Old vs. New - Marengo: Town has downsized over the years

Rev. Raymond Ayers stands in for a portrait at Zion Lutheran Church in Marengo, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2009. Ayers, an Army chaplain, returned home from a year stint in Iraq in October. (Justin Edmonds - jedmonds@nwherald.com )

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MARENGO – Raymond Ayers was less than thrilled to find out he would be living in Marengo.

“I was like, ‘What? Did he just say tango? Mango?’ ” he said.

But as it happens, the associate pastor at Zion Lutheran Church on Jackson Street loves the small town.

“When we moved here, I immediately fell in love with the small-town farming emphasis and friendly community character,” Ayers said.

Born and raised in Idaho, Ayers stayed in-state for college. He graduated from University of Idaho with a mechanical engineering degree and worked for Hewlett-Packard for about 10 years before he decided to enter the seminary and moved to St. Louis.

“I didn’t really have a lot of say in coming [to Marengo] because, as a pastor, the way we are placed in the ministry is through the divine call of the church,” Ayers said.

“When it comes down to it, the Lord is placing you where he needs you. It’s kind of like receiving an order from the Army.”

Ayers had hoped to be placed in the Northwest, he said.

“When I heard that I was coming to Marengo, I went to the placement director and he said, ‘Well, it’s northwest of St. Louis,’ “ Ayers said. “I said, ‘No, it’s not.’ ”

In July 2006, Ayers dutifully picked up and moved to Illinois with his wife and two kids, and it turned out that Marengo was what he was looking for.

“It is very similar to what I came from in Idaho,” Ayers said. “Just walking down the street, you have people who call out your name, and you see the same people.”

The feeling of a close-knit community showed in November, when Ayers returned from Iraq, where he spent about a year as an Army chaplain.

At least 400 community members and schoolchildren lined the streets and greeted him with waving flags and cheers as he was escorted home by Patriot Guard Riders and Marengo’s fire and rescue squads.

Ayers said Marengo has everything he needs with restaurants such as Café 20 and Flatlander Market, but that it would be nice to have a movie theater, which is one thing Marengo used to have that long-time residents Herb Franks and Helen Lindow remember clearly. The Colonial Theater closed about 1960, the siblings said.

Marengo used to have five grocery stores, three pharmacies and three hardware stores.

Now it’s down to one of each, including the hardware store that Lindow owns, Lindow’s Appliance.

“Friday night on State Street was lit up like downtown [Chicago] because the farmers would come in when they did their shopping,” Franks said.

Franks, 75, and Lindow, 74, grew up in Marengo.

Helen Lindow, 74, and her brother Herb Franks, 75, have lived in Marengo for more than 70 years and own 240 acres of land in the town. The siblings are now working on building a bowling alley, hoping to bring more activity to the area. "We aren't the fastest, smoothest outfit but we honor it and love it," Fanks said about Marengo. (Lauren M. Anderson - landerson@nwherald.com)

Each left town for college – Franks was drafted and also went to law school – but eventually came back and built their own houses on the farmland that has been owned by their family since the 1940s.

Both graduated from the one-room Coral School, where Franks said there were only two kids in his grade and fewer than 20 in the whole school.

There was no running water. Each morning the students would have to pump water into a bucket and pour into a chemical toilet.

For fun, there was a bowling alley and a roller rink, but they had a lot of work to do on the farm.

“We were farm kids and quite frankly, after school we went to the barn,” Franks said.

There’s no doubt that the town has changed, the brother and sister said. Lindow has worked hard to help establish a business community at the east end of town.

“New people have moved in with new ideas,” she said. “Marengo does need a lot, and Marengo has to grow.”

Family and community were among the reasons that brought the brother and sister back home to Marengo, and those characteristics remain.

“People want to live here; it’s pleasant to be here,” Franks said. “I think that even in these tough economic times we will prosper.”