Dick Riffle Story Part IV

To continue with People of of Lindley 1922-1940-as I knew Them by Dick Riffle .(refer back to Part III-Older Posts)

Next to them was Bill and Mary Passmore. He was the station agent at the Lindley railroad station. Mary was English and proudly called attention to her English Coat of Arms hanging on the wall.Rutty was their only child. Mary was very protective of him and never allowed him to leave the yard. This became an aggravation to him and at the age of 14 ran away from home. The police found him in Washington,D.C.. Shortly after high school,Rutty began to publish a newspaper called the " Bi -State Express". I helped him by getting paid ads from the local merchants in Lindley and Lawrenceville.When I went to work for the Ingersoll-Rand, Bertha Ayres became his assistant publishing the paper. Dick Peer,Corning Leader columnist, wrote several articles about Rutty and his paper. One of Dick's articles told how Rutty had related to him how he loved to roam the hills hunting deer and fishing in the Tioga River. Actually, Rutty never did any of those things,but longed to do them so much, he imagined he did. His Mother would never let him own a gun. I knew Rutty better than anyone else since we grew up together.
Bill and Mary Ayres and family lived next door. They had 3 children, Bertha, Cecilia and Robert. Bill was a wood craftsman and made beautiful things including furniture. He was slow in getting the job done-so you had to be patient. In the winter on Saturday nights, Bill and I would play Checkers listen to the "Grand Ole Opera" from Nashville,Tennessee and eat popcorn and apples until midnight..

(Note from Lindley Historian.) During Lindley's Bi-Centennial Celebration in 1990, several of Rutty's newspapers were donated to the Lindley Historian at that time -Wilma Welty and are in the Historian's files.
In June on a search for personal genealogy information, the graves of the 3 members of the Passmore family were unexpectedly found in the Glenwood Cemetery in Troy,Penna.