Matilda Isaacson, a very pretty girl, later, married Alfred Hazeltine. By reason of his living in a farm home on the opposite side of town, Alfred was also considered as belonging. Well, in fact, Alfred did live in town several years prior to his marriage. We roomed together at the Overland Hotel when he was engaged in business, partner in the Buzan, Hazeltine & Hough Lumber Company, and I was clerking in Than Morris’ store. Our family was then — ten years after first coming to Wetmore—doing a three-year stretch on a portion of the Charley Hazeltine farm west of Alfred’s place, beyond the timber on the south side of the creek. And I was working out a store bill. Father still worked at his trade in town, but he could go home before dark; and, anyway, he wasn’t afraid of Erickson’s ghost—nor panthers. More about Erickson’s ghost and the panthers, later. My work kept me in the store until 10 o’clock, at night. After marrying, Alfred Hazeltine built a home in town, the house now owned by Adam Ingalls. And later he bought the Charley Hazeltine 120-acres adjoining his farm, and moved back to the country. His brother Charley and family went to Payette, Idaho. Alfred Hazeltine was a fine man. He was deacon in the Baptist Church. One time when a protracted meeting was in progress, he said to me, “By-damn, You, you ought to join the Church.”
Andrew J. Maxwell, with his wife Lizzie and two children, Demmy and May, and, at this time, the estranged wife of Elisha Maxwell, lived on a homestead adjoining town-and, like the Isaacsons and Andersons and Alfred Hazeltine, were regarded as town folk. Elisha Maxwell, brother of Andy, lived part time with his mother in town, as did also his wife. Elisha’s wife was the daughter of Matt Randall, then living near Ontario, seven miles south-west of Wetmore. There was much in common between the town folk and those borderites. Let it be a picnic or a dog-fight they were all on hand. Altogether they made one big-shall I say—happy family. This, however, strictly speaking, would not be quite right. Gus Mayer built the first residence in Wetmore—the Neville dwelling on the corner where the First National Bank now stands. His daughter Lillie (Mrs. Peter Cassity) was the first child born in the town—though Irving Isaacson was born earlier in a temporary shack near the present depot before the town was established.
There was a one-room school house on the site of the present City hall, with one teacher, John Burr—in 1869. I was nearly eight years old then, and my brother Charley was a little over nine. This was to be our first—and last — school. Charley died at the age of eighteen; and I was out of school—not graduated, not expelled, but out—before the shift to the present location on the hilltop.
While our home was being built in Wetmore on the lot where Hart’s locker is now, the family found shelter in a one-room, up-and-down rough pine board shanty in hollow west of the graveyard, on the Andy Maxwell homestead—the farm now owned and occupied by Orville Bryant. This little “cubbyhole” was originally built to house Andy ’ s brother Elisha—known here as “The Little Man” — and his bride.
Charley and I followed a cow-path through all prairie grass all the way from the shack — about a half mile — to the school house. And during that first winter, after the path had been obliterated by a big snow which drifted and packed solidly over the board fence enclosing the school grounds, bearing up pupils — even horses and sleighs zoomed over the drifted in fence—we skimmed over the white in a direct air line to the school, with not a thing in the way.
Our parents were from the deep South, and on the farm Charley and I had no playmates other than our younger brothers, Sam, Dave, and Nick—even the hired hand on the Wolfley Creek farm, Ben Summers, was a Tennessean — hence we brought into a school already seven-ways-to-the-bad, in language, just one more type of bad English.
Many of the other pupils were children of immigrants — from Germany, England, Ireland, Wales, and the three Scandinavian countries — whose picked-up English was maybe not so good as our own. In those days we learned from our associates rather than from books—that is, unconsciously became imitators—and the result, in most cases, was not promising. My mentor was a Swede girl several years my senior. “Tilda” Isaacson was neat, sweet, and sincerity compounded. She would tell me, “You youst don’t say it that way here, my leetle Yonnie.” This, of course, was the first runoff. In time, our Wetmore school was to rank with the best. And for all I know maybe it did then.
The old Wetmore school made history — history of a kind. An incident of those eventful years having decidedly bad-English flavor occurred after John Burr had been succeeded by D. B. Mercer, who came to us from a homestead up in the Abbey neighborhood between here and Seneca. Mercer gave one of his pupils a well-earned whipping one forenoon. At the noon hour, the boy’s older brother danced up and down the aisle in the school-room, singing, “Goodie, goodie, popper’s goin’ to lick the teacher.”
That dancing boy was Clifford Ashton.
Soon after school had taken up in the afternoon, Mr. Ashton, late of London, walked in unannounced. He was moderately docile in presenting his grievance and the teacher, not to be outdone by this green Englishman, treated his caller civilly. The trouble seemed to be amicably settled. But the teacher’s mild manner had emboldened the Englishman. As a parting stab, in an acrimonious monotone without stopping for breath or punctuation, Ashton delivered the ultimatum: “But if you ever w’ip one of my children again sir I shall surely ’ ave to w’ip you.”