowa. I enjoyed it so much and I really liked to do it and it was my profession. Gifford didn’t object to it so I kept on teaching.

Gifford -

     My boyhood ambition was to be a hardware man. But my parents or relatives didn’t have enough money to finance me to get into business. Meanwhile there was  man at Knoxville in Iowa that was very wealthy. His daughter was married to a man who had moved to St. Joseph and lived near us. We got acquainted and we became very fast friends. She had learned of my ambition to be in business and she said if you will find any business that you want, my father will back you. It was his main pleasure in life to find someone who was worthy and dependable and he could trust. He would set them up in business in something that you could not do without and he had done this repeatedly. Very often after they went into business they forgot what was his money and what was their money and he had to close them out. That was not in all cases. But he would take his daughter’s word without investigation and what she recommended he could do. 

     I had another friend that traveled on the road. He called on hardware stores and he came home one weekend and called me up and asked if I still wanted a hardware store and I said, yes. He said there was a store up at Chariton, Iowa that was a good store in a good town. The man wanted to retire from the hardware and go to ranch in the sand hills of Nebraska. He advised that I go up to see him. I did and I talked with him. The night I got into town it was snowing, it was October. The next morning the farmers were driving around the square in bobsleds in the snow. There was a chain hitch rack all the way around that square and it was much larger than it is now. The county gave 20 feet on all sides for a city square. 

     I called over to Knoxville to the banker’s office and his secretary who had been there a long time and had the authority to make engagements for him without questioning him. He was not in the office when I called and she knew the rail connections and because of the mud and no paved roads that you could not drive a car through to get me or they would have done it. You go to Albia on the afternoon train and you get a train from there to Knoxville and they would see you in the office after supper. That was done and he asked me if we would come up in two weeks. I said yes. So Elizabeth and I came up to his home. He and son and I drove over to Chariton to interview the man who wanted to retire. He talked about the conditions and looked the store over and he seemed to be agreeable. He turned to me and said, “Do you want it.” I said, Yes and he replied to the merchant, go up to the lawyer’s office and draw up a contract and I will give you a check for $1,000 to bind the contract. This was on a Friday afternoon and the hardware man replied, if you will make that check for $5,000 then I can pay my bills and he said he could do that. He did and then he said we would start inventorying the next Tuesday morning. The next Tuesday morning was October the 13th. If you are superstitious about Friday the 13th, to us they are very successful days. Before my benefactor died I had the satisfaction of having my obligations paid off to him. We continued on in the business.

Fred Gay - 

     Tell us about the business, where was it at? And what was it like getting started during the ‘20's? I understand it was somewhat stocked so you didn’t have to start from scratch.

Elizabeth - 

     The city of Chariton has what is called a square. There is a large park in the middle and the business houses were on the four sides of the square. The north side seems to have always been the best side of the square. There were good stores all around but the north side has always been considered the best. This store was about in the middle on the north side, a double front hardware store. Just the perfect location for anyone that wants to improve their business and to keep it active and have people come in. The traffic is always good on the north side of the square. We had large windows and we could put our large coal or wood burning kitchen ranges in there. Of course they had a reservoir on the side.

Fred Gay - 

     You were telling me the electricity wasn’t in use in the county and the coal stoves went over real well.

Elizabeth -

    There was a lot of walking farm engines. Not riding but walking. You think about how long ago that was, 1923. It was a fine location and we thought we had the finest location in the state of Iowa. That is we thought that. It was very good for us and we got all the traffic that ever came to town. The other stores on the north side did good. The dry good stores, and Pipers and a fine big grocery store and drug stores. We thought we were in the Garden of Eden. 

     It was a very exciting time to be in business. Everything went well and we were harmonious among ourselves. Gifford had the good judgment to get a couple of his nephews to work for us. Gifford’s two brothers had sons and then I made a trip to western Kansas all by myself to ask Lawrence to come and be in business with us. He did and then Chester joined us and they were perfect hardware men. They loved the work and they prospered by it. It was all very interesting. We look back a most harmonious business life in Chariton. We are pleased with it. As I said, we loved Chariton and wanted to stay here. We like the people and it is enjoyable. We are just happy.

Fred Gay - 
     It seems to me that the hardware business would be as good a business to be in as any during the more difficult times. I was just wondering if during the depression if that proved to be true because people still needed to buy those important things for their homes. What was it like during the depression for you?

Gifford -

  The depression was pretty hard on us. We inventoried down to save loses but we had to use some red ink during those depression days. Then too, we had some drought years, some grasshoppers and chinch bugs with cornfields with stalks that stood like broomsticks with no foliage on them. When we entered business here we sold bob sleds, top buggies and as time progressed we sold tractors and power equipment, self-propelled combines and all the labor saving equipment that came on in our time. 

Fred Gay - 
     Tell me about when electricity came into the area. That must of been quite a change for you. You had to go into completely different kinds of appliances. What year was that?

Gifford -

     I believe it started in the late 1920's. We kept abreast of the times.

Elizabeth -

     We still sold some kerosene lamps as it didn’t start all at once. It was gradual. That seemed to be nature’s way or the human’s way. It started slow and that was good for everybody. 

Fred Gay - 

    You had talked to me about credit as some people, during the depression, didn’t have cash. You mentioned about a man that had came in and evidently he had extended his credit too far and you weren’t going to do that again.

Gifford -

   He had a reputation and we weren’t going to extend credit anymore. He was a farmer and I was out of town one day and Mr. Frank Lunan who had worked for us one summer during the school vacation. The help were all informed to not to charge anything to this man and he came in and he was mowing his hay he broke the equipment driver of his mowing machine and he came in to buy a new equipment stick and a new crank shaft, too. He was from Leon and he found what he wanted to buy and he said, “Charge it.” Frank said, I can’t do that and he asked for Elizabeth and Frank went and got her and he said, Mrs. Tuttle if you don’t let me have this I don’t know what I will do. I have part of my hay down and I want to finish it. It is right in the harvest and I don’t know what I will do if you don’t let me have this. If you let me have this I will pay for it Saturday. I quit lying; I found that it doesn’t pay. I promise I will be in Saturday and pay you. She let him have it and he did pay it Saturday afternoon. I think he remained a customer after that. 

Fred Gay -

     One thing that interests me when talking to you earlier was the different advertisings. The different ways you advertised, through the newspaper and by using your store windows. You put a lot of time into those. Number one, the “Tuttle Talkies”.

Elizabeth -

     There was a very efficient and timely man in our Hardware Association. He always tried to make suggestions to help someone. I don’t know who it was that suggested I write them in rhyme. So, of course when I looked around the hardware store I found something that would rhyme with something over there. He said I wish you could get a good heading for your ad. So I tried and it ended up “Tuttle Talkies” and I asked the newspaper if they would make us a plate and they used that for years and years and I still have stacks of the “Tuttle Talkies”. Every week we run them and people are awfully kind and thoughtful and thousands of people speak words of kindness to us. People would say, Hey, I like your “Tuttle Talkies”, I always read them. We said our farewell in “Tuttle Talkies” style. Our departure of the business - it was a time of sadness and happiness all mixed together. 

Gifford - 

     If one can imagine it. It was 1958. The bankers told us it was the best year that we could have chosen to get out of business. The farmers had money and we had what we thought was quite a large amount of money on the books. We had notes on the book for large appliances, quite large. We had what we thought was open account business and when it was all done and done with, we had collected every nickel. We never had to repossess anything we never got an attorney or collection agency, we did it ourselves and we got every nickel of the open accounts. We never lost a penny on our credits. At that time during the years of business we lost some and we charged it off but in closing out the books we got every last cent. We sold everything ourselves as we wanted our customers to have anything from our stock that they wanted to buy. 

     We made a contract with PM Place and Company in May and they had a store here and their contract didn’t run out until the end of the year so they wanted us to turn the building over to them on January 1st. We told them they would have to buy our stock and they looked the stock over and one of them said, “Ye Gods”. No. You start where we quit. They meant our stock started where there’s left off as we had higher quality items. We will give you a whole year to sell this out and if that is not enough we will give you more. Our lease would not be expired. We started then reducing our stock and we were out on the 31st of Dec. and the last little bit was held an auction and sold out.

Fred Gay -

     Elizabeth, people think that a hardware store is just about nuts and bolts. You had a very good attitude about what made a hardware store.

Elizabeth - 

    We are both from farm homes. We know that indoors and outdoors hardware is needed. I think that if a man needs a bolt to fix that plow I could get it for him. He was always thankful that I could go get him the right size that he wanted. Then he could go on his way rejoicing and he could get his work done. Now everyone had to get there work done. I will tell you something beautiful. I think when we put an electric range in the home it raised the standard of our home considerably. I went to the factory to take training especially in the electric cookery. I could tell this lady, each lady, when she bought the range. I could tell her how much water to use in cooking. Another thing was the waterless cooker. It was a very human thing. It reaches into daily life, morning, noon and night. There was almost everything they could buy at our store. Sometimes the lowliest utensils would be so necessary in a home. I enjoyed people telling me what they needed and how they wanted to use it. I could then select something and get them what they needed because I had studied these myself. I went to Chicago to the Merchandise Mart and various manufactures were there, and I could buy a half dozen of this and four dozen of that and I always enjoyed finding new things that would make life easier, more helpful and there was a pride in using a good utensil. I loved to give demonstrations, how to use the cookware. How to cook without water in the waterless cookware. I would serve it to the ladies as we had these in the back of the store and we just had a great time. I could show them what the new items would do. Of course being raised on a farm I knew what was needed. I enjoyed telling the people about that.

Gifford -

     We just had to keep abreast of the times thru the news and magazines. They told of what was coming up and what was going to be. We thought more of our implement repair business than we did of the implement business. We carried an immense stock of repairs for various machines and some for machines we did not handle. I remember one time, the time of the horse drawn grain binders for cutting the grain and three or four men came in before noon to get some repairs for their grain binders. We went to the repair stock to find what they wanted. One man picked up a piece and said this is the piece I went to Des Moines for the other day and I had to stand in line for an hour and I could have come here and got it. Another time two or three men came in to get something for their grain binders and one said I came thru three towns and never stopped for I knew when I got here I would get it. That policy built us up a reputation as a one- stop store. 

Elizabeth - 

     It was hard for us to make up our minds to leave that. The customers were all our friends and we had been serving them all these years and serving them the best way we could. We enjoyed it and we loved to be useful in this world. It was not about the money it was about the friendship. Look at all the service and happiness you can bring to all the people in your area. That is where you get your satisfaction.

Gifford -

     It was not just Lucas County that supported us, but the adjacent counties as well. One afternoon in the fall time, nothing special going on here, it just so happened that Lineville, which was about 40 miles away some people had come up and another couple from Lineville just happened to meet in our store. It developed that at that same time there were four families from the Lineville area in our store at the same time. We had customers that would come down from Des Moines would come down, not just for us, but the women would come down here to buy dresses and then they would buy hardware also. Just within the last week I noticed in the paper of a women’s death and burial. It recalled to my memory, since we have been out of business 21 years, that for several years every October and she would come into the store to pick out some Christmas items and put them on layaway. She never failed to pick them up and her credit was plenty good. There were people from Ottumwa who would come over here in the fall and pick out some of our expensive, high quality cooking utensils, maybe $40 to $50 worth and hold them for Christmas. That happened several times. She never failed to pick them up and pay for them. Those customers are valuable as they give you a reputation.

Fred Gay - 
     I know that you have been busy since you retired, Elizabeth, I know you keep busy on one particular day each year, you would bring children from the high school out to your place.

Elizabeth -

     In our side yard there is a dogwood tree that grows and each year it blooms. I was a teacher and I loved literature and I loved to give it to the children when I found a special gem and the legend of the Dogwood is a very special gem of literature. Mrs. Shirley Yocom, a good friend of mine, was a Sophomore teacher and I talked to her and told her I would like to invite her Sophomore classes to come over when the Dogwood tree blooms and tell them the story of the Dogwood tree and I would serve them cookies and punch. She thought that would be fine. Her classes are 40-minute classes and that gives them time to come over, if they hurry, and I would take them out to the Dogwood tree and give them the legend. 

     This is the legend - at one time when the earth was much younger than it is now the Dogwood tree was the very strongest tree in the forest. It was so strong that when evil men wanted to kill God’s only son, they decided to kill him on the Dogwood tree, so they nailed him on with terrible spikes thru the palms of his hands and thru his feet and left him there to die. And this Son of God had a very sensitive nature and in his agony he felt that the tree was suffering with him. So he said to the tree, “From now on you will not be a strong tree, your limbs will be small and knotty and prickly and rough and your flowers will have red spots on them and people will remember.” And so he died on the tree. 

     I had 500 copies of the legend made and we would take them by classes and I would take them out and tell them the story and have them come up and look at the little limbs and the flowers. They were not as big as my arm and they are rough and knotty and wouldn’t hold any weight at all. Then I took them in and served them cookies and punch and I would pass the paper out with the legend printed on it. They always remember me in some sweet way. I don’t want them to spend their money on me but they will do it. This last time they sent me a 9-foot long thank you, about 36 inches wide, with all their names written on it. There were 6 classes with 20 per class so that was about 120 pupils and all had signed their names with some little sweet note on it. I almost broke down when I received it. It was all rolled up and tied with a bow and I said to Gifford, “What is this?” And he said it was from the class and it was this beautiful and sweet thank you. 

     That was one of the loveliest things I feel I could do for people and I wish I could do more.

Fred Gay - 
      That was nice!

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