Note: Over my time at CC I’ve written a number of articles reflecting upon various automotive related family events. However, from the automotive standpoint, there are other persons and events that stick out and whose story is yearning to be told.
Marvin Eichstetter lived across the road from my maternal grandparents, “Albert” and “Iris”. Raised in an orphanage, Marvin (usually referred to as “Ike”) farmed his unknown number of acres. Every warm day a person could drive by on Route N and see the results of Ike’s effort. He had his row crops on the north side of the road and his cattle on the south side, adjacent to my grandparents 10 acres.
Periodically during my visits to my grandparents, Ike would stop by in his mid-1970s Chevrolet pickup. Despite his considerable frugality, Ike had spent some cash on his pickup; it was a two-tone and it obviously had a V8 under the hood given the sound it made. It was not a bare-bones example by any measure.
As a child, I always knew the atmosphere with my grandparents changed whenever thin-as-a-rail Ike would stop by. My grandmother would linger long enough to say hi and would announce she had laundry or dishes to attend to – anything to get her back inside. As a very young child, the only thing amiss to me was Ike wore nothing but a pair of short shorts and tennis shoes. It was obvious Ike dressed this way frequently as he had a near mahogany sheen.
My grandfather was utterly unfazed by what Ike wore (or, rather, didn’t wear). They would talk about cattle, grain prices, and the weather. However, when Grandpa had to go to Ike’s house about something pertinent, he never let me accompany him. This was uncharacteristic, always making me wonder why.
As I got older, Ike’s Chevrolet pickup stuck around. For that area of Southeast Missouri, it was far enough south that winter didn’t bring as much calcium and sodium chloride for snow removal purposes, so even a famously rust-prone vehicle such as Ike’s Chevrolet never developed full-on cancer. However, it sure did age as Ike used it hard every day.
During the years I grew up, the pieces about Ike started to slowly fall into place. As the puzzle came together the resultant picture was an interesting one.
For a long time I never knew if Ike was married or not. Asking my grandmother about this one day, I got more than I had anticipated. To roughly quote her:
“Yes, Ike is married. His wife’s name is Marie. She was a mail-order bride from somewhere up in Quebec and speaking English isn’t her strong suit. Marie is a difficult person as every time I’ve seen her she’s barking orders to Ike faster than he can carry them out.
“She’s also eccentric. I was there one day and was surprised to see she had a cat since that was another mouth to feed. She spoke French to the cat, telling me how cats mind her as they universally understand French, not English or any other language.”
I never met Marie.
From Google Earth; Ike’s house in 2013
Of course, I was only in Ike’s house once to deliver some Christmas candy. The house itself was a fairly innocuous two-story that had some years on it. It was rather cold and sparsely furnished and Ike did not turn on any lights while we were there.
Ike’s aversion to electricity was tied into his breathtaking frugality, a trait he addressed on many fronts. These behaviors flew in the face of his having such a well-equipped pickup and something I would later learn was his only allowance of any type of extravagance.
When I was in high school, conversation during a visit to my grandparents house revealed Ike had inadvertently left the water on to his cattle feeder. Doing so meant the pump to Ike’s well ran all night, burning electricity. Ike had told Grandpa this was so disastrous to him, he had punished himself for two weeks by parking his pickup and using a wheelbarrow along with going to bed after dinner and not watching the broadcast news. Ike had figured this would offset his well pump having ran for about ten hours.
Food was also a consideration. Along about this same time, my grandparents were beginning to question Ike’s sanity. It appears another disclosure from Ike revealed he and Marie were eating once daily, with their sole menu item being a bologna sandwich with lard and cake icing as condiments.
The most memorable was a story told to me by my grandfather’s younger half-brother Clem. Clem had been visiting grandpa one day and the need to go see Ike arose. Grandpa had told Clem to be prepared but, as Clem told me, “I told Al I’d been in the Army; not much surprised me.”. Well, Clem was wrong; he was surprised. As he told me:
“We got there, Jason, and your grandpa went tearing off between the house and barn yelling for Ike. He didn’t want to go in the house. Anyway, we heard Ike yelling back from the barn. After we got past his old Chevy pickup, there was the damnedest sight I’d ever seen – Ike was sitting there buck naked milking a cow. Your grandpa didn’t tell me Ike was a nudist! He said that son of a bitch went around naked half the year! Your grandpa set me up.”
As Grandpa wisely observed, a person can save a lot on clothing, water, and laundry detergent by going around naked. Plus, if you have short shorts, it doesn’t take as much water to clean them. It also helped explained how, as my grandfather was later unsurprised to learn, Ike had a couple million dollars in the bank.
1988 shown
Ike finally broke down and bought a new Chevrolet pickup around 1990. Like his last pickup, it wasn’t a base model as his new one even had chrome wheels. But this pickup didn’t last long.
A few years later, Marie was having health issues and Ike decided to put her in a nursing home. Not wanting to be alone, Ike sold everything and moved in with her. Ike died about twenty years ago but it is impossible for me to see any two-toned Chevrolet pickup from the 1970s without thinking of Marvin Eichstetter.
Thanks, Jason. This is the kind of article that moves me. The car is an interesting accesory to the whole story. Go figure what kind of issues led Ike to that kind of life.
There are some really odd people out there. They seem to thrive out in the country where they don’t have to interact with folks all that much.
Except for the nudist part, Ike reminds me of one of my sister’s inlaws. He lived in the farmhouse he had been born in (somewhere around maybe 1910) and it remained without electricity until some time in the 80s. He was a mean old coot and would shoot peoples’ dogs if they wandered onto his property. Someone set fire to his house but only part of it burned before the fire department got there. He dealt with it by nailing up plastic to seal off the burned part and lived in the couple of rooms that were undamaged. He stored many personal items in a 71 Chevy station wagon that had sunk into the ground to its hubs. He finally died some time in the mid 90s if I remember correctly. I think I remember him driving one of those 70s Chevy pickups.
Are people like that just drawn to Chevrolets? 🙂
Jason’s story reminded me of the Neighborhood Oddball when I was growing up. I have no idea what his name was, but we called him the Man with the Stick, because he always took long walks around the neighborhood with a long stick… which he would shake at any nearby dogs or children.
The Man With the Stick lived in a old, falling-apart house, of course. Next to his house was a small detached garage, and his car only fit halfway in, so the rear end stuck out. His car was… a mid-70s Impala. So, maybe such folk are (or were) drawn to Chevrolets.
You are now reminding me of two old bachelor brothers who lived in the same town where I grew up, and, ironically, lived next door to my mom’s younger brother “Ron” when they lived there.
Pink and Cold Water (nobody knew their real names) were classics although, unfortunately for here, they never had a vehicle. However their neighbor across the street took them to get groceries in his Chevrolet.
I’ve been looking for a way to use Pink and Cold Water in one of these reminisces.
I’m not sure what that says about me or my step father! He gave me his 1978 C-10 when I moved to Texas about six years ago. It used to belong to a farmer, that like Ike, hadn’t got the base model. This one had a 305 V8 and a three speed. It was plain white with a long bed. The only other option the truck had was a blue cloth bench seat. The “upgraded” seat. No carpets of course. Or a radio, clock, or AC. My father used as his daily and my step sister hated it! I miss that truck.
It seems to me, but I could be wrong, that folks with borderline mental health issues managed to get through life more readily than nowadays. I suspect someone with Ike’s issues would likely be homeless today, and living on the streets.
The difference: back then one could still make a living (and squirrel away a few million) from what was probably a pretty modest-sized farm, since he probably inherited it in the first place. Today? Not so likely. And folks today mostly don’t have the basic skills necessary either.
I suspect there were a fair number of Ikes around living like that, I knew of several batty old guys still living on little farms in Iowa, when I lived out in the country for a while. But all those little farms have been gobbled up by bigger ones.
This is a reflection of the changing times.
You may be onto something about getting through life. In this instance, Ike bought the place sometime in the 1950s (he had been there a while when my grandparents bought across the road in 1961) and it was four miles from the nearest town. So his interactions with others were pretty infrequent.
Quite a few houses have been built in this area just in my lifetime. As a for instance, the pasture where he kept his cattle had a McMansion built on it right after Ike sold it. So being as isolated is simply harder to do.
And none of his former property is currently being farmed.
When I was a kid in the 1980s there was a guy named Ivan who lived in our neighborhood who had some mental health issues. He lived in a dumpy run down house up the street from us. For reference, the subdivision was built in the mid 1970s, so it would have been only slightly over a decade old at the time, so it wasn’t an old house, just not maintained at all. Ivan rode around on a moped because he lost his drivers license due to a DUI. As far I know he didn’t have a job; from the stories I remember he got some sort of financial support from his mother, and it’s possible he got SSI disability or something like that due to his mental illness. One day Ivan fell asleep in a chair while smoking a cigarette and set fire to his living room. The fire department put it out before it caused any major structural damage to the house, but Ivan didn’t live there anymore after that. As best I can remember from stories I heard 30 years ago as a child, he went to live with his mother after that.
I never really thought about before, but after reading your comment I realized if Ivan hadn’t had that support from his mother he more than likely would have been homeless.
As far as the house goes, it sat abandoned for years after the fire, until eventually somebody renovated it and put it up for sale. I don’t know the story behind that, if Ivan or his mother (I’m pretty sure she had bought the house for him in the first place) sold it to a house flipper, or if it got foreclosed on, or if one of them died.
Great story Jason,
That reminded me of a locally famous eccentric farmer, Crazy Ernie Simmons. He bought up all kinds of scrap after WW2 including surplus airplanes, living alone in the house he grew up in. After his death in 1970 all his stuff was auctioned, any surviving North American BT-9 Yale or Fairey Swordfish is from the Simmons collection.
A bit of a different twist, some folks I am acquainted are some guys who still live in the same house where they were born, now 60-70 years later. Never married, lifelong city dwelling bachelors, still the same childhood phone number, and driving 20-25 year old cars. The houses are left unmaintained and the gentlemen rarely step out of the houses. As Paul alluded to, I would suspect borderline mental issues. Certainly not normally accepted behaviour in this day and age. A bit sad to see.
A non-Chevy example: Clarence and Clara. Brother and sister, about 60, always lived in the same inherited two-story house in a small town in Ohio. You could see that the house was filled to the gunwales with newspapers and junk. Clarence spent the day sitting outside in a ‘pergola’ he had built from four screen doors. There was just enough room for a chair, and he sat there smoking his pipe.
Clarence and Clara bought a car once, for unknown reasons. It was a ’48 Chrysler New Yorker. They drove it home and never drove it again. 20 miles on the odometer.
That is indeed unusual, especially about the Chrysler. It’s hard to determine what others are thinking sometimes.
Back in the late 60s and early 70s my father-in-law drove a cab part time in St. Louis. A regular fare was a retired couple. They owned a car but were worried it was wearing out as it had nearly 800 miles on it. You read that right; only 800 miles.
At some point in here he was able to acquire one of these low-mileage cars, a ’57 Plymouth that had like 2000 miles on it. It’s the car he drove to bring his only daughter home from the hospital in 1972. He sold with 40,000 miles on it and made money from it.
I think the frightening part of this is that as we age, we can all see a little of these types of behaviors creeping in. i dont have a yard full of WWII airplanes but I’m getting more content not leaving the house, driving old cars, and not caring what people think. Am I on my way to eccentricity?
This story reminds me of my mother in law’s cousin Lloyd, he was one of the last bachelor farmers in my area. Little guy, like 5 foot 5, big head, and the biggest gnarliest hands I have ever seen, grew popcorn and whenever he came to visit, brought..popcorn, we had like 15 pounds of it at one time. Nicest guy you could ever meet, always fell asleep while visiting. My in-laws would just let him sleep until he woke up, and he would pick up his conversation where he left off.
Mental illness sucks.my 51 years old cousin is suffering from schizophrenia he is still living with his parents No jobs and driving A 42 years old Paykan.in my opinion someone with health issues like cancer or aids at least knows that what is wrong but people with mental health issues are suffering and their families are suffering As well.
It would be so nice if Chevrolet built trucks that were that size again. No one needs the Peterbuilt sized trucks we have now.
Seems like everyone here knows an Ike-like person. Perhaps THEY are the normal ones as opposed to us that tend to have some concerns about what others do and think, try to at least sort of fit in and seem to give a damn about it all. As long as Ike was happy, so be it. My wife and kids think I’m weird enough when I stop the car to take pictures of an old Corolla or whatever. At least Ike drove a Chevy, he was probably telling stories to his Marie about this weird long-hair he saw driving some odd French or Swedish car when he went to get a bologna resupply at the grocery store…
Jason, you do tell a good story, I must say. I never get distracted when I read one of these pieces. Keep ’em coming.
That is a good counterpoint to some of the thoughts expressed so far.
I’ve been trying to determine if I was simply lucky enough to be exposed to a colorful set of people growing up or if I was unusually observant as a youngster. Either way, Ike was memorable. He would have been well over 100 by now (I’m thinking he was about 10 years older than my grandparents) and some of the more extreme behavior emerged when he was in his 70s.
The thing that strikes me most about Ike is his having been raised in an orphanage gave him no known family, he had no children, and he had no heirs when he died. That’s sobering.
I don’t know if you were lucky or observant (likely both) but it appears to have taught you empathy, something sorely lacking in much of the population. Not everyone is how they are or in their particular situation of or due to their own doing. Those that can recognize it and are willing to do something about it or at the very least accept it make the world a better place for all. The others, not so much.
My youngest (9) hates wearing underwear and takes every opportunity to remind us of the “fortune” he’s saving us as a result. There may be a little bit of Ike in him, I don’t know.
+1000
Agreed. He would have fit right in in Northern California back then. Just another hippie working on his farm in the nude. Nothing new…
Ike is my hero.
I think every small rural town has, or at least had, a couple of colorful characters. In my little rural farm town north of militia country in Michigan, we had Vern and John. Vern drank Mountain Dew by the two liter and twitched and spoke like he was on some strong uppers. John was the more interesting of the two. He had a custom jacket with “JOHN” in a really goofy font… So the aliens would know who he was when they came to get him.
Neither of them drove, though… John walked, far enough he’d occasionally show up in the next town over, 17 miles away. Not sure what ever became of him-he was probably only in his 40s or 50s when he disappeared from public sightings. Vern usually had an old 10-speed, but I don’t know that he ever actually rode it. After 20 years, he had the same 10-speed, tires flat and looking worse for wear, but he still pushed it along like he always had.
I knew a guy who was tight with money to the point he pissed his wife off badly enough that when her mom got sick, she just moved in with her, filed for divorice (Their 3 kids were shocked as they had about 40 years in at at that point), and rarely talked to him again. He was famously cheap and about the only thing he didn’t do on the cheap side was split toilet paper, who another guy my dad was sort of friends with did. Buy the wife a car with no radio? Sure? No heater? Yep, I didn’t think it was possible, but he found them and added one on. He would give his kids the cold shoulder for days if they ordered anything expensive when they had the rare treat of going out to eat. I went with them once, before I knew about his extreme frugality, and ordered the whole Walleye, as I did a lot of the time when I was with my parents, not thinking it would be a big deal. Oh boy, was it ever a big deal, as I would find out later from one of the kids. When I told my dad that after I had gone home, he had a meltdown about me getting Walleye, he thought it was hilarious, it was like, “It was two bucks higher!”, than the burgers and chicken they got. Every time I would find out about some new cheapskate milestone he had reached, I would tell my dad, who just shook his head and laughed. The no heater in the car deal just floored him.
GREAT story. I shudder to think what the world will be like when the last eccentric is crushed under the weight of the singularity.
Great story Jason, as usual. I’m a bit older than you (68) and I remember many colorful, mostly harmless, but fascinating characters from childhood. I think you and I must have been unusually observant as kids to remember such folks. As many have commented above, these kinds of folks just aren’t seen much anymore, and modern life is poorer for it.
I grew up in the 1950’s-60’s in northern Indiana and can relate to this story as we had a number of “local characters” who exhibited eccentric behaviors that were well tolerated by the neighbors.
One old gentleman was a friend of my paternal grandfather and on occasion the two of us would go visit him. My grandfather always told me that Mr. Fawley was a lawyer who never practiced and that may (or not) have been true. He certainly was an articulate and intelligent man. He wore overalls well stained from the juice from the tobacco he constantly chewed and spit, among other things. In the warmer months he worth nothing but the overalls, and eschewed shoes and socks as well. He had a substantial farm that he worked mostly by himself, including tending to hogs and cattle.
Mr. F owned an ancient truck but do I not recall the make – Studebaker, I think. His car was a faded blue Henry J, the least expensive model with no trunk door or any options. “Henry” was his only car for all the time that I knew him. There was a wife but I don’t recall seeing her more than once or twice, cooking and doing laundry. They spent almost no money on anything for themselves but they did feed and care for a pack of dogs that followed Mr. F. around. When he died the estate was over $2,000,000 in the late 60’s – major money then or now.
I could name other local characters with odd behavior, including bachelor cousins of my grandfather who lived without electricity and indoor plumbing right up into the 60’s. I’m strongly with those who see eccentricity and anti-social or just independent behavior but not mental illness on display, and this was certainly the community’s reaction to most of these folks.
There were others that clearly had some degree of mental illness or that society had rejected due to their behavior or character being so outside the accepted “norms” (e.g., gay men) that they were ostracized and had difficulty living anything other than isolated lives on the fringes of the community. These people were sadder cases.
Were we better off then in that a lot of these folks could function better, perhaps even prosper, in non-urban environments where neighbors tended to be tolerant – probably so. But in terms of the latter group, probably not as the lack of tolerance or willingness to accept or help was undoubtedly harmful in the long run. I could provide more detail but will stop here.
Good story, Jason, one told with understanding and that brings back a lot of memories of my own growing up in a community so totally unlike the world I live in today.
We all seem to have known some eccentric characters. Recall that for decades there were these identical twins that walked the streets of downtown Baltimore dressed identically in three piece suits. Word was they came from a wealthy family, never worked, lived in the old family home and always dressed identically. Both were in their eighties when they died a few months apart.
My wife had an uncle who had been quite successful and by 1962 had a nice house filled with modern appliances (including then rare color televisions) and a new Thunderbird in the driveway. Then, something happened. I’m still not sure what. He stopped working and essentially became a hermit, rarely leaving his house. When he died 40 years later it was like his house was frozen in time back in 1962. The same TV’s, appliances etc. that had been there for 40 years. And, the ’62 T Bird was still in the driveway, Only about 50,000 miles, still ran (barely), but rust had taken its toll.
Stories like your wife’s uncle fascinate me, I like walking around older suburbs, older houses interest me as much as old cars.
Every once in a while you come across a house where time has stopped, sometimes with a car to match, some have the lawns and garden maintained, more often not.
In a fast moving world I find these scenes soothing somehow, like not everyone has to participate in the rat race world of earning a living, even though I know there is probably sadness involved as well.
Of course thoughts like this are probably part of my mental decline.
Superb read Jason; your empathy shines through. I compare Ike with the legion individuals in marketing whose clothing and appearance is directed towards being ‘different’, but in fact are simply cookie cutter when you see them all buying their chai lattes.
It is when we buff these rough edges from humanity that we lose humanity in itself.
The story reminds me of a half-forgotten childhood/teen memory (which only vaguely involves a car…)…
Across the highway from the church we went to when I was a little kid (near Findlay, OH) was a small, run-down farm. It was hilly, wooded, and had a small stream running through it. In flat as a pancake northwest Ohio, this was an anomaly. An old couple lived there, in the 60’s and 70’s.
My parents told me the farm had no electricity or running water. I don’t know if this was because the old man was frugal, or poor. I remember thinking this was very strange when I was little.
For a long time, a mid to late 30’s Chevrolet sedan sat outside the barn.
Eventually, the couple passed away. The place was empty for a long time. Finally, someone else realized the beauty of the location, tore down the original buildings, and built a new house there.
Lovely, Jason, down to your observation of those paused or strained reactions one got as kid when asking about something hard to explain.
We had a type of Ike opposite us when I was a kid, only of a more sinister variety. A miserable, opinionated, kid-hating Yorkshireman (whose last car was a Morrie 1100, bought new I believe), he had an unseen wife and a painfully shy son. After his death in the early ’90’s, we discovered that she was a concert pianist who’d never been allowed to play a note after marrying him years earlier. He was a controlling abuser, and she largely lost her mind. They had lived in utterly deprived, heatless, lightless circumstances, and yes, there was a lot of money found in the house itself when he did cark it. (In a nice ending, the son, by then in his early ’50’s, met a determined lady his own age who made him pull down the old place and build a new one there. So he still lives at the same address in his late ’70’s with her today, but happily. And sometimes, he even stops to talk!)
Great story Jason. I think we all know such a person as Ike. Reminds me of family a few blocks from where I grew up. They have quite a fleet for lack of a garage or yard to store them. Most notably, is a very weathered puke-green late 60’s dodge wagon filled to the gills with various and sundry items. It appears to be capable of scooting a few feet up and down the same street as it has done over the course of the last 20 or so years.
Next is a gray house-painted 80s-90s Chevy short bus in the driveway, also filled with items and adorned with a no trespassing sign on the rear emergency exit door. It has not moved in at least 10 years.
The flagship of the fleet is a late 80’s 4-door Cherokee with current registration. They also use an early 80s K car coupe for transportation.
Previous fleet vehicle included two super beetles and a 1940’s land rover.