What Do You Remember About Rippey?
The Rippey, Iowa, Sesquicentennial will be held on Saturday, August 1, 2020. If you have personal remembrances of Rippey, you are invited and encouraged to share those memorable stories. Just send your remembrance via email and we’ll get it posted on the Rippey News Web site, as well as on Facebook sites of the Friends of Rippey and the Rippey Sesquicentennial. You write down the anecdote or story–a page or two–and we’ll do the rest. Phyllis McElheney Lepke is serving as our volunteer coordinator and stories may be sent to her at Rippey150@gmail.com.
My Love For Rippey
Rippey had a huge influence on the person I am and the direction I took in life. Growing up close enough to see the lights of the ballpark glowing over the horizon. Dreaming of being a ball player. And the day I could play on that magnificent diamond. (That at that time looked like Yankee Stadium to me.) While my address was RR#1 Perry. I always claimed Rippey as home. It is where I enjoyed my first lemon coke with my grandfather, watched countless card games and absorbed the personalities and humor that made this town.
Growing up a farm boy, the center of my world was Rippey and those that called it home. Two banks (the one you talked out loud and the one you whispered), two car dealers (those cool director chairs with car names), two service stations (the adventures of getting a tire fixed at Ross Hatfield’s Coop station), the school where I started my education and my parents finished theirs, and the ball park. What more could you need?
From the beginning I loved this farming community and its unique ability when help was needed to drop all differences and personal animosities to rally to whatever cause was necessary to get someone else’s life back on track. Spending my teenage years baling hay, shelling corn, and walking so many rows of beans I still can see them with I close my eyes taught me the value of a job well done. As I neared graduation from high school and the reality that I was not the next Mickey Mantle set in (nor was I the next Lester Zanotti or Danny Peters.), I turned to the second love, farming. My teacher advisors were devastated to the point they called me into the guidance office to talk me out of “wasting my life” farming.
Being third generation stubborn, I decided to show them! For the next 35 years I thoroughly loved wasting my life! More than the job, I loved the camaraderie that went with the life and the extra special way it felt in the Rippey community. I learned great life lessons from the outstanding characters of this community as a boy, a teenager, and a man. The list of people from Rippey that made these years great is quite long. As the story goes: “They just don’t make them like that anymore!” And that is how I will always feel about Rippey! Thank you for the memories! Happy 150 years!