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I know I don’t speak for all of us, but there are times when the seemingly infinite number of choices we have become overwhelming. Just go to a “big box” store and look for a simple tube of toothpaste. Please don’t get me wrong; I fully appreciate not having to settle for a single kind of something. One evening this week I wanted to relax and watch a little television. A half hour later, I’d already watched 30 minutes of choices! I surrendered and decided on an old favorite, Mike Rowe’s “Dirty Jobs.” I’ve done it before, obviously, because my “smart” tv knew where I’d left off … Season One, Episode Six. So … Episode Seven began …. in Webster City!!
Murray McMurray Hatchery is not unknown to me; I know it’s “out there,” but not in my everyday life. I eat eggs. My daughter has some backyard chickens. What else is there? Well, now I know there’s nearly an alternate universe of “things poultry” right here in WC. This week I’d like to introduce, in part, a family that resides in Our Neighborhood and the company begun by them that once was located just down Ohio Street from my own front door.
L.A. McMurray arrived here in the mid 1870s as the co-owner of a bank. He soon married Jessie Dunham and began their life together, adding two children along the way. Their home on Willson Avenue was a center for social activity. Their son, Murray, began working in the bank, bringing with him a love of fowl.
There are stories of his father’s patience being stretched a bit with a back room used for the business. Eventually Murray became an officer in the bank and, after his father’s death, a co-owner himself. Murray was also interested in the Boy Scouts of America. He served as Scoutmaster of the Webster City troop for some 40 years, all the while growing the hatchery business. The location at 609 Ohio Street was, for more than 70 years, the center of all things chicken as the operation expanded. Mail order businesses — think Sears Roebuck — were the internet shopping of the day and McMurrays used it wisely. Their website sums it up well: “The McMurray Hatchery catalog bridged the distance gap between the hatchery and the mail order customer. The arrival of the beautiful color catalog with its description of the birds was always anxiously anticipated as it still is today, many years later.”
For me, the mid-winter arrival of the Gurney’s Seed Catalog did it.
In 1991 the hatchery opened a new state-of-the-art facility in town. Today it continues to serve thousands of customers around the world. I suppose a lot of Webster City youth worked there at some time while growing up, something like my own kids at Cabela’s up in Owatonna.
For now, I’m so glad to have met the McMurray family in Our Neighborhood, generations of them. I’m sure I’ll meet many more families that, like the McMurrays, value kinship and community. I’m also convinced I’ll never look at an egg the same way I have before.
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