October 7, 2010
In March of 1966 I made the decision to leave my job at the Sac City State Bank
and take a job with Felco Feed Company in Fort Dodge, Iowa. I had met my first wife (to be) and she was earning more as a teacher, than I was at the bank so I decided that I wanted to pursue my formal education training and go to work as a production artist at Felco.
I had been working at the bank and painting signs in addition to working at expanding our family business (DaLe Monogramming & Signs) that my mother and I had started in April of 1962.
I started working in Fort Dodge in March of 1966 , 4 months before our wedding on June 5,1966. I lived in a hotel building called the Warden Hotel
and began looking for an apartment we could move into after we were married.
We moved into a very large 3rd floor apartment. It had 7 rooms plus a porch and fire escape escape stairs. We paid $127 a month rent which included hook-up to the TV antenna. We were within walking distance to the downtown area and close to the Grocery store we went to (Randall’s Grocery).
After living in the apartment for almost 2 years, a good friend from work told me about a contractor friend of his that would allow us to purchase a house, unfinished, at a lower price. Then we would have to finish it our selves. We decided to do that so we could afford to have a house.
Above are some other views of the outside of the house. Notice we had a 1963 Ford Galaxy automobile that was our first car.
I worked at Felco and was promoted from production artist to Advertising Coordinator after a couple of years.
While I was there at Felco I worked very closely with Denny Wessels, the in-plant print shop manager. We became very close friends and discovered that a man that we both knew was a paper salesman that eventually called on both of us. He was the man I wrote about in a previous Blog about my US Army Reserve experiences, He was Jim Nevins.
Denny, Jim and I along with our wives joined a Fort Doge Dance Club and eventually became officers in the dance club. We also would go out for a business lunch every Monday when Jim came to call on us as a paper salesman for Lesley Paper Company. I think we were one of his largest customers.
Below is a picture of Denny’s family taken at their Lake cottage on Twin Lakes.
You can imagine how difficult it is for me to stay on the subject with all of these outside events and I am only sharing this about two of my closest friends related to Fort Dodge.
I will post this Blog now and continue the Fort Dodge experiences later.
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