RFD - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

RFD

Someone asked how I come up with ideas for the blog each week, so this blogpost provides some insight into the bizarre process I sometimes go through to find a topic. So bear with me as we follow the convoluted mental gyrations sometimes necessary to generate the weekly blog. A few days ago I was surfing through channels on the TV when an old show called "Mayberry RFD” from the 1960’s popped up. It starred Ron Howard as Opie.

I hadn’t heard the acronym RFD for years, which means Rural Federal Delivery. So I googled it and discovered that before 1880, farmers across the country had to go into the closest town to pick up their mail, sometimes many miles away. Fayette County, in southeastern Indiana was the first to try a system for daily mail delivery to the rural areas of the county.

Ironically, about a hundred years later from 1978-1982, I worked at a Ford components plant in Connersville, the county seat of Fayette County. The plant was unfortunately closed in 2007 and the production move to South Korea. We have fond memories of those times as our son was born while we were stationed in Indiana.

More on RFD; Ray Delaet was our long-time rural carrier in Ft. Loramie when I was growing up. He was a veteran who had survived the killing fields of Argonne, France during WWI as corporal in the 324th Army regiment.

Back in those days, soldiers from the same area tended to be drafted together and placed in the a single regiment, meaning there were dozens of other soldiers in the regiment from Ft. Loramie. One of the noteworthy veterans serving with Ray was Clem Ruhencamp, who became the ditcher extraordinaire back after his military career. I’ve documented in this previous blogpost my escapades as a honey dipper working for Clem and his son Don during summers while in college.

Of course everyone in the area knew and respected the mailman, Ray DeLaet. He epitomized the postal service motto: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, as did my father-in-law, Delbert (Doc) Francis, who was the RFD postman in Russia during the same time period as Ray. No doubt they knew each other well. I was always amazed at how both Ray and Doc could drive their postal vehicle, which doubled as the family car, from the passenger seat!

Ray's wife Marie was active in many of the various women’s organizations around town and was equally respected. Ray died in 1975 and Marie in 1979.

While researching more on-line information about Ray and Marie DeLaet, I discovered Marie had a brother named Joe Dickman, pictured here, who in the 1920’s lived as a hermit squatting on land in California and later Florida.

The DeLaet’s even traveled to California in 1931 to connect up with Joe, but couldn’t find him because by then he had moved onto Florida, squatting on land south of Marco Island.

According to this interesting Community Post article from 2008, Joe did not connect up with any of his 9 brothers and sisters until 1960. By then he had become somewhat of a legend having spent almost 30 years collecting and selling sea shells found on the Florida island, which was eventually named after him as shown on the map.

So now you know how some of the off-the-wall ideas surface for some of my blogposts. Something sparks a thought and I let the internet coupled with my memories of the past lead me to topics you hopefully fine interesting. Most searches lead to multiple potential blog topics, which I then save in a file of future blog ideas that now has hundred’s of entries waiting to be written about. So continue to stay tuned. By the way, I just joined Twitter and will be posting the blog each week. Be one of the first to follow me at this link.