Ninety-nine years and counting

“I’ve had a full life,” Cornell Deeny said in talking about his 99th birthday recently.

Born on a farm in Winneshiek County on September 27, 1918, Deeny said there really wasn’t much to do in Jackson Junction, the closest town to where he grew up. All they had there was a railroad, a post office, and a grain elevator. For him, though, that was never really a worry as he was kept busy helping with farm work.

Deeny enjoyed playing baseball for his high school in Waucoma. That was the only sport he played because according to him, there were no fall or spring sports at his school. When he graduated, he decided farm life wasn’t for him. Part of that, he noted, was due to the fact that they didn’t have the nice, fancy, modern equipment like they do today.

When he was a young boy, they used horses to pull the plow. “When that hit a rock, it could throw you clean up on the horse,” he recalled.

Read the full story in the October 19 edition.