Two days in March, 1938

My father, John W. Kennedy, AKA Johnny and Jack and Gus, kept a diary quite faithfully for most of 1938. The first entry is dated Friday, March 4 and he was nine.

How I wish people (including myself) were explicitly encouraged (required?)  to keep a journal or diary. Maybe that's what this blog equals, I guess. But those early years are so unguarded and revealing. 

Full disclosure: I had no idea of the existence of that diary until after dad's death. 

Here’s a quick summary of the setting: The boy lived on a farm just a couple miles west of Iowa City, along with his sister Dorothy and his parents: Jack (really John E., and no one knows what that middle initial stands for!) and Adelaide. They lived in a quite large two-story house that faced south, located on the IWV (Iowa City, Williamsburg, Vinton… towns which the narrow two-lane highway connects).

Not to complicate things too much, but there were three Schnare brothers - Henry, William, and Augustus, each with a farm - and Gus shared the large farmhouse with Bill and his wife and, eventually, my grandpa and grandma and their two children. Augustus Schnare was a bachelor, and after his death in 1937, my grandfather purchased the farm. He had been farming both properties since Bill died and he would farm those lands for 42 years.

Henry's farm passed to his wife Julia in 1929, and their son Leslie eventually sold the land to the Slothowers. There is a busy road that bears that family's name at the current west edge of Iowa City.

A couple hundred yards west of the family home was a one-room schoolhouse, which is immediately mentioned in the diary in that very first entry:

Went to school. Dorothy and I were the only ones there. Played ring toss. I against Miss Cole and Dorothy. I won 12 games. They didn’t win any.

My dad was meticulous about recording winning and losing at age nine, and that was something that never really changed. A very competitive guy. The school's enrollment was no more than a dozen local children, as far as I can tell, and served grades one through eight.

The Saturday, March 5 entry:

Went to dentist. Got a tooth filled. Ate dinner at Grandma’s. Went to kattakize.

He was referring to Catechism, a tough word for even a bright nine-year-old. This was a weekly religious education class that most young Catholics attended at least through Confirmation, and was held at St. Patrick’s just south of Burlington Street. The 2006 tornado collapsed the roof and the church was basically destroyed. Many of the original bricks and other pieces were used in rebuilding the current St. Pat’s, which is now on the northeastern edge of Iowa City.

I am not certain which grandma he was referring to, but my best guess is that it was his Grandma Schnare, who had moved to a small house on Summit Street at some point following Bill's death in 1928. They had driven to town for that dental appointment, so why not stop by Grandma's? 

I wish I could say I had vivid memories of my Grandma Schnare, but I was only five when she died and she lived "all the way across town" from our Koser Avenue house. She was 83 when she passed, and the only image I have of her was as a tiny, wizened woman who seemed incredibly ancient to a kid. I'm not sure I ever said one word to her.

I wish I could say more, and I will certainly try to do more digging, but this is one of those many times when I devoutly wish I could grill my mom about all that. One thing becomes quite clear in the diary: the family routinely would drive into town, often multiple days per week.

Grandma Margaret (Maggie) Schnare was in her mid-60s at the time, and she and her late husband Bill had two daughters: Adelaide and Elsie. After Margaret died in 1955, the two Schnare farms were inherited by those sisters, and their grandchildren in turn would eventually split the land ownership 13 ways. The “owners” will continue to multipy and my estimate is that if we don’t sell that last parcel, the total owners will number in the dozens not too far in the future.

My point is to not consider that land as a future nest egg.

Dad wrapped up that Saturday entry with:

Went to the Williams’s tonight. Just talked. No fun. There are floods in California.

Our author often rated his days, using vivid terms such as “no fun” and “fun.” Clearly, a visit with neighbors that did not involve play was not a favorite and "no fun." 

The flood he mentioned was one of the worst in Los Angeles history, bringing nearly 10 inches of rain in back-to-back storms, killing over a thousand and causing what today would be nearly $2 billion in damages. That flood led to converting the Los Angeles River to concrete, which allowed the excess water to rapidly get to the ocean. 

Dad also rated the many movies he would watch downtown. That scale ranged from “bad” to “fair” to “swell,” which appears to have been his highest compliment.

The diary got me doing some research into Iowa City theaters, and eventually I discovered that the house at 528 Iowa Avenue that the family purchased in 1950 was sold by the widow of one of the town’s more flamboyant characters, who owned one of those theaters.

I plan to return to the diary and expand on it with a combination of speculation and research on Iowa City (and maybe wider world events) in the late 1930s. It would give me an excuse to do more family research.

The diary is a great example of how quickly time moves along. I would be born just a dozen years later, and I would bet serious money that nine-year-old Johnny was not imagining that turn of events.