I did not grow up in Lone Tree, nor am I a member of that “Great Generation” that the depression forged. I am a “baby boomer” born in 1949. My Grandmother’s family was from Swiss City, her last name was Dove. My mother’s family is from just west of Lone Tree in Knox County, a small town called Oaktown. One of my mother’s older sisters married a Lamb, Clone Lamb in 1929. Clone and my aunt Helen lived and worked on a farm in Sullivan County. Clone’s father was Aid Lamb.

My father often told me and my brothers about spending summers with his grandfather Dove on a farm just east of Lone Tree, my grandfather was a sharecropper. I have great memories of hunting with my father just east of Lone Tree on a farm that was owned by a childhood friend of his. I wish I could remember his name but I do not. During these hunting trips my father would talk about his summers and how he helped his grandfather plow the fields with mules. How he and his friend would play in the woods and I am sure get into mischief. He also talked about walking down to the Lone Tree General Store and getting “a soda pop”. I remember the old Lone Tree store from my visits in the early 60s. Sadly it is gone.

I was just back in the U.S. on one of my R&Rs from Afghanistan and I made a visit to my mother, who has moved back to Oaktown, and traveled down Indiana State Road 67 and was greatly saddened by the now dilapidated small towns in the area. Swiss City, Lyons, Marco, Sandborn, and even Worthington all almost ghost towns.

In traveling through Swiss City my thoughts traveled back to what the town must have been like in the early 1900 to mid 1900s. I thought of the life of the people living there and how my grandparents must have lived during that period. I just have to think that we are currently going in the wrong direction.

Last year a cousin from Oaktown and I made a day trip to Indianapolis. During the trip he reminisced on how each of the small towns in the area of Knox, Greene, and Sullivan County had their own high school and how the Oaktown High School basketball team would travel to Marco, Lyons, Swiss City and other towns in the area for Friday night basketball games and how each small town team was a point of town pride. He remembered special games between Oaktown and many of the other small towns in the area.

So much we are missing today, sorry to say. As Bob Hope said, “Thanks for the Memories”.
Bill

Johnl

My husband and I had lunch with Your son Bret and our daughter Terri and our conversation turned to your book “Lone Tree”.

We have grown to love Bret as we get to know him and are so happy that he obviously loves Terri so much. Terri has never been happier and we are thankful for them both as a couple.

I look foreward to reading your book, and to meeting you one day soon.

With kindest regards,

De Van Overbeke
Colorado Sprigns, CO