A PICTORIAL OF OUR REGION'S SPECIAL PLACES: POCAHONTAS

Paul Williams, village handyman, has spent his whole life doing yardwork and other odd jobs for the widows in town. Although most appreciate his work, some dislike his starting time at 6 a.m.

Rhonda Kiehl plays the organ at St. Paul Lutheran church on Sundays.

Jr. Petzoldge looks for pecans behind Zion Lutheran Church. Most of the nots are rotted by this time of the year.

Jeanette Wichern, left, Bernice Steiner, center, and Pat Overbeck wash dishes after the Zion Lutheran Ladies Aid Monthly meeting.

Myra Reisenbicler and Larry Runnels share a dance at Pokey's, the only restaurant in town. Pokey's main attraction is the Friday night fish fry.

Mrs. Biglesworth, the mill cat, struts away from Bowman Mill in the late afternoon. "She's the best rodent control we ever had," says Richard Winter, manager of the mill.

Kristy Winter, left, Mackenzie Gass, center and Scotty Reisenbicaler, top right, learned about the story of Jesus and the man at the pool of Bethesda from Linda Wiggins, bottom right, during Sunday school class at Zion Lutheran Church.

Rev. Howard Muller dresses in vestments before service at Zion Lutheran Church. Muller is responsible for two different churches in the area... and preaches at both every Sunday.

Don Magee, left and Charles Engelhart share a joke while hanging out in the office of Bowman Milling Co. Magee was waiting for an order... Engelhart just stopped by to chat.

Richard Kasten butchers a pig at Reis Meat Processing, one of the town's few remaining industries.

Pocahontas is a quiet town where neighbors meet at the local restaurant for dinner or catch up on the latest news at the tiny post office. There's hardly a political scandal, traffic jam or police siren to jar residents from their tranquil lives and if there were sirens everybody would know about it.

Most often, the noise likely will come from barking dogs and the occasional whir of a passing farm truck or rumble of a tractor in the fields along Route C.

At one house, a dog napped in the sunshine on a brisk winter afternoon, ignoring passing cars and people. Near the St. John's Lutheran Church, a black Labrador retriever comes racing over from the parsonage to greet visitors and just as quickly hurries back home.

Pocahontas is a friendly place where neighbors care about one another and are always eager to lend a hand when needed.

"Everybody watches out for their next neighbor," said Postmistress Joan Hoehn. Although not a native, Hoehn knows everyone in town. She's been sorting their mail and weighing their parcels since 1993 when she came to run the post office.

"People are content living here," she said. "They put down their roots."

Roots run deep in Pocahontas where most of the community is related in one fashion or another. Descendants of the founding families Reisenbichler, Shanes and Gerler are still living in the community.

Miss Esther Macke, probably the oldest living resident is great-aunt to Richard Winter who manages the Bowman Milling Co.

The mill, as locals call it, is the oldest-running business in town. It was here even before the town actually incorporated and served as the town's trading post back in its founding days.

Once Pocahontas thrived with a creamery, a grocery, a lumberyard, blacksmith and a doctor. Now the mill, a tool store and meat processing plant are all that's left.

The mill is where children gather after school or in the summer to buy candy bars or sodas. It's where they used to meet after dark in the summers when Winter was a child and ride bikes around town.

Now fewer children gather outdoors and when they do, parents keep a watchful eye. Things change, but stay the same. "It's not like it used to be," Winter said.

A picture taken decades ago shows all the Pocahontas residents 80 years old or more. Winter is one of the few people who could still name those pictured. At least two of the men are his grandfathers and another is a great-uncle.

It used to be that everyone knew everyone else in town, "but I don't know a lot of people like I did when I was a kid," Winter said.

There was a time when people gathered at one of the two Lutheran churches Zion or St. John's for Sunday worship. Life was centered around church activities.

Today, crowds just head to church for special events like anniversaries or suppers. People who used to live in Pocahontas will stop in to say hello, Winter said.

The hometown pride of people in Pocahontas is what strikes Jeannie Hanners as the community's best asset.

"Everybody knows what's going on and everybody knows why," she said. While people could construe that as being nosy, Hanners said it's not. "People are always willing to come and help."

When she and her husband, Mike, opened Hanners Handy Tools five years ago, the entire town was there to help. It took 40 gallons of paint to transform the empty building that had once been a woodworking shop into the retail store. The building was once the site of the town's blacksmith.

The tool store sells everything from paintbrushes, hammers and nails to fishing equipment and tent and camping supplies in the summer.

Whether it's the security of living in the absence of high crime, near family and friends or among the beauty of its surroundings, Pocahontas is secure in its place. The town doesn't need grocery stores, gas stations, fast-food restaurants and pizza deliveries.

A desire to own land in the country and to have some freedom from the "ills" of city living have kept Pocahontas alive since its founding in 1855.

"People just want five or 10 acres in the country," Winter said.