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Thursday, October 10, 1985 -- 5th Year, Number 2 AS00dliC!lfroTp00hP°'0000000000li:"0000r00'
f:cs ]
r " 'CHA TO ULA TIMES 5o°
[J r-] Old Glory will fly
!
Ready
Main St. Open ornot!
By BRYAN T. McMAHON
Editor & Publisher
Taking a politician's promise seriously
Can lead to some fairly strange tongue-
in-cheek celebrations in downtown
Ponchatoula.
MFor example: Tuesday the Mayor of
ain Street grocer Betty Cutrer,
helped organize a ribbon-cutting
Ceremony so that main street could be
Mened to traffic, right on schedule.
prWith Chamber of Commerce
esident Mrs. Jeanne Zaleski holding
the oversize clippers, and with all of the
merchants of main street grinning
behind the ribbon, a Times photographer
Captured the ribbon-cutting scene in the
Iiddle of main street at Sixth Street.
Behind the posing merchants
tretched desolate city blocks of
unfinished road, with not a single
worker busy on the project under cloud-
less skies.
"This is not really what 1 had pictured
when they told us they were going to
redo main street," dead-panned the
owner of a:Tocal shoe store as she gazed
down the center of Ponchatoula's torn-
up main thoroughfare.
"You've got to give it to them
though," said another in mock defense
of local politicians and the Highway
Department. "It is in keeping with our
downtown historic district. I think the
new dirt road adds something; a touch
of the past."
The many similar comments from the
card shop owner, hardwareman,
furniture seller, finance man, grocer, air
conditioning repairman, and the
ceremony itself, was touched off by
promises made I uesday, September 17.
Gideon on that date announced to a
group of merchants and high school
Booster Club members that he
personally promised that main street
would be completed "rain or shine"
and that the city's main business street
would be opened "'no later than three
weeks from now.'
The following week Gideon renewed
his pledge, vowing main street
completion in two weeks, but seemed to
be hedging on the date a bit.
So the merchants, looking out
their storefront windows and seeing no
action whatsoever on the road, began
preparing for the grand opening of main
street with the promised date of October
8 set as the day of the celebration.
Country Cupboard supplied the
champagne, Olde Town Shopoe the
ribbon, Hardy's Ace Hardware the
oversize hedgeclippers, and Cutrer's
Grocery the crowd of gallows humor-
loving main street merchants.
Those who missed the original ribbon-
.......... early in the day that was
captured on film by The Times were
sure to get in on the mock celebration
during the afternoon restaging for other
members of the news media.
"It's just about time we let everyone
know how we feel about this situation,"
said one of the merchants holding the
ribbon in front of the long stretch of
unpaved road flanked on two sides by
businesses which have been suffering
slow starvation for months.
Other than the unofficial Mayor of
Main Street, none of Ponchatou]a's
elected officials were on hand for this
ribbon cutting.
Local service club raises $8,000 in one whacky day
Staff Report
p A whacky fundraiser organized by the
onchatoula Lions Club for the benefit
of the Arthritis Foundation landed
Cores of prominent citizens behind bars
ay, and raised over $8,000 for
According to national representatives
of the Arthritis Foundation, the Poncha-
toula effort marked the largest single
day of donations to the charity
anywhere in the nation. An identical
"Jail & Bail" promotion in Phoenix,
Arizona had held the previous record
with $7,000 donated in that large
metropolttan city.
Local Lions raised the record-breaking
sum by offering anyone with $25 the
chance to have a friend, spouse, boss,
or anyone for that matter, arrested by
off-duty policemen from the Ponchatoula
P.D., the Hammond P.D. and the
sheriff's office.
Under the direction of project
coordinator Lion James McKnight, a
Ponchatoula police officer, realistic
looking arrests began taking place all
over the Ponchatoula and Hammond
area Thursday morning.
SEE PAGE THIRTEEN
LIONS' PRIDE -- John Schliegelmeyer
Local gator hide
buyer salutes season
Staff Report
The state's top alligator hide buyer
imed this year's alligator season to
a huge success, and added that
nchatoula still reigns as king of the
lligator buyers. "" ' .... Bill"
. M.A. Bankston o. mr..
Young was claiming the title for yet
rtother year this week, more than
idpoint through his buying seaso.n.
oung inherited the business and the
tator-buving reputation from his grand-
lather, Ponchatoula's M.A. Bankston.
Young says he has already purchased
SEE PAGE TWO
German-American farmer war hero
By BRYAN T. McMAHON
This week's recipient of the Lions'
Pride award was born in Ponchatoula's
German farming community, took time
off during World War I1 to take part in
one of the most daring American
actions in the war, before returning to
the land he loves.
John Schliegelmeyer said that
schooling was tough for him as a young-
ster when he attended the Wadesboro
school, one of three Wadesboro schools
which used to serve the farming families
of the area.
"1 spoke German because that's what
everyone in my family and all our
neighbors spoke," recalls the still-active
farmer• "They tried to teach us in
English though, so I didn't get much out
of it."
His parents (his father, an older
brother who drowned, in Ponchatoula
Creek before he was born and his son
are all named John. His mother, Eliza-
beth, was an Ollenberger before
marriage) emigrated from Germany in
1905 with their first three children. They
raised seven more in this country.
"My father and mother both spoke
German. Until World War II we all
spoke German out here (west of
Ponchatoula), said Sddiegelmeyer.
His mother's entire family immigrated
here at the same time ,and settled in
"arms around his parents.
Farming then was even tougher than
it is now, and Schllegelmeyer has
several family stories o how his parents
started the blacksmith business that
supplemented their early farming: "In
those days they welded a shaft they
might need to run a farm machine in the
fire. Momma held it up while daddy
beat on the hot metal with a hammer.
Dad was solid iron and built like me,"
said the still robust farmer, who was
born in 1921.
He recalls an early youth in Poncha-
toula's German farming community
where every farmer had his own recipe
for beer and wine brought with him
from the old country. He said the
German citizens would get together
about once a week on Krafts Lane.
"They'ld have a dance that would last
all night and the next day as well• When
someone got married the wedding party
lasted for three days. They believed in
celebrations.
"They all worked together on every-
thing. If one got sick he didn't worry
about his work getting done• A neighbor
would take over. They played poker
together, drank together, went to
church together."
He remembers Fritz Pflanze, the
Yents, Schaefers, Sharers, Schwartzs,
the Houcks, and his cousins the
Elmbergers, all of whom lived around
his parents' farm, the Hefners, Helqs,
,chums, Schillings, Drudes and Krafts.
His parents had by this time moved
from the small cabin where they had
been staying in Ponchatoula while his
father cleared the family's land (tree-by-
tree).
His father went on to help build the
Louisiana Cypress LumOer Lompany
when not blacksmithing or farming.
Electricity came to the farm in 1926,
when a line was run down the street to
Rosaryville.
Schliegelmeyer at one point seemed
headed for a life on the water. He was
drafted into the U.S. Army during
World War I! while serving on the crew
of a Mississippi tugboat. Like so many of
his generation, that war changed Schlie-
gelmever's entire lif,
SEE PAGE THIRTEEN
Honoree
if local patriots will rally
Staff Report nearly the same size as the original.
By rotating these flas and savinq the
Torn and knotted pieces of Poncha- SEE PAGE THIRTEEN
toula's giant American Flag were a
visual reminder to members of the
Minuteman's Club meeting Monday
night that immediate action is needed to
save Ponchatoula's newest landmark.
Two of the original Betsy Rosses who
made the original flag, said to be the
largest pole mounted American Flag in
the nation, are members of the group
dedicated to maintaining the banner
over Ponchatoula. Mrs. Evelyn Hebert
and Mrs. Ann Boudreaux.
They vowed the damaged flag.
whose constant service has subjected it
to the harsh treatment of bad weather
and high winds, would be repaired and
raised by week's end.
The Ponchatoula Kiwanis Club's gift
of $I,000 was announced, a boost to
the initial fund drive.
As a longer-term solution to the
problem, members of the Minutemen
Club voted to launch a membership
drive successful enough to raise dues
money within the next month to
purchase three replacement flags of
\\;
Minutemen
MY PONCHATOULA
By OLE HARDHIDE
The Alligator
I smelled a terrible smell coming from above Paul's Cafe Monday night,
the worst I've experienced since I spent that swampy summer with cousin
Sweatsox (he earned his name because of the dandy collection of white
cotton socks he kept after years of fishing for fishermen on Middle Bayou,
but l came to associate his name with a peculiarly musky smell that could
only be replicated by Pete Rose's right shoe, playing in southern Florida in
mid-July.
Anyway, it was Sweatsox for true, and the more I sniffed at the air
wafting through my protective cage Monday night the more 1 looked
forward to a family reunion.
! got that, sort of, when Kenneth Quigley came down from Atop the
Gator with a dish of Billy Young's alligator sauce piquante, featuring Cousin
Sweatsox floating in bitty pieces amidst the sausage and funny-looking
noodles• (Quigley, when the world gets right I hope to return the favor).
! wanted to chastise gator hide buyer (yech!) Billy Young, but he was too
busy advising David Pevey in the matters of love, and could not be
disturbed. Billy took one look at the lady David says he will marry this
month next year and Billy quickly drew him aside and said, "David, she's so
pretty I'd marry her right away if I were you. If you can't do it in an alligator
cage, hell, settle for a church (Billy is the Huck Finn of My Ponchatoula).
I don't want any of my readers on the east side of town to go into a panic
caused by that ferocious dust bowl storm sighted this week over Lavigne
Road off South Thibodeaux. Hooks is just cleaning house. Now ask him
which lucky lady has inspired this autumnal nesting...
1 don't know if it's true or not but word has reached the cage that Mike
Sanders says bow hunting in Louisiana in autumn is at least as interesting as
beau hunting in Louisiana in the weeks before the P.H.S. prom.
Dawnella Dance Studio's Strawberry Dancers tell me to blow them kisses
when they dance past my cage October 19 to help kick off the Lions
Oktoberfest with a German parade.
Tammy Waren, I'd like to see you in dance tights with Dawnella's girls on
that day (or any day).
How many know that the M.A. in M.A. Bankston stood for Martin
Andrew?
How many know that if it wasn't for the P.V.F.D. the town would have
burned down long ago, and a whole lot saved people would have been
buried people? Don't tell me, tell my volunteer smoke eaters at their big
Open House this Sunday (and save a place for this gator to ride that big red
siren machine).
Bill Graziano is still talking about the local bachelor who quit dating a girl
because her voice had a ring in it.
Tell James Peoples his east of Ponchatoula store is a real gas (pass the
Milk of Magnesia. About two P.V.F.D. tankers should do).
If you can buy a man's friendship, it's not worth it.
Eston Rewis hung on my cage and after some effort focused one of his
eyes on me. "it's a croc," he proclaimed. I agree.
Ask Tammy "Turtle" Tucker about the gopher turtle she has that got here
by hitching a ride on the rails.
Wasn't thal Doug Allen spotted with City Attorney Bob Troyer on main
street Tuesday?
l'd llke to offer my cage to the Ponchatoula Lions Club as a jail cell for
their next Jail & Bail. (rm betting the jailees would put out more effort to
raise ball if we put a little teeth in their sentences.)
Word is out in reptile circles that double the going gator rate is now being
offered for John Dahmer's gutted and stretched hide following his too
successful hunting efforts over the past, excuse the expression, alligator
season. All the gators down Bedico way want Dahmerskin belts and shoes.