Joseph Clayton in retirement

   After Rosa Ewer Clayton's death in 1913, Joe Clayton spent quit a bit of time with his daughter's family next door.  Dorothy Stover Rodehorst (born 1909) shared several Recollections from those times:

   Grandpa furnished the meat for the meals.  He would return from downtown ["downtown?" - that's a hoot ! - rrs] about 11:15 with the meat for dinner.  About 5:00 PM he would come up with  cold cuts.
   Mother was an excellent cook, though we kids didn't know it at the time.  We thought everyone ate that way.
   He was very well informed about world affairs.  It would have been hard to name a place that he had not read or heard about.  He could rise and make an excellent speech on almost anything.  No gossip.  Our conversations at the dinner table were politics, local affairs, history, geography, etc.  He was quite a talker and his graces were very long and touched upon anyone who was in need of prayer.
   He slept over at his house leaving us about 8:30 every night.  He did not go to bed at this early hour, He read the Bible and took care of his letter writing.  He did not believe in card playing with regular cards, but every Christmas we received a deck of Authors which stood me in good at test time in English for many years.

   Glenn Stover recalls:

   ... Grandpa had his meals at our place.  After he left we'd get out the cards to play rummy or something - once in a while he'd come back for something and someone would say, "It's Grandpa," and the cards would disappear under the table.

   When the weather was good we would go out to the farm every Sunday afternoon.  Grandpa had the second car in town.  Ernest went to Omaha to get it.  It was a "Little" - very soon the company became Chevrolet.  The horse-hair stuffing came out the holes and there was a quiet hassle as to who had to sit on the holey side... we went out to the farm and we three older kids loved it.  We roamed the creek for miles either way.

   Glenn Stover also recalled the "Little," and the outings to the farm.  According to Glenn, the Little was an open roadster and on their drives, Bert would drive and Joe sat up front with Bert.  May and the kids would sit in the back.  According to Glenn, they always took an old blanket with them, even in the heat of summer.  Grandpa occasionally used chewing tobacco, and whenever he turned, it might have been to spit, and "zip, up came the blanket!"
   Glenn also said that Joe was convinced that there would never be a road built over the hill south of Poole simply because there would never be an automobile powerful enough to climb it.

[Note the shadow of the windmill and the lack of ornate trim on the east side of the house. Verlin died at the age of two and one-half in April of 1918]

   Allen Stover shared some recollections and stories:

   There was a barn sitting on the northeast corner of Granddad Clayton's lot so we almost always had a cow or two which kept us in milk and butter.  Then there was the time that Dad and Granddad decided to go into the chicken business and built a big chicken house just northeast of our house.  I really don't remember just how it turned out but if I recall it wasn't very profitable as I think they only tried it for two or three years.
   Then there was the time that Keith couldn't get a new-born calf to drink out of a pail.  Not sure who, whether it was Dad or Granddad who said he didn't have enough patience and they tried their hand at it.  Anyhow, they held the stubborn calf's nose in the milk until it drowned.

[No mention of the ice house in the same vicinity?  I have no recollection of a barn, it was gone by my time, but there was a chicken coop (that kept us in eggs - Mom loved chickens), and I had the chore of cleaning the winter accumulation.  I do remember the hot, humid, stifling, breezeless days of cleaning... old chicken doo-doo is dusty, and it just hung there thick, dissolving in the sweat of the labor...]

   Joe Clayton enjoyed an active retirement and had many interests and pursuits.  In fact, probably the only thing he really retired from was the farm, as he continued in his capacity as Chairman of the Village Board until his death.  According to Dorothy, he "took many trips with his eyes wide open.  He attended World Fairs, Civil War Encampments and Grand Old Army things."

   And from Ernest:   "I remember Dad going to Vancouver, British Columbia, to visit the Elliots.  He took a boat trip from there down the coast to San Francisco on the way home..."

   In 1915, Joe Clayton was honored by having a Poole street named after him.  [see the Village minutes from "Poole, a Town of the Past."]

Clayton sale article courtesy David Ludwig

   Ernest Clayton, of Majors, only son of Uncle Joe Clayton, mayor of Poole,is advertising a public sale of his fine herd of Holstein dairy cattle, as well as his farm machinery and other personal effects, to take place on Tuesday,Dec.16,1924.  His farm,a choice 80-acre tract of land, located one mile west and five miles south of Poole, was sold for $7000 on Monday of this week, through the agency of Grant Corey, of Ravenna, to the Messrs. Bert and Clarence McConnell, neighboring farmers.  Mr. Clayton has made a quite conspicuous success of the dairying business in recent years, and has accumulated a herd of Holstein cattle probably as well bred as any to be found in this section of the state.  His success has been such that he is selling out with the intention of re-engaging in the dairying business on a much heavier scale, in a location nearer to market and where there is a demand for the whole milk. At present, he is figuring strongly on locating near some of the larger cities in the Pacific northwest, in Washington or Oregon. He is is afraid of shipping his Nebraska stock into an entirely different climate, so has decided to sell his much-prized cattle and re-stock wherever he finally decides to locate. The sale will be conducted by Grant Corey, of Ravenna,with the assistance of an auctioneer who is well posted on Holstein-Friesean pedigrees, on Tuesday, Dec. 16, at the Clayton farm south and west of Poole.

    Ernest recalled one of his father's visits:

   ... one thing I remember, I had a large beet field and Dad and Keith helped me weed it on our hands and knees, and Dad used a box to sit on.  One morning Keith and I got out before he did and we found a baby skunk on the way and put it under his box.  Wasn’t that a stinking thing to do?

   From Dorothy Stover Rodehorst:

- He was quite tight-lipped; only occasionally did he tell of his youth.
- He thought nosy kids should be seen but never heard.
- I never knew anyone more honest than he, and Church going!

   From Ernest Clayton:

- I never heard him mention his father...
- He was very religious, and I never heard him swear.

   (And Ernest was there when the skunk got out!  The harshest language attributed to Joe was a muttered "danged fool" when involved in the problems of neighbor Alex Young.)

   And from notes taken in conversation with Dorothy and May Stover:

 - Joe Clayton was a Presbyterian turned Methodist.
 - He claimed he was Irish.