Remembering Randall's Grocery Stores

 

If you grew up in Iowa anytime from the 1960s into the 1990s, you probably remember Randall’s.

Once a week, the entire family packed into the station wagon and headed to the grocery store. Mom followed the sales. Dad studied the steaks. But us kids. We made a beeline for the cereal aisle—Captain Crunch. Sugar Smacks. Applejacks. Count Chocula.

And if you were lucky, you got a nickel to ride the rocket or the race car in the lobby. Or maybe a few cents to blow in the candy aisle.

That was the kid’s perspective.

Randall’s wasn’t the biggest grocer in Iowa. It didn’t need to be. It carved out a solid spot, mostly in eastern Iowa, and did a good business by giving people what they wanted at a fair price.

The Daring Bank Robbery That Ended With Fire And A Dead Body

 

Orlando Wilkins pointed a shotgun at Cashier A.W. Leach and demanded the cash

Orlando Wilkins and Charles W. Crawford walked into the Adel State Bank on the morning of March 7, 1895, figuring they could scare one cashier, snatch the money, and be gone before anybody knew what hit them.

 

Instead, they kicked off one of the wildest bank robberies in Iowa history.

 

The Iowa State Bystander called it “unparalleled in the criminal annals of the state.” It sounds like newspaper thunder, but the facts backed it up. Wilkins ended the day dead after taking three bullets. Six townspeople were wounded, and for a few minutes, the streets of Adel sounded like open war.

 

Two men walked into the bank around 8:45 a.m. They told cashier A. W. Leach they wanted to make a deposit. Leach turned toward his desk, expecting coins, paper, and another dull morning. He got a rifle shoved in his face instead.

When The Sky Began To Bite The Grasshopper Years

 

The grasshoppers were so thick at time that they blocked out the sun

The 1860s to the 1870s were known as the Grasshopper Years. The “green hellions” came out of the Rocky Mountains and ate their way across the prairies devouring everything in their path. Many early settlers thought the hoppers did more damage than all the marauding Indians in the West.

The grasshoppers also went by the name of the “hopper,” the “red-legged locust,” the “Mormon Locust,” “G. Hopper” (sometimes, Mr. G. Hopper), and the “hateful grasshopper.”

They were often described as “an immense snowstorm” or like a “dust tornado, riding upon the wind like an ominous hailstorm.” Frequently, there were so many that they blocked out the sunlight.

Grasshoppers could eat a field of corn quicker than a herd of hungry buffalo. The hoppers weren’t fussy. “They eat anything—dead plants, dry wood, the wool off of sheep’s backs, dead animals, and when one of their own becomes disabled, they fall upon him and eat him up before he has time to die.”

If the hordes of hungry grasshoppers had been a onetime thing, it wouldn’t have been so bad; the hoppers returned with the spring rains. When they were done eating, they laid their eggs and continued to do so until the ground froze up or they died. 

The Storm Of The Century And The Towns That Disappeared

 

The outbreak started with twin tornadoes outside of Lisbon and Mount Vernon

June 3, 1860, was hot and sticky. Nothing unusual for an Iowa Sunday. Then the sky turned wrong.

 

The storm came out of nowhere. No warning. No time to think. Just a low, growing roar—like a freight train.

 

By the time it was over, over 150 people were dead. About a hundred in Iowa. Fifty more across the river in Illinois. The storm carved a 150-mile path from Cedar Rapids to Sterling in less than two hours. Entire towns—Camanche and Albany—were wiped out in minutes.

When Hobos Roamed Small Town Iowa

 

"Scoopshovel" Scotty McDougall & Boxcar Betty, Hobo King & Queen

Iowa used to have a steady flow of uninvited guests, and nobody considered it a problem.

 

They arrived by freight train, usually without a ticket and with a pretty casual attitude about schedules. They stepped off somewhere near town, stretched, and drifted in like they belonged.

 

People called them hobos. It wasn’t an insult. Just a job description without the job.

 

You didn’t have to go looking for them. They were just… around. Sitting near the tracks. Walking the gravel roads. Cutting across a field. They had a way of moving that didn’t match the rest of town—slower, but not lazy. Like they weren’t in a hurry because they didn’t have anywhere to be.

 

You’d see one now and then, rounding the corner or on your front step.

Early Iowa Breweries

 

An early Iowa brewery, circa 1850-1860

Here’s a snapshot of Iowa’s early brewing days, pulled from One Hundred Years of Brewing (1901).

Davenport got in early. Mathias Frahm opened the first brewery around 1848 or 1849. After that, things picked up fast. The Pacific Brewery went up in 1853. The Severance Ale Brewery followed. The Eagle Brewery showed up in 1858. Around the same time, the Arsenal Brewery opened its doors. For a while, it felt like everybody in town was brewing something.

After the Civil War, it kept growing. Julius Lehrkind built the Blackhawk Brewery, lost it to a fire, then turned around and built another one.

By the 1890s, things shifted. Bigger operations took over. Smaller breweries faded out. The Zoller Brothers built a new Black Hawk Brewery in 1892, and a lot of the earlier names quietly disappeared.

Who Remembers Riverboat Days On The Clinton Riverfront

 

Riverboat Days crowd in the 1960s

Riverboat Days was one of those things you didn’t really think about… until it was gone.

If you lived anywhere near Clinton, you just knew. Late June, sliding into the Fourth, you were going down to the river. Didn’t matter if you planned it. You ended up there anyway.

It started in 1961. Didn’t look like much at first. Small-town festival stuff. A queen, a parade, some events, people figuring it out as they went.

In 1963, Gertrude—(maybe Georgene. The papers weren't sure.) Krogman—got crowned queen. A few years later, in 1966, Gertrude Lego took her turn. Same names popping up, same families, same faces. It still felt local.

But even then, they were swinging bigger than they probably should’ve.