in June, 1875, I was able to buy even a Kerby self-rake reaper that John Bell had let a near-by farmer try out. The next year, 1876, “Centennial year,” Mr. Martin Honomichl went to Salina with his team of horses and brought home a reaper, the Walter A. Wood “self-rake.” Many settlers followed his example and bought the same kind. This harvesting machine was favored by our pioneers because it made a nice, square, compact sheaf, ready to be bound by hand without having to rearrange it. Our first implement dealer, Jan Tobias, wisely kept these machines for sale until binders and headers put them out of market.
In the fall of 1875 I bought the only wheat drill John Bell had, and, as far as we knew, no other merchant in our vicinity had one for sale. It was the Hoosier drill with grass seeder (for which we had no use), costing $85. I loaned it to everybody far and near, even as far as eleven or twelve miles; and it was the same way with my reaper. Jan Tobias, who was a shrewd business man, soon began to keep Hoosier drills for sale.
Joseph Tampier, a young lad of promise, clerked for Mr. H. Stassen, and later for Mr. Nesmith, thus getting a good training in merchandising. His father, J. F. Tampier, becoming lonesome on his farm in Russell county, without a wife, sold the farm and bought a little grocery store in Wilson, where Mr. Jacob Fowle had kept post office, groceries, and sometimes fresh meat. Soon after Tampier bought the store he had the old rotten building torn down to make room for a large stone building, which later he enlarged. Besides this store room Tampier built another adjoining it on the east side.
Just east of Tampier’s second store building the “Sokol” club built the opera house, or what is more frequently called “Turner Hall.” Mr. Tampier donated the cost of the west wall of this building, besides giving a ten-foot strip the length of the lot, so that our “Sokol” club might have more room. The contract for the building was let April 29, 1901. It has a frontage of fifty-three feet, is one hundred and three feet long, and two stories high with a nine-foot basement. The stage has a curtain opening of fourteen by twentytwo feet, and floor twenty by fifty feet. The gymansium under the stage is twenty by forty-nine feet, with a fourteen-and-a-half-foot ceiling. The seating capacity of the hall is five hundred. The building has furnace heat and electric light and its approximate cost was $15,000.
The Bohemian athletic organization, analogous to the German turnverein, is named “Sokol” (Falcon). Vincent Hubalek, a young Cech fresh from “Ceske Vlasti” (our native land), full of enthusiasm and energy, organized a club of Sokol upon his arrival here in 1892, and in a short time they were able to give public exhibitions of their skill and strength at picnics held in the groves on the banks of the Smoky Hill river.
The first “Sokol” club was organized at the Bohemian Hall in the country, located at the northeast corner of the southeast quarter of section twentytwo, Noble township, Ellsworth county. The second club was organized at Wilson, Vincent Hubalek being the first training master for both clubs. In 1896 was built our National Hall at Wilson. For it was used the best building rock the magnesia limestone found on the bluffs dividing the watershed between the Saline and Smoky Hill rivers. The Wilson “Sokol Karel Jonás,” was the second club of athletics, and they undertook the building of the hall. They secured donations of many kinds from both countrymen and merchants of Wilson, countrymen generally donating work,
