March 19, 2024

17 compete at Hopeville memorial cribbage tourney

A record 17 people competed in the Jim Overholtzer Memorial Cribbage Tournament that was held at the Hopeville Rural Music Reunion.

There was a tie for the winning trophy. The two winners won all five games of the tournament by playing other contestants. They decided to share the glory and the trophy.

The two were Joshua Shields, formerly of Grand River who now is a landscape architect in Ames. The other winner was John Klein, one of the founders of the Hopeville festival in 1979. He is a retired NRCS wetland biologist now living in Treynor.

While most of the contestants lived locally, many Des Moines card players attended and one from Omaha.

Jim Overholtzer was the retired postmaster in Grand River, and therefore knew everyone and was popular. He was also a master cribbage player, and taught several of the local contestants how to play the game.

He eventually retired to Mount Ayr, and set the bar with cribbage playing at the senior meals center.

Now, every year his family provides a new trophy for each year’s tournament. This year was the sixth-annual cribbage tournament and the 38th-annual Hopeville Rural Music Reunion.

The music reunion began with an outdoor church service at 10 a.m. and the country music performers began at 11 a.m. The music continued non-stop until 4 p.m.

The festival is free and all the musicians donate their talents to make a great day together. It was a day with ideal weather in the upper 70s and a slight wind from the south.

Concessions, including homemade pies, were sold to support the Hopeville Church, which is the only remaining community building remaining in the once thriving town.

Hopeville is located in southwest Clarke County near the confluence of Clarke, Union, Ringgold and Decatur counties.

Hopeville, the oldest town in Clarke County, started as a communal society with the new settlers owning everything collectively.

Sept. 10, 2017, will be the date for the next Hopeville Rural Music Reunion and another cribbage tournament.