Black Hawk Beer As The Medicine of Choice?

The Daily Times. April 15, 1914.

If you stood on Davenport’s west side a hundred years ago and caught a whiff of warm grain, smoke, and something vaguely cheerful in the air, congratulations—you were downwind of a brewery.

One of the big names was Black Hawk.

Black Hawk Brewery opened sometime around 1865, when America was finishing a civil war and apparently decided the next order of business was beer. Julius Lehrkind, a German-born brewer, was an early owner. That made sense. Germans all over the Midwest were quietly improving local life one lager at a time.

Davenport was the perfect town for brewing. It had river traffic, railroads, factories, and a healthy population of people who’d worked all day and didn’t need to be talked into a drink.

Like many old businesses, Black Hawk never sat still. Names changed. Ownership changed. Buildings were added whenever money appeared.

The Independent Brewing and Malting Co. plant near 1801 West 3rd Street was a serious operation. It had cellars, bottling works, rail connections, wagons moving in and out, and all the machinery necessary to dominate the local market.

They kept selling Black Hawk beer. Customers already liked the label; only a fool would toss it aside.

Who Remembers Duane Ellet And Floppy WHO TV Des Moines

 

If you grew up in Iowa anytime between the late 1950s and the late 1980s, there’s a good chance you knew exactly what time The Floppy Show came on.

From 1957 to 1987, Duane Ellett and Floppy were a huge part of daily life on WHO-TV in Des Moines. For a lot of Iowa kids, Duane and Floppy were as familiar as the kitchen table, the school bus, and snow boots lined up by the back door.

This was back when television wasn’t endless. There were only a few channels. If you missed something, you missed it forever. No rewinding. No watching whenever the spirit moved you. If Floppy was on at a certain time, you got there.

Usually with cereal, in pajamas, and yelling for somebody to stop touching the rabbit ears because the picture was just right.

Duane Ellett had a face people trusted right away. Calm, friendly, never trying too hard. He wasn’t loud or  fake cheerful. He seemed like a decent fellow who had somehow wandered onto television and stayed.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show Comes To Davenport July 9, 1913

The Daily Times. July 8, 1913.

Buffalo Bill brought his Wild West Show to Davenport on July 9, 1913, and gave the city a front-row seat to the Old West.

The show had played in Moline on July 8, then crossed the river for a July 9 stop in Davenport. The grounds were set up on Telegraph Road next to the baseball field, but the real action started downtown.

Thousands packed the streets for the parade. Kids climbed curbs. Men tipped hats. Women craned their necks for a better look. Leading the procession were Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill.

The parade had about everything you could imagine. Cowboys, cowgirls, ropers, riders, old stagecoaches, soldiers, and performers from all over the world. A cowboy band played on horseback. Mexican Rurales rode in formation. Elephants and camels lumbered along behind them.

Native American performers were a major draw. Iron Cloud led the procession. Reports said he had been twelve years old at the time of Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn in 1876. Another man, Yellow Hand, was the son of a chief who fought there.

The Davenport Democrat and Leader called it “a pleasing blending of the Wild West.”

After the parade, everybody headed for the showgrounds. The afternoon performance kicked off at 1 p.m. The evening show opened at 8.

Neustadt's Deptatment Store Davenport Dave Neustadt

 

The Daily Times. July 11, 1913.

This was a new one on me. I'm guessing it was a department store that featured clothing and shoes, but I wasn't able to find much about it online. What I like best is the picture of the building and the owner, Dave Neustadt. The store was located on the corner of Second and Main Street in Davenport.

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.