“That’s me,” said the merry Tony.
“This is Henry Weinhard and I am putting up a building on the corner of Fourth and Alder Streets and I want to tell you that you can have all the mill work there, without price. Goodbye,” and he hung up the phone.
Thus did Tony Neppach have his little joke, and his firm reaped an unlooked for reward for the same.
[A Grapevine Telegraph Line.]
It was the Fourth of July, 1876, and the City of St. Louis was celebrating the occasion in the good old way, which is rapidly becoming merely a matter of history.
The Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company had recently opened an office in the Missouri metropolis, but the facilities were, indeed, very meagre, consisting of but one wire to Chicago, which went along the highways and byways the entire distance. The telegraph company did a good business, the wire being crowded to its fullest capacity day and night.
The advent of the new telegraph company had brought into existence a new daily paper, the Morning Chronicle, which came to fill a long felt want. The Chronicle could be supplied with press dispatches, a matter of vital moment in the introduction of a new journal, even in those days.
On the afternoon of the “glorious Fourth” some bucolic individual with more enthusiasm than good sense, shot off several insulators near Alton, breaking the wire, and as the linemen were off duty celebrating the day the telegraph company was put out of business pending repairs.
The writer was the night operator for this company at St. Louis at this time, and while regretting the unfortunate break and loss to the company, it looked like there was a chance for a holiday.