More than once have I walked with Mr. Henry the mile to her country home, when I thought my friend Alex Hamel, or maybe Rodman DeForest, or Johnny Thomas, or my brother Sam, was the top man there. We were not, of course—Mr. Henry and I—walking out together of a Sunday evening to see the same girl, but had I been pressed to make a choice of the half dozen girls who congregated there, Miss Anna would have been that one. It was not clear to all just who was going to see whom.
Alex Hamel’s most cherished memory of his suit was the fact—so he told me—that while walking out in the night with Mr. Henry and the girl, arms in arms, Alex on one side and the tall stately highbred gentleman (Alex’s description) on the other side, he had reached over and kissed Miss Anna. Alex did not say whether or not she had inclined her head toward him for the reception of that kiss in the dark.
It was no comedown for the “highbred gentleman” when he married the harness-maker’s daughter. Mr. Henry died, in retirement, in 1917. His widow and son Carroll, later, moved to Boise, Idaho. Augusta Ann DeForest died in 1895. Her husband, Isaac Newton DeForest, had died ten years earlier.
During a ten days stay in Los Angeles, following Christmas (1947), at the home of my nephew, W. G. Bristow, and his wife Ethel, and visiting the Weavers — Raymond, Nellie, and Miss Cloy—Tom DeForest called with a new automobile and drove me to his home at Santa Anita, a restricted residential section in the foothills, where I met his wife Hilda, his daughter Mary, and his son Tommy. He also drove me over to the west side to call on the Larzeleres — Ed, Mabel, Ella and her husband Lester Hatch, and their daughter Miss Drusilla, who writes feature (society) articles for the Los Angeles Sunday Times. Tom, son of Moulton and Mary (Thomas) DeForest, is in possession of the original DeForest family bible. From those records, and from Tom himself, I verified facts set forth in this article.
Tom DeForest has a $50,000 home only a little way up the canyon from the famous Santa Anita race track. After showing me through the home and we were on our way out, Tom spied some freshly baked pumpkin pies on a table. I imagine they were pies baked for a family outing “below the border” in Old Mexico, where Tom said they were going the following morning for a three-day fishing trip. He said, “I think we ought to have a piece of pie and a glass of milk before we go over to Larzelere’s.” While eating the pie, Tom expounded glibly, as only a DeForest could, on his liking for pumpkin pies in general and particularly the one we were eating—and his detestation of the so-called pumpkin pies made from squash. As we were going out the door, his wife whispered to me, “I made that pie out of Tom’s despised squash which he grew himself here in the garden.” Tom has an extra lot back of his residence where he digs in the good earth to keep himself fit.
T. M. DeForest is a former Wetmore boy who made good. He told me that when he landed in Los Angeles about 1908, Ed (Bogs) Graham, another Wetmore boy, staked him to a meal ticket. As we were driving past the business location — confectionery store, I believe — of Ed’s twin daughters, Marion and Maxine, very close to the Larzelere home, Tom said he had a warm spot in his heart for the girls because of the lift he had gotten from their father, long since dead, when things looked pretty blue for him.
Tom DeForest started his restaurant career with a push-cart, peddling hamburgers and beans of evenings, while studying law during the day — just to please his father. The hamburger and bean business grew beyond all expectations—and Tom soon forgot about his father’s wish that he study law. Tom did not travel the streets with his push-cart. He stored it back of a bank building in the daytime, and brought it out only of evenings — keeping late hours, and quite often “wee” hours. When he housed the business at 2420 North Broadway, it became “Ptomaine Tommy’s Place.” And it continued to grow. The name made it famous. Tom told me he could sell the business for $100,000—but he didn’t know what to do with the money. Then, too, I suspect, the complicated income tax demands was also a deterrent. That’s what has stopped Jim Leibig — another Wetmore boy who has made good, at Santa Ana — from turning a big profit. I think Jim could clean up with as much, or maybe more, than Tom.
Tom DeForest has leased the business to his former help for a percentage of the profits. He goes to the place only once every day now, (12 o’clock, noon), to check up — and gather in the cash. Pretty soft, Tommy—pretty soft.
Now, was there ever another man like Henry Clay DeForest? Certainly not in Wetmore. Mr. Henry was my hero, had been so since the time of his partnership here with Seth Handley, when I was eleven years old, “under foot” much of the time in their establishment. And I should have liked very much to have seen his romance with Seth’s sister materialize. Although I had seen her but once, I had come to think of her as an exceptionally desirable lady, a lovely personage like her wonderful brother Seth. And though it came to naught, I still think it was, in a way, the most beautiful romance that I have ever known; with the lady waiting—waiting unto death for the clouds to roll by.
And even with the handicap of being influenced by an aristocratic mother — if it really were a handicap — Mr. Henry rose, in a community dead set against such holdings, to the heights in popularity. He was the almost perfect man — a man after my own heart, and even now it pleases me no little to remember that I had selected him as my hero early in life.