FCS Financial: One Hundred Years July 2016 | Page 28

the bank,” Billy said. “He went to St. Louis and bought a team of
mules that cost him $320. That was the last check that came through
Catawissa Bank. After that they couldn’t clear any more.”
The resiliency and self-reliance of rural America helped farm
families get through the tough times. “Mom would can 400 to 500
quarts of vegetables and fruit and we had a cellar,” Billy recalled.
Without the luxury of refrigeration to keep meat from spoiling,
neighbors took turns providing a beef cow which they butchered and
shared. And though life was indeed difficult, it wasn’t totally without
its light-hearted moments.
Life was just different—we knew everybody in the
neighborhood. The only entertainment we had was that
every Saturday somebody would have a house party.
There’d be a kid come across the field to tell us his mom
and dad were having a house party. Mom would make a
cake or kill a chicken to make some chicken salad to take
and then everybody would go to the house. They’d take
up the rug in the front room and dance and it would be
morning before we went home. That was our entertainment!
Neighbors provided the music, a guitar, a violin, a banjo,
and sometimes a piano if the people had one. The kids
always went along and we’d set on the side and watch. We all
learned how to square dance.
Years later, when Billy developed a relationship with Bob Pillen
of the St. Clair Production Credit Association, he remembered him
as a promoter and organizer of their local rural electric cooperative
years prior. “I remember sitting on a feed sack listening to the men
speak of how they could get electric for eighty-six cents a month.
Everybody laughed; they said it would never happen.” And though
World War II stalled rural electrification, Bob Pillen was ready to help
his rural neighbors get electricity once it was over.
Jay Shipley, a longstanding member of the Maryville Production
Credit Association, still owns the house where he was born in
Isadora, a town his great grandfather Renaldo Brown founded.
Jay recalled his father, Ivor Shipley, worked on his father’s farm,

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