Charley Hutchison’s father was a wealthy brewer back in Ohio. Charley acquired the drink habit. When his family thought they had him shut off from the liquor supply, he would sneak into the storage cellar, bore a hole in a whisky barrel, and suck the stuff out through a straw.
Charley was sent out here, in the hope of curing him of the drink habit. He was given a section of land on Wolfley creek, three miles northwest of Wetmore—and supplied with money to improve the land. I think he was then left wholly on his own. I do not recall ever seeing any of his people out here.
Charley Hutchison came here in 1870, and was about 21 years old—a modest, likeable young man. He spent most of his first year here, in town. He lived at the Hugh Fortner Hotel—and while rooming there, lost $500, which he had placed under his pillow. There was no bank here then.
When Charley loafed downtown—which was much of the time that first year—he made my father’s shoeshop his headquarters. The shop was on the north side of the main street, opposite John Clifton’s saloon on the south side. Charley was really trying to taper off in his drinking, and seldom entered the saloon. He tried to avoid the amenities of the drinking gentry. He would sometimes, when alone, take one drink, and then come across to the shoeshop.
Though not a relative of ours, John Clifton was the step-son of my Uncle Nick Bristow, and he often dropped in at the shoeshop. My mother worked with my father in the shop. She asked John Clifton to not encourage Charley in his drinking. Clifton said “Hutch” was really doing fine, and that he would help the boy all that he could.
Then a girl came down from the prairie country in the neighborhood of what is now Goff—”Pucker Brush” it was called then—to work in Peter Shuemaker’s new hotel. Anna Mackey was a nice looking girl—too nice looking, Charley said, to go out with the landlord’s “drunken” son. It really worried Charley. He said one day, “I believe I’ll try to stop it.” He did. He married Anna. And never again did he take a drink. My mother and Clifton both took credit for helping him over the hump. But I suspect it was the girl from the prairie country who had transformed him short off into an abstainer.
Charley Hutchison was the only one of several whom I knew that were sent out here from the east, when this country was new, for a like purpose, that made good. There was no finer man than Charley Hutchison—a conscientious, upright Christian gentleman. Compared to “Jersey” Campbell, a New Jersey drinking boy, located on the best half section of land south of Goff, Charley Hutchison’s performance was phenomenal. But then, maybe there never was an “Anna” in Jersey’s life. Charley Hutchison sold his land to Fred Shumaker, and moved to Wetmore in the early eighties. He built the home now owned by Mrs. James Grubb.
Let me say here that Alice Stowell was an attentive little type-setter when she worked for me after I had bought The Spectator—and that Coral Hutchison still was a frequent and most welcome caller. Also, they had learned that it was important that visitors be seen and not heard on press days. Coral continued her visits to the office long after Alice Stowell had married Marsh Younkman, and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma—and after Myrtle Mercer had taken Alice’s place in the printing office. Coral seemed to like the smell of printer’s ink—and she continued her regular visits long after she married Charley Locknane.
While still quite young, Coral Hutchison was the town’s top pianist and singer, a distinction she held throughout the years against all comers. She even competed favorably, in song, with the girls from the Colony, whose reputation as singers was widespread. The younger generation of Colonists were superb entertainers, anxious at all times to compete against or team up with the young people from town, at their lyceums held in the Wolfley school house. Wetmore had a “literary” society, which gave entertainments, usually charging twenty-five cents admission—while the Colonists always gave their shows for free.
Then, the time came when they combined in one big show, an epochal achievement, at Wetmore—drawing two of the cast from the Colony. Ted Fish was a specialty man, singing comical songs. His favorite rendition had to do with the loan of a friend’s girl, the refrain running, “Hand ‘e wounted me to tike ‘is plice and do the best I cooud.” I’d heard him sing it several times before at their lyceums. Coral Hutchison was also a specialty singer—on a much higher and more pleasing musical plane, however. John Stowell, long removed from the Colony, blacked his face, rattled the bones—and played the concertina.