By Jolene Farley
Eighty-six-year-old Beaver Creek resident Elmer McDowell has many memories to share.
Elmer was born on a farm northeast of Beaver Creek and lived there with his parents and two brothers.
"I can remember coming to Beaver Creek to get groceries when I was a kid," said McDowell. "It was just a cow trail into town."
McDowell thinks he was about 4 years old when his family moved to the Rock County Poor Farm, two miles west of Luverne, for about a year.
He clearly remembers being scared of some of the other residents. One fellow was kept in a room that was supposed to be off limits to McDowell. He was shocked to see a man in a high chair with his ears, nose, hands and feet frozen off.
His parents would take food in to him and he wouldn't touch it, so McDowell assumed he ate it like a dog after they left the room.
It wasn't only the physically challenged that put McDowell on edge. He said there were rough characters living in the house with them.
According to reports from a 1977 Star Herald article, most people who went to the Poor Farm were workers or bachelors who had no place to go in the winter and the elderly with no family.
His time at the Poor Farm would later spur McDowell to bring food and fuel nine miles out in the country to a couple during the blizzard of 1936. He didnÕt want the couple to freeze like the person he remembered.
When McDowell was 7 years old his family moved to Sherman, S.D., where they farmed until his father passed away in 1937.
McDowell only attended school until "the second year of high school." He said he was forced to quit school to help with farm work.
McDowell also tells tales of Frank and Jesse James. He said the railroad wanted to push through the land of the boys' father.
The young men in the family started robbing banks. When the posse came, on several occasions, looking for the James Gang, area residents would point them in the wrong direction. "No one would turn them in," said McDowell.
Elmer said he will never forget how his wife, Dorothy, died in his arms at the age of 49. She was given a clean bill of health just two days before her death. The McDowells had two children, Dennis and Gary.
McDowell moved back to Beaver Creek in 1974. "This was home country to me," he said. "This is where I grew up. Most of my friends are here."
Later in life, McDowell enjoyed attending dances, usually at the Moose Lodge, the El Riad Shrine or the V.F.W. hall in Sioux Falls. "I canÕt dance like I used to," lamented McDowell.