The Rice House

The Rice House in the village where I was born, Gordon, Ohio. Tommy Rice, the village blacksmith, owned the house and he lived there with his wife, Ella and daughter, Ruth and son-in-law, William or Bill Lage. Bill came over from Germany and escaped Nazi Germany by months. He met and married Ruth and the two of them went on to make a lot of money from selling heating oil and gasoline to farmers and to small towns that had small tanks and one pump for selling gasoline to run Model T's and Model A's. He bought a number of farms during The Great Depression and had tenant farmers run those for him for a profit. It seems like everything he touched turned to money and his contributions to the communities benefited many people. He paid for an entire hospital wing that was added to the Greenville Memorial Hospital, for example. He sold new Reo Cars and Trucks from his small dealership, block building (above), on Main Street in Gordon, Ohio. The building is still there but the car and truck business ended. I remember one of his Reo trucks was used by Boyer's Grocery: it had shelves and drawers stocked with food items and ran a regular route in the country; stopping, showing and selling everything from bread and cheese to candy and hardware to the farmers on the route.