Pop Bottle Pete - A Side Story

After the Oskaloosa show several of us met a fellow named Perry at the hotel who was kind enough to drive Mike O and me to Pizza Hut to pick up a late late meal.  On the way Perry shared a story that, although I can't necessarily vouch for the truth of every detail, we found interesting and I thought was worth sharing.

There used to be a Oskaloosa character (according to Perry) that everyone knew as Pop Bottle Pete.  To all appearances Pete was a likable enough guy but someone who barely scraped by.  He had earned the name Pop Bottle Pete because he used to roam around town collecting returnable soda bottles to collect the 5-cent deposit on them and whenever anyone asked his name he would just say he was Pete.

To cut to the chase:  after Pete passed away a few years ago his home was found to be completely filled with all sorts of odds and ends he had collected including a large selection of stock certificates.  It appears that Pete was heir to a fairly substantial sum that had come to him as the sole survivor of his family fortune.  Apparently Pete and his father had some sort of disagreement many years before and Pete had refused to take any money from his father due to their feud.  So all the time he was collecting pop bottles, the fortune was growing and he wouldn't have anything to do with it.  And his name wasn't Pete.  It was George Daily.  As Perry tells it, the lawyer that was responsible for administering the estate was empowered to direct the funds for use for the town of Oskaloosa.


One of those uses was the construction of the George Daily Auditorium, the venue where we performed.


I confirmed the general details of the story talking with a couple of guys the next morning at breakfast although they didn't recall George being called Pete.

But if the story is true, then it's fair to say that "Of Mice and Men" came to Osklaoosa, Iowa at least in some degree because of Pop Bottle Pete.   I'd like to think so.

(It must be true, by the way.  It's on the Internet now and everybody knows if it's on the Internet it must be true.)