They Were Going To Be Famous!

Grampie Wayne spent some of his growing up years in the coal and corn land of rural Illinois, near the Kankakee River. His Dad was pastor at Custer Park Baptist Church, where his grandmother had been a member several years prior.

Now, according to him, Custer Park was a "one horse town and the horse was dead." You can't imagine the road back in the 1950s. The road had a paved lane in the center and a wide shoulder of gravel on each side of the pavement. Drivers would stay on the paved lane until they met another vehicle and then they would pull over with one tire on the pavement and one on the gravel. He says that was really scary for kids.

The Wabash Rail Road ran through town and the mail sack was grabbed on the way through, by a train crewman, who snatched it from the pole where it was left hanging. We cannot imagine that today, but -- from Pony Express days until now, the mail had to get through! And it did.

There were two grocery stores in town. The main store was Aldrich's and the other was Case's. Case's didn't operate very long, as he remembers. Between the two stores was a low building that housed the post office. He remembers getting baby chicks through the mail and at the post office, that annual delivery day found the building full of chirping!

Next to the post office was a hotel, he thinks. And for some cause, unknown to him it burned to the ground. That really changed the mini-skyline and as far as he knows the hotel was never rebuilt.

The Church was nearby and the cemetary. You can visit that cemetary these days and see a headstone at the grave is his great grandparents, Frank and Martha. The Church has a new building outside of the little town center.

Near the graveyard his friend, Jimmy lived and it was a short hoof for the boys when they visited. Gramp tells of many adventures. And they were typical boys from the time when there was no TV, no internet, no digital games and all that is available today. Most of the play time was outside.

One day a few boys, including his friends Gary and Jimmy were playing in a nearby corn field. As they went between the rows, kicking at the wonderful, black soil they found a BONE. It was big and it needed to be dug up. A DINOSAUER BONE! They had to dig it up and report their find to the Chicago Museum of Science. They were going to be famous. And they were going to be wealthy.
So they dug and dug with their hearts beating faster and faster (I presume). AMAZING! They had an area, probably 9 x 11 feet dug up in the field and probably as much as 6 feet deep. Whatever the size, he remembers it as pretty massive.

Everything was fine with the young scientists until someone driving past the research site stopped the car and screamed at them. They took off running -- all in different directions! Gramp said he ran into the electric fence but he was so scared he didn't know if he got a shock or not. Maybe it was off at the time.

It was so humiliating to Gramp! Not only did they find that their archeological dig was unappreciated, but their dreams were shattered when they found out the skeleton was that of a horse! (Maybe it was that one horse from the one-horse town.)

But one of the boys kept the dream alive by keeping a "dinosaur tooth" in his collection at home. Gramp doesn't know where he got that specimen, but likely from another adventure at a different time or place. From time to time he would take the tooth to school and show it. Your Gramp thinks it was a rock!


Note: The photo of Grampie was taken about a half century later very close to the original scene.