Ironton Sililoquy

February 25, 1966

Written by Charles Collett

Submitted by: Robert Kingrey

I often think of my dad who did a lot of thinking and telling me what I would live to see. He didn’t care for navy beans but enjoyed corn bread and mush with milk. He said it many times at the dinner table that I would live long enough to see the time that people could eat their meals by taking a couple of pills from a bottle and going about their work, and I often think of his prophecy when I take a vitamin with a glass of hot water for breakfast.

Dad was sold on newspaper advertising and advertised more than any other man in the same line of business in this town. His livelihood was insurance, but he loved the press. His name seldom appeared in print, but he wrote editorials in the old Irontonian before I was born, mostly boosting what he called "Our Home Town". He wrote travel stories longhand for the Cincinnati Enquirer as late as 1900 and Ironton papers later than that.

Quite often he told me, "I was talking through my hat," when I said something about what would happen when "I am a man". One of my childhood dreams was, because I was afraid in the dark that someday I’d have a home and press a button at the front door and all the lights would come on. Of course I never dreamed of it, but I now wonder what dad would have said even just before his death in 1932, had I predicted what happened in this newspaper yesterday when a half-page advertisement in color announced a new dog food.