SMALLPOX PESTILENCE
Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
Don’t be frightened. On paper, smallpox is not contagious. That is, usually it isn’t. But I shall cite one case where it might have been. Had you been living here in Wetmore fifty years ago, it would have been about a hundred to one chance that you would have backed away from the mere mention of smallpox.
Some five hundred others did just that.
It was my first and only experience with the loathsome disease. Also it was the first — and last — case of smallpox the town ever had. There were among us, however, several sorry looking walking testimonials of what that pestilence could do to one’s face. Elva Kenoyer, in her twenties, unattached and so remaining to the end, was horribly pitted. E. S. Frager, the furniture dealer, got his pits elsewhere. Eli Swerdfeger, a retired farmer, had ’ em all over his face, and deep too. And though he was at that time making his living by doing odd jobs about town, he wouldn’t for love or money attend me. Said he had his family to consider.
And Eugene Dorcas, living in the country at the time — later in Wetmore—had smallpox so badly that the soles of his feet had come off like a rattlesnake sheds its skin. But, at that, he had nothing on me.
Dr. J. W. Graham, the old family physician, was called in—and, as a mark of courtesy to me, or perhaps more correctly as a beginning for launching his son just out of medical school on a like career, brought Dr. Guy S. Graham along with him. And, in a manner, it was Guy’s first professional case. They found that I was running a temperature of 105, and mighty sick, but no signs or even thought of smallpox—yet. The young doctor remained with me after the old doctor had gone to the drugstore to get a prescription filled. He sat on the edge of my bed, just visiting.
At that time, there was a lot of smallpox in Kansas City, and I had been there about ten days before with a mixed carload of hogs and cattle — owned in partnership with my brother Theodore—from my Bancroft farm. Also, I had occupied a seat in the railroad coach coming home, with George Fundis. He spoke of the prevalence of smallpox in Kansas City, and his fear of contracting it—and then proceeded to have his attack almost at once on getting back to his home in Centralia. He might have been a carrier. George was a stockbuyer—but before this time, he owned and operated a general store at Ontario.
On the following morning after the Drs. Graham had visited me, I noticed red spots deep under the skin in the palms of my hands. They worried me. I sent word to Dr. J. W. Graham appraising him of my fears, and asked him to not come back. And the young doctor rushed out immediately and buried his clothes. However, the old doctor was not frightened — so he said. But he called up the County Health Officer and scared the “puddin’ ” out of him.
I had Dr. Graham send for Dr. Charley Howe, of Atchison, known as “The Smallpox Doctor,” on account of his having stamped out an epidemic at Lenora with his vinegar treatment, or rather his vinegar preventive.
Dr. Howe first had a talk with Dr. Graham, and decided I did not have it. He came to see me without putting on his rubber suit. On first entering the room, however, he said, “You don’t need to tell me anything, you’ve got it, I can smell it—but I thought you were so scared of catching it, that you would never get it.”
A few weeks before this I had met Dr. Howe at the depot in Wetmore, while on his way to Centralia to see a man whom the local doctor believed might be coming down with smallpox. I had known Charley Howe for a long time — had worked with him on his brother Ed’s Daily Globe in Atchison, and worked for Charley on his Greenleaf newspaper before he was a doctor. When he stepped off the train to tell me about his findings, I hung back a little from the start, but when he said the fellow was broken out, I backed still farther away from him before he had got around to saying it was not smallpox. Dr. Howe laughed about this, and said, “Oh, you’ll never get it.”
The doctor asked me if I had a shotgun? I told him Dad had one in the kitchen. He said, “You better have it brought in here. If the people try to force you away to a pest house, stand them off with it. To move you now would mean almost sure death.” Dr. Howe told my sister Nannie — she had been attending me up to this time, and thought she was in for it too—that she could continue waiting on me, without risk, if she would ring off my bed with chairs”, come into the room as little as possible, not touch dishes or anything else handled by me, without rubber gloves—and take the vinegar preventive, she would be safe. He said the danger was not so much with the first fever stage, as later.
The doctor said I should eat no solids; nothing but soft food for eight days— “ and then,” he laughed, “you’ll not care to eat solids or anything else, for awhile.” That’s when the smallpox patient erupts internally. We settled on cream of wheat, and my sister, not getting the short term well fixed in mind, kept me on that one diet for forty-two days—long after I was well enough to get out. The County Health Officer was afraid to come down from Seneca to release me. He took plenty of time, and then without ever seeing me, issued an order for my release, with a “guess so” attachment.
My sister Nannie, at seventeen, was rather plump — not bulky fat—but after the vinegar treatment she came out as slim as a race horse, and has been trim ever since. An awful lot of cider vinegar —it had to be cider vinegar — was consumed in Wetmore that winter. I believe the vinegar produced an acid blood.
On the first afternoon when the fever was making me pretty stupid, I had spent maybe a half hour sitting by the stove in Bud Means’ store, below the printing office. Near by, there was a water bucket, with dipper, for everybody’s use. I did not drink at the public bucket that day — but when it became known that I had a high fever at that very time, and was now down with smallpox, it was but natural for Bud to imagine that I had tried to cool my fever with several trips to his water bucket. And there was no imagination about the quaff he himself had taken from that dipper, after I had left. Bud told me after I had gotten out—not right away, you can bet your life—that it almost made him sick.
With Elva’s and Eli’s pockmarked faces constantly in mind, I laid awake nights to make sure that I would not, in my sleep, scratch my face, or misplace the slipperyelm poultice, done in cheesecloth, in which my face was swathed. And then, even then, it was awful, a mass of apparently disfigurating open pustules, with face redder than a spanked baby.
After my face had come back to somewhere near normal, I sent my neighbor, Ed Reitzel, up to B. O. Bass’ barber shop to buy—not borrow—a razor and mug, aiming to use them only once. Then, before I had started on that oh-so-awful looking face, I began to wonder if maybe Byron had not sent me his “deadman’s” razor, and I had to send Ed back to make sure about that. I knew that Byron, when telling one of his funny barbershop stories, was liable to do and say things off key. One time he poured nearly a whole bottle of hairoil on my head—which I had not ordered, and didn’t want—while he was looking away from his work, and laughing at his own funny story. Then I had to have a shampoo before I could go to “protracted” meeting that night.
Fixed up with Byron’s razor, I looked a little more like myself, and was now ready to hold an appointment with my girl, who was also the manager of my newspaper business, with the alternate help of Herb Wait and Jim Harvey Hyde, of the Centralia Journal. She had secured for me from General Passenger Agent Barker in St. Louis a pass over the MK&T railroad, to Galveston. George Cawood had sent me word not to show up at his store for awhile after I would get out, and I knew that all the town people were feeling the same way about me. Hence the trip to the gulf.
As instructed, Myrtle met me at the front gate of her home, handed me my credentials and the money she had gotten for me, stood off a reasonable distance, also as per instructions, and said, “You look like the devil.” The cold had enhanced the “splendor” of the blemishes on my face. If she could have said further, “But I still love you in the same old way,” it would have been a more cheerful sendoff for the long journey ahead of me.
But Myrtle was too busy trying to tell me how she had managed my business. She didn’t know it, but she herself had, in prospect, a substantial interest in the printery. Before leaving the office on that dreadful day when my fever was at high pitch—I mean actual temperature—I deposited in my desk a check written in her favor, with no ifs or ands attached, for an amount which would have come near bankrupting me as of the moment—even as I have now, since I am no longer a family man, set aside the residue of my possessions, if any, in favor of the sister who had so bravely, at the risk of her face and figure, stood by me through that smallpox ordeal.
After getting settled in bed that first night, I told my sister about the check in my desk, and also told her that I wanted her to see that it be paid, if, and when, it would appear appropriate to do so. I was remembering at the time the case of Myran Ash and Ella Wolverton, south of town. Ella had waited on him in his last sickness, and in the meantime picked up Myran’s check for $1,000. His relatives tried, but failed, to prevent her from cashing the check.
When I boarded the train at Wetmore that same day, Charley Fletcher, the conductor, coming down the aisle gathering tickets, stopped stock-still, and backed up a few steps, when he saw me. He wouldn’t touch my Mo. Pacific pass until I had explained that it had been in the office all the time during my sickness.
After first calling on my doctor, I stopped in Atchison long enough to buy a suit of clothes and other needed articles. I had left home wearing an old suit, “borrowed” from Ed Murray. On leaving the clothing store I met, or came near meeting, Mr. Redford, bookkeeper at the Green-leaf-Baker grain elevator, whom I knew quite well, having shipped grain to the firm. Taking to the street, he shied around me, but he had the decency to laugh about it—and told me that I would see Frank Crowell, of the firm, at Galveston, if I were going that way. The Kansas Grain Dealers Association was to hold a meeting in Galveston two days hence.
On my way to a barbershop down the street, I had a chat with my doctor again. He was standing on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps leading up to his office, grinning. He said, “Well, your conductor came along while I was standing here, and I asked him what did he mean by bringing that smallpox patient down from Wetmore?” Dr. Howe laughed, and said, “You know, I thought that poor fellow was going to collapse on the sidewalk, and I had to tell him quickly that you couldn’t give it to anyone if you would try.”
There was one small spot on my jaw that had not properly healed, and I had asked the doctor earlier, in the office, if he thought it might cause the barber to ask questions? He said, “No, no—just go in and say nothing.” But after we had talked awhile on the sidewalk, he said, “You better hunt a fire before you go to the barbershop. Your face is as spotted as a leopard.”
At Galveston, I met Mrs. Poynter—she was our Bancroft correspondent—with several of the grainmen’s wives. Usually very sociable, she acted as if she were looking for a chance to run, and I backed out of a rather embarrassing position. Evidently not knowing of my smallpox siege, Secretary E. J. Smiley gave me a cordial ham, even laughed as if he were remembering the illegal grain contract which he and my local competitor had virtually forced upon me, “for benefit of the Association” — a similar one of like illegality, which had, reputedly, within a few weeks therefrom, got someone a 30-day jail sentence at Salina. Other acquaintances in the grain dealers party acted as if they could get along very well without me—and I troubled them no more.
Back home, the people gradually stopped their shying, and in the week I waited for the County Health Officer’s instructions for fumigating the house, I talked matters over with the family. For the peace of mind of our town people, it was decided that everything in the smallpox house should be burned—and my parents and my sister would go to Fresno, California, where my brothers Dave and Frank were in business.
My Aunt Nancy, with her husband, Bill Porter, drove in from their Wolfley creek home, and had dinner with the folks the day I was to start the fires. Bill Porter said it would be rank foolishness for us to burn the stuff. I said, “All right, Bill; drive by this afternoon and I’ll load your wagon.” He said, quickly, “Don’t want any of the things — on account of our neighbors.”
Several years later, the Porter family all had smallpox—and Bill, the elder, died of it. And Bill, the second — there is a third Bill Porter, and a fourth Bill Porter now — tells me that not for six months thereafter did they have callers. Had I loaded his wagon that day of my fire, the loss of my uncle would have made it regrettable—but I don’t think that I would have allowed him to cart away anything, even had he accepted my offer.
Jessie Bryant’s three-months old daughter, Violet, was first in the Porter family to have it, and she was thought to have contracted the disease in a rather peculiar way. Jessie was holding the baby on her lap as she read a letter from her husband, Lon Bryant, who was working in Nebraska, saying he would have to move from the place he was staying, on account of the people in the home having smallpox.
The burning of the things was mostly done that afternoon, but the fumigation would carry over into the next day. To avoid an extra scrubbing of myself, with change of clothing twice, I planned to stay that night in the house, and held back one bed and some bedding. It was in the same room I had occupied, and was first to be fumigated. It would get another dose of brimstone the next day, after the room would be cleared. I opened all windows and one outer door, but the room did not air out readily. The brimstone had penetrated the bed covers so as to make them squeak under touch, and I could hardly get my breath in the room. It was almost dark, and quite cold. I could not sit by an open window, through the night. Then I thought of a roll of linoleum in the kitchen. I put one end of the rolled linoleum in the bed and stuck the other end out the window. With the coat I had worn that day wrapped around my neck, I got in bed, covered up head and foot, stuck my face in the funnel, chinked around with the old coat, and got through the night very well—with little sleep, however.
Our close neighbors did not show undue fright. In fact, they volunteered assistance while the home was under quarantine—but they had the good sense to limit their visits to the middle of the road in front of the house. My brother Sam got out before the red flag was posted, and took refuge in his mobile photo gallery. My father got caught, with my mother, in the kitchen—and remained there and in a connecting bedroom until permitted by the proper authorities to go to his shoeshop. And there, save for one lone kid, he had no callers, for the duration—but, with the help of this boy runner he kept the supply line open to the quarantined house. Louie Gibbons, half-brother of “Spike” Wilson, our old Spectator’s celebrated “Devil,” after spending forty years in Minneapolis, Minnesota, got the urge to see what Wetmore and Holton looks like now—and, after flying to Kansas City, dropped in here for a day recently. When he found out who I was, and I learned who he was, he said, “You know, I used to carry groceries over to your home in the east part of town when you had smallpox.”
Oldtimers who have often heard the expression, applied to persons of dubious ways and stupendous blunders, should not miss the climax in this last paragraph. After I had cleaned myself up with doubly strong solution of corrosive sublimate — which, by the way, salivated me — I called on our neighbors, Don and Cass Rising. Don had been choreboy for the folks while holed up. My face was not pitted, and Don said that I must have had smallpox very lightly, or maybe not at all. I told him I had protected my face because I figured that it would be about all I would have left after the expense of the thing—but if he would send his wife out of the room, I would show him. My hips, and even farther back all the way round, were badly pitted — still very red, almost raw. When I showed him, Don yelled, “Cass, Cass—come in here!” I started to pull my pants up, but he grabbed hold of my garment, saying, “No, no — don’t!” Then he shoved my trousers down even farther than I had dropped them.
And the lady came in.