She laughed and said, “Were you expecting to see a note in my hand? You don’t need to be afraid of Johnny Reynolds. He is engaged to a Miss Spelty, in Atchison.”
“Johnny” Reynolds had roomed at their home in Effingham before the family came to Wetmore, when Myrtle Mercer was eight years old. Being a very courteous man, he “made over” all members of the Mercer family whenever and wherever he might chance to meet them. And he had gotten lunches from their home in Wetmore.
After her husband’s death in 1888, Myrtle’s mother had rather a hard time providing for her family of five girls, ranging in age from two to sixteen years. She was advised to open a boarding house for trainmen — and others—but it settled down mostly to providing lunches for the two local freight train crews which passed through here about the noon hour. I think it was not very helpful. She was an excellent cook, and her twenty-five cent lunches were too elaborate to make money, even in those days. The passenger trains had stopped here for dinner before this. The hotel charged trainmen 25 cents—as was customary at all stops—while passengers paid 35 or 50 cents. Hence a 25 cent precedent for trainmen.
The pinch was lifted, however, some years later, when Mrs. Mercer was granted a Government pension—for herself and the two younger children—with several years back pay. Though only 39 years old when he died, John Mercer was an “honorably” discharged soldier. He had enlisted in 1864, when only 15 years old. How he managed to get in at that age, is presumed to be the same as other under-age boys got in.
One time when I was riding the local freight to Atchison, I saw Tom Haverty, the conductor, an Irish Catholic, open his lunch basket. It contained a big porterhouse steak cooked just right—it was a steak that would cost at least $2.50 now, with very few trimmings. I know that steak was cooked just right, for my wife had learned the art from her mother, and she had cooked many a one to the same turn for me. Well, Tom Haverty picked up that steak, held it as though he thought it might bite, walked to the opposite side of the caboose and chucked it out an open window.
It was Friday.
After selling my newspaper, I found time to “putter about” on my farm one mile down the creek from town. I actually did a lot of worthwhile work, cleaning up the bottom land of brush, trimming hedge, and cutting cockle burrs with a “Nigger” hoe. I usually stuck a sandwich in my pocket for lunch—but sometimes Myrtle would prepare a real dinner, even steaks like I’ve been describing, carry it in a basket, sit down on the ground with me in the shade of hedge or tree, fight flies and gnats while eating, and pretend to enjoy it.
One morning she said I need not take a lunch—that she was going to cook a real dinner, bring it down to the farm, and eat it with me. I told her I would come for dinner, and save her that long walk. She insisted that she “loved the walk, loved to get out in the open,” and I told her where to meet me.
But she caught a ride most of the way. Green Goodwin, conductor of the local freight, told her to come aboard the caboose, that he would stop the train out near the farm and let her off. He had gotten lunches from her mother’s home. She said, “Mr. Goodwin said my lunch basket smelled good — like old times. He told a passenger in the caboose that he could always be sure of getting a good lunch at our home. I sure appreciated the ride, and I offered to give him my part of the lunch, but he wouldn’t take it. I’ll bet that traveling man who peeped in the basket wouldn’t have turned it down. But Mr. Goodwin did eat two of the cream-puffs: he said they were as good as the ones mamma used to put in his lunches. That leaves four cream-puffs for you—if I don’t eat any myself.” What manner of man would have eaten four cream-puffs—just then?
Myrtle felt pretty chesty about getting this ride—to think Green would stop his train on a steep grade, to save her the walk. Well, it was a pretty steep grade—and it was kind of Green to give her this lift. It recalled the time when, on several occasions, freight trains had stopped at that same place to let me off. And when the train had started to move again I could easily have beaten the engine to the top of the grade, in a running walk. But that would not Tiave been what I had been taken on the engine for, in town. I walked, or trotted slowly, ahead of the train pretty close to the creeping engine, shooing grasshoppers off the rails. After the 1874 invasion of grasshoppers freight trains could not make that grade until the rails were cleared of hoppers—and I had to stay close to the engine so that the hoppers would not fly around me and settle on the rails again. I was always “Johnny on the spot” to catch those rides. To ride the engine was a thrilling experience for a twelve-year-old boy.