Our Past Is Present June 27, 2018

June 27, 2018

            This is “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society. 

            We want to remind you that our air conditioned Museum is open from 1 until 4 every day Tuesday through Sunday.  Stop by and enjoy the history of Geary County in cool, refreshing comfort.  If you have stories to share, some research you would like to do, or have us research for you, please let our friendly staff know.  They are always glad to help.  Oh, and we have a great Gift Shop where you can purchase books and other items for that special  person.

            Now for today’s story which comes from memories shared by Louis Rago about life in Junction City in the 1920s.  Louis was born on December 23, 1908 at 16^th and Price Street.  He stated that his “parents were from Italy and they came to Kansas from Pennsylvania to repair railroad damage from the 1903 flood.”

            He went on to state that “I did not go to school until I was in the second grade.  I lived too far from school and had too many railroad tracks to cross.  My parents held me back until there were more children in the neighborhood so we could walk together.  My first adventure was to come to this building where the superintendent’s office was and show him what I could do and he agreed to let me start in the second grade.  Nothing exciting there except reading, writing and arithmetic.  We enjoyed the playgrounds and had lots of fun.              At the end of my fourth grade year, things changed and grandmother got sick and she had to go back to her native land so we all went back to Italy.”

            It was five years before my father and I got back to Junction City.  My father went back to work for the railroad in 1924 and I enrolled in Washington School in 1924 in fifth grade.  Next up was sixth grade in Departmental School, but after one month in sixth grade Miss Camel wanted to know if I wanted to try the seventh grade.  So, I agreed and finished seventh, eighth and ninth.

            When I graduated in 1929 and left high school, which is now the Geary County Museum, I was the last class to go through there.

            In March of 1924, when I first started at Washington School, the dairy cows had priority over the cars on North Washington Street.  That’s how different things were in those days.  There was only a handful of cars in Junction City, mainly owned by doctors, lawyers and a few others.  But about every other family had a dairy cow and the city rented some reservation land north of the Republican River between there and 77 highway.  Fort Riley and Junction City made a deal for grazing land for the military and in return Junction City would educate Fort Riley children.  Some of the boys would herd the cows up toward North Washington Street to go over the Washington Bridge so the cows could graze all day and bring them back at night.”

            Well… the way we educate our children, the ownership of vehicles and where cows graze today are different from the way Luis saw things in the 1920’s.

            Thanks for joining us today on “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.