Memory’s Storehouse Unlocked
TRUE STORIES
by
John T. Bristow
PIONEER DAYS IN WETMORE and Northeast Kansas
January — 1948
WETMORE, KANSAS and
FRESNO, CALIFORNIA
1005 Ferger Avenue
“The SPECTATOR FORCE”— In “GAY NINETIES”
This book does not carry the actual work of these pictured Associates—but it does bring them into the writings. The Author owes much to them for helpful co-operation during our newspaper regime—and maybe also, if the truth were known, they have been, in a manner, quite helpful in the actual writing.
The book is dedicated to the memory of them.
INDEX
[“The SPECTATOR FORCE”—In “GAY NINETIES”]
[TEXAS CATTLE AND RATTLESNAKES]
[THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. HENRY, et al.]
[GRAPES—RIPENED ON FRIENDSHIP’S VINE]
[ODD CHARACTERS—COLORFUL, PICTURESQUE]
[MEMORY’S STOREHOUSE UNLOCKED]
SUNSHINE AND ROSES
Because of World Unrest and conditions with the Printing Fraternity what they are, this job has lain on the shelf for over a year. Most of the articles are dated, and appear just as written and published. Later unpublished articles remain as written at the time of preparation. Except for 1 story, and a few “Notes” the issue bears the date of January, 1948—and with situations running back into pioneer times.
THE AUTHOR.
This foreword is being written in California—in the shadow of Campbell mountain, a 1700-foot detachment from lofty Sierra Nevada range, 25 miles east of Fresno, on Christmas Day, 1947—six days before my eighty-sixth birthday.
I am writing on an envelope—and a used one, at that—out in the open, in Anna’s and Virginia Anne’s rose garden, at the ranch home of my nephew, Sam Bristow, from whose orchard came the choice oranges sampled by our Wetmore friends at Christmastimes.
I am writing in the rose garden for the same reason I Imagine Gray’s Elegy was written in the Country Churchyard—for privacy. My nephew’s home is filled with relatives, seventeen by actual count, waiting for the call to a turkey dinner.
Then, too, I want to get in a word about this most unusual Christmas Day—something seldom seen in my cold climate home state. As a rule you just don’t write on a tab out in the open, nor pluck roses in the wintertime, back home.
Though, on Christmas Day, 1937, I cut four lovely long-stemmed perfectly developed Radiant Beauty (red) roses from a single unprotected plant, the one blooming plant among hundreds, in my rose garden in Northeast Kansas. And, to make it appear all the more unusual, Radiant Beauty was brought out in 1934 as a hot-house rose. Also, I needed a little data—and I got it from Sam in the rose garden. And this seemed the opportune time to write a few lines.
It will not, of course, be a “White Christmas” here as is likely back home—never is in the San Joaquin valley. Sunshine and Roses enhance the beauty of the day here. But farther up—up in the high Sierras, up toward Mount Whitney, the highest point in the United States, only a few hours away, there will be snow aplenty today, tomorrow—and forever.
This book is not my memoirs. It is not a family tree. It is not a complete history. But it is, sketchily, all of these things. The book is not a connected narrative. The articles, each complete within timely as of the date of the situation. Also, some of the characters depicted as living at the time of the writings have since died—but the stories are printed as originally written. And for clear understanding the articles should be read consecutively, as they appear in the book.
These feature articles, pertaining mostly to Wetmore and Northeast Kansas, have all been written—some by request—for the home papers since my retirement from the newspaper field, in 1903. The first one, “The Boy of Yesteryear” was printed in W. F. Turrentine’s Wetmore Spectator, May 29, 1931.
One or more of these articles have been printed in George and Dora Adriance’s Seneca Courier-Tribune—and, later, in Jay Adriance’s Courier-Tribune; General Charles H. Browne’s Horton Headlight; Will T. Beck’s Holton Recorder: Ray T. Ingalls’ Goff Advance; Senator Arthur Capper’s Topeka Daily Capital; and the Atchison Daily Globe. And all of them, with twelve exceptions, have appeared in the Wetmore Spectator. The twelve exceptions are recent writings—since the Spectator’s demise—rounding out topics previously introduced.
Pictured with the writer in the forepart of this book are two of the principals of the old Spectator force during o ur newspaper regime through the “Gay Nineties.” While referred to often in the articles they had no part in the writing thereof. Regretfully, they were both dead before e beginning of these writings.
Besides these two capable assistants, our printing office had something no other paper could boast. Our “itchyfoot” Devil—for a short time only—was a personality of high adventure. Like Nellie Bly, of (National) magazine fame, and Ed Howe of (Atchison) Daily Newspaper fame, Bert Wilson, better known as “Spike” Wilson, went around the world. But unlike Nellie, backed by a magazine in a race against time; and Ed, teeming with newspaper dollars, our “Spike” bummed his way, with a minimum of work—mostly dish-washing—all the twenty-five thousand miles around the globe while still in his teens. “Spike” aspired to become a printer for the advantage it would afford him in his desire to see the world. A journeyman printer could always get a lift from any country newspaper in those days. Old Busbee, Nationally known “tramp printer” dropped in on us one time. He was given a day’s work—and a half-week’s salary. He tried to discourage “Spike”—and maybe he did. But I think his woe-begone looks was the greater influence. Busbee came this way three times within my recollection. “Spike” Wilson was the stepson of “Mule” Gibbons, who came here with his family from Corning in the early 90’s—and several years later moved to Holton.
President Grant’s Congress — 1876 —memorialized the state legislatures to have County Histories written for the benefit of posterity. Nemaha County has had three—but not one of them touched on the subjects covered in this volume. Usually local histories are compiled for profit — colored, biased; boosting individuals who are willing to pay for a write-up.
There is no angling for profit in this work.
These stories are now printed in book form to preserve them for their historic value. The book is not for sale. It is my gift to the home folks.
The books are costing me about ten dollars a copy—and, naturally, I won’t have enough of them to be passed out promiscuously. I shall place them in the schools, and libraries, and with the newspapers in the county—and with friends here and there, where all the home folks can have the chance to read the book, should they so desire. I am sure that I have more friends than I have copies of the book, and I trust that those who do not receive a copy will not feel that, in my estimation, they do not rate one.
Wetmore
It was not an excess of water, as one might suppose, that gave Wetmore its name. Nor was it, as some have been led to believe, because a certain Captain Wetmore, with a number of soldiers during the Civil War chanced to camp over night at our ever-flowing mineral spring. Art Taylor says his grandmother told him that such was the case.
It has been generally understood all along that the town was named after a New York official of the railroad which came through here in 1867. Confirmed, this would seem to kill the Taylor version of it, by at least two years. The matter, I believe, was settled for all time a couple of summers back when a New York woman, returning by automobile from the Pacific coast, called at the Wetmore post office to mail some letters. She told Postmaster Jim Hanks that the town was named after her father, who was an official of the railroad—and that she had driven a hundred miles out of her way to have her letters bear the Wetmore postmark.
I have seen Wetmore grow—and slip. Compact at the time of my entry seventy-nine years ago, occupying less than a half block, the town spread out through the years to a space of one-half mile by nearly one mile—not quite solid. The town became a City in 1884, with Dr. J. W. Graham as first Mayor—and at its peak had a population 687. The population at this time—1948—is 373.
There is not a person in this City today who was here when I came. Gone, all gone now. And nearly all dead. Something more than a tinge of sadness accompanies this thought. There is not a building of any kind standing that was here when I came—not a tree but what has been planted since that day. In truth, there is nothing, not a thing left, save the eternal hills and the creek which flows through the south edge of the City that antedates the time I came here.
Yet, I do not feel old. And should any of my friends choose to wish me anything, let them wish with me that I never do grow old.
The Mineral Spring
To enlarge a bit on our ever-flowing mineral spring! It was—and is—near the creek in a natural grove of big trees at the southwest limits of Wetmore. Nathaniel Morris, an early-day merchant, had an analysis of the water made—and talked of developing the spring into a health resort. The water was pronounced medicinally good — mostly iron, I believe. But, beyond attracting large celebration crowds, his dream was never realized. However, Morris induced the railroad to run in an “excursion” train of flat-cars canopied with heavy-foliaged brush against a blazing summer sun, on the occasion of one Fourth of July celebration. Green leafed brush also covered some of the stands on the south margin of the grove. Green brush was the standard picnic coverings in those days.
Then, later, Charley Locknane, Jay W. Powers, and Jim Liebig, undertook to popularize the spring—and incidentally, make some money for themselves. They invested considerable money in improvements. Locknane was a budding promoter with considerable nerve—and a pull with the railroad. He caused a special excursion train to be run out from Kansas City, $1.50 fare for the round trip. Also, Charley organized a Girl Band of twenty pieces, which furnished music for the opening picnic—and many occasion thereafter. The Girl Band gained national acclaim. Locknane was State Deputy for the Modern Woodmen of America—and took his Girl Band to the Head Camp at Colorado Springs in 1901, and to Minneapolis in 1902. The members were: Dora Geyer, Mollie Neely, Nora Shuemaker, Mabel Geyer, Phoena Liebig, Iva Hudson, Daisy Terry, Blanche Eley, Kate Searles, Truda Berridge, Edith Lapham, Pearl Nance, Maude Cole, Jennie Scott, Belle Searles, Grace Maxwell, Ruby Nance, Myrtle Graham, Mrs. Ella Rice and Mrs. Carrie Glynn, of McLouth, Kansas, were numbers five and six in the line-up as written on the back of an enlarged photograph now in possession of Mrs. P. G. Worthy—formerly Myrtle Graham.
The dance pavilion was well patronized between celebrations—and the town populace turned out of evenings for a stroll to the spring. It was really popular. Then a flood, an unusually big flood, swept the park clean of all improvements. The large frame dance-hall came to anchor on a projection of land on the present Bill Winkler farm nearly a mile down the creek. The town jester said that as the pavilion floated away the piano was automatically playing “Over the Ocean Waves.”
The mineral spring is still here—but that’s all.
At one of the big celebrations about the turn of the century a farmer brought his family to town in a spring wagon. He tied his team on the town-side of the picnic grounds, leaving a three-year-old child asleep in the wagon. When the parents returned after taking in the picnic, the child was gone. Then the picnickers began a search which lasted throughout the night. All roads were covered for four or five miles out. One searching party went four miles west on the railroad track—then turned back, believing a small child could not travel that far. The section men out Wetmore found the mangled body of the child in a small wash by the side of the railroad about a half-mile beyond the point abandoned by the searchers. An early morning freight train had bumped it off a low bridge. Then there was much speculation as to how a small child could have traveled that far—even hints, unwarranted suspicion, of foul help. Then there was a story afloat about the conductor whose train had struck the child. When told of the killing, it was claimed, he cried and said had he known a child was lost along the track he would have walked ahead the train.
Wetmore in 1869-70
There were only eleven buildings and thirty-four people Wetmore when I came here with my parents from our Wolfley Creek farm home in the fall of 1869.
There was one general store owned by Morris Brothers. Uliam Morris, with his wife Eliza and daughter Nannie, and his brother Nathaniel, lived over the store. Kirk Wood had a blacksmith shop, a small home, his wife Euphemia and two children, Riley and Jay. Kirk’s brother Jay lived with the family. M. P. M. Cassity, lawyer, owned his home and rental house, had a wife—off and on—and a son, George. Martin Peter Moses Cassity’s second marriage with his Griselle (Wheeler), the birth of Eddie, and the final parting, were after we came.
James Neville, section foreman, had a residence, his wife Sarah, and five children—William, George, Mary Ann, Jo Ann, and Mahlen. Dominic Norton, section hand, had six motherless children — Anna, Kate, Bridget, Ellen, Mollie, and Michael. Mike Smith, a plasterer, lived with the Nortons in the section house. Ursula Maxwell, a widow, with her son Granville and daughter Lizzie, lived in her own home. Ursula’s daughter Maggie, married to Jim Cardwell, was also temporarily in her home at this time. Samuel Slossen was building a hotel. He had a wife and a son, George. And there was a railroad station, and an agent named Catlin. Also a school house, and a teacher—John Burr.
The family of Peter Isaacson, deceased, in a farm home separated from the town by a street, were considered as town folk. Here lived the mother (married to A. Anderson) and four of her children—Andy, Edward, Irving, and Matilda. Anderson had two children, Oscar and Emily, living in the home. William and Alma were born later.
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.”
This was a mistake — a real “John Bull” blunder, Mercer was a large, muscular man. With a single pass he knocked the Englishman cold right there in the school room. Ashton fell almost at my feet. When he had come up out o f his stupor, still blinking and grimacing, Ashton bellowed, “I shall see a solicitor about this!”
“See him and bedamned,” bawled Mercer. “Now get out!”
After he had become seasoned, Ashton was really a fine fellow, rather above the average of his countrymen in intelligence. And he reared a fine family of boys and girls — Clifford, Anna, Eva, Stanley, Horace, and Vincent. Ashton was a carpenter.
At another time, James Neville rushed unceremoniously into the schoolroom and hurled a big rock at Mercer’s head, barely missing. The rock tore a big hole in the blackboard back of the teacher. Neville was a powerful man. Just what the grievance was, and how a lively fight was averted, has slipped my memory—though I rather suspect Neville did not tarry long after he had failed to make a hit with the rock.
These two infractions, and many more, passed as being only by-plays incidental to a good school, as interpreted by those pristine patrons.
Andy Maxwell’s home was on the hill west of the shack. But Andy did not live there long after we came—in fact, he was off the place for keeps even before our house in town was ready for occupancy. Mary Massey, unmarried sister of Mrs. Maxwell, as well as the estranged wife of Elisha Maxwell, was at this time in the home—altogether too many Women to be in one man’s home. Mary, a close observer, had said she’d see a man of her’s and that other woman both in h — l before she’d play second fiddle in her own home.
“Second fiddle” in this sense was of course a figurative term having dire implications. Then, too, Lou Hazeltine, a sister-in-law by reason of a first marriage with a brother of the Massey sisters, had her say. It was critical.
It occurs to me that I have seen in print a recent version of an old quotation or saying, often expressed then, which, in line with Mary’s blow-off, defined the situation admirably. It read: “Hell hath no music like a woman playing second fiddle.” For the text of the original quotation, ask any oldtimer—or you may substitute “fury” for music, and “scorned” for playing second fiddle, and you will have it.
These facts were gleaned while spending the day with my mother in Lou Hazeltine’s home. Lou had said to my mother, as was customary at the time, “Bring the children and stay all day.” So we were duly scrubbed and dressed up for the occasion. I think Lou wanted to unburden herself. But how she could have thought the children would be interested in such topic of conversation is beyond me. True, there was her daughter Lizzie Massey, about my age, for company—but Lizzie behaved as though she thought she might miss something, and paid no attention to her mother’s frequent admonitions, “You children run along outside and play.” I think Lou was unduly worked-up over the matter. She would look at us children, and then put her hand up to the side of her mouth, come down momentarily off her “high-horse” almost to a whisper, and channel the choice bits to mother. I think my mother would have been satisfied with less than was said—and certainly, as a newcomer in town, she did not want to be the one to spread gossip. However, she repeated it all, with apparent relish, to my father, adopting Lou’s adept manner of, shielding it from the children with her hand.
The Massey women decided that Andy’s sympathies for his estranged sister-in-law were simply “outlandish”—and Mrs. Andy invoked the law on him.
Constable Lon Huff started to take him to Seneca, but when they came to the creek crossing, a ford, in my Uncle Nick Bristow’s timber, Andy slipped off his shackled boots, jumped out of the buggy and made his getaway, barefooted, over the snow-covered ground. My cousin, Burrel Bristow, followed Andy’s barefoot tracks through the woods and counted the trees barked by the constable’s gun.
That Alonzo—he was the shrewd one. Shot up the trees, he did—and brought home Andy’s shackled boots.
I liked Andy—and, though I was never to see him again, as glad that he had gotten away from the constable. I think that nearly all the other people here were glad it, too. And, moreover, I’ll bet Andy did not travel far without foot-protection.
You may be sure Andy did not come home to his wife. Lou Hazeltine told my mother that the arrest was big mistake. Charley Hazeltine, Lou’s Swede husband, said “The vimens was yust yumpin at collusions.” Elisha’s wife and Andy’s daughter May left Wetmore soon thereafter. Demmy remained here with his grandmother for several years—then went to his father at Spearfish, South Dakota, from which place Andy was then operating a stage line to Deadwood.
With Ursula Maxwell and Charley Hazeltine as long-range intermediaries, Andy Maxwell waived claim to farm equipment, livestock, and all other belongings, in favor of Lizzie Maxwell. All Andy asked—and received—were his children, and the promise of no contest in two divorces, Lizzie Massey Maxwell remained here. She sold the farm improvements to Dr. W. F. Troughton for $50. Troughton filed on the homestead in 1872.
In the meantime Andy, with his daughter May and Mrs. Elisha, traveling out of Miles City, Montana, in covered wagons, with four other men, were attacked by Sioux and Nez Perce Indians—the siege lasting for three days. The newspapers said at the time, it was the hardest-fought Indian battle of all times.
A three-column account of that Indian attack, written reminiscently by a correspondent of the Chicago Times seventeen years after it had taken place, found its way by mere chance into the Wetmore Spectator—right back to the old home of the defenders — through the medium of the Western Newspaper Union, Kansas City, Mo., from which auxiliary the Spectator then got its inside pages ready-printed. It was a hair-raising story—one that could be read with interest again and again.
Incidentally, Andy Maxwell had Indian blood in his own veins. His mother told me she was a quarter-breed. She had Indian features.
Then there was another Indian story having Wetmore connections. I have in my newspaper files Catherine German-Swerdfeger’s own story — nearly a full page written for the Spectator — of the slaying by the Indians of her father and mother, a brother and two sisters; and the capture of herself and three sisters—Sophie, Julia, and Addie. John German, from Blue Ridge, Georgia, with his family, was traveling by ox-team and covered wagon, through Kansas on the way to Colorado at the time of the attack.
Catherine’s description of the abandonment of her two little sisters, aged five and six, after two weeks on the move by the roving band of Indians, on the then uninhabited plains somewhere between southwestern Kansas and the main Cheyenne camp in Texas, in the midst of a big herd of buffalo, where, after following on foot until well nigh exhausted, as mounted Indians forced the two older girls on ponies away from the scene, the little girls lived—no, existed—for six weeks, in October and November weather, with no shelter other than a clay bank, on the leavings of soldiers, (cracker crumbs, scattered grains of corn, and hackberries), in a deserted camp, by a creek, would wring your heart.
Catherine’s personal explanation to me was that the little girls, when down to the last morsel of edible scrapings, had difficulty in deciding which one should eat it. The little one thought the older one should have it—that it might enable her to live to get away. It would appear that the little one had already resigned herself to her fate. The older one decided it rightly belonged to the baby. And neither of them ate it. It was only a dirty kernel of corn, Catherine said in her article: “God had a hand in that work, and I believe you will agree with me when I say He wrought a miracle.”
And I, for one, certainly do agree.
Several inaccurate accounts of the fate of this unfortunate family have been written—one by a professor, who evidently did not have the full facts, as text for the Wichita schools. And another one, as told to a reporter for the Kansas City Journal by “Uncle” Jimmy Cannon, an interpreter on Government pay-rolls, stationed in Kansas (the rider of “Little Gray Johnny”) in which he himself, in a daring dash on a band of Indians, rescued one of the little girls — which, in fact, he didn’t do at all, according to Catherine.
Actually, it was this story of “Uncle” Jimmy’s that caused Catherine to write the true story of the massacre and of their captivity, for my paper. Catherine said it was soldiers under Lieutenant Baldwin of the Fifth Infantry who found her little sisters, sick, emaciated, on the verge of starvation, in that same deserted camp, which was really no camp at all—only an overnight camp site. And though soldiers were constantly on the trail of the Indians, there was no spectacular dash by the military in the rescue the two older girls. When first taken into the main Cheyenne camp, in Texas, Chief Stonecalf told Catherine, who was then nearly eighteen years old, that he was grieved know that his people would do such a deed; that he would, Soon as possible, deliver them to the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Agency—and that he did. Catherine had much praise for Chief Stonecalf, and General Nelson A. Miles, their efforts in liberating them. Under Indian custom, girls were regarded as loot, and had to be bought from their captors.
Jim Smith, now living in the west part of Wetmore, went to school — at the Porter school house on Wolfley-creek—with the two younger German girls. Pat Corney, living on a farm adjacent to the J. P. Smith farm, was guardian of the girls.
Addie—Mrs. Frank Andrews—is still living, or was a few years ago, at Berwick in Nemaha county. A few years back, Mrs. Andrews was invited to appear on a radio program in New York, with all expenses paid—but she did not go. Amos Swerdfeger, husband of Catherine—and son of Adam Swerdfeger, who was among the first settlers here—died at Atascadero, California, Nov. 12, 1921, age 73. Catherine died in 1932, age 75.
These two Indian stories would make good reading now—and while they are in line with my endeavor to give a true picture of the old days, they are not included in this volume. Nothing but my own writings, since my retirement from the newspaper field appears in this book. However, slight reference to those two Indian attacks were made in my more recently published stories, which are reproduced in this book—just as they were written at the time. Many changes have taken place in the meantime.
After it became generally known here that the defenders of that fiercely fought Indian battle in Montana were former Wetmore citizens, many of our people came in from time to time to read the story. That page of the old files is pretty well thumbed.
About fifty years ago, a family by the name of Cummings came here and lived for a short while in the northwest part of town. Mrs. Cummings said she was the daughter of Andy Maxwell. I did not learn her given name, but supposed she was May. She called at the Spectator office, and read the story.
Then, in February, 1939, Mrs. Nettie E. Rachford, Westwood, California, wrote the Spectator asking for a copy of the story, saying she was the daughter of Andy Maxwell. I then copied the story from my files, and W. F. Turrentine printed it again in the Spectator, February 1939.
This reprint of the Maxwell story caused Dr. LeVere Anderson, born and reared on a farm five miles southwest of Wetmore—now established in Miles City, Montana—to bring the matter of that Indian fight to the attention of the Miles City Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber was at that very time sponsoring a homecoming jubilee—and after an exchange of letters between Miles City and Wetmore, Andy Maxwell, then living in Santa Ana, California, was invited to be the Chamber’s honored guest—but he was unable to make the trip. Andy Maxwell died at Santa Ana in 1941, at the age of ninety-nine.
Our New Temporary Home
Earlier in this writing I mentioned the fact that our family had three years on the Hazeltine farm. My older brother, Charley, contracted “quick consumption.” There was a prevailing notion that the scent of new pine lumber and fresh country air would be helpful in effecting a cure. So my father made a contract with Charley Hazeltine for the erection of a new house under the cottonwoods on the hill near the old log-house which had been the home of father of the Hazeltine brothers—with a three-year lease on 40 acres of farm land.
The new house had plenty of exposed pine lumber and fresh air all right. It was a box-house made of barn-boards, unplastered, with sleeping quarters in the loft, comparable to the hay-mow in a barn, reached by a ladder from one corner of the ground-floor room. On occasions, snow sifted through the cracks in the loft, covering my bed completely. The lower room was more closely built, which was living room, kitchen, and sleeping quarters for my parents—and the babies. There was a standard sized bed, and a trundle bed—the latter shoved under the regular bed in the daytime, and pulled out to the middle of the room at night. It was a replica of many another home of that day, only the others could have added protection of plastered walls. Then too, it was Dr. Thomas Milam’s belief that Charley would show improvement in the new home with the coming of spring. But, come time for the swelling of the buds of those old cottonwoods in the spring of 1879, the “Grim Reaper” beat the carpenters to the finish. Charley had died before the new house was ready for occupancy. And that made long lonesome hours for me on the farm. Charley had an enviable record as an exemplary boy—and, try as I might, I have not been able to follow wholly in his foot-steps. But I am sure that my memory of him has helped to make me what I am.
Roses The Girls Didn’t Get
Reference has been made to my Rose Garden. I have grown them, you might say, as a hobby—and for the pleasure of giving the flowers to my friends. Bushels of them have gone in the past to the Cemetery on Memorial Day, and not a few to sick rooms, to churches, and to local society functions.
The fame of my Rose Garden has traveled far—to California and to Florida. Proof: The two little girls of Shady Mitchell, a Tennessean, who conducted a general store in Wetmore some years back and lived across the street west from the school grounds in the house now owned and occupied by Prof. Howard V. Bixby—in their school work at their new home in Orlando, Florida, wrote in collaboration a theme, beginning: “There was a man living in our town in Kansas who grew roses just to give them away to his friends—” This is the extent of the essay which has been relayed to me—but I’ve no doubt that Verda Bess and Marjorie Lou acknowledged having been the recipient of roses from my garden. I don’t think I ever permitted a little girl—nor a big one either, for that matter—who stopped by to admire my roses, to go away without a bouquet.
And particularly have I been pleased to supply the girl graduates of our splendid Wetmore High School at Commencement time. Last year—spring of 1947—the garden did not show promise of early bloom of quality flowers, and I got the girl graduates some beautiful long-stemmed “Better Times” red roses, ($7.85 per doz.), from Rock’s in Kansas City. I planned to make this an annual contribution, whether at home or away, as a sort of commemoration of the fine Rose Garden I once owned. The garden is now owned by Raymond and Marjorie McDaniel.
Before leaving in the fall for California, I told the girls I would send them roses by air mail—but, through an oversight of someone, I was not apprised of the date of the 1948 Commencement. And this was one time when the girls, through no fault of their own, (except possibly trusting another than a member of the class to do the notifying), missed getting some really high-class graduation roses—roses grow to perfection in California—which I think was more of a disappointment to me than perhaps to anyone else, unless it should have been my niece, Alice Bristow-Tavares, who was to have supplied two dozen extremely beautiful long-stemmed Etoile de Hollande red roses from her climbers. A Fresno florist had been engaged to pack them for mailing.
LITTLE FILLERS
In this volume will be found several “Little Fillers”—sayings of children, which have no connection with the various articles. They have been prepared to fill out the pages where the ending of a story leaves unused space—so that all articles may have a top-page heading.
CONSIDERATE KID
Having bought little three-year-old Karen McDaniel a 5-cent cone, and also one for her to take home to her little brother Harry, I laid a couple of nickels on the counter at the restaurant; and then put down a dime, and picked up the two nickels—this twenty-cents representing the sum total of my cash as of the moment. Karen said, “What you do that for?” I told her that I was going to purchase a 5-cent lead-pencil from Charley Shaffer at the drug store, and that I wanted to keep the nickels, as it would save time of waiting to get back the nickel in change, were I to keep the dime. She said, brightly, “He might not have a nickel.” I said, “That’s just it.” Not realizing the risk which I myself was cooking up at the moment, I said, “It’s never wise to take a risk when it can just as easily be avoided.” Placing the two nickels beside the little dime, I told her the dime was worth as much as the two bigger nickels. Thinking to see if she had caught on, I said, (rather badly stated), “Now, what you think—which would you rather have?” She smiled, almost saucily grinned, and reaching for the dime, said, “I’ll take the little one—you want to keep the big ones.”
THE BOY OF YESTERYEAR
Published in Wetmore Spectator
May 29, 1931
By John T. Bristow
It was a lazy October afternoon. The woods were still in full leaf and the tops of the trees, touched by early frost, had turned to reddish brown and golden yellow. It was a fine day for squirrel hunting. But this is not strictly a hunting story.
There were six in the party—three men of widely varying ages and, as the college youth would say, three skirts — but, for convenience, all wore trousers that afternoon. It was a sort of boarding-house party out for recreation and game. They were: Mrs. Edna Weaver, Miss Genevieve Weaver, Miss Thelma Sullivan, Milton Mayer, Raymond Weaver and the writer.
Our wanderings carried us into the heavily wooded section near the head of Wolfley creek. I had no hunter’s license and, being a law-loving citizen, carried no gun. The hunters, alert for game, went deep into the woods. And I trailed along, not noticing, not caring, where we were going. Having passed the stage of life when one normally gives a whoop where he is or what he does, to me, one place was as good as another.
And then, of a sudden, I became tremendously alert. We were now coming near to my father’s old farm—the home he had blazed out of the wilderness, so to speak, on first coming to Kansas—oh, so many years ago. That farm is now owned by Mrs. Worley.
A few of the many letters commenting on my published stories are printed in this volume—in all cases, blocked in the story to which the letter refers. They help to attest the authenticity and worthiness of the article. It’s most stimulating to have one’s friends write in and say, “I know that to be true.” It’s like the “Amen” to a fervent prayer.
The regret is that so few of the old ones are left.
For sentimental reasons I wanted to hunt that old place — to live, briefly, again the days of my youth. As we came to the line fence between the Worley farm and the Brock pasture lands on the east, my companions balked at wire—wanted to turn back. My suggestion that we go on was regarded as “idiotic.” The Worley timber was un-inviting. There were lots of weeds over on that side, and probably snakes, too. I know rattlesnakes infested that place when I lived there as a boy.
I climbed over the fence, anyway, and was soon racing toward a mammoth elm tree—a tree that had budded and leaves more than sixty times since the day I last saw that place. The hunters came over on the bound. “It went up this tree,” I lied. There was no squirrel. I was in truth a boy again—a very small boy—resorting to childish subterfuges.
E D WOODBURN
Lawyer
HOLTON, KANSAS
October 19, 1931
Mr. John Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas
Dear John:--
I want to express to you my appreciation for the opportunity of reading your article, “The Boy of Yesteryear” published in the Wetmore Spectator May 29, 1931.
I have never understood and have always regretted the fact that you quit the newspaper field. It has always seemed to me that with your ability to write, you could have been useful as a newspaper man. You have the happy faculty of getting and holding one’s attention from beginning to end.
Yours very truly,
E D WOODBURN
But my “idiotic” idea wasn’t so bad. The hunters a got a nice bag of squirrels on that side of the fence and in passing the spot again an hour later one of party thought she saw my mythical squirrel go into a hole in one of the top-most branches of that old monarch of the woods. So that was that. Kindly forget the ethics involved. We hunted the timber the full length of that place Dad’s old farm. Now there were big trees—and some tall trees. As I remember, there were big tall trees on that place when we lived there more than a half century ago. My father split rails from that timber to fence the farm, And as ex-woodsman he was he was inordinately proud of that rail fence, of his excellent craftsmanship. In his native state, with the straight-splitting birch and poplars, it would have been a simple matter. Here it was an accomplishment.
In that day there were two kinds of rail fences in general use. The “leaner” fence was constructed with posts set on top the ground in a leaning position and supported by stakes on the under side, with the rails nailed onto the posts. The “stake and rider” fence, also sometimes called the “worm” fence, was made by laying the end of one rail on top of another, in zigzag fashion, at an angle of about twenty-five degrees, so that the ends would lap, with a ground chunk under each section, and when built up to the desired height — usually seven rails—two cross-stakes were set in the ground at the junction of the panels, with another rail on top the cross-stake. My father’s fence was of the latter type. It took a lot of rails.
Also I recall seeing my father shoot a squirrel out of the top of a very tall tree with his Colt’s revolver. That six-shooter was presented to him by Federal officers during the Civil War for protecting himself against a band of guerrillas. More about the guerrillas later.
And on this October day I saw the spot where the old house stood on the south flank of that woodland—the house around which I played with my brothers as a care-free child, and where my mother almost cried her heart out because of loneliness. Also, it was here where my mother told me a story one day—a story of my father, of herself, of why we had left our home in the Southland. Our tears mingled over the telling of that story then. And there was sadness in my heart that October afternoon as I paused, reverently, for a moment in passing.
Although I was born in the sunny South where magnolias bloom and mockingbirds sing all winter long, my first vivid recollection of life was upon this bleak Kansas farm, hot and wind-swept in summer, cold and desolate in winter. The rigid climate of this new plains country home was in such marked contrast to the mild and even temperature of my mother’s native heavily timbered state as to her long to go back to her old home.
It was eight wilderness miles to Powhattan, the post-office; five miles to Granada, the trading post; and one mile to the nearest neighbors—Rube and Anne Wolfley.
The mill that made our sorghum molasses—nearly every farmer grew a patch of cane for making molasses to go with corn-bread, the staple diet—one mile off from Powhattan, was owned by Charley Smith, the same Charley Smith who had in earlier days, been keeper of a station (his home ) on the old John Brown “underground railroad,” where runaway Negro slaves, being transported to Canada, were in hiding through the day. I know it was the Charley Smith place, for Ben Summers, our hired man, said it still smelled of “niggers.” But of course it didn’t. That was Ben ’ s way of opening a sizeable tale about Mr. Brown and his underground railroad.
And I wouldn’t know how far it was to the mill that ground our corn-meal, but I do know there was one—for we had no bread other than cornbread for months on end. Only on rare occasions would we have “lightbread”—made of wheat flower, of course. The cornbread my mother usually made was not the cornpone customary in the South. Cracklin ’ bread and seasoned cornbread was much better—that is, for most palates. I wish I could have some of it now. But there was one traveling salesman, Hugh Graham, who preferred the cornpone. He would wire the hotel here of his expected arrival, which meant that for breakfast, dinner, or supper, he wanted cornpone. I think the cornpone was made of cornmeal, salt, and water.
I recall that Ben Summers had gone “acourtin” Betsy Porter that evening, when my parents were shelling corn, by candle-light, on a sheet spread upon the kitchen floor, to take to the mill—probably the Reiderer mill east of Holton — when a big bullsnake which had crept in through a displaced chink in the log house, slithered across the sheet, gliding over the corn, and out an open door. The matter was debated, seriously—then it was decided the hogs should have that corn.
My father and mother, with their three small children, came to Kansas from Nashville, Tennessee, in 1865. They came by steamboat on the Cumberland, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to Atchison. The family was met there by my uncle Nick, father’s only brother, with an ox-team, taking most of two days to drive us to his home on Wolfley creek. That farm is now owned by William Mast.
On the way out from Atchison, as we were nearing home, we ran into one of those fierce prairie fires that so often menaced life and property of the early settlers. I was very young then and cannot say positively that what I am about to relate here is from actual memory, although I have always believed that I retained a mental picture of that prairie fire. Details are now a bit hazy—and, you know, with the very young there is always a borderland not any too well defined between what you may have actually seen and what you may have heard others recount.
Anyway, there was a prairie fire. And its sinister red flames—a long snake-like line of crackling, blazing hell — overhung with an ominous pall of thick black smoke, sent a spasm of fear surging through my uncle and my parents.
That prairie fire was on one of the big creek bottoms — probably on the old Overland Trail — somewhere between Granada and Wetmore, only there was no Wetmore then. We had just forded a stream and were well out in a big bottom where the slough grass was as tall as the oxen, when the fire was sighted coming over the hills towards us, and fanned by a brisk wind it was traveling at terrific speed.
My uncle, who was driving, ran up along side his oxen and yelled, “Whoa-haw-Buck! Jerry!” The oxen seemed to sense danger and the wagon was turned around in no time. Just then a man on horseback came running up. Without stopping to say a word the man jumped off his horse and touched a lighted match to the tall dead grass in front of the outfit. An effort was made by the man to beat out the fire on the windward side. The man then excitedly commanded my uncle to drive across the thin line of back-fire into the newly burned space. It looked like the rider had come out of that blazing inferno especially to warn us. And as the wagon moved away he yelled loudly so as to be heard above the roar of the encroaching flames from behind, “For God’s sake, man, follow it up as fast as you can.”
That young man was Fred Liebig.
Boyhood impressions stick like the bark on a tree, while later events are submerged in the whirlpool of life and are forgotten. One of the outstanding incidents of my young life took place upon this Wolfley creek farm. I remember it as distinctly as if it occurred only yesterday. It was my first—and last—alcoholic debauch.
I have already told you that rattlesnakes infested that place way back in the distant past. One of them—a fat, seven-button specimen—took a whack at me one summer day, its fangs loaded with deadly green fluid sinking deep the top of my right foot. It was August — dogdays — and of course I was barefoot. The children of pioneer settlers didn ’ t wear shoes, except in cold weather, even when their fathers were excellent shoemakers, a distinction my father enjoyed at that time.
My father was over at Granada. A neighbor was sent after him — and for whiskey, the then universal remedy for snakebite. Finding no whiskey at Granada, the courier, on horseback, came on to Wetmore, which town was just starting then, and failing again, pushed on the Seneca, stopping on the way long enough to change horses. The round trip approximately sixty miles and eight hours had elapsed when the rider returned with whiskey. He brought a generous supply.
In the meantime my mother had dumped a package of baking soda into a basin of warm water. She bade me put my foot in it — and two little fountains of green came oozing up through the soda-whitened water. And she gave me tea made from yard plantain—why, I wouldn’t know.
Also my Uncle Nick had arrived by the time the rider returned with the whisky. I didn’t like the taste of the nasty stuff and, boy-like, set up a howl about having to drink it. And my Uncle, desirous of helping in every possible way, said, soothingly, “Johnny, take a little, and Uncle take a little.” We both passed out about the same time.
I don’t mean to infer by this that my Uncle was a drunkard. He was not. And, mind you, he grew up in a country at a time when you could buy good old Bourbon at any crossroads grocery store as you would buy a jug of vinegar—and almost as cheaply.
My Uncle Nick was a soldier in the Mexican war of 1848. And he was a soldier in the Civil war—an adventurer, and in a way a “soldier of fortune.” He prospected for gold, and hunted mountain lions—with the long rifle—in the Rockies, just as he and my father had hunted panthers in Tennessee.
This ferocious beast, if you don’t know, is the big cat with four names. In the South and East—extinct in most sections now—he is the dreaded panther. In the Rockies he is the mountain lion. Farther west, in Arizona and the Sierras, he is the cougar. Somewhere he is called the puma. And everywhere he is “the killer.”
Two strangers stopped at our home just after I had passed out—that is, after I had become limp, unable to stand, unable to talk, from the effects of the whisky. But I could understand as well as ever what was said. One of the men suggested that if they could find the snake and cut it open and bind the parts to my foot that it would draw the poison out. I knew that Jim Barnes had killed that snake, and the stranger’s suggestion gave me a mental spasm. I could not speak out and tell’ them that I had had about all of that snake that I could stand.
The earthquake of 1868 — or thereabout — greatly frightened my mother. It was her first experience with quakes. And, woman-like, with a perpetual grudge against the erratic Kansas weather changes, she laid this shakeup in climate, which, it seemed, she never could become accustomed to. And when the house trembled and the dishes cupboard began to rattle, she rushed out into the yard, where my father and the children were, and said, “If we must all go to the devil I would just as soon walk as ride.”
Also Indians from the Kickapoo reservation, while harmless enough at the time, had a habit of prowling about over the country, and a band of them nearly scared the wits out of my mother one hot summer day. She saw the blanketed red skins, on ponies, coming down the road, single-file. Gathering her youngsters, much as a hen gathers her brood the approach of danger—and much as my mother had once before taken her children under her protecting arms and saved their lives, as you shall see presently—she hid in the cornfield until the rovers had left our farm.
And now another prairie fire. If there could be any question about the youngster having retained with photographic accuracy the horrors of the one earlier mentioned, there can be no doubt about this later one, which, whipped by the ever-present wind, stole in upon us in the night, My father’s much prized rail fence was laid low, and only by heroic efforts was the house saved. These dreaded prairie fires and other subjected frights incident to the new country seemed to place a mark upon my mother.
“William,” she said one day to my father, “we might as well have remained in Tennessee and taken our chances on being killed by guerillas as to come all the way out to this God-for-saken country only to be burned to death by prairie fires, or shaken to pieces by earthquakes, or frightened to death by Indians.” And I am sure that if the Kansas cyclone had then enjoyed the widespread reputation that it does in this year of grace, my mother would have included that also.
In Tennessee, my father was a shoemaker and tanner by trade. And, by the grace of a kind Providence—and some quick shooting—he was a live Union “sympathizer” in a Rebel stronghold. The great conflict—the Civil War—between the North and the South was then on. My father had not, at this time, joined the fighting forces on either side. He was content to ply his trade, make leather and shoes, both of which were very much needed at the time. But my father made the almost fatal mistake of “exercising his rights as a free-born citizen,” in having his say.
The South was not quite solid for Confederacy. Sometimes even families were divided. In my mother’s family two of her brothers favored the North and two were for the South—”rank rebels,” my mother said. None of them went to war. They worked in a powder mill—more dangerous, by far. Twice the mill blew up, and each time one of my Uncles was blown into fragments. Also one of my mother’s acquired relatives hid in a cave for the duration of the war.
The guerilla element was composed of Southerners, not in colors — and they made life miserable for any o ne who dared to express an opinion, on the aspects of the war, contrary to their views.
The hush of a November night lay upon the forest, in the thick of which was located my father’s home, his tan-yard, his shoeshop. The night’s stillness was broken by a volley of bullets from the guerilla guns crashing through the windows and doors of the log house.
My mother—herself only a girl in her teens—took her two babies and crept under the bed, which, luckily, had been moved to another part of the house that very day. And that shift of the bed saved the family from the death-dealing bullets poured into the house with that first onslaught.
My father had only a muzzle-loading, double-barrel shotgun, with two charges in the gun—and no more ammunition — with which to defend himself and his little family against that mob of armed men. The main body of guerillas, on horseback, were in the front yard. The house stood upon the bank of a deep gully, with little or no backyard. A wide plank served as a walk across the gully. Beyond that was heavy timber.
Believing that his family would be safer with him out of the house, my father, only partly dressed, grabbed his shotgun and flung open the back door. He quickly emptied both barrels of his gun into the two men who were guarding the back door. The revolver in the hands of the first man in line, standing on the plank, was being brought down on him when the charge from father’s shotgun cut off the crook of the man’s arm at the elbow and entered his body, killing him instantly. The bullet from the guerilla’s revolver plowed through my father’s hat. And that was the revolver my father shot squirrels with in Kansas. It was retrieved by Federal soldiers and presented to him.
The other man was mortally wounded and lay there in yard, at the far end of the plank walk, until morning, Things had happened so quickly, and so disastrously to their ranks, that the mob believed the house was occupied by armed men. And, after firing another volley into the home, many of the bullets this time penetrating the bed under which my mother, with her babies, lay flat on the floor, the mob withdrew to a safe distance—but sentinels were kept posted in the nearby woods until morning. All told, more than one hundred shots were fired into the house.
And now a man from the outside dashed in at the back -the door by which father had made his exit. Hurriedly he bolted the door from within.
My mother, peering out from her hiding place under bed, exclaimed in surprise, “You here, Sandy! What does this mean?” And before he could explain, she cried, “Oh, I smell smoke. Is the house on fire, Sandy?”
“Yes,” he said—”it was. And the tanyard buildings and shoeshop are now burning.”
Sandy Fouse, a Southern boy, had worked for my father in his tobacco fields, and lived at our home. My father grew tobacco on the side. I was told Sandy took a marked interest in me—a baby. God only knows why it was so, but it seems I was destined to become the favorite of the family. I had an older brother, too. But it seems I was the favorite of my Aunt Harriet who helped my mother, and the pet of Sandy who “wormed” the tobacco.
And as with the prairie fire—only with positive conviction this time—I must again rely on what has been told me. Reaching under the bed and hauling me out, Sandy said, “Why, I’d risk my life any time for this here boy Johnny—or any of you-all.” And that was just what he was doing that night.
When the mob had withdrawn after starting a fire against the house, Sandy ran back and kicked the blazing sticks away from the building—and then made a dash for the door. He was now afraid of the mob and did not leave the house again that night. Good old boy — Sandy, Pal, Protector. Just why you were out with those guerillas that night has never been explained to me.
My father did not come back into the house, and my mother believed that he had been killed, or mortally wounded, as she could plainly hear the groans of the dying man outside. And she was, of course, frantic with grief. After hours of agony, when she could stand it no longer, she took a lighted candle and went outside to investigate.
My mother’s name was Martha. The wounded man kept groaning, “Oh, Lordy.” And my mother thought it was my father calling her name. It took some tension off when she discovered the dying man was not my father — but she was horrified to find he was the son of a close neighbor. The young man asked for a drink of water, and wanted someone to pray for his soul. She gave him water. And she prayed for him. At daybreak the young man’s companions took him to his father’s home where he died a few hours later. He told his people that he got what he deserved, that he had no business in permitting the mob to persuade him to go out with them that night.
Still my mother did not know the fate of my father — and of course her mind and nerves were harassed to the point of breaking all through the long hours of the night. In this story I can only give the facts and trust that some power of understanding in every human heart may lead the reader to some appreciation of the tense situation—the web of destiny seemingly inextricably entangled, in which my parents had been caught.
After shooting his way out, my father had kept on going, and under protection of the night and the dense woods surrounding the house, eluded the mob. And after fifteen miles of weary tramping over the hills and through woods, after hours of worry for the safety of his family, he reached the Union lines, at daybreak. In the afternoon of that same day the family was moved to Clarksville, by solders sent out from the army.
The guerillas had burned my father’s tanyard and shoeshop, and his tobacco barn. They had stolen his horses — four fine grays which were kept on the plantation for plowing the tobacco fields and for hauling tanbark. And in the end, someone stole his farm. The trusted agent forgot to remit.
My father then went as a scout with detachments the Union army. He served under Major E. N. Morrill, who was later Governor of Kansas, and a resident of Hiawatha for a number of years. The guerilla band was broken up. But hostilities did not stop altogether with the surrender of Lee. And bushwhacking” became a pastime with the embittered few.
My mother, with her sister, Nan Porter, went back to Tennessee some years later for a visit. And about the first thing they did was to attend church—a new church in the old neighborhood. My resident aunt — Aunt Harriet Lovell—had said to her sisters, “You-all will meet lots of friends after church.”
The two Kansas women, with their handsome and deeply religious young escort, marched into church a trifle late, and my mother was smiling and nodding to close seated old acquaintances, and properly attuned, all were living in the happy anticipation of a real love feast when church would be out. Then suddenly, abruptly, as if she had received some deadly stroke, the smile faded from her face. She looked at her sister, in crestfallen dejection, and whispered, “Let’s get out of here, Nan, just as soon as the services are over.” That pained look did not belong on my my mother’s sweet face. Some highly disturbing thing had happened.
Quickly, my mother revised her plans. She could consistently have waited for the preacher to come down from the pulpit and address her as “sister” with more significance than ordinarily accrues to the church going woman. But no, thank you—not my mother. Not in that spot. She had recognized in that coarse-voiced preacher the leader of that guerilla mob. He was my non-consanguineous uncle — father’s own brother-in-law. And the accommodating young man who had been so kind as to “carry” them over in his shiny new buggy could not understand what made them in such a hurry to get away.
That meeting house was set in a small clearing in the dense woods on top of a high ridge. It was called “Sentinary.” The worshippers came in from the lower settlements from every direction. It was their custom to tarry after services for a visit — and especially^ if there were strangers in the congregation they must be wholeheartedly welcomed, Southern style, as I was to learn.
Some years later it was my pleasure to attend that same church. And Walter Cox “carried” me over in his buggy—the same rig in which my mother and my aunt had ridden with him—though the buggy was now, of course, somewhat the worse for wear, as the roads down there are rocky. Fully half that four-mile trip was in the bed of a creek which flowed, clear as crystal, over a rock bottom, between high hills. And when not in the middle of the creek that road crossed and recrossed the stream many times.
But the guerilla-preacher—he of the “foghorn” voice — who had so disturbed my mother’s tranquility, was not at the Church to greet me. It was my uncle, one of my mother’s rank rebel” brothers, who stepped down from the pulpit to meet the stranger.
And when Walter Cox introduced us—after effusive greetings and some emotional tears from the older man — uncle, with fine Southern accent, said, “I’m powerful proud that Walter here didn’t introduce you before the services. If I had known one of sister Martha’s boys was the congregation I believe I would have forgotten my text.” He stroked his whiskers. “Yes, suh, it would have frustrated me a heap.”
Having registered at the Maxwell House—the one that presumably made a certain brand of coffee famous—I attended the Nashville Centennial for three days before looking up any of my relatives. My Uncle Thomas Cullom lived Nashville — but my Aunt Nancy Cullom-Porter had written from Wetmore to my Aunt Harriet Cullom-Lovell at Newsome Station, twelve miles out, of my expected visit—and I went there first, by train. I inquired at the Newsome store for a way to get out to John Lovell’s, five miles up Buffalo creek. Mr. Newsome said, “Just go right down to the mill, the boy there will carry you over plum to his door—you a Cullom?” The boy led out two horses, and I was “carried” over astride a horse to my Aunt’s home, arriving at about four o’clock. And here I met, for the first time, Uncle John Lovell, his two daughters, Emma and Margaret; and of course my Aunt Harriet—not however, for the first time. My mother had told me that we had been pretty good friends in my baby days.
Also, I met here the renowned spirit medium Jim Spain, of whom I had heard my mother and my Aunt Nancy tell some tall stories—but Jim got on a horse, rode away, and I did not see him again that day. Jim Spain at this me was about thirty-five years old. He had come to the Lovell home when a young man—and just stayed. I don’t know if he had any relatives; though undoubtedly there was a time when he might have been blessed—or plagued—with kin.
At eventide—maybe it would define the hour better to say as dusk settled on the hills and hollows surrounding my Aunt’s home, making the hollows thick with semi-darkness—girls, in twos and threes, began coming in—in all about a baker’s dozen. That spirit medium had made the rounds spreading the news of my arrival. The girls were too nearly the same age—sweet sixteen—to be of one family. They were my relatives — or maybe just relatives of my relatives. They were all cousins. I asked one of the girls where had they all come from? She said, “Just over the east hill—apiece.” It was a steep hill.
The Lovell home, a double structure with the usual open spacious gallery separating the apartments—a typical Southern home—was near the junction of Buffalo creek on the north and a deep gulch between high wooded hills, flowing in from the south. The building spot, about the size of an ordinary town lot, had been leveled off some fifteen feet above the wash, with the west end of the dwelling resting on piles reaching down almost to the water level. To the east, the hill above the flattened space, was so steep and high that the sun did not» shine on the house until after ten o’clock. A cook-house stood in the yard about thirty feet south of the dwelling where family meals were prepared—presumedly by a colored cook.
Here, I must explain.
After I had returned home, I learned that my Aunt Nancy had written my Aunt Harriet advising her to get rid of her Negro cook for the duration of my visit. Whatever possessed her to do this, I wouldn’t know—there was, in fact, no justification for it. I had no reason to be prejudice of Negroes. On the contrary, I may say I “owe my life” to a Negro — my mother said he was the blackest Negro she had ever seen—for having rescued me from the river after I had fallen off the deck of the boat, when coming to Kansas from Tennessee. I was about four years old—and still wearing dresses, in the fashion of the times. I was told that the Negro said he had saved my mother’s little darling girl. I didn’t like to be called a “little girl”—either with or without the “darling”—but this was no cause for me to forever dislike the colored folk.
Might say I was nearly six years old before I got my first pants—and even then I didn’t wear them regularly. They were knee pants—in style, which style endured for a long time. I knew one young fellow in Wetmore who wore his knee-pants right up to his wedding day. When I first began howling for pants, my mother said I was lucky she hadn ’ t dressed me in a flour sack, with holes cut out for head and arms, like Preacher Wamyer’s kids had been clothed, in our neighborhood. But the joke was, she did not happen to have a flour sack, and she said that in this God-for-saken country she was not likely to have one for ages. My mother made me shirts with long tails — and when around home out there in the sticks, in hot weather, I would not bother with the britches. I recall the time mother took me with her to a quilting at the home of one of the Porter women—it might have been at the home of Kate Evans, wife of Bill Evans, the famous old stage-driver; but more likely it was the home of Amanda Ann Watson, widow, who later married Brown Ellet. Johnny Bill Watson, a red headed, freckled face boy about my age, played rough, making it plenty hot for me. I pulled off my pants, went into the house, and threw my britches onto the quilting frame—greatly humiliating my mother, and creating uproarous laughter from the women.
Well, you know, I didn’t see a “Nigger” or even hear one mentioned during my visit at my Aunt Harriet’s home, That cook house was the one place not exploited. But somehow the meals got cooked—tempting meals just like my mother used to cook—and I suspect by Auntie Lovell’s regular colored woman, after the Cullom technique.
The smoked ham, produced and cured on the place, was the best I have ever eaten. Uncle and Auntie’s 200-acre farm lay in irregular boundaries—likely described by chains and links zig-zagging between blazed trees—for two miles up and down Buffalo creek. Uncle John showed me the limestone ledge protruding over the north bank of the creek, which sheltered his hogs at such times as they would come home to spend the night—and feed on perhaps the first “bar’l” of corn produced on a near-by clearing. The hogs came home only at such times as the “mast” was insufficient. This combination made for cheap pork—and delicious hams.
I had recently been in Texas—and because of that trip to the Lone Star state, I had a message from a relative to a relative to be delivered in Nashville. Here again I should explain. On learning that I planned a trip to Galveston ten days hence, my Aunt Nancy Porter asked me to stop off at Dallas and call on a relative—a Cullom of the Tennessee tribe. I believe his name was Jerry. But if he were not Jerry, he was a close relative. When I called at Mr. Cullom’s real estate office in Dallas, I was told he had gone to Galveston. I went on to Galveston, and dismissed all thought of seeing my relative. I went out to the beach, and while strolling on the sands—on the gulf side of the sea-wall — among hundreds, perhaps thousands of other strollers, fell in with a friendly man. He told me he was from Dallas, and I told him that I was from Wetmore,„Kansas. He said, quickly, “Did you say Wetmore? Reckon you might know my cousin Nan Porter, there.” And I said, “Then, I reckon you know that my Aunt Nancy asked me to stop off at Dallas, and call on you.” He grabbed my hand, saying with real Tennessee accent, “Mr. John Bristow, I’m powerful proud to meet you.” Again, I may be wrong. It could have been the Texas accent. In the course of our conversation I told Cousin Cullom that I would be going to Nashville for the Centennial, and he said likely he would go, too. The message from him was for my Aunt Tennessee Cullom-Clark, mother’s sister, living in North Nashville.
I may say I’m “powerful proud” that my meddlesome letter-writing Aunt Nancy took it upon herself to notify our Texas cousin of my intended visit. That rather unusual chance meeting is paralleled by another chance meeting — which opens the way for bringing into this writing my distinguished Kansas cousin. I had an engagement to meet J.L.Bristow at the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence, when he was Fourth Assistant Postmaster General — later, U. S. senator from Kansas. He was of my father’s branch of the Virginia and Tennessee Bristows, a third cousin to me, and up to this time we had never met. He was billed as principal speaker at a Republican rally in the Bowersock Opera House that night. Upon my arrival in Lawrence about noon, I discovered he was registered at the Eldridge House—but I could not locate him. I went out to the Kansas-Nebraska football game, and got a seat by a man who seemed to be deeply interested in the game. We conversed in an off-hand way when he was not up on his toes rooting for the Kansas team. From the conversation I inferred that he was a newspaper man, like myself. But, unlike myself, he was a college man. Not being a college man, I could not get interested in the game. It was brutal. When we had fetched up at the Eldridge House, this football enthusiast—now surrounded by politicians—said to me. “I am told by the clerk here that you were looking for me, and it seems you failed recognize a relative when you had found him.” He was my man.
Might say I first learned of my Kansas cousin when he was owner and publisher of the Salina Daily Republican, and I was publishing the Wetmore Spectator. A Kansas City printing firm addressed a letter to J. L. Bristow, Wet-more, Kansas—one initial off from my own. It was delivered to me. The contents of the letter showed that it should have been sent to the other newspaper man in Salina. I mailed it to him. He came back promptly wanting to know from whom did I get my name? One more exchange letters told us both exactly who we were. We both claimed kin to old Ben — of Virginia, Kentucky, and New York fame—though I do not now recall his specialty. But it’s a safe bet it had to do with politics. My father was a first cousin of J. L.’s father, a Methodist minister, living in Baldwin, Kansas. My illustrious cousin Joseph has climbed high up the ladder of political fame — and who knows his limit? I shall not lose track of him.
After I would have returned from Pensacola, Florida, and spent a day in Nashville with Uncle Tom and Aunt Irene Cullom, and their three daughters, cousins Lora, Clevie, and Myrtle, it was planned to give a party for me at Aunt Harriet’s country home, the day set for one week hence — when they “allowed” they really would show me some Tennessee girls. Here, I think my Wetmore Auntie had been meddling in my behalf once again. Well, no matter. If it was meant that the girls at the coming party would grade upwards in looks from the first showing, it surely would be worth coming back for. Cousin Maggie Lovell, a fifteen-year-old beauty, told me the girls would turn themselves loose at the party—and, she said, “The woods are full of ‘em.” The girls of the advance showing had been rather on the reserved order—I might say very lady-like. Still, I imagine there were missies in that group who would have been pleased to start something. Also, I imagine they were the flower of the flock.
All Southern girls at that time were supposed to be pretty. The climate, and the care in which the girls were taught to shield their faces from the sun was believed to make for superior beauty. My mother said that in her day no girl would ever think of going out without her sun-bonnet.
Admittedly, the South is blessed with some extremely beautiful girls. But, after extensive searching, may I say that—exempting cousins of course—I did not find it overwhelmingly so. I am convinced that it takes something more than climate and ribbed sun-bonnets to turn the trick; and that the South has no monopoly on this something. Also, I further find that the strikingly beautiful girl is, like -prospector’s gold, where you find her. And for my money give me the sun-kissed girl from the wide-open Kansas range.
Unfortunately, I was called home, and did not have the pleasure of attending the party—and was compelled to send regrets, from Nashville, by mail. Also, I missed the chance to see Jim Spain call up the spirits. But then it was only a half promise. When I asked Jim if he would hold a seance for me, he said, “Reckon I might—but generally I aim to do it only for the hill folks.”
“But,” I said, “you fooled my mother and my Aunt Nancy when they were down here not so long ago.” He said “Yes—I did. But you know they grew up here in the South where most everybody believes in ghosts.
“My mother used to tell us kids that there was no such thing as a ghost—but she said it in such a dispirited way as to cause me, as young as I was, to doubt if she fully believed her own words.
I grew up in a generation which talked freely, pro and con, about ghosts. And, believe it or not, I have actually seen Erickson’s ghost—that is, until the apparition faded away into something tangible, as “ghosts” always do if given time. There was a time here when I — and other youngsters of like caliber—looked for Erickson’s ghost in every dark corner. And I think that if I should even now go through the woods on the old Hazeltine farm adjoining town, at night, as I often did in the early days, I would involuntarily keep an eye peeled for the ghost of Jim Erickson, a murderer and suicide, of May 10, 1873—buried, without benefit of clergy, mourners, or even regulation coffin — on top a high hill just south of town. To mention only one of the several proclaimed haunted houses—which always go hand in hand with ghosts—Jim Erickson’s ghost cut up a good many capers here in the early days, particularly where “it” was often “seen” on the margin of the big swamp lying between town and the high hill. Let there come a foggy night someone was sure to say: “Erickson’s ghost will stalk tonight.” A party of three young couples—boys and girls — set out one night to trap old Jim, or whatever it was that haunted a vacant house of many rooms, which sat on a high hill near the swamp—but, would you believe it, they were disturbed by another couple who had preceded them—and all fled the scene in a rout. Actually, some brave people — grown-up’s—positively refused to venture south of the creek on foggy nights. It’s not a promise—but I may, at some future date, write the Erickson story for the Spectator readers.
And I can well believe Jim Spain had the situation as to ghosts stalking among the oldsters of his generation in the South sized up correctly. However, the bright kids of today should never be troubled with any such hallucinations.
No, kids—truly, there is no such thing as a ghost. My mother told me so.
NOTE—Cousin Bill Porter recently visited Nashville, and was told that Jim Spain (having died in cousin Margaret Lovell-Ezell’s home in Nashville in 1948, aged 84) is only a memory down there now.
And what a memory!
CAREFUL PLANNING
When still very young, Donna Cole—in our home—had eaten an apple and was nibbling the core. My wife said to her niece, “Oh, oh—child, you must not eat that core.” Donna smiled, and taking another bite, said, “Ain’t goin’ be no core.”
At another time, the wife and I were visiting in the Locknane home in Topeka—and Myrtle had taken Donna along with us, at the suggestion of Coral, who said they would try to get her pictured in the Sunday Daily Capital. Well, they did that easily. Donna was deservedly given a top position—a standout picture—among other youngsters. Myrtle and Coral were very proud of this—and Donna “rode high” during our stay.
The Locknanes had a fine home, neatly, though not lavishly furnished—and a “hired girl”; a Cadillac car, and a colored chauffeur.
Along with all her gayety, Donna did a little sound thinking. She whispered. “How can they beford all this, Aunt Myrtle?”
RED RIFLEMEN
Published in Wetmore Spectator,
Feb. 7, 1936—and in
Seneca Courier-Tribune’s Historical Edition.
By John T. Bristow
It was early autumn far back in the pioneer days. The wood which this story opens was one of the largest stands big trees in Northeast Kansas. It was bordered on the high slopes with sumac, hazelbrush, and tall grass. The trees had not yet fully shed their leaves.
An Indian, blanketed, with a long rifle swung across withers of his buckskin pony, detached himself from the band of rovers and rode straight to the place where my father and I stood, under a great oak tree, frozen to the spot. A foreboding stillness pervaded the oak grove. I was terribly frightened. Somehow the idea had formed in my young head that the Indians would not kill children; that they carried them off alive, along with the scalps of adult whites.
About that time frequent accounts of Indian depredations had filtered in from the west — gruesome, hellish, blood-curdling stories they were.
A tribe of Indians lived then, as now, on a reservation only eight miles away. The fact that those Kickapoos were considered civilized and peaceable did not register in this all boy’s mind—nor even in some adult minds.
My father, William Bristow, was reared in the heavily wooded sections of Kentucky and Tennessee, where, in his day, the gun and the “hound-dog” were man’s dearest possessions. I knew that he was a crack rifle-shot; that he could, without doubt, hold his own with the advancing redman—but not against that band of savages lurking in the background. Wrapped in flaming blood-red blankets, those Indians, silent and sinister, with the long barrels of their rifles sticking up like telegraph poles, looked as if they might be making ready to go on the warpath.
Closer and closer came the Indian. And why the devil didn’t my father shoot? Was he going to let that redskin take his scalp? In a fit of panic I dodged behind the big oak tree; and then just as suddenly I popped out again and backed up my father by clutching his trousers legs from behind. It is surprising what amount of terror can flit through a small boy’s mind in so short a time.
In a flash I reviewed again the fate of the German girls, orphaned and stolen by the Indians. All oldtimers here will recall that the German girls—Kate, Sophia, Addie, and Julia—after being rescued from the Indians, became wards of the Government and were placed in the home of Pat Corney, who lived for many years on Wolfley creek. Their ages ranged from six to seventeen years when rescued. They were filthy dirty—grimy, without clothes. When the two younger girls were brought to the Corney home—the other two were recovered later—the old Irishman exclaimed: “For God’s sake, Louisa, get a tub of water and a bar of soap!”
Also, about this time—probably a few years earlier — our townsman, Andy Maxwell, after leaving Wetmore to take up his home in the West, was besieged for three days by Sioux and Nez Perce Indians. With Andy were Mrs. Maxwell — his sister-in-law — his daughter May, and four men. They were traveling out of Miles City, Montana, in covered wagons. The story of this Indian encounter had filtered back to Wetmore where Andy Maxwell’s mother, a brother, and two sisters still lived. According to the report, Maxwell and his men took their stand in a small timber tract, on three sides of which were deep gullies. Owing to this advantageous position the Indians could not follow their customary tactics of circling the whites. They skulked. And whenever an Indian would get near enough, he would be picked off by the white man’s bullet. Maxwell and his men killed eight Indians. Two of the white men were severely wounded. May got an arrow through her foot; Andy lost a lock of his hair and had his face grazed by a bullet. Mrs. Maxwell was shot in the arm. The party lost twenty-six oxen. Andy Maxwell now lives at Santa Ana, California.
I have mentioned these two Indian incidents briefly, merely to give the reader some idea as to what was, and might have been, flashing through my mind at that tense moment—and for their historic value. Also other Indian pictures assailed me. That awful moment will stand out in my memory while life lasts.
My father said not a word, and to be sure I could not read his reactions. I knew only that he had been harboring a fine mess of mixed emotions at the moment when the Indians appeared.
Mark this well.
“How!” greeted the Indian as he drew rein. He slid off his pony and surveyed the surroundings quickly. At edge of the clearing his redskin companions, departing from their single-file formation, sitting on their ponies, went into a huddle not unlike modern collegiate intelligentsia on a gridiron.
Though it may be said that the Indian’s mission was of rather urgent nature, let us leave him standing here by the side of his pony while I tell you how my father and I happened to be caught in this embarrassing predicament.
For some reason, undoubtedly well grounded, the owner of that timber forbade hunting on his premises. Nevertheless, on one occasion, that ban was lifted in promise, if not in reality—and therein lies the nucleus of this tale.
One day while on a friendly call at the shoeshop in Wetmore, John Wolfley granted permission to my father to shoot squirrels in his timber, though he made it plain that this was to be considered a special favor, because of old friendship. My father and John Wolfley, the senior John, were among the first settlers in this country. They came before the railroads, before the towns in this section—in the log cabin days. The towns then were strung along the old land or military road passing five miles north of here. As compared with highways of the present day, it was not a road. It was but a rut, a serpentine streak of dust spanning the great plains, crossing the mountains—and on to California. Yet, it carried immense traffic—stage, pony express, commerce — and was a celebrated thoroughfare. Many notables passed this way. U. S. Grant, Horace Greeley, Mark Twain. And although of no particular moment here, I might add that I, myself, came into this country over the Old Trail at a time when traffic was near its peak.
It was, therefore, in considerable blitheness of spirit that on one fine October day my father and I “hoofed it” five miles up Spring creek to the Wolfley timber. We were going to a choice and restricted hunting grounds, on invitation of the owner—a favor granted no one else.
My father shot a squirrel. The report of his gun, heard by the owner of the place who was in the timber gathering down-wood—sometimes in the old days called squaw wood — brought a vigorous protest from a half-hidden spot across the creek.
“Get out!” the angry voice shouted.
My father was not disturbed. Not then. He even laughed a little. And I fear his voice was charged with rather too much mirth when he called back across the stream, “Why, John, don’t you know me?”
Like a flash of lightning came back the ultimatum, “I don’t care if you are General Grant, you can’t hunt in my timber!” So that was that—a sorry situation for two old friends to impose upon themselves.
My father told me we would leave the Wolfley timber by the shortest route. Leaving the dead squirrel on the ground where it had fallen, he started off at once with the stride of one bent upon urgent enterprise, muttering incoherent but indubitably uncomplimentary things about his late friend. It is such breaches of friendship, as this seemed to be, that cause men to talk to themselves.
Sometimes, however, what we consider a calamity proves to be a blessing in disguise. That was true in this case. And the breach, which loomed so menacingly on the horizon at the moment, instead of impairing a fine friendship was the indirect cause of making it everlasting.
Even as my father hastened away, the Invisible Hand was working in his favor. Had there been no interruption, he would have continued on his course as mapped out, up the creek, and the providential thing which was very soon to take place would have miscarried. Here I want to interpose a paragraph—maybe two, or more—to show how welcome this providential thing that was now about to enter my father ’ s life.
A shoemaker with a family rather too large to support in comfort even in normal times, was my father—a slaving man who, like so many others in those pioneer days, had nearly reached the limit of his endurance. In this new country everyone was directly, or indirectly, dependent upon the products of the soil. Those were the days of Texas long-horn cattle and ten cent corn—when there was corn. Those were the days when snows driven by winter’s howling blasts across the open prairies piled high in the streets and country lanes and cut off all communications with the outside world for weeks at a time. At such times we would burn corn for fuel. Well do I remember the superior warmth of those corn-fed fires. They were life-savers for those who were compelled to live in the open, wind-blown homes of that day.
There was land to be had for the taking, but my father thought he could not afford to take it. Without capital to stock the free grass range, the pioneer farmer could not hope to make more than a bare living. And when crops failed for lack of moisture, as they too often did in the early days before the country became seasonable for the production of grain, all suffered.
That was pioneer Kansas! That was “Droughty Kansas! ” That was “Bleeding Kansas!” It was not the Kansas of today—barring, of course, the year 1934, and maybe with apologies for 1935.
Then, before that providential find was to bear fruit, two outstanding reverses visited appalling hardships upon an already discouraged peoples. The lingering effects of the great money panic of 1873 was the cause of much distress. There was no such thing as Federal aid then, and everyone here was on his own. However, the East did contribute some bacon and a quantity of cast-off clothing, including plug hats and Prince Albert coats—useful in some cases, but generally scorned by the needy people.
That money panic was brought on by the collapse of the Jay Cooke brokerage houses in three eastern cities. Cooke, a nationally known promoter, was financing the building of the Northern Pacific railroad, and had made too many advances.
It may be of interest here, especially in Nemaha and Jackson counties and possibly throughout all Northeast Kansas, to know that, later, through an unprotected brokerage partnership in the National Capitol with that wizard of finance, a former resident of Wetmore township, Green Campbell, who had come into local and national prominence by reason of his sensational rise to affluence as principal owner of the famous Horn Silver mine at Frisco, Utah, dropped a cool million of his mine-made dollars in the aftermath of that failure.
After he had failed, Jay Cooke, still the promoter par-excellence, secured a railroad for Green Campbell’s mine. Later, after he had sold his mine, Campbell went to Washington as delegate to Congress from Utah. Still later Campbell joined Cooke there in the brokerage business. With new money in the firm, Cooke’s old creditors swooped down upon Campbell like a swarm of bees. And they stung him hard. His first check was drawn for nine hundred thousand dollars! However, there was no time after selling the Horn Silver mine that Green Campbell was not a rich man. Green Campbell endowed a college at Holton, Kansas, bearing his name. His old homestead was in the southwest part of Wetmore township. It is now owned and occupied by August Krotzinger.
Then there was the year 1874—a blank year with its train of blighted hopes that socked the whole populace still deeper down into the slough of despond. Following a season of scanty production, the crops that year, in the spring and up to mid-summer, showed signs of fulfillment. Then came the usual anxious period—dry, windy, scorching days, And hope, that had sprung in the tired hearts of the farmers commenced to die as they looked with anxiety on the drooping crops. The people prayed for rain. They watched for clouds. Then, out of the northwest there came a cloud—a black cloud, a menacing cloud, that was to blot out all renaming hope.
It was a rain of pests—a deluge of grasshoppers! Like the plagues of old they descended upon us. And they greedily devoured every growing thing—corn, grass, weeds, foliage of the trees—leaving in their wake a barren waste and a woefully impoverished lot of people. After devouring every edible thing, and gnawing on pitchfork handles and axe handles — for salt deposited by sweaty hands — the hoppers deposited eggs in the ground, and then perished with the coming of cold weather. The young hoppers in the spring of 1875 cleaned up the farmer’s first plantings—but on a day, at noon, late in June they rose up as a cloud blotting out the sun from the earth as they winged their way to greener pastures—where, nobody here knew.
Now we have left the Indian standing there by the side of his pony for a long time. But the Indian doesn’t mind. Not our Kickapoo, anyway. And, as a stickler for the truth, for accuracy of detail, I will admit that my deductions, my fears, did not coincide with the facts as later developed; that, in the language of the street and as my father said of me at the time out there in the wood—literally, I was “all wet.”
That Indian was not an emissary of destruction, rather, he was, after the manner of the wise one of his peoples, a maker of good medicine. My father’s great haste to get away from the Wolfley timber had been halted by a clump of black oak trees. There were two holes in a large limb of the great oak under which the Indian found us standing. The Indian looked up into the tree. “Long time go Indian’s tomahawk make holes,” he said. “Maybe catchum coon,” He shifted his beady black eyes to another part of the tree, and exclaimed, “Seeum squirrel!”
My father had hot noticed the holes in the limb, nor the squirrel which the Indian saw flattened out on a branch high up in the tree. To my father, that tree presented far more interesting possibilities. Before interrupted, his thoughts had, more or less, shifted from the man who had treated him so shabbily and had carried him back to the sunny Southland, to the evergreen hills of his boyhood home. There he had successfully operated a tannery—successfully, until the Civil War put him out of business.
The tree my father was now viewing was a huge black oak. It was surrounded by more of its kind. At any time the sight of a black oak attracted him. Black oak bark was the agency he employed in making leather in his Tennessee tannery. He longed to get back into the business. There were other black oaks in the country; yet he questioned if there were enough to justify the establishment of a tannery here. He was constantly on the lookout for a substitute for making leather.
Pointing to the boots he himself wore, my father told the Indian that his interest in that tree was because the bark of the black oak was used in making leather. Also, noticing that the Indian was wearing moccasins and other deerskin raiment under his blanket, my father asked him what the Indians used for tanning. The Indian became thoughtful and finally said something that sounded like “Sequaw.” But that was worse than Greek to my father.
It is fitting that I pause here to pay tribute to one of those little borderlets mentioned in the opening paragraph. Resplendent in its lofty setting that little borderlet, and its kind, possessed priceless properties. Henceforth it becomes golden thread in the woof and warp of this tale. As with the lovely Claudette Colbert and her coca-cola tidings, this is, in a manner, “the pause that refreshes.” And so being, it is with memorable pleasure that I now salute the sumac! It was my father’s salvation.
Back in the Wolfley timber, my father told the Indian the owner did not permit hunting on his premises—that he, the tanner, was not interested in the squirrel.
“Me shoot ‘im,” said the Indian. The long barrel of his rifle pointed upwards—a sharp crack, and the squirrel fell the ground, shot through the head. The Indian picked up the squirrel, and then holding it out to the frightened little boy, said, “Take.”
Without more ceremony the Indian rode away. He was gone only a few minutes. When he returned he was holding in his hand a branch of sumac. “Sequaw,” he said again. There were but a few belated red leaves clinging to the stem. “Catchum ‘fore go red,” he offered when he saw the leaves shattering in my father’s hands.
The Indian’s sharp eyes surveyed the black oak again. He looked at the branch of sumac, saying “Makum buck-kin.” He hesitated. Then said, “Maybe killum deer ‘fore Sun go way. Maybe two suns. You seeum deer?”
My father told the Indian—whom he then and there named Eagle Eye—that he had not seen the deer which those redmen were trailing. Those Indians who had remained in the background were trying to conceal a deer which one of them had swung across his pony as they went into that huddle.
The deer, more numerous in earlier days, had been pretty well killed out by this time. Though, as late as 1880, I, myself, shot a deer on that same run. Also I recall having seen one band of antelope, that fleet-footed little animal of deer family which could outrun the wind even in its then unhampered sweep across the prairies. I was too young to identify the little ruminants, but my father said they were antelope, and he was a hunter of the Daniel Boone type—in fact had hunted in Dan’s old territory, and he knew his game.
Here I will say the Indian, Na-che-seah, was the leader of that hunting party. He was tall, lithe, and straight as an arrow. In later years, with generous expansion of body, he was known as Big Simon. He died May 27, 1934. As I looked upon the still form of this good Indian, in his wigwam, on the day of the funeral, my mind drifted back across the years to the time of our first meeting—but instead of fear, it was now reverence that gripped me. Big Simon was a man of authority among the Indians for a great many years—though, contrary to newspaper reports, he was never chief. About his age, Big Simon would say, “Hundred years, maybe. Don’t know.” With the passing of Big Simon, Commodore Cat is the sole surviving member of the old, old tribe. He too may have been one of those blanketed redmen back there on that deer trail six decades ago.
The redman’s medicine was an invigorating tonic for my father’s frayed spirits. It seemed like God had sent that Indian just at the psychological moment — when my father’s depressed spirits needed bolstering so very much, when an anodyne for his ills was to be had by the blending of two agencies for making leather. Though he had never up to this time regarded it as a commercial agency, my father knew of course that sumac contained tannin. If the Indians could tan their deerskins with it, he reasoned, why couldn’t he mix it with oak bark and tan his calfskins?
I shall always believe that it was something more than blind chance that brought the paths of white man and red man together at that particular spot. Undoubtedly, the Great Spirit was in control. The movements of the Indians up to that time were of course dark, but timed just right. And praise be, there were Indians—amongst them an Indian like Eagle Eye, who could make himself understood. The big break for my father was in the sumac patch close at hand.
After ten years absence from his old haunts and the business he loved so well, the fire in my father’s blood had cooled. Now he felt the old flame leap. The black oaks and the sumacs beckoned. And to his eager nostrils rose the odor of a tanyard.
Almost at once after that meeting with the Indian, still nosing a tannery, my father was hot on the trail. With the characteristics of a thoroughbred, he doggedly followed his lead, picking up new hope as he went at almost every jump, into the woods of three counties. In a particularly fine stand of wood over in Jackson county, he “treed” his quarry. Looking up into the trees, his senses all aflame with eagerness, and I might say standing on his hind legs — upright anyhow — he barked, “Eureka!”
Then, having gone there on invitation of the owner to view those fine black oaks, standing tall, with their big boles close together, he said more rationally, but still with considerable enthusiasm, “It ’ s enough! By God I’ll have that tannery now!”
My father had now declared quite emphatically, though perhaps a bit inelegantly, that he would establish a tannery here in Wetmore. It was not idle talk. He experimented, and in due time the tannery was a going concern. Not immediately, however. Capital had to be provided, and it took time to bring materials. The tannery was an “open” yard in the bend of the creek just west of where the town bridge is now—a sort of makeshift affair, operated only in the summer months. But in one respect it was regular. It had the tanyard smell.
The black oak-sumac mixture made a fine grade of leather—much better than leather made with straight oak bark, and superior to the present-day chemically tanned leather. My father tanned only calfskins. His surplus stock was sold to L. Kipper & Sons, wholesale dealers, Atchison, Kansas.
I want to say here that those inviting black oaks, earlier mentioned, made it easy for my father to graciously accept his friend’s apology, on the plea of forgetfulness—and when he went to deal for the trees John Wolfley said, “Why, yes, of course you may have them. You know, Bristow, much as I prize my trees, I couldn’t refuse an old friend like you.” He glanced toward me, and now I’ll swear there were mirthful crinkles playing about the man’s eyes.
The black oaks were cut in the spring when the sap was up, then the bark was spudded off the trunks of the trees. All available black oaks within a radius of twenty-five miles of Wetmore were cleaned up in three years. The last tan-bark came from the Wingo farm near Soldier, twenty miles away—wagon haul. That was considered a long haul in those days. The roads here then were no more than winding trails across country, radiating in every direction from town, like the spokes in a wagon-wheel. And there were almost no bridges. The creeks were forded.
The sumac — that innocent little flaming bush, over which young and inexperienced writers are wont to revel — was cut with corn-knives and left spread on the ground until dry. The leaves were then stripped off the stems with a little corn-sheller, the kind that fastened on the hand. The sumac stems were drawn through the closed shelter and the leaves were caught upon a large canvas. Like harvesting tanbark, that was work which had to be done in season—not too soon, not too late.
The time to get busy was when the sumac began to show a tinge of coloring late in the summer, after maturity. But, as the Indian had said, when the big splash came — when the sumac thickets took on a blaze of coloring, that dark crimson hue, as if Nature had spilled the life-blood of the waning summer to glorify the last minute splendor of its passing—it was then time to quit. The leaves would no longer remain on the stems to carry through the drying process. Yes! That was it! “Catchum ‘fore go red!”
My father made Eagle Eye a pair of boots with leather tanned by the new process. He gave them to the Indian, Eagle Eye wanted to pay for them. He had Government money and he had ponies. When money was refused, he thought a pony would be about right. Maybe two, three or even a herd of ponies would not be too much. But my father said, “No, just bring me a deerskin sometime.”
The Indian brought him a green buffalo hide. At that time all swell turnouts—horse and buggy conveyances — included a buffalo robe. When, in time, the hide had been tanned and made up, my father found himself in the rather awkward position of owning a buffalo robe without the turn-out. But even so it was not a worthless treasure. On cold, stormy, winter nights—they were bitter cold then—it served as an extra bed coverlet for a quarter of a dozen of his boys, with, at times, an additional neighbor boy or two thrown in for good measure.
Buffalo were quite plentiful only a hundred miles or so west of here then. But our Kickapoos did not often venture west of the Blue River. Hostile Indians roamed that territory. The Pawnees were the worst Indians the whites had to contend with on the old Overland Trail between the Big Blue and Fort Kearney. Eagle Eye’s gift was all the more appreciated because he had braved the hostile Pawnees to get a suitable present for his “Paleface” friend.
The boots my father made for the Indian were of the tongue pattern, with morocco tops and small high heels. The tops were scalloped with half-moons over red sheepskin. A big red heart was fashioned in the top front. Eagle Eye was very proud of his boots. They were, I believe, the first boots to be worn on the reservation.
But, in time, one of those boots ripped. The side seam gaped near the ankle. The Indian had been walking through wet grass when he came to the shop to get the rip sewed up. He tried to pull his boot off. It stuck tight. My father did not have a bootjack. He always said he did not like to have his perfectly fashioned boot-counters ruined by the use of a boot-jack. He had a better way.
My father turned his back to the Indian, and told Eagle Eye to stick his boot between his—the shoemaker’s—legs and push with the other foot. “Harder, push harder!” cried the human boot-jack. When the boot finally came off, a first-class shoemaker took a header into a pile of lasts and other rubbish in the corner of the room. He came up with a skinned nose.
The Indian—who had now come to call himself Eagle Eye when in the presence of my father—did not, of course get any kick out of hurting his “paleface” friend, but it was plain to be seen that pleasant thoughts were engaging him. An Indian laughs rarely, if ever—not the old Indians two generations back, anyway. But he had his moments of extreme pleasure.
When the rip was repaired, the Indian had a hard time getting his water-soaked boot back on. My older brother, Charley, said to me, “Eagle Eye will have to sleep with his boots on tonight.” The Indian heard. His copper-colored face again registered anticipated pleasure. He actually smiled a bit as if he saw real humor in the thing.
“Huh!” he grunted, as he raised his foot and thrust it to the fore with much vigor, “Pushum squaw maybe! Heap fool squaw all time say Eagle Eye not smart!”
A TWOTIMER
We were having company for supper. Little Dorothy Bristow. four year old daughter of my brother Frank and wife Cecile, told August and Hulda Bleisener they need not be afraid of the silver, that she and her aunt Myrtle had cleaned it that afternoon.
But—hold your laugh.
My wife had put pickled cling peaches on the table. Now, everyone knows how hard it is to get the meat off a pickled cling peach. I shoved one into my mouth and was doing the best I could with it when Myrtle, looking across the table, said with shocked overtone, “Did you put that whole peach in your mouth?” She of course had not seen August put one in his mouth—but, no matter, August shot his out onto his plate right now.
TEXAS CATTLE AND RATTLESNAKES
Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
When harvesting sumac, often barefooted and always barehanded, we boys, sons of the tanner, had to keep a sharp lookout for rattlesnakes—and Texas cattle. We were repeatedly so warned by our parents. Also, it was generally understood that all children should “watchout” for Indians. This, however, did not greatly disturb us after we had made friends with Eagle Eye.
Then, one day, while cutting sumac for the tannery, with my brother Charley, near a timbered ravine three miles out southeast, close to the Oliver Logue farm, a long-horn steer, out of a large herd, chased me up a tree early in the afternoon and held me prisoner in the treetop until the riders, Abe Williams and John Taylor, came to round up the herd for the night.
I thought that steer would surely butt his horns off, the way he rammed that six-inch tree. He would back off, paw the ground, shake his slobbering head, and come snorting at the tree again and again. After quieting down, he grazed fitfully and frightfully close to the tree—and he came trotting in several times with something ugly on his bovine mind, I’m sure. Even now I wonder is it possible for an enraged cowbrute to have red eyes.
The day herder, at ease, on a ridge a quarter mile to the west—probably reading a Frank Merriwell baseball story—was letting the herd feed north, and so long as the cattle did not attempt to go over the rise to the east, out of sight, Wes Shuemaker would have no occasion to ride down my way. And it would have been futile for me to have tried to call him, with a south wind blowing forty-fifty mph.
My brother was safely on the other side of the ravine close to trees, but he slipped out the back way and went home. I knew he was doing the right thing. And I knew too that I would remain in the tree until the arrival of the riders. Those Texas cattle behaved nicely for mounted men, but they could not abide a person on foot.
I really had no business on that side of the ravine, with those cattle feeding there—but I guess I was, as always, a little too venturesome. I knew that herd had some bad actors in it. In fact, I had been warned to never get off my horse when riding as relief herder of that same herd, on several occasions. And one time while all alone at the dinner hour my mount, in jumping a ditch, broke the saddle girth and spilled me on a rattlesnake infested prairie, amongst those longhorns—with not a tree in sight.
However, nothing untoward happened. Had my luck been running true to form, there should have been at least one rattlesnake coiled on the margin of the shallow ditch into which I squeezed myself, and waited in misery for the day herder to return. As I lay in the ditch I just had to recall the time, a short while before, when a rattlesnake, coiled by a cowpath, struck as I trotted past—barefoot, of course—and got his fangs hooked in my trouser leg, requiring two wild jumps to dislodge his snakeship.
The herd was owned by Than Morris and Abe Williams, the latter a brother of Mrs. Jake Wolfley. Morris and Wolfley were brothers-in-law. John Taylor, herder, was a son of Hebe Taylor, of Atchison. John Taylor was later bailiff of the Nemaha county court, in Seneca. And he was the father of Earl W. Taylor for whom the Seneca American Legion Post was named. Hebe Taylor also, at one time, ran cattle in the open country southwest of Wetmore — with Ed. Keggin.
Charley went straight to the Morris general store in Wetmore and told Than of my predicament, and Morris immediately rounded up two cowpunchers. John Taylor, working with a herd to the southwest, chanced to be in town, and rode out with Abe Williams.
The herd had grazed on past my tree-perch. The unruly steer did not follow, but if the critter was capable of the sound thinking I was willing to credit him with, “I betcha” he always wished he had. A good cowhand could play a tune with a cattlewhip on a critter’s rump, under dead run. And John Taylor was good. He lashed his short-handled 10-foot whip overhead to the steer’s rump, right and left, with rhythmic timing, making the hair fly with each crack. The steer’s hindparts, seemingly trying to outrun his foreparts, swung to the right and swung to the left with clocklike regularity—and he thus wove himself deep into the herd, bawling “bloody murder.”
When told of John Taylor’s adroitness with the whip, my father said, “I wouldn’t care to tan his hide”—meaning the steer’s, of course. While father bought the hides from the lost dead of all those big herds—sometimes the losses in the early spring were heavy—he tanned only a few of them. He didn’t like to tan a mutilated hide, nor the hide of a branded critter—and he wouldn’t tan a grubby murrain hide.
Thus it was, I herded the cattle that produced the hides that made the leather which I helped make into shoes—all while still in my teens. My apprenticeship as a shoemaker began by holding a candle for my father to work by, at night. And if you could think it was not a wearying task for a sleepy boy, you can think again. The light would have to be shifted from side to side with each stitch as he sewed the soles on shoes. By midnight he usually ran out of “endearing” terms by which to bring me to attention—and he was willing to call it a day. Sometimes my mother would relieve me of this chore, but too often at such times she would be engaged in sewing up the side seams of a new boot, with awl and waxed thread. While I did a lot of repair work satisfactorily, I made out and out only three pairs of shoes. And though always behind with his orders, my father very wisely demanded that I make them all to my own measures.
Might add that we boys, sons of the tanner, and other rough and ready town boys—just to be doing something of our very own—tanned, in the big leather vats, squirrel hides, coon skins, and, of all things, two rattlesnake skins. Wes Shuemaker proudly wore the belt made of those rattlesnake skins for a long time.
Dr. Holland was another Atchison man who, in partnership with his brother-in-law, Mr. Prunty, of Soldier, ran a large herd southwest of town. His corral, a 10-acre pine board enclosure, was in the northwest corner of the Harry Cawood quarter. The land was then owned by Billy Cline, of Soldier. Where there were no corrals, a night herder would have to stay with the cattle.
The Bradford spring—now known as the Joe Pfrang spring—gushing up from a hilltop, was the main attraction for those early day cattlemen. Just how the free range was divided up to carry several individual herds, without clashing, I do not know—but there were no cattle feuds, and no gunplay.
NOTE—The values in cattle, as with everything else, ran low in the old days. An instance: In 1861, Bill Porter had a hard time raising money to pay taxes on two quarters of land. Unable to borrow $7.20, the troublesome amount, he walked and led a big fat cow to Leavenworth, and sold her for $7.50. In marked contrast, Garrett Bartley of Powhattan, son-in-law of Bill Porter, the second, reports a neighbor of his recently sold a 2,000 pound cow on the St. Joseph market for $540.00. I think the herds corralled here and grazed around the Bradford spring were bought for as little as $5 to $8 per head. This year—1950—Joe Pfrang, present owner of the Bradford spring and surrounding acres, bought, in May, a bunch of 700-pound steers for approximately $160.00 each—and after running them on pasture, the same wild grass, with some acres now planted to tame grass, sold them in the fall off grass, for an average of $270.00; a gain of about $110.00 per head. These steers were Texas-bred cattle, too. But they were not “longhorns.” Herefords never are. And likely the Pfrang 1,000-pound steers, out of the feed lot, with 300 pounds added weight, would have sold for about $487.50 each. It was a great year for the cattlemen. Beefsteak in the old days in Wetmore was ten cents a pound for the best cuts.
There were, however, some angry threats between the cattlemen and Old Morgan, an outsider, who had run in four thousand sheep on them. I helped shepherd that flock, And I discovered early that by looping a pebble in the cracker end of my cattle-whip, and sending it over them a little to the outside of the straying sheep that I could bring them back into the fold without effort. Also, the singing noise of the pebble thrown over the flock would divide the sheep into two bunches. I really became quite good at this thing, and played with the discovery a lot — until one day when the missile did not sail true, and a sheep had to hobble home on three legs. We were in the hills south of the creek. The poor little lamb got no help until after the flock had passed over the bridge at the east end of town. Old Morgan usually met us there. Luckily, he was tuned up properly and did all the talking. He threatened to sue the township for permitting a hole to remain open in the bridge. This, I like to think, was the one black mark against my rather diversified career. A sheep herder in a cattle country rated pretty low. Cattle would not graze after sheep. I quit Old Morgan before the season was over.
The cattle herder’s main function was to keep the herds from mixing, and to keep the cattle clear of the creek-bottom farms and the few isolated prairie farms; and also to keep them out of mischief in general, such as running down careless boys—and free of dogs. A dog could always start a stampede. And a cattle stampede was something to be dreaded, in the old days. When those Texas cattle and dogs mixed there was sure to be loud bellowings and a great clashing of hoofs and horns. I have a clear picture of my Uncle Nick’s herd of longhorns, after running themselves down, milling about on the range adjacent to his Wolfley creek farm—milling in a compact bunch, when one could look out upon a sea of horns; nothing but horns.
It was quite the thing for local men who had a little cash, or backing, to take a hand in the cattle game. My Uncle Nick Bristow and Roland Van Amburg contracted for a large herd of those longhorns from Dr. W. L. Challis, cattle broker of Atchison. The cattle were fresh from Texas—brought up over the famed Chisholm trail. Uncle Nick and Van divided the herd, and after running the cattle on grass, tried to carry them through a rather severe winter on prairie hay alone. Those fresh longhorns would not eat corn. The cattle were so weakened by spring that when turned out on grass they mired down in creeks and water holes all over the range. They died in bunches, almost to the last head. And while that cattle deal cost my Uncle his farm, Van said it cost him only his “britches.” Roland Van Amburg was a grand old sport, with a great capacity for seeing the “funny” side of life—and up or down, financially, he was always the same cheery Van.
Other men got out of their Texas cattle speculations less lucky. Dave Garvin, besides losing a lot of his hard-earned money, had to take the “rest cure” for nearly a year. However, those who confined their speculations, within their means, to native-bred cattle made money. John Thornburrow, starting from scratch, amassed a small fortune. Charley Hutchison, a mere boy, scion of a wealthy’ brewer family, sent out here from Ohio to sober up, and put on a section of wild land, made a pile of money from his herds — and more, he became a teetotaler, a solid, honorable citizen. Fred Achten, a fifteen dollar a month farm hand, built the foundation for the Achten Empire, the largest land holdings in the country, largely on cattle and free grass.
Also, John Rebensdorf, a German farm hand, after marrying Christine Zabel and settling down, made plenty of money running cattle on free grass. Rebensdorf was oddly a thrifty man. By no means an inveterate tippler, he liked, occasionally, to pay for his own beer—and drink it himself. Time and again I have seen him ride into town, tie his horse at the rack in the middle of the street in front of the saloon, go in, and, elbow himself a place at the bar, order three quart bottles of beer—always three bottles. When he had leisurely emptied the third bottle he was ready to pipe. “I’ze zee richest man in zee whole country.” And, at that, the man was not far off in his calculations.
One time, John Rebensdorf and his brother-in-law, Albert Zabel, of German parentage, were engaged in a spirited argument—on a street corner, in my hearing — over something which had to do with cattle and free grass, Albert, a fine Christian gentleman momentarily suffering a lapse of piety, called Rebensdorf all the fighting names in the book—that is, all the names that would rile an American, without perceptibly ruffling him. Albert worked himself up Into a white heat, but he couldn’t bestir John. Rebenstorf would say, “No, Albert, you iss wrong.” He repeated this, meekly, several times. Finally, when Rebensdorf, wearied of the argument, started to walk away, Albert yelled parting shot, “You old sauerkraut, you know I’m right!” Then “zee richest man in zee whole country” turned quickly, came blustering back, shaking his big fat fist, and roared, “By gosh, you call me sauerkraut! Now I fight!”
Also, the residents would often—that is, in season, cut hay off the prairie that had been more or less grazed. One summer my brother Sam and I hauled into town $315.00 Worth, at $2.50 a ton, measured in stack—and much of this was done at night, by moonlight, owing to high winds making it impossible to handle the loose hay by day. Owners of cows in town, as well as in the country, always aimed to have enough hay stored to carry their stock through the winter, but often the supply was found to be short, especially when the winters were unusually severe. Then the speculators who had stored hay against such eventualities, would have an inning—maybe get $3 or $3.50 a ton, in stack. One especially energetic man in the Granada neighborhood, with a couple of confederates, put up an unusual amount of this free hay one season, inside fire breaks—then a prairie fire in the late winter destroyed all the outstacked hay belonging to his neighbors. Then bedlam broke loose among the natives. Still there were no killings.
And, even with all that grazing and mowing there was enough grass left on the south range to make spectacular prairie fires, racing at times, all the way to town—and would even sometimes jump the creek and menace the town.
Here is one more of the many incidents attributable to the free grass range. Without refrigeration in the early hot summers the farmer’s wives had difficulty keeping butter made from grass-fed cows fresh until it could be brought to market. On the whole the women managed exceedingly well under trying conditions—it was before the day of screens on the homes—but there were some that didn’t know how, or just didn’t seem to care.
At that time I was clerking in Than Morris’ store, along with Curt Shuemaker, George and Chuck Cawood. We had already accumulated a full barrel of off-grade butter that would have to be sold for soap-grease, when Morris told us all that should a certain woman bring in butter again for us to reject it. It so happened that it fell to the lot of the “cub” clerk to wait on her. Morris and the three other clerks stood by, grinning. I carried her jar into the side room, and without uncovering it, brought it back and told the woman we could not buy it. She appealed to Than, saying, “Mr. Cawood here,” nodding toward me, “took my butter away and got it all dirty, and now says he won’t buy it.” Morris knew what to look for—and it was there for all to see. He said, “Look!” pointing to the uncovered jar, “ Cawood didn’t put those wigglers in your butter. Don’t bring us any more of that stuff.”
The woman insisted that “Mr. Cawood had dirtied it up”—and Morris paid in full, gross weight. And she was permitted to take the whole mess back home, along with her purchases. I was thankful that Morris, in dealing with her, also called me Cawood—minus the “Mister.”
Still calling me “Mr. Cawood,” this woman later told me she had rheumatism—that she had, unfortunately, spilled her cooling bucket in the water well, and that her man would no longer allow her to cool her butter in the customary way — suspended on a rope deep in the well. After she had passed on, the second Mrs. L. made good butter—so good in fact that the town customers called for it by name. But even this could not correct the damage done to my delicate stomach during that summer in the Morris store. I have never tasted raw butter since that time. And with me, after that sheep herding experience, mutton is also taboo. Old Morgan’s sheep were scabby.
Again, while clerking in the Morris store I was put to the test—and though this has nothing whatsoever to do with the free grass range, I am sure you will observe that it is neatly wrapped in fast green. A Miss Sumerville, a relative of the Zabel’s, visiting in Wetmore—I believe she was from Pennsylvania—asked for variegated yarn. I told her we didn’t have that kind, but I would show her what we had. I admit that I was not very bright on some matters — but at that, I wasn’t as dumb as one of the standbys that I could have named.
Morris said, “Show her what you have in that drawer over there,” indicating the drawer holding the variegated yarn. After I had made the sale, Morris complimented me for selling the little lady a lot of something she didn’t want. He said, “When you don’t have what they want, always try to sell them something else.” He henkie-henkie-henkied in a manner which passed as a derisive laugh. “Keep awake, young man,” he said, “and you’ll make a salesman in time — maybe as good as Cawood here,” indicating Chuck.
With George Cox and his two sons, Bill and young George, I helped build that Holland corral earlier mentioned — and a small bunk house. And it was here where I mixed it with the rattlesnake I had been admonished so often to keep a sharp eye out for. Note Note how well young America obeyed the injunction. I saw the rattlesnake coiled by the roadside as we were coming in after the day’s work, with ox-team, piloted by a Mr. Green who had brought the outfit up from Atchison to haul the lumber out from town. I jumped out of the wagon, and hit the snake with a rock. It flopped, then lay still. I thought it was dead but to make sure I prodded it with a stiff prairie weed—and learned pronto that the stick was a mite too short on one end. That rattler lashed out at me, overreaching by the fraction of an inch, with its neck or body falling across my wrist. My hands were scratched and blood-stained from handling the rough pine boards—fencing came in the rough in those days — and Mr. Green insisted that he saw the snake bite me “with my own eyes.” And to prove it, he spotted a snagged place on my hand where he was sure the snake’s fangs had struck.
Mr. Green crowded those normally slow plodding oxen, and we actually came to town by fits and spurts on the gallop. He wanted to buy whisky for me, and seemed awfully distressed when I refused it. He was so exercised over the matter that one easily could have believed that it was he who was in need of a generous slug of the stuff — and I’m not so sure that he didn’t get it. Anyway, I was ready to go out on time the next morning. Mr. Green was not. And you can bet your life I never again tried to poke a diamondback with a stick too short on one end.
Incidentally, I may say there were other close calls and near misses—not to overlook the one August day when a seven-button, (seven-year-old) rattlesnake actually made a ten-strike on my bare foot. And though always to me a bit hazy, I can now assure you that this is no dream. Just why I would stand still by the side of the hole into which I had poured water in the hope of drowning out a ground squirrel, and watch that snake slither up through the grass, coil and strike, before going down the hole, has always been something for me to ponder.
It was said in the old days that snakes would charm their prey—mesmerize a bird so that it could not fly away. Well, here for once was a “charmed” fledgling that did “fly” away—too late. The charm was broken the moment the snake struck, and though I was only six years old, my brother Charley said I let out a terrific yell, and cleared a wagon road in one jump. Even now I wonder does one ever get so frightened that both mind and body refuse to function?
And here is a solemn truth you will likely find hard to believe. For several years thereafter, come August and dogdays, my right leg would become spotted like that rattlesnake. In a previous article I told of this same rattlesnake encounter, and my Aunt Nancy Porter asked me why didn’t I mention the fact of those recurrent spots? I told her that I didn’t want to weaken the story with anything hard to swallow, however true it might be. Then she said, “Well-I, could tell them that it is true, that your mother—” her sister—”told me that it was the gospel truth.” And there were no better Baptists than that pair. Still, in this day of freedom of thought, you can doubt it if you wish — but you would be wrong.
WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE
Little Josephine Cole, not yet three years old, trying to catch an evasive cat in our home, shocked her Aunt Myrtle by saying, “Damn that cat.” My wife was telling Mrs. Morrison, our neighbor, about it, When Dick Morrison, the husband, spoke up saying, “I said those very Words about our damned old cat while the child was over here yesterday.” It has wisely been said: “Out of the mouths of babies come Words we shouldn’t have said in the first place.”
DONE IN CALIFORNIA
Not Hitherto Published—1948.
By John T. Bristow
As sequel to the foregoing old-time cattle riding story-experienced in my younger days on the gently undulating plains of Northeast Kansas, I here record a contrasting up-to-date cattle riding experience I recently had on a far away mountain range. But in this last ride I did not race my horse and crack my whip for the sheer fun of it—as of yore.
Until Sunday, April 18, 1948, I had not been on a horse for fifty-five years—not since the opening of the Cherokee Strip, September 16, 1893, at noon, when, with my brother Dave, and Dr. David H. Fitzgerald, and Charley Rice, I rode sixteen miles in fifty-six minutes to locate a claim on Turkey creek, seven miles southwest of the present city of Enid, Oklahoma. In that race we were led—for a price — by “Ranaky Bill,” an Oklahoma outlaw.
While going up the mountain, the name of other notorious outlaws—the Daltons—was mentioned by my nephew, Sam Bristow, with whom I was riding. Sam owns “Dalton Mountain,” some sixty miles east of Fresno, California, where it is said those desperadoes were in hiding a long time ago.
The Dalton gang of bank robbers—following in the wake of the Jesse James gang whose hideout was in Missouri — operated mainly, I believe, in Kansas and the Indian Territory, in the late ‘80’s. At any rate, the Dalton bank robbers came to grief at Coffeyville in southern Kansas, with three of the gang killed by a sharp-shooting local hardware merchant, and law enforcement officers. Grat and Bob Dalton were killed. Emmett Dalton was badly shot up — was captured, convicted, and given a life sentence. President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned him. I have a faint recollection that sometime prior to the Coffeyville raid, the news dispatches stated that the Daltons—under assumed names—had shipped their horses to the Far west. And it is not at all improbable that our old-time Kansas and Indian Territory band of desperadoes rode their horses to the saddle-back near the top of my nephew’s 3500 foot mountain, from which eminence they could have guarded the approach in all directions.
Dalton Mountain is an attraction for patrons of a large Dude Ranch close by, in the Kings river area—something to talk about only. No dude could ride a horse up that mountain—particularly none of the thirty New York “dude” girls who rode the canyon trails thereabout for several weeks, recently.
Also, I recall the time when Jim Dalton, after killing Sheriff Charley Batterson and escaping from the Marysville jail, was captured by a posse led by Constable Charley Andrews, near the Buening school, eight miles southwest of Wetmore—my home town. After serving time, it was said, Jim Dalton went to Los Angeles and made an honorable “killing” in the manufacture of ovens for bakeries. I do not know if he was a member of the old gang. Probably not. But it has often been considered that he was.
But we were not riding via a series of switchbacks to the top of Dalton Mountain especially to view that historic spot. From the saddle-back, looking to the north down a tree-studded canyon, and looking back over the trail we had traveled, we could see at a glance much of Sam’s 1480 acres, of mountain pasture land, trees and rocks. And from this lookout we could locate nearly all of his ninety-eight head of cattle that had wintered there during the worst winter drought that California has had in eighty years, while other valley ranchmen were feeding $40 hay to $100 cattle, or shipping their stock to pastures in other states—some to the wheat fields of Western Kansas. The north slope of Dalton mountain, shielded from the burning sun, is what saved the day for Sam. Campbell mountain, almost in Sam’s dooryard, was picked bare. Sam bought fifteen of the cattle taken off that range. In his pasture, those newly purchased cattle did not graze with the other stock. And this is where the trained McNabb shepherd dog, Spike, comes in. I shall give Spike a line, later.
When Sam was saddling the horses before loading them in the truck for the 35 mile drive up into the mountains, from his 80-acre valley ranch, his wife—Anna—came out to the barnyard, and said to me, “Don’t let Sam talk you into making that hard ride all the way up to the top of the mountain. When you get tired, turn around and come back.” Excellent advice—but that was the one thing I couldn’t do. We were already coming down when I began to tire, and a quick reflection on Anna’s injunction told me that to turn around then would have availed me nothing. And though I had had it done to me many times in my younger days, that hard four hours horseback ride up the mountain and back did not produce the saddle-weary spots my relatives were expecting.
For identification purposes, let’s say Sam’s son Robert, 21-year-old ex-GI, an exemplary young man, and Sam’s daughter Virginia Anne, 13 years old, each own a dog — Spike and Curley. When loading the horses into the truck both dogs were “rearing” to go. Spike, the trained cattle dog, told us by signs and in perfectly understandable dog language that he wanted to ride in the cab. But he was forced in with the horses—and after he had made the rounds of the pasture, he climbed in with the horses without argument for the return trip. In the pasture, the dog would run ahead and spot segregated bunches of cattle, then come back, point out the stock, and stand “at attention’” awaiting orders. Sam said should he tell Spike to “Go get ‘em,” the dog would be off right now. He said it was almost impossible to get the cattle out of the hills without a trained dog. Sam paid $50 for the pup, and trained it himself.
Sam had said he would not take Virginia Anne’s dog along with us, that Curley would likely pick up a deer trail and follow it for hours, which might delay the return trip.
He planned to drive back by the Kings river road through the Dude Ranch to show me the place where the new irrigation ditch now being put through past his valley ranch — to take San Joaquin river water from the lake formed by the recently built Friant dam—goes under the Kings river, ninety feet below, through a 27 foot circular cement tube nearly three-eights of a mile in length. From the 100 foot bridge spanning the irrigation ditch one could look down 90 feet to the bottom of the ditch, and up nearly a 100 feet to the top of the ridge of dirt deposited by the big dragline. We had seen the west approach to this siphon on coming out from Fresno the evening before.
Sam says he frequently sees deer in his pasture—particularly one big buck—always before the hunting season opens, but never when he is permitted to shoot them. With the advancing years, it seems the deer, as well as man, are taking on wisdom. Hunters say that as soon as the season in California opens the deer make a break for the National Parks, where they are protected.
Sam also said that we would call on Mrs. Bert Elwood, who has lived in the canyon adjoining his pasture for a great many years—and get the facts about the Daltons. But she was not at home when we stopped, on our way out. I really wanted to obtain from her a firsthand report on the early-day cattle business, and information about the cougar menace in the low mountains years ago. I have been told that the cougars were alarmingly destructive then.
The cougars are now mostly in the high mountains, though the Fresno Bee reported two killed in the Valley last winter. Professional hunters have kept them down in recent years. It is said a professional cougar hunter named Bruce—his surname—has a pack of dogs that will track them down without fail, if the scent is not more than 72 hours old. A grown cougar will take a toll of 50 deer in one season.
Getting back to the wise deer in the parks. While “doing” the Sequoia National Park five years ago with Major Clement A. Tavares—he was in the service then, and that “Major” handle was pretty firmly fixed, but “Doctor” takes precedent now—who is the husband of my niece, Alice Bristow, I saw a deer browsing about the ranger camp. The Major took a “movie” of it while it was walking in front of a giant Sequoia tree. A Ranger told me it was a “wild” deer that had never been in captivity. And I saw deer at several places by the roadside so close that I could have almost touched them. Also we saw two young bucks “sparring” almost under the General Grant big tree. The Major turned his camera on them.
Again, yesterday, we saw deer in the Yosemite Valley. My brother Theodore shooed one away from a foot-path where it was nonchalantly nibbling a mushroom. Deer are very tame in the valley.
The Yosemite Falls, seen at their best on Sunday, May 23, 1948, with Yosemite creek in flood from melting snow, did not look to be 2425 feet in height; not until we got up close enough to be sprayed — good. Even the foot-path through the grove seemed to grow in length, as we walked toward the Falls.
Many, many years ago, I heard Eugene May lecture on the beauty and immensity of Yosemite Valley at the Methodist Church in Wetmore. When it came to describing the Falls, he got up on his toes, reached for the sky—literally soaring up, up, up, in an unbelievable manner. Now I find the Falls and other notable sights in the valley all that May said they were—and then some. There are six separate falls pouring into the valley.
Nothing looks its size up in the High Country. The far famed tunnel drive through the big Sequoia tree in the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, is deceiving. It looked as if it would be a tight squeeze for the car, but after passing through with room to spare, I could easily believe a cattle truck might pass through it.
While driving in the Grove, with the big trees standing surprisingly close together, the Doctor said he had been pretty much all over the world, and had seen nothing to compare with this wonderful Grove. Just imagine a tree 33 foot through standing 300 feet high.
When I first went up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, years ago—when automobiles were first coming into general use—trees were hitched on behind the cars to hold them back while coming down the mountain. And there was a sizable wood-yard at the foothills—product of those drags.
Five years ago, I came down from the Sequoia National Park with Major Tavares, when he put the machine in low gear and eased it down ever so gently. But now, with everything in California moving along in high gear, the tendency is to open ‘er up, and let ‘er drop down at an alarming rate of speed.
Last Sunday the Doctor—yes, it was the Doctor now — brought me safely down from the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, at a fast clip—a drop of nearly 8,000 feet in 65 miles of winding hairpin curves, done in less than that many minutes, the speedometer showing 65 to 70 miles all the way. And I had been told that his wife Alice was the best driver in the San Joaquin valley.
The Park roads are really wonderful—built at the right pitch for safety, at every turn.
The Doctor, with Alice and their two children, Clemie, eight, and Myrna, three, plan to fly in June to Honolulu—the Doctor’s birthplace. He is not Hawaiian, however. Alice has invited me to accompany them—but as I have always believed air travel unsafe, I declined, with thanks.
But now, after Sunday, I think I would not balk at anything—let come what may.
THE OLD SWIMMING HOLE
Published in Wetmore Spectator January 3, 1936
By John T. Bristow
Other things may be submerged in the whirlpool of life and forgotten, but memory of the old swimming hole, no matter where it was, or in what generation, lives long.
Now comes a letter from one of the old “boys” living in another state calling for elaboration of that tanyard gang’s doings. Combining the old swimming hole with the tanyard and our circus layout—they were closely connected — he mentions them as likely material for a story. A “funny” story, he suggests.
Allright, Buddy. You shall have it. But I must warn you, Old Pal, that you will, like as not, have the jitters instead of a laugh. But you have asked for it. As the desired mirth-provoking story, this one will likely be a flop. Buddy must know that while those old escapades, incidents, or what-nots, always carry well with the ones who have lived them, when transported in word-pictures across the years to a new audience, by a limping artist, they very often fail to click.
Halfway convinced that I could still be murdered for this thing, I have decided to write a few paragraphs about the old swimming hole and the gang—and some girls. However, I do not falter. Going on the theory that when the sweetness of life is over what comes after cannot greatly matter, I assume the risk—deliberately court danger.
Regardless of the ever-present smell, that tanyard, located in a bend of the creek just west of where the town bridge is now, was made a sort of rendezvous for all the town boys. A dam was constructed across the creek, and there was a Damsite Company, fully officered. The pond — long, wide, and eight feet deep made a fine swimming hole.
Michael Norton, a diminutive Irish boy, was our life-saver. Shy of qualifications, he was given the post for no good reason at all—unless it was that his willingness greatly exceeded his size. Michael was a queer lad. He always crossed himself three times before going into the water, and his lips would work in a funny little way without saying anything. Furthermore, it was characteristic of the little fellow to round out his sentences—especially when earnestness or excitement spurred — with, “so I will,” or with, “so he did.” And sometimes it would characteristic of the little fellow to round out his sentences—especially when earnestness or excitement spurred — with, “so I will,” or with, “so he did.” And sometimes it would be “You bet.”
E D Woodburn
Lawyer
HOLTON, KANSAS
January 21 1936
Mr. John T. Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas
Dear John:--
This morning I took time to read “THE OLD* SWIMMING HOLE” which you wrote for the Wetmore Spectator. As usual, you are very interesting and your article will be enjoyed by all of the citizens of Wetmore and community who lived there in the long ago.
It is too bad, John, that you ever quit the paper business. It seems to me that you naturally belong to that honorable “tribe.’* I have laid away your articles as I will enjoy reading them again and again. I have often heard it said that it is one of the signs of old age when one begins to hark back to our childhood days. Maybe so. I am not denying that age i3 probably creeping upon you, but I still insist that I “am as young as I used to be.” We try to keep in touch with the younger generation and to be and become interested in the things of today but, in fairness and in strict honesty with ourselves, we will have to admit that you and I and others of our age are inclined “to cast our eyes, like a flashing meteor, forward into the past.”
Keep it up, John, and when you have anything to write remember, I will appreciate a copy of the good old Wetmore Spectator containing your article.
Yours very truly,
E. D. Woodburn
At that time the deep slough south of the railroad tracks, instead of turning abruptly at Kansas avenue and paralleling that street to the creek as it does now, flowed straight across to a point fifty yards down stream. The narrow strip of land between slough and creek formed the north bank of the old swimming hole. Trees and bramble shut out public gaze fairly well, but they did not make a dependable screen against prying eyes.
Ten yards farther down stream from the mouth of the slough was the old ford. Still farther down stream there was then and is now a mammoth elm tree that has budded and shed its leaves sixty times since that day. Tramped firm by cow hoofs, and free of weeds, this bit of ground marked the spot where our townspeople often went for a few hours loll in the shade, and where in the surrounding grove even picnics were sometimes held. It was here also where, on one Independence Day, a fine English lady from the old Colony essayed to pet a horse on its nether end and was kicked in the bread-basket. It was so phrased by our elders then.
In the old days there was in use in the church a hymn-book containing a song entitled “Beautiful Gates Ajar.” “Dutch” Charley Kumbash, with the jarring note of the horse’s vengeance and the lady’s name fixed in mind, said: “It wass now for her the Peu-ti-ful Kates Achar.” The lady was a Mrs. Gates, daughter of John Radford—later, Mrs. “Paddy” Ryan.
Starting from the friendly shade of that great elm, where they had gone to while away a little time, and stopping at the old ford for a wade in the water, a bevy of girls, wandering aimlessly about, fell upon the boys’ domain.
Willie sent out a low whistle of warning. Eyes from all parts of the pond swept the opening down stream. Girls coming—a lot of them, too many to count. The boys ducked. Henry, who chanced to be in the top of a small elm tree ready for a dive, found the bottom of the pond with his proboscis in no time. One crafty little fellow, well plastered with mud, was caught wholly unawares, taking his siesta on the bank, cut off from the pond. As one having lost all sense of decency, he darted this way and that way in front of the girls—and then, like an ostrich, hid his head in the low forks of a tree, with back exposed to company. Well now, maybe it is that the ostrich, when he sticks his head in the sand, hopes that he might be taken for another bird. Shall I name this ostrich imitator? Well—maybe later.
“Let them come!” yelled Henry Callahan, in a braggadocio way. “Who cares! We used to swim with the Peters girls—and that didn’t kill us.”
“Yeah,” drawled Timothy Doble, in his usual draggy voice, “but remember, we had our pants on then—and that made a lot of difference.”
Timothy was so right about this. It certainly did make a lot of difference. Incidentally, I may say I have not thought of this boy for a long time. And Gaskel was his me—not Doble. But the boys all called him Doble because he was at one time—a considerable time—in a fair way to have Archibald Doble for a stepfather. However, Bill Kerr, young school teacher, stepped in and married the widow Gaskel, who was nearly twice his own age. That marriage did not endure.
Before going on with the main show, let us go back little—maybe a year, maybe two or three years. This tanyard pool brought the swimming hole a mile and a quarter closer to town—and it was hailed with delight by le barefoot boys. Prior to this, the town boys did their swimming in the “prairie pools” out south. But the pools had their bad features—hazards fraught with disturbing elements.
In the first place, one-third of the distance to the pools was across the big bottom south of Spring creek which skirts the town. The bottom was covered with a rank growth of sloughgrass, and, in the early summer months — the natural time for swimming—after the grass had burned off, needle-pointed stubs were very damaging bare, feet, and caused utterances of many an “ouch” and not infrequently a “damnit”—and this unholy language emanating from youngsters barely past the trundle-bed stage. But the little sinners could swim—every one of them.
The prairie pool patronized most, if it were not filled with soil, as are all the other pools now, would be close to the public road, on the Grant Dale forty acres—open territory then. Directly north of this was the Barney Peters forty-acre isolated prairie farm. We could always count being accompanied by one or more of the four Peters — Bill, George, Jim, and John. And on rare occasions two Peters girls, Bertha and Mary, would invade our privacy.
The pool was about 50 by 25 feet in dimensions with a minimum depth of eight feet. It was edged with a sort of “greasewood” growth of brush which grew in clusters at the water’s edge three feet below the rim. Often water snakes could be seen sunning themselves on branches which curved out over the water. It was a most disquieting feeling to have one of those four-foot fellows slither across one’s back. They were not poisonous. Still they were snakes.
The Peters girls did not often come upon the scene. But when they did, it was more disturbing than to be raked over the back by those snakes. The south side of the pool offered the best place for the snakes to sun themselves — and as soon as the water was agitated by the bathers coming in from the north side, as they always did, the snakes would drop off into the water and make, blindly, for the opposite side and disappear under the north bank. Some of the snakes seemed to sleep more soundly than others, and, on a good day, the snake parade to the north side, while not continuous was, seemingly, never ended. Were it true, as claimed in the old days, that those snakes passing over one’s back would make hair grow wherever they touched the bare skin, I would have more hair on my back than I now have on my head.
And occasionally a turtle would drop off those bushes into the swimming hole. It was said by oldtimers that should a turtle nip you that it would not let loose until sundown. Other oldsters said it would hang on until it thundered. The adventurous youngsters—usually ready to try anything—never, to my knowledge, tried to find out which way was right. With brassy skies and prolonged summer droughts; with thunder clouds few and far between, made it too risky. At that time swim-suits were unknown here — maybe just not used—and always after a swim with the Peters girls, we would have to walk home in our wet pants.
That chain of water holes along a three-mile treeless water course, was said to have been “buffalo” holes. But this I was inclined to doubt, after seeing the remains of true buffalo wallows in Western Kansas. My Uncle Nick Bristow said there were no buffalo here when he came, and that so far as he knew no one before him had seen any. But in my time, the whole plains country west of the Blue river was swarming with them. They were shamefully slaughtered by eastern outfitted crews, for their hides. I believe that Zan Gray ’ s novel, “The Thundering Herd, ” was inspired by the big herds of buffalo in Southwestern Kansas.
Then there were the “second” pools, a longer wash, one mile farther south, fed partly by the Bradford spring, which we would patronize in dry times when the stream connecting the “first” pools would stop running.
Back at the tanyard pool: Those girls, full of high spirits and gay chatter, scooped up our clothing, such as it was, and stood on the bank laughing at us. Save for the one with head so nattily ensconced in tree crotch, all were in water up to necks, and thinking some rather ugly thoughts, we were, I can assure you, most miserable. Miserable, however, does not fully define the plight of the featherless bird on the bank.
Then, holding a yapping little dog to a bulging bosom, a Good Samaritan came moving in. Her smiling face was framed in a lovely orange bonnet. She interceded for the boys. The girls were adamant, heartless. For her pains, the intermediary was called “Mother Fuzzicks”—then, and there-after. She was in truth the mother of the brave Indian fighter mentioned in an earlier article.
In all fairness to those girls I should say that they were, probably, possessed of the idea that their appearance in this manner might cure a certain habitue of the water hole of being neglectful of his duties at home, and maybe cause him to choose better company as well. They could not be censured for that. They were nice girls, those intruders.
It was our life-saver who undertook to solve the problem for us—the little fellow of multiple peculiarities, the most pronounced of which, as you have been informed, was displayed in his crossing himself three times before going into the water.
I rather think that one, maybe two, of Michael’s older sisters were among that hilarious lot. But as to that I cannot be sure. Much water has gone over the dam since that day and on some points things are a bit foggy. It is one of the tricks of memory—that parts of a recalled incident will stand out clearly while other parts remain, shadowy and tantalizingly, just outside the grasp of the mind.
So, then, of those damsels I make no identifications — this on account of much fog. Still, casting back through the mists of many years, I can sense enough of the old thing to cause me to suspect that I could almost spit on one of those erstwhile trim maidens, now grown stout, from where I write. Not, however, that I would want to do so at this late date.
With a mischievous twinkle in his pale blue eyes, Michael said: “Lave them to me boys. By-gorry I’ll show them a trick with a hole in it; I will so I will!” Much stress was laid upon the last phrase. It contained the true Irish accent. A trick with a hole in it! An old saying, of course — much used then.
Manifestly, Michael had decided, as any fine boy of the period would, to deal modestly with the girls—or, at least, with as much modesty as the exigencies of the situation would permit—but he had reckoned without taking into account the destructive forces of Time upon discarded tinware.
Someone, pointing to a stick on the bank, said, “Take that and wallop ‘em good!” It was a portion from the butt end of a well seasoned sumac.
“Aye, I have it!” mouthed Michael. At the same time he fished out of the mud at the edge of the pond an old weather-beaten dishpan, one of many that had been used in the tannery for various purposes. This he swung in front of him.
Then, with surprising alacrity and apparent confidence in himself and the implement of his veiling, he bounded up the bank, pivoting at the top long enough to cast a reassuring look over his shoulder to his buddies in the water. The gang beamed approvingly on their savior.
Michael advanced on the intruders, shouting in a rather thin voice, “Drop the rags, and scram!” He waved his cudgel. No results. Michael didn’t like having his efforts go for naught that way. The laughter went out of his eyes. His Irish was up. He resisted an impulse at belligerence. Then, “Vamoose, I tell you, or bygorry you’ll be knowing the feel of this shillelagh!” Now, however, his belligerent interest was superseded by new elements.
The girls did not budge. Not then. They laughed mightily. All but one. The Good Samaritan shook with suppressed laughter. Her orange bonnet bobbed in fine harmony. The little doggie barked. With deep concern and echoes of mortification trailing in her voice, the laughless one, stepping forward—it was now observed that she held in her hand a shillelagh of her own, once again of magic sumac origin—exclaimed, “Holy horrors! Look Michael! Your manners! There do be a hole in your shield!”
This he took to indicate her desire for him to depart — as, indeed, it did. And Michael, our defender, “took water.”
You must believe me now when I say to you that the never-to-be-dispensed-with three-time act, peculiarly and persistently the boy’s very own, was delayed somewhat.
“You bet!”
MISS INTERPRETED
My mother cautioned my sister Nannie when a very little girl as she was going out to play, to look good for snakes. After she had returned, Nannie told her mother that she had looked everywhere and did not see “ary snake.” Asked what would she have done had she found one, Nannie said, “I would of bringed it to you.”
THE “CIRCUS” LAYOUT
Published in Wetmore Spectator,
January 10, 1936.
By John T. Bristow
Now, I trust “Buddy” will be satisfied with the foregoing narration of events at the old swimming hole. He really should be. He is in it—figuring inversely, up to his neck.
Since the actual distance from the swimming hole to the tanyard was but twenty steps—and I mean literally steps—there should be no difficulty in making the switch over. Those twenty steps did, however, at times, present physical hazards. They were dirt steps carved out on a rather steeply inclined bank, up which the tanner’s sons carried water in buckets from pond to tanvat. Barefooted, with pants rolled up to our knees, we would dig in with our toes when going up with the filled buckets, always spilling a little water on the way, until those steps would become a veritable otter’s slide. As a boy’s bare heels, in the old days, were poorly fashioned for digging in, the water carriers would then have to use the longer rope-protected path provided for making the descent with the empty buckets. One slippery slide on one’s backside was a hint that it was time to make the switch.
But a rehash of the “circus layout” as my Old Pal puts it, is maybe going to be disappointing, as I can now think of nothing in this connection to pin on Buddy. However, I suppose it might have been considered—for recreation purposes only—as a sort of adjunct to the tannery. The trapeze, horizontal bars, and spring-board, were only about fifty feet removed from the tanvats. And then, too, the lot had the tanyard smell.
Ringling Brothers wagon circus had recently made a stand here, and the “fever” among the local youngsters was running high. Activity about the lot was both spirited and awkward, with a lively bunch willing to try anything—once.
The real trouble was, we had only one Star performer. Charley Askren was, before he got injured in a fall, a trapeze and bar performer with the Dan Rice circus. He was a welcome instructor. And though he could still do some wonderful stunts, I think there are none I want to mention here, except maybe the time he let me slip through his hands in a rather daring act, the fall to the ground breaking my left arm.
This statement, without qualification, would hardly do justice to my old team-mate. Had we made it, the act would have been a honey. And had Charley not said, grandly, to a “skirted” audience, “This is going to be good. Keep your eyes pinned on this Johnny boy, the G-R-E-A-T and only—,” in real circus ballyhoo fashion, it might not have been a flop. Charley used a lot of circus terms in his work with us.
The trouble was, I “weakened”—just a wee bit, to be sure—at the moment when I took the air, and after making a complete turn came down also a wee bit tardy for Charley to get a firm hold on me, in his head-down swinging position. Had he caught me by the wrists, he would have tossed me, on the third swing, face about, back to the bar from which I had made the takeoff.
In practice, another boy — usually George Foreman, brother of Mrs. L. C. McVay and Mrs. R. A. DeForest — would stand by to right me, in case of a slip. George was tall and very active. Sometimes we would change positions in this act. I know now that this would have been a grand time for me to have called out, in the usual way, “Let George do it!”
Sure, we had a well-filled straw-tick which was always placed under the weaklings—but who was there among us that would have wanted to have it brought out in the presence of lady visitors? Of the two lady spectators, one was a redhead. She fell in love with Charley—and married him. Charley had done a lot of impressive flipping and flopping to gain his position on the bar for the act. The redhead’s younger black; haired sister (Anna) was the better looking, and near my age—but, as of the moment, I did not shine as I hoped I might. And then, too, I had that broken arm to think about. Dr. Thomas Milam “splinted” it up drum-tight, according to ancient practice—but, by midnight, he had to do it all over again.
Then, my Dad came onto the lot, and without any coaching whatsoever, did some pretty tall kicking. Not the circus kind, however. The “circus” paraphernalia was then moved up town to a vacant spot alongside Than Morris’ corn cribs on the lots west of where the Dr. Lapham home now stands. But it was no go. The tannery was the natural place for such things.
Charley Askren came to us, as a young man, in the early 70’s. He was a carpenter. He married Lib Fleming. And notwithstanding his serious injury caused by the collapse of a trapeze under the Dan Rice bigtop, he lived to be quite an old man. He died at his home in Atchison last year. Here’s hoping that his kid co-performer — the G-R-E-A-T and only”—may live as long.
Honesty — The Better Policy
NOTE—Some seventy-five years ago I accidentally dropped a five-dollar gold piece into one of the big vats at our old tanyard on the creek bank near the town bridge at the foot of Kansas Avenue which gold piece was never recovered.
The old bridge has now been removed, and a new one—156-foot span—is being constructed over a newly dug creek channel sixty-five yards south of the old one, on a grade ten feet above the old road. In building up the grade between the old bridge site and the railroad, Albert Tanking, of Seneca, operator of a County bulldozer, today—June 11, 1949—moved the ground where the old tanvats were buried.
As he made the excavation I noticed no signs of the old sunken vats—but it is none the less certain that my five-dollar gold piece is now deposited somewhere along the west slope of the fill, or in the “sunken garden” between the fill and the newly cut drain-ditch paralleling it. After it rains on the works it is possible that I might go down there and pick it up. But I think that I shall leave this for the kids to exploit. It was a sort of kid’s keepsake, anyway.
That five-dollar gold piece was first given me some years earlier, in change, by mistake for a nickel. I thought I had been cheated. I took it back to Peter Shavey, who had a confectionery store in the old part of the building now occupied by Hettie Shuemaker-Kroulik. He praised me for being an honest boy—and he loaded me up with candy and oranges. And then he said, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to give you this gold piece for a keepsake, something to remind you always that it pays to be honest.” And think of it — the old Frenchman was illegally selling whiskey and unlawfully operating a poker game in the back room.
I said, “Thank you, Mr. Shavey—but I still have not got my nickel back.”
He laughed, “Here, honest boy, here’s your nickel.” And now I can’t be sure If Mr. Peter Shavey inspired this noble trait of honesty in me—or if it just comes natural.
INNOCENT FALSEHOOD
About twenty years ago, I was going with “Dutch” Roderick, in his car, to Kansas City, starting at four o’clock in the morning—and Minnie Cawood, with her two and one-half year old Ruthie, were going along as far as Leavenworth. We stopped at the H. P. Cawood home, and “tooted.” Minnie came out, and Harry followed, carrying Ruthie in his arms. She was fussy, and Harry said, “Don’t cry—your partner is out here in the car.” Ruthie said—well, had she not been such a sweet kid as to call me her partner, I’d be tempted to say she told a “white” lie, when she said, “I thought he would be there.”
FATHER AND SONS
Published in Wetmore Spectator,
March 20, 1936
By John T. Bristow
T his, then, is the continuation of the story of my father’s tanyard; with related incidents—hoarded memories of the old days back a half century, and more. They are solemn reminders that “Time flies.”
That tanyard was, I might say, a howling success while it lasted. Besides the tanyard, my father owned a bunch of boys, and those boys, semi-obedient and helpful, really did some commendable things, but when encouraged and abetted by the other town boys of that happy, care-free age, their doings were not always something to be commended.
Taken by the large—including, of course, the English and the Irish and the “Dutch,” and a couple of Swedes — they were, I must admit, a dare-devil bunch. And I might as well confess now that I was, perhaps, the most devilish one of them all. Anyhow, I became a printer’s “devil” at an early age.
My father made good leather—and he knew how to get the most out of it. Being a shoemaker, he made it up into good boots and shoes and gave his boys a good leather dressing whenever they needed it—that is, when their deviltry came within his notice. The Lord knows there were hundreds of times when they escaped only by narrow margins. And had my father been a little more vigilant, this day of which I write promised to be the red-letter day.
There were two outstanding events that day, either of which would have merited knee-strap activity. In case you don’t know, the shoemaker’s knee-strap, besides being useful to hold a shoe in place while the artisan works, is a persuasive instrument of correction when applied with vim and vigor at the right time and place.
As already informed, in a previous article, the creek had been dammed and there was a fully officered Damsite Company, with Michael Norton as life-saver, whose actual services, as Jake Geyer now recalls, never amounted to more than his crossing himself three times before going into the water. A large wooden box, with metal bottom, used for cooking the sumac-tanbark mixture, when not otherwise in use served as a boat on that fine body of water.
Jim Cardwell, a Kentuckian — and brother-in-law of Andy Maxwell, the Indian fighter mentioned in previous writings—who held a responsible position as coal-heaver at the railroad chutes close to the tanyard, when not otherwise engaged, helped the boys occasionally with the work of maintaining the dam—and even helped my father sometimes. All this he did out of the goodness of his heart, glad to be helpful. He was a grand old sport, even with his one weakness. Jim loved his booze and seemed to have a mania for sharing his bottle with others. He even gave Eagle Eye, the Indian featured in a preceding story, a nip of his “firewater” one day, and my father raised Ned about that. It was unlawful to give liquor to an Indian.
Having the distinction of being the only enterprise of the kind in this part of the West, that tanyard was made a sort of port-of-call for all comers—local and transient.
“Lord” Perry graced the tannery with his august presence one day. He was of the old English Colony folk and drunk or sober, proclaimed himself a British peer. He was a “remittance” man.
On this occasion, after riding in from his Colony home, Perry had stopped up town and was comfortably full when he reached the tanyard. He slipped the reins over his horse’s head and asked me to hold the animal while he held audience with Jim Cardwell. “Hand if you let ‘er go,” he warned, “Hi’ll cut y’r hears hoff.” I dropped the reins as soon as he was in “spirited” conversation with Jim. The “Lord” soon forgot about me—and the horse also.
“Lord” Perry had the poise and the marks of the gentleman he represented himself to be. Also he loved his drink, and indulged himself freely. When he had taken on about so much, he would invariably mount a chair, or anything handy that he could climb upon, and attempt to make a speech, always prefacing his harangue with “Hi’m a gentleman hand a scholar, by-god-sir, by-gosh!”
In this instance, Perry had climbed upon the tank-boat which was standing on edge. After making his usual salutory and puncturing it with his long arms waving hither and thither, he stood for some moments groping for words which did not present themselves with what might be called kaleidoscopic rapidity. Then one of the gang—designated here as the one intrusted to ‘old the Nobleman’s ‘orse — casually leaned against the prop, causing it to topple from under the distinguished Englishman.
His Lordship then lost some of his aristocratic poise and a modicum of his temper. A nervous person, with bombastic tendencies, he literally exploded when he hit the well-tramped terrain about the tanvats. To be accurate, he made a rather awkward display of himself in a furious outburst of Anglo-American profanity, in which he branded, correctly, a certain member of the gang as a “Blarsted, ’ artless hupstart!”
“Tut, tut, my Lord,” said Jim. “It was an accident.”
“Haccident, my hye!” retorted Perry, sharply. Jim Cardwell then felt it incumbent upon himself to offer something to assuage his Lordship’s agony, to pour balm upon his troubled soul. Good old Jim! How could we have managed without him. He once move proffered his bottle. And another drink was directed with grace down the Perry gullet.
At the tanyard there were six vats, each, four by six feet, which were set three feet into the ground, with the tops about one foot above ground.
A wild black cherry tree, at this time loaded with ripe cherries, stood close to one of those vats. On account of its fruit and its fine shade it was the delight of all the boys. Especially was it inviting to my little brother Davey Cullom, who, though fourth in point of spacings from being the baby or of the home, was still his mother’s darling little curly-headed man.
There was an erroneous notion that black cherries would make one tipsy—in a mild way. It was also claimed that choke cherries, some of which grew in the next bend above oh small trees like plum trees, were poisonous. That was erroneous, too.
Davey Cullom attempted to walk around on the edge of one of those tanvats, and fell in. The vat was filled with strong ooze, leachings from the oakbark and sumac. With the process then employed by my father it took four months to tan a calfskin—but Davey Cullom got his hide tanned in about fifteen minutes. Not with the ooze, however. It was because he could not walk, in a test, the twelve-foot length of a ten-inch board without stepping off.
Davey told his father that he had eaten too many cherries. But the gang knew he was fibbing. Davey Cullom was already “pickled” when he fell into that tanvat. And had it been any place other than the tanyard, my father could have had olfactory evidence of his offspring’s condition—but in a tanyard, there is but one smell.
After it was all over but the shouting, Davey’s father shrilled, “Howl, you pusillanimous little devil, howl! Maybe you’ll now stay out of that cherry tree.”
Just at that moment Jim Cardwell came staggering up from the creek bank, flourishing his bottle. “Anybody want a drink?” he queried. My father took the bottle and threw it into the creek. He never drank. He was awfully peeved. He swore. And let me say now whatever my father did, he did it well. “Jim,” he accused, “you’ve been giving Davey whiskey from your rotten old bottle!”Davey Cullom stopped his howling long enough to say, “No, daddy, it was the cherries; honest it was.” He supplemented his little lie with the further information that it was not the choke cherries, but the black cherries, that he had eaten. Then my father said, “I’ll cut that damned black cherry tree down tomorrow.”
Jim Cardwell laughed, drunkenly, and inquired, “Got a match, Bill?” My father didn’t smoke, and he didn’t have a match. Then Jim mumbled, “Furnish my own whiskey, find my own match.” He fumbled in his pockets and produced a match.
Jim walked over to the curly-headed boy who had lied so cleverly, and said, “Now, Davey, we can show Bill that you didn’t drink any of Jim’s old rot-gut.” Placing the match and a dollar in Davey’s hands, he said, “Bet you that dollar you can’t blow out the match.” Jim looked at us boys and grinned in a maudlin way. “Light the match and then blow it out, Davey, and the dollar is yours. John and all the boys here know you won’t take a dare; and I dare you!” he taunted. It was then I wished that I could make little crosses like Michael Norton to ward off impending disaster.
Jim staggered backwards a little as he continued. “But don’t light the match, Davey, until I get away. I know my old whiskey breath will burn like a house afire.” Davey Cullom stared, looked foolish and finally said, “I don’t want your dollar, Mr. Cardwell.”
I shall now explain. Speaking for the gang as well as myself, we thought Davey would put the stuff to his little lips, then, with a wry face, push it away—perhaps spill it on the ground, which, of course, would have tickled us immensely. But the little fellow, feeling that he must make sure of winning the dare, took not one but two small swigs of the raw stuff. Booze was booze then, and it took only a very little of it to make a small boy wobble. If it will help any to put over my alibi I will say now that the “pusillanimous little devil” made that face.
Now a bright idea struck one of the gang. I believe it might have been Will Gill—now Dr. W. W. Gill, of Enid, Oklahoma. He would know, of course. Anyway, someone had said, “Come Jim, let’s get your bottle.” They managed somehow to get into the tank-boat and they rowed out to deep water. And there, from some unexplained cause, the boat capsized. Michael Norton crossed himself three times.
Then the whole bunch—lifesaver, officers, and all—plunged into the water without stopping to remove clothing, which wouldn’t have been a very big job, at that. Jim was saved, of course. And appreciably sobered.
As intimated in the foregoing paragraph, the clothing worn by the tanyard gang during the summer months was almost nil—negligible, at any rate. Always there were rents and patches, and more rents. But the gang did not care.
The next day after Davey’s debauch my father came blustering into the house, and bellowed, “Now, who in hell has taken my axe?” My mother said to him in her sweet, calm way, “Oh, don’t be so fussy, William—Davey loaned your axe to Jim Cardwell last night.”
Attaching no significance to this fact, nor sensing forebodings, my father laughingly said, “I wonder what Jim thought he could do with an axe, in his pickled condition?” I should like to tell you now that he found that out, to his dismay, all too soon.
He was a good feeler, was my father, happy as a lark when things went right—and not at all ugly even when he swore, not counting of course the tempo of the sulphurous words of easement which he sometimes released. Just habitual, understand. The indiscriminate use of swearwords was as natural as long-whiskers to the old pioneer. He whistled a lot, and sometimes tried to sing, but he was hot very good at that.
Having first boots to mend for a patron of his shoe-shop, my father was late in reaching the tannery this day. The ruffled condition which had broken forth with the axe inquiry now relegated from his thoughts, he whistled while he worked, and this too in bad taste in the presence of his patron.
It had fallen to my lot to remain at the house for a while, the home and the shoeshop being one and the same place. A packing case containing alum, tallow, neatsfoot oil, and lampblack, had been received by express the day previous. I was to take from this packing box some alum, powder it fine, then dissolve it in warm water. It was to be used at the tannery in the day’s workout of the hides from one of the vats. It was to firm them. A hide in the jelly stage is as slippery as an eel, and it was always a chore to get them safely landed on the work bench.
My father would work the ooze out of the hides with a slicker—a piece of plate glass ground smooth on the edge. Then he would rub the alum in with the same devise, before returning them to the vat which would be refilled with fresh ooze. Later, after the six vats were worked out, the hides would again be put upon the bench, when tallow and neats-foot oil would be worked into them with that same slicker. It would come into play again when he polished the blackened leather. All handlings at the bench called for vigorous rubbings. So vigorously did he attack them that he would sweat. Oh, God, how that man did sweat! Being in fine fettle, and late on the job this day, he would rush the work, and whistle—and sweat all the more.
Consider now for a moment that cherished black cherry tree—the tree which, in a spasm of idle talk, my father had threatened to cut down. It was a large tree, as black cherry trees grow, more than a foot through, and tall with good spread. Under this wild cherry tree reposed my father’s work-bench. Also under this tree was the ash-hopper in which lye was made from wood-ashes to remove the hair from the hides. As a protector from the hot summer sun the tree was well nigh indispensable.
The sun rose that July morning sixty years ago on a rain-soaked world—a perfumed, growing world; sparkling; invigorating. The brook at the tannery, slightly augmented by the early morning shower, gave forth a soft, dreamy murmur as it poured over the dam. Birds sang sweetly in the tree tops. Jim sang also, though rather poorly, as he put the finishing touches on the job to which he had set himself. Save for the depressing knowledge that later in the day things would sizzle in steaming humidity, with old expansion of noisome tannery fumes, all was fine and vely.
Came now my father, gayly whistling, to his beloved tannery. Davey followed. The other boys were already there. With a puzzled look on his face the daddy of that happy-go-lucky bunch stopped suddenly in his tracks. He surveyed the surroundings in considerable disgust.
At first I thought my father was so overcome by the shock that he was not going to say anything. Well, he didn’t—exactly. Maybe he couldn’t. But it was none the less certain that a violent change of mood had taken place. The thing he saw had stilled his gay whistle—and whereas only a few moments before could his voice but have taken up the glad song of his heart he would have sung beautifully, now he cursed prodigiously!
And Davey howled some more.
That “damned” black cherry tree was gone—cut down, trimmed, and neatly piled. Jim had mistaken Davey’s purpose in bringing him the axe. He had done his work well. The morning sun flooded the tanvats and the work-bench. By noon it would beat down upon them with torrid intensity.
PLUGGING FOR HER DADDY
Little Janet, four-year-old daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Leland Latham, was at the home of J. E. (Dutch) Roderick. Thinking to get a reaction from Janet, “Dutch” said in a sort of off-hand way to no one in particular, “Wish I knew where to find a good veterinarian?” The little Latham girl said, “My daddy is a vet’narian. If you want to get spayed, he can do it.”
THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. HENRY, et al.
Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
The last three preceding articles were done at the request of one of the old tanyard-swimming hole gang whom I dubbed “Buddy.” It really was a triple order. At the same time I was committed to still another request. Went out to one of Buddy’s buddies to verify data pertaining to Buddy’s written request and ran head-on into another one—the one I’m going to tackle now, together with other incidents.
It is a dangerous operation, this thing of running in unrelated episodes, and if in attempting it I should find myself up in the air going around in circles with no place to land, I shall have to call on Buddy’s buddy to “talk” me down. Though no longer in our midst, Buddy’s octogenarian buddy still lives. And it will be a pleasure to grant his request.
In reminiscing one incident calls up another, and that one still another, and so on ad infinitum—and anything of the time and place is considered fair game, if you can capture it without maiming it, or without encumbering something else. In presenting the Strange Case of Mr. Henry, I shall try to ease it in without a jarring note. But, to do this, I must go back to the “circus” lot, grab onto one of my co-performers, and work up to it through a chain of co-incidental events.
George Foreman was here at that time going to school, and learning telegraphy with his brother-in-law, L. C. (Cass) McVay. George was my closest boy friend. After graduating in telegraphy, he worked for the railroad company out on the west end of the Central Branch—and later blossomed out as a fullblown lawyer in a finely appointed Denver office, all his own. When I called on him there he laughingly remarked, “Here I am, a big lawyer in a big city—with no clients.” In later years I saw him up at Blackhawk doing assay work for a Colorado mining company. This time he aid, “I’ve found out that I am a better assayer than I ever *was a lawyer.” He went from there to Butte, Montana, still following the assay business. He never married.
His sister, Alice Foreman-McVay, with whom George made his home, came here from a highly cultured community over by the river in Doniphan county, as the bride of Cass McVay. And, being a refined lady with a fine show of modesty, notably out-classing the common herd, got the unearned name of being a “stuck-up.” But she lived that down nicely, simply by carrying on in her own sweet way oblivious to it all. Alice McVay had the happy faculty of attending strictly to her own knitting—and letting the world go by. She was, in truth, the town’s most gracious and beloved woman. And had she aspired to it, she could have been nominated as the outstanding model of social perfection, displacing one who had held that distinction from the town’s beginning.
Up to this time, our people had not been what one might call connoisseurs in the art of classifying the townfolk. In the old days, social standing was largely measured by wealth — even make-believe wealth. For example, Eliza Morris, (Mrs. Bill), as the leading merchant’s wife—and a big hearted woman—was looked upon as the leader in society, one who set the pattern. The fact that she said “bekase” for because, with many another outmoded expression, did not disqualify her—but she lost caste when she sallied forth to church wearing her new Easter bonnet wrong-side-to. But, let it be remembered, she had a way with the youngsters about town that was taking.
After her husband’s death, which occurred in the eighth year after coming here, Alice McVay could have married, in later years, Henry DeForest, the town’s top eligible bachelor, and while she greatly admired him, as did everyone else, she simply would not “desert” her three children — Harvey, Myrtle, and Louis. I was favored with this bit of information for having “tended” store for Mr. Henry while he accompanied the lady with her purchases to her home. Besides teaching me double-entry book-keeping of evenings, Mr. Henry would sometimes get confidential on other matters. He told me himself that Alice McVay’s love for her children was the one thing which caused her to forego a marriage with him. And then too, Mr. Henry was markedly devoted to his aristocratic mother, which fact might have had some bearing on what to my mind should have developed into a most charming romance. His mother spoke of him always as Mr. Henry.
Alice McVay had ample means to rear her children — and rear them she did right here in Wetmore. Then the family moved to Whittier, California. Besides his savings, Cass McVay and his brother Bill, had each inherited $7,000 from the family estate shortly before Cass died. Alice was a step-sister, and also shared in the cut.
Cass McVay was a thrifty man, a real gentleman. Aside from his position as station agent at the C. B. U. P. depot—it was a Union Pacific line then, and before that organized as the Atchison and Pike’s Peak railroad—Cass owned a lumber yard, and operated a small grain elevator, powered by a donkey. I know it was a donkey for when I would sometimes whip him up in order to lift the grain faster so that I might get off early to play, “one old cat” with the town boys, he would bray just like a donkey. Cass McVay built the dwelling later owned by Dr. Guy S. Graham. Close in now, it was considered “away out in the cow country” then. In marked contrast, Bill McVay squandered his inheritance, in drink. He had Spanish blood in his veins, along with his other short comings. Bill McVay married Johnny Thomas’ oldest sister, Jemima.
The DeForest-McVay romance was not Mr. Henry’s first. That came earlier in life. The girl was the sister of Seth Handley, who was Mr. Henry’s partner in the implement business on first coming to Wetmore. Adherence to a family brand of religion — something like that which threatened the love of the King of England and Wally — was said to have prevented marriage. She was reputedly a divorcee.
In reviewing this romance, I am uncovering no skeletons, giving away no secrets. The story has been told and retold, in whispers and snatches, with varying degrees of accuracy. Clean and beautiful beyond compare, it was not a thing to be hidden under a bushel.
I did not get the divorce angle in the case of the Handley girl from Mr. Henry, or any other member of his family. Had understood all along that it was nothing more than family objections occasioned by a doting mother’s idea of her son’s superior breeding that was holding the romance in check. But John Thomas, one of the few oldtimers left, tells me now that he got the impression of the divorce from his brother-in-law, Moulton DeForest. So then, I think, much as I dislike to, we shall have to accept it as authentic.
This causes me to speculate.
Henry Clay DeForest was 26 years old when he came here. Seth Handley was about the same age. His sister was younger. This would have afforded scant time for the girl to have married and become divorced before the beginning of her romance with Mr. Henry. And moreover, I cannot imagine Mr. Henry deliberately paying court to a divorced woman, knowing the while the family feelings, the Church restrictions, and above all his aristocratic mother’s set views on such matters. The romance dated back to Madison, Wisconsin, beyond the time he came to Wetmore — likely back to school days. And in that event, accepting the divorce angle, it very well could have been a case where the man had “Loved and Lost,” with the old flame carrying on after Reno.
The town people said the same thing about Augusta Ann DeForest as was wrongfully said about Alice McVay — and she lived up to it, nobly. I wouldn’t know what, if anything, she had in her own right to justify this, but she had the DeForest name to build on—and that was a million.
The DeForests were of French Huguenot stock. Joseph DeForest, grandfather of Mr. Henry, was reputedly, at one time, a very wealthy man. He made an endowment to Yale college—hence the schooling there of Moulton and Mr. Henry.
Augusta Ann did not play the aristocracy game offensively. With courteous dignity, she played it faultlessly. It was well known that she had definite ideas about gentlemen in general marrying beneath their station and, it was said, she saw to it that her hired girls—in one long-lasting instance an extraordinarily pretty maiden — would have no chance, under her roof, to make google eyes at her boys.
In the process of making, Mr. Henry was not touched with this better than thou idea—and it seems that father Isaac Newton had none of it. In fact, Isaac was not at all times in complete agreement with his spouse.
Mr. Henry was not Augusta Ann’s oldest, nor yet her youngest. He was seventh in a family of eight boys. Even so, he displayed no necromantic talent, despite the ancient superstition. But he sure had a lot of the worthwhile kind of talent. Then, too, that run of seven might have been broken by the birth of a girl. I never learned just where she came in, did not even know of Mrs. John C. Kridler until she came here from Denver with her three fine little girls — Lettie, Grace, and Blanche. Jane DeForest-Kridler was now a divorcee—something more for the aristocratic Augusta Ann to frown upon.
Augusta Ann was a mite heavy on her feet, and on her infrequent appearances in public leaned heavily upon her Mr. Henry. And though not of a mind to recognize caste, our people paid her marked respect, and were free in saying that it was mighty nice of Mr. Henry, tall and stately, to give his mother, short and dumpy, his arm on all occasions. It was truly a most beautiful mother-son attachment.
It would, perhaps, be too much to say that in this unusual show of attention Mr. Henry had hopes of bringing about a change in his mother’s estimation of his girl. But never doubt he had hopes, enduring hopes, that in riding the thing out something favorable would turn up. The way I had it in mind, Mr. Henry did not want to break with the family—nor did he have any intention of ever giving up his girl. This awkward situation made it inadvisable for him to bring her here.
One time, after I had gotten myself rather too deeply in the mining game for comfort, Mr. Henry told me that he also had, some years earlier, taken a flyer in mining with his old partner, Seth Handley, at Grass Valley, California. But when the conversation was terminated, I was of the opinion that he had, in fact, only put his sweetheart on ice, so to speak, for safe keeping against the time when the family winds might blow less raw. And had the Aristocratic Augusta Ann have passed on before the girl I think Mr. Henry, divorcee or no, would have cast his religion to the winds—as did The King.
Somehow, I don’t like the divorce angle.
Seth Handley’s sister died at the little mining town of Grass Valley, in California, where her brother was a prospector. Mr. Henry went to Omaha to meet the Union Pacific train bearing his old partner, Seth, and the remains on the way back east for burial. On his return home, Mr. Henry was visibly shaken. It was a sad day for him. Few people here ever knew just who it was that held such a strangle hold on Mr. Henry’s affections.
From my early association with Mr. Henry and Seth I got the impression that there was more between them than just being partners. Later, I had it from one or the other of them, maybe both, that the girl in the case was Seth’s sister. Their implement house and yard was just across the street from our home, down by the tracks, on “Smoky Row.” And though less than half their age, my mother said I was always under foot when they wanted to go about their work. The year was 1872. But if I were not under foot at the moment when Seth wanted to go hunting, he would come to the house and ask me to go along. He would shoot anything that could fly. And Seth remembered, years later. He sent his respects to me from Omaha by Mr. Henry. At that time I was “helping out” in the DeForest general store.
I suspect there were some things the aristocratic Augusta Ann did not know about her favorite son. While vacationing in Colorado Mr. Henry, with the Handley girl—who was supposed to be in California—rode horses on the trail to the top of Pike’s Peak. Miss Handley rode a sidesaddle, the ancient kind where the lady puts her left foot in the stirrup and throws her right leg over the left fork of the split pommel—and holds on for dear life. That was at a time when it was considered vulgar for a lady to straddle a horse. Also it was before the cog-railroad mounted the Peak, even before the time of the carriage road up the north side of the mountain.
Mr. Henry’s eyes sparkled when he told me it was a wonderful trip—one I should not miss—and though a little difficult coming down, especially for the ladies, he said he enjoyed it immensely. That was quite understandable. Love had come to Mr. Henry wrapped in trouble. Here now for a day at least he was bound by no thongs. Here, with the girl who was the most precious one in the world to him, his spirits could soar—unhampered, up to the clouds.
Under Mr. Henry’s oral guidance, I also made that trip all by my lonesome—that is, without my girl. Later, I went to the top again with THE Girl, and I can tell you there was a difference. We were in love, a maid and a man—intoxicated with the joy that only the first love of the young knows. And the clouds came down to where one could almost reach up and touch them—just as Mr. Henry had said they would.
I have learned, as doubtless Mr. Henry had learned, that the show spots in this old world of ours take on beauty and meaning when you have someone along—preferably THE ONE—to help you enjoy them. It’s truly a situation where two hearts can beat as one. And it’s worth a million to see the shine come into her eyes.
Might say here that it was while on an editorial junket to Colorado Springs—with THE Girl—that I made this great discovery. It was her first trip to the mountains, and the shine was in her eyes—big. I’m glad that memory holds the picture of the girl, who, in all her radiant loveliness, walked by my side all through that week with but one tiny shadow to flit across her faultless blue sky.
And while she had, with justification, came near showing temper one morning, when, in following the crowd, I had innocently led her away from the historic grave of Helen Hunt-Jackson, on the mountain above the Seven Falls, down the gravel slide, thereby ruining a pair of new shoes for her, she was still THE Girl that made all the difference. Compared with some of the other women who took the plunge, her squawk was mild indeed—and most ladylike. The well-dressed women in that day wore high kid shoes and silk stockings.
The gravel slide is—or was—about three hundred feet downslope from the grave, along the mountain at a left turn, where all join hands, stick feet in the gravel, stand erect, pulling first one foot up and then the other to avoid being swamped, while the whole mass slips away to the canyon several hundred feet below. And there you were—right at the trail, with the laborious climb down the seven flights of steps avoided.
The mutilation of those new shoes at a time like that was truly a disconcerting thing to befall the “perfect 34” girl—we had ‘em then—who had only the day before been declared the neatest dressed and most attractive woman in the editorial party. She had form, poise, personality—and a wonderfully good dressmaker. However, before the day was done, she evened the score—and gloried in it.
The Association members held their annual meeting in the parlors of the Alamo Hotel that evening, and through the courtesy of my good friend, Harvey Hyde, of the Holton Signal, I was nominated and elected vice-president. This gesture cost me. Any one of the editorial party could have testified that Mr. Harvey had joyously climbed down off the “water wagon” on his first trip to Oldtown—Colorado City — halfway between Colorado Springs and Manitou. That I was paying for the whisky without participating in the drinking thereof, I cannot deny. But if I should say that he never gave me as much as a smell of the stuff, I would not be telling the truth. By pre-arrangement, Harvey’s wife was sharing her room with my girl, and I wars sharing my room with Harvey—and there was nothing I could do about it. A bargain was a bargain—and neither of us had the faintest notion of welshing.
When the speech-making was getting dangerously close to the vice-president’s turn, I slipped out. Motivated by strictly personal interest, Mr. Harvey followed. And though I did, later, get away with the acknowledged best write-up of the outing, I couldn’t have said one word in that meeting, with the Pike’s Peak Press Club in attendance, for all of Cheyenne mountain, with the famous Seven Falls and the gravel slide thrown in—and THE Girl knew this.
Also, as it turned out, my girl carried off the acknowledged speech-making honors—following some very fuzzy ones. I never could understand why relatively smart people would insist on pushing the ill-equipped fellow out into the open. When the call came Major J. F. Clough, of the Sabetha Republican, president elect—the old piker had just delegated another to do his talking—said, “we must hear from the vice-president; someone please fetch him back in.”
The Major, who, incidentally, in partnership with Theodore J. Wolfley, established the Wetmore Spectator, in 1882, and therefore was a sort of godfather to my paper, looked over to where THE Girl was seated, with Mrs. Hyde and other women including his own daughter, Miss Bay. Then THE Girl raised her 118 pounds up to her full 5-6 height, in her scuffed shoes, saying, mirthfully, “He has gone out with Mr. Hyde. You’ll not see HIM again tonight.”
The applause, started by the ladies—all of whom had scuffed shoes, and instantly taken up by the men, all of whom had gotten from their women a neat and not a gentle telling off—was enough to frighten THE Girl. The shine having already gotten back into her eyes, THE Girl, in associating me as of the moment with Mr. Harvey, was actually trying to cover up for me for running out on them. But the inference, nevertheless, pointed toward Oldtown.
There were some in the party who were not bona fide editors—that had worked transportation through the newspapers. A Wetmore shoe merchant had made a deal with a county paper. The outing was a courtesy gesture of the railroad—principally the Rock Island.
Might say here that the next year—1892—the Association arranged with the Union Pacific for transportation to Salt Lake City, concluding the outing again at Colorado Springs—and it was almost a complete sell-out on the part of the newspapers. We were short ticketed to Grand Island, there to meet the through train carrying a Company representative who would ask us some questions about our papers, and supply us with passes for the round trip. When he came to me, after working pretty well through the cars carrying the “editors,” he laughed and said, “You are the second newspaperman I have found, so far.” I told him he should find at least one more who knew the password. My partner had been coached. Though not present himself, Ewing Herbert, of the Hiawatha World, was elected president. And though a mighty good newspaperman, he did not seem to have’ influence with the railroads. Our Association never got another complimentary outing. But, personally, I remained in good standing with the railroads, and got everything asked for—all told about 250,000 miles of free travel. In addition THE Girl—Miss Myrtle Mercer—had a Missouri Pacific pass, and Moulton DeForest, our proofreader, had one for nearly ten years. Newspapers do not get them so easily now—if at all.
Also, there were five girls in the Colorado Springs editorial party. The secretary, Clyde McManigal, of the Horton Commercial, had written the single editors telling them to bring their girls along—that the Association had arranged to have a chaperon look after them. The chaperon proved to be a grass widow, a newspaper owner in a nearby town—and right off she found herself a man. The fact that he was a married man, a shoe merchant from my home town, by the way, made no difference—not until they got home.
Mr. Henry had come to the Spectator office, bringing copy for a change of his advertisement, and tarried a few minutes to converse with me about our Colorado outing. I showed him the proof of my write-up. He said he would not take time to read it just then, but he marveled at the four fine wood cuts illustrating the Pike’s Peak trip—and marveled some more when I told him they were engraved right there in the office by my brother Sam.
Might add that editor Clough said in his paper, the Sabetha Republican, “The Wetmore Spectator has a genius in the office in the person of the editor’s brother, a wood engraver. Last week it published engravings of scenery about Pike’s Peak equal to any we have ever seen. They are true to nature and finely executed.” He said, further, “We also notice that nearly all the papers gave the Spectator credit for having the best write-up of the excursion.” Think maybe those engravings had influenced some of the decisions.
Might say that Sam became so good at it, that John Stowell, former owner of the Spectator, sought to get him a job with the Government in Washington—and he came very near doing it too. Stowell, an impulsive little Englishman, had the happy thought that as he was making his appeal for the boy direct to the Government, that a print of a ten-dollar bill would be an impressive sample. It was a lifesize masterpiece. Do I need tell you that Sammy’s Uncle Sam informed them that if they didn’t destroy that cut and all prints immediately, somebody would surely get a lasting job? Uncle Sam did, however, compliment Sammy on his work—said it was good, in fact, too good.
Mr Henry also had a few words with Alex Hamel, who, besides being the type-setter, was editor-in-chief during my absence. Henry said, “Ecky, I’ll bet you helped John write that one.” Alex—he was called Ecky by nearly everyone — said truthfully, “No—Myrtle did.” But Ecky had slipped in a few sentences about the authoress of “Ramona,” which bit of history had not appeared to the eye when I viewed the large pile of pebbles marking her grave.
Being the smarter man, Ecky got the credit for writing my best feature stories during our newspaper regime back in the 90’s. But Ecky died in 1899, and I’ve not been able to find a dependable ghost-writer to take his place. However, Ecky did write some really fine feature stories for the Spectator, using the pseudonym, “Xela Lemah” Alex Hamel spelled backwards. And Ecky was a poet, too. The following eight lines appeared, unsigned, in my paper, Sept. 1, 1893. It is one of many of Hamel’s poems that were widely copied by other papers and credited to the Spectator. To fully appreciate it now, the reader would have to know the then generally accepted panacea for bellyache. At that time an epidemic of “summer complaint” was going the rounds. Now, properly signed, this is the only injection of writings by another than myself to appear in this volume.
A Summer Idyl.
Jem. Aker Ginger is my name;
I have a way that’s takin’ —
My seat in summer’s in the lap
Of dear Miss Belle A. Aiken.
And Watt R. Melon is the chap
Who, by schemes of his own makin’,
Secured for me the stand-in with
My darling Belle A. Aiken.
—Xela Lemah.
As against Ecky’s classic eight lines, my own most widely copied writing consisted of only nine simple little words—words well put together, timely, and not wholly my own: “It once rained for forty days and forty nights.” It was a prolonged rainy spring, with farmers kept out of their fields so long as to cause much uneasiness. West E. Wilkenson, of the Seneca Courier, pronounced these nine words the best piece of writing coming from any of his contemporaries in many a day.
Brevity—saying a lot in few words—did it.
I do not mean to brag about this, for the item was largely a quotation, as any good Bible student would know. If I really wanted to brag, I would tell about the four times in one year my writings in the Spectator were selected and reprinted in Arthur Capper’s Topeka Daily Capital—maybe it was J. K. Hudson’s Daily then—as the best article of the week appearing in any of the four hundred newspapers in Kansas. Selecting and reprinting a best article was a weekly feature of the Capital for one year.
I “crowed” a little about it then, and P. L. Burlingame, a school teacher—principal of the Wetmore schools in the late 80’s and lawyer thereafter in partnership with his brother-in-law, M. DeForest, in offices across the hall from the Spectator office—said that I should have been content to let the other fellow “toot my horn.” But the Capital’s readers were not my readers—and I figured nothing was too good for the home folks. Always I write for the home folks.
Alex Hamel’s stories were more academically put together than anything I could write. Ecky was a school teacher. Also he was my very good friend. And it would be ungrateful of me not to acknowledge his able assistance — though his technique was rather too highbrow for my background, and I had to reject many of his literary buildups. Ecky’s writings were clothed in rhetoric and spiced with learned quotations, while I had to get along with bare limpy grammar. But then, in newspaper writing, it is not always academic learning that counts. However, it doesn’t hurt any—if one does not try to make it the whole show.
And moreover, one cannot get too much of it—if one learns at the same time to “carry it like a gentleman.” Firsthand knowledge of the matter one chooses to write about, when presented in an interesting and readable manner, even though devoid of the earmarks of higher education, always scores high.
For example, the late Ed. Howe, “The Sage of Potato Hill,” (his country estate), publisher of Atchison Daily Globe, and writer of numerous magazine articles, and a highly acclaimed novel, “The Story of a Country Town,” once told me that he had never studied grammar a day in his life. Like Mark Twain and Damon Runyan and Charles Dickens, Howe’s education really began when he entered his father’s newspaper office at the age of thirteen years.
Now, since I have brought the name of this successful author into this writing, I would like to tell you a little more about him—and his. Ed. Howe was the father of three noted writers. Jim Howe, now living on a ranch in California, was a top overseas correspondent throughout the first World War. Gene Howe is publisher of the Amarillo (Texas) Daily Globe—and a magazine writer. And Mateel Howe-Farnham wrote a book. Before writing her story, “Rebellion,” Mateel’s father advised her to select characters from real life. And this she did. It was said in Atchison that Mateel made her father the main character in her book; that she was a bit rough in her delineation—and that she painted the picture so well that everyone in Atchison knew without further telling. This may be true to a certain extent — but I hardly think a dutiful daughter would have gone the limit in portraying her father uncharitably. Ed Howe was my friend—and I don’t hold with those rumors. Doubtless, Mateel padded, and built her rebellious character into a personage that did not exist. But her “homey” line made the story. It was a big success. Mateel’s “Rebellion” won the $10,000 Bok prize—and become a best seller.
Mateel was living in New York City, while her father was in Atchison, Kansas—and thus widely separated they could not compare notes. Ed Howe was asked by Mateel’s publishers to write a foreword to the story. For this he got big pay—I believe the amount he received was fifteen hundred dollars for an equal number of words. I think also that the liberality of the publishers was influenced less by the Sage’s fine wording of his contribution than it was by his veiled admission that he had been flailed rather unmercifully by his daughter.
Here, I should maybe pick up a few hanging threads and backstitch a little. My entry into the newspaper field was purely accidental. Being a chum of the junior partner of Clough & Wolfley, who were preparing to launch The Spectator, Theodore Wolfley invited me to stick around — said I might learn something. Mr. Clough, obviously recognizing my need for it, observed “There’s nothing like a newspaper connection to bolster your education.”
Major Clough had brought along from Sabetha his foreman, George Fabrick, to get out the first few issues. Then, after Fabrick had gone back to Sabetha, a printer came over from Falls City—but Will Allen played pool most of the time while here. Allen stayed ten weeks, went home for a visit, and failed to come back. Then the “Devil” took over. It was as simple—and raw—as that.
The Spectator passed through several ownerships — Lawyer F. M. Jeffries, Don Perry, John Stowell, Curt and Marie (Polly) Shuemaker. I worked for all the separate owners—but there was a time between Jeffries and Perry that publication was suspended for over a year. The newspaper business in small towns was not very remunerative in those days. To keep going, the publisher often had to take up side lines, but Jeffries rather overdid the matter—and failed, even then. He made a pretense of keeping up his law practice, taught the Hayden school, walked three miles out and back, and, after a few week’s help from me, tried to do all the mechanical work, with only the help of his inexperienced wife.
The ownership had reverted back to Wolfley, and so remained, camouflaged, through the Perry regime, which also was of short duration. Perry was a good newspaperman — when sober—having conducted the Seneca Courier-Democrat for a number of years. Jake Cober, also of Seneca, was his first printer here.
One evening Don Perry came rushing up to the office—-that is, moving as swiftly as he could make the stairs, in his cups, otherwise very drunk, saying, “They are after me — I want to make you safe.” I had drawn no wages, and the amount due me was $127.00. He grabbed up a piece of yellow scratch paper and penciled a due bill for the amount, and said, “There now, my patient friend, you’re safe—that’s as good as gold,” with emphasis. And the surprising thing is that, though he could not have paid cash for another half-pint of booze, that yellow memento, regarded worthless, was indeed good as gold. But the payment would have fallen on my friend Wolfley—and that might have complicated matters between us. I decided to forget it—and went to Centralia to work for Bill Granger. And The Spectator went into suspension again.
Then, after I had worked as compositor on the Seneca Tribune, (with Wolfley again), the Centralia Journal, the Greenleaf Sentinel, the Atchison Daily Globe, the Atchison Daily Times, and the Kansas City Daily Journal—subbed for Harvey Hyde—I became owner of the Wetmore Spectator, buying it from Polly Shuemaker after Curt Shuemaker’s death, in December, 1890. And my education, so long neglected and retarded by circumstances, had now begun. Let me say here and now that I cherish the memory of Theodore J. Wolfley, from whom I derived, at an impressionable age, the still unshakable conviction that a newspaperman is a pretty good thing to be.
Not aiming to brag, I led the “pack” on the Atchison Daily Times with more type set in given time than any other printer. It was back in the 80’s when everything was handset. On learning that a new daily newspaper was to be launched in Atchison, I wrote to John N. Reynolds asking for a position as compositor. He replied that all cases had been filled. He said he liked the tone of my letter, and maybe there would be an opening later. I went down to Atchison anyway the day before the first issue was to come out. Reynolds said he wished I had applied earlier; that he had been told by a Globe printer—probably Charley Gill or “Doc” Tennal—that I was a swift, printer’s term for a fast type-setter. After a little more conversation, he said, “Come back here tomorrow morning—if any one of the printers fail to show up a 7 o’clock, you shall have his case.” A printer who had the night before celebrated on the prospect of a new job, came in five minutes after I had gone to work.
And while I made more money than ever before, setting bravier type—(8-point now) at 30 cents a thousand ems, had I known in advance the low character the Times proved to be, I think I should have let that disappointed celebrant have his case. Conducting his paper on something like iconoclastic order; not exactly image smashing, but unquestionably an attacker of shams—I am now thinking of “Bran’s Iconoclast,” published at Waco, Texas, about that time — Reynolds dug deeply into the private lives of Atchison’s truly great.
A prominent Atchison banker was reportedly out gunning for the editor. The Times office was in a large second floor room on the south side of Commercial street. An open stairway, the only entrance to the printing office, came up from below in the rear of the building. Reynolds, facing the stairway, always with a six-shooter tucked in his belt, worked at a flat-top desk halfway between the head of the stairs and the printers’ cases against the windows in the front end. It was watchful waiting for the eight printers.
Then one day it happened. When the banker’s head showed above the level of the floor, every printer made a break for cover—that is, got quickly out of range of possible feudal bullets. The banker did not come up with his hands in the air. Nor did Reynolds lay aside his gun, as he had done a few days before while discussing matters with a woman. But then, it was said, the woman had no grievance with the editor. She merely wanted to know how he had found out so much about her man and the other woman — things that would be helpful in the matter of obtaining a divorce. And so far as we—the printers — were to know, the banker might also have had no grievance with the editor. It was apparently only a business discussion.
As an indication of the stakes Reynolds was playing for, I cite this case. A tired, overworked, Commercial street business man—and family man—was reportedly seen crossing the river bridge with another man’s wife. The incident rated only five lines. Somehow the tired merchant got hold of a first copy of the afternoon paper—and it was said, paid $500 to have the objectionable five lines lifted before the edition was printed. And I still think Reynolds had engineered matters so that the overworked merchant could have a look-see in plenty of time to act.
I had set that five line item. But I balked, later, when I got a “take” attacking one of Atchison’s foremost professional men, involving a woman, who, of all women, in her most respectable churchy connection, should have been above reproach. I gave that “take” and my “string”—type set that morning—to a printer whose case was next to mine; and called for my time.
Nannie Reynolds, the publisher’s pretty 18-year-old daughter—she was really pretty—gave me a statement of the amount due me. Ordinarily, it would have been the foreman’s place to attend to this matter, but, unfortunately, he was in jail—said to have been put there because of his position on the paper, but more likely for a night’s celebration. Oldtime printers thought they had to go on periodical “busts” to ward off lead poisoning caused from handling so much type. And, incidentally, I had declined to take the foreman’s place—that is, the foremanship of the Times, while the ranking man was confined in the City bastile.
I took the statement Nannie had given me down stairs to Scott Hall, who was to be the cashier of a new bank not yet formally opened, in that building—but he had been paying the paper bills. Scott said he had paid out all he was going to until more definite arrangements could be made. I went back to Reynolds. He grabbed up a full blank newspaper sheet and wrote in six-inch letters diagonally across from corner to corner: “Pay this man $17.65.” Scott Hall reluctantly went into the vault and brought out the money. He said, “This IS THE LAST. You can count yourself lucky in getting away now.”
I learned later that the tall Irishman who so bravely took my “string,” did not profit by it. In fact, there were no more payments. And, with the publisher in the penitentiary and a portion of his printing plant in the Missouri river, the Times also was no more. Atchison’s enraged “good” people did not overlook any bets. Reynolds was caught in a Federal net, charged with irregularities while president of a defunct Atchison Live Stock Insurance Company.
Reynold’s wife died a few months after he was taken to Leavenworth. He was permitted to come home for the funeral, under guard, of course. Nannie had neither brother nor sister. Thus, she was now left entirely alone. It is always a very sad thing for a beautiful young girl to be left out in a cold world alone.
While in the pen, Reynolds wrote a book, “The Kansas Hell.” In fact, he wrote two books—the other one, “Twin Hells.” He had been in the pen in another state—Iowa, I believe. After his release from the Kansas penitentiary, John N. Reynolds drove into Wetmore with four large gray horses hitched to a spring wagon, carrying his books and four male gospel singers. He made a stand in front of the old Wetmore House, and sold his books. He spotted me in the crowd, nodded a greeting, and later gave me a hearty handshake—and a copy of his Kansas Hell.
Like Howe, and Runyan, and Twain—all good newspapermen—my formal schooling was negligible. I did not work up to the big school in Wetmore, on the hilltop. Also, I did not graduate. I do do not know if I got as high as the eighth grade, or even far along in the grammar school. The one-room, one-teacher school down town had no grades. But I do know I wouldn’t study my grammar. And I now know too that this was one regrettable mistake.
If it had not been for the ravenous grasshoppers — 1874 — and other calamitous visitations upon us in those pioneer days it might not have been so, but the fact is, I quit school at the age of fourteen to help my father earn money to take care of his family while he himself was industriously engaged in bringing in new recruits for the school. The tenth one was the only girl—and to be brought up with a bunch of “roughneck” boys, she was a pretty good kid. And smart too. She studied her grammar in the first school house on the hilltop.
Nannie and my brother Theodore are, besides myself, all there are left of the once big family. They are, and have been for forty-five years, living in Fresno, California — now at 1005 Ferger avenue. Theodore was the seventh son, but contrary to ancient superstition, he has displayed no supernatural talent. He is now, and has been for forty years, in the employ of the Southern Pacific railroad, at Fresno. Theodore was the last born of twins. Willie, the first born—and sixth in line—died when about a year old. And Joseph, my youngest brother, lived only nine months.
Me, I was just a darned good printer—a “swift,” if you please—trying, lamely, to fill an outsize editorial chair. And it was Myrtle Mercer—later my wife—who, as compositor, took the kinks out of my grammar. The hard and fast printer’s rule to “follow copy if it goes out the window,” was something to be ignored in my office. And though she has been dead now since 1925, that ever helpful girl still is, in a manner, taking the kinks out of my grammar—I hope. The pain of shop-acquired grammar is that one never knows for sure just how faulty his English might be.
Getting back to the dominating character of this story, during that morning call at The Spectator office, Mr. Henry stepped over to where The Girl was setting type, saying, “I should know, Miss Myrtle, without asking that you must have enjoyed the Peak trip.” Their eyes sparkled as they talked it over. Though months and years had passed since the day he made the trip with the Handley girl, Mr. Henry was still feeling the exhilaration of it.
The Spectator office was over the W. H. Osborn shoe store on a corner across the street from the DeForest mercantile corner. Hardly had Mr. Henry gotten back to his store when Myrtle, looking out the window, exclaimed, “My gosh—the chaperon! Look out below!” Seeing the chaperon heading for the shoe store, caused Myrtle to say to me, “It looks as if some of you brilliant fraters of Faber could have foreseen the damage to be done by that foolhardy plunge down the gravel slide.” She had picked up the term, “fraters of Faber,” in the parlors of the Alamo hotel when the party was welcomed by Mayor Sprague, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Pike’s Peak Press Club.
The shoe merchant’s wife had taken care of the store during his absence, and was still on duty. Somehow, during the hour’s visit, the merchant slipped a pair of new shoes to the chaperon—as was quite proper, since he had led her down that gravel slide. But his wife seemingly was not an understanding woman. She followed the chaperon to the railroad station, and recovered the shoes. No blows, no hair pulling—not at the depot, anyway.
Another time, while ostensibly vacationing in Colorado—Colorado again, I’m sure it was—Mr. Henry had a couple of fine flannel shirts washed by a Chinese laundry-man in Grass Valley, California, and they had shrunk so badly that he put them back in stock in his store. I’m positive he told me they were laundered in Grass Valley. Those fine shirts were to be taken on another outing in Colorado, and one of them got up Pike’s Peak, too—but those shirts did not find their way to Grass Valley this time. I know. I wore them.
Years after that sad trip to Omaha, and after he had thrown his fortunes in with the younger set, Mr. Henry married a mighty fine Wetmore girl, a school teacher—Miss Anna Gill. The marriage license gave their ages as over 21, which was correct as far as it went. A closer tab would have revealed his age as being somewhere around 54, and hers a full decade above the stated figure. This romance also “hung fire” for several years. In fact, it was hard to tell just when it began.
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.
SMALLPOX PESTILENCE
Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
Don’t be frightened. On paper, smallpox is not contagious. That is, usually it isn’t. But I shall cite one case where it might have been. Had you been living here in Wetmore fifty years ago, it would have been about a hundred to one chance that you would have backed away from the mere mention of smallpox.
Some five hundred others did just that.
It was my first and only experience with the loathsome disease. Also it was the first — and last — case of smallpox the town ever had. There were among us, however, several sorry looking walking testimonials of what that pestilence could do to one’s face. Elva Kenoyer, in her twenties, unattached and so remaining to the end, was horribly pitted. E. S. Frager, the furniture dealer, got his pits elsewhere. Eli Swerdfeger, a retired farmer, had ’ em all over his face, and deep too. And though he was at that time making his living by doing odd jobs about town, he wouldn’t for love or money attend me. Said he had his family to consider.
And Eugene Dorcas, living in the country at the time — later in Wetmore—had smallpox so badly that the soles of his feet had come off like a rattlesnake sheds its skin. But, at that, he had nothing on me.
Dr. J. W. Graham, the old family physician, was called in—and, as a mark of courtesy to me, or perhaps more correctly as a beginning for launching his son just out of medical school on a like career, brought Dr. Guy S. Graham along with him. And, in a manner, it was Guy’s first professional case. They found that I was running a temperature of 105, and mighty sick, but no signs or even thought of smallpox—yet. The young doctor remained with me after the old doctor had gone to the drugstore to get a prescription filled. He sat on the edge of my bed, just visiting.
At that time, there was a lot of smallpox in Kansas City, and I had been there about ten days before with a mixed carload of hogs and cattle — owned in partnership with my brother Theodore—from my Bancroft farm. Also, I had occupied a seat in the railroad coach coming home, with George Fundis. He spoke of the prevalence of smallpox in Kansas City, and his fear of contracting it—and then proceeded to have his attack almost at once on getting back to his home in Centralia. He might have been a carrier. George was a stockbuyer—but before this time, he owned and operated a general store at Ontario.
On the following morning after the Drs. Graham had visited me, I noticed red spots deep under the skin in the palms of my hands. They worried me. I sent word to Dr. J. W. Graham appraising him of my fears, and asked him to not come back. And the young doctor rushed out immediately and buried his clothes. However, the old doctor was not frightened — so he said. But he called up the County Health Officer and scared the “puddin’ ” out of him.
I had Dr. Graham send for Dr. Charley Howe, of Atchison, known as “The Smallpox Doctor,” on account of his having stamped out an epidemic at Lenora with his vinegar treatment, or rather his vinegar preventive.
Dr. Howe first had a talk with Dr. Graham, and decided I did not have it. He came to see me without putting on his rubber suit. On first entering the room, however, he said, “You don’t need to tell me anything, you’ve got it, I can smell it—but I thought you were so scared of catching it, that you would never get it.”
A few weeks before this I had met Dr. Howe at the depot in Wetmore, while on his way to Centralia to see a man whom the local doctor believed might be coming down with smallpox. I had known Charley Howe for a long time — had worked with him on his brother Ed’s Daily Globe in Atchison, and worked for Charley on his Greenleaf newspaper before he was a doctor. When he stepped off the train to tell me about his findings, I hung back a little from the start, but when he said the fellow was broken out, I backed still farther away from him before he had got around to saying it was not smallpox. Dr. Howe laughed about this, and said, “Oh, you’ll never get it.”
The doctor asked me if I had a shotgun? I told him Dad had one in the kitchen. He said, “You better have it brought in here. If the people try to force you away to a pest house, stand them off with it. To move you now would mean almost sure death.” Dr. Howe told my sister Nannie — she had been attending me up to this time, and thought she was in for it too—that she could continue waiting on me, without risk, if she would ring off my bed with chairs”, come into the room as little as possible, not touch dishes or anything else handled by me, without rubber gloves—and take the vinegar preventive, she would be safe. He said the danger was not so much with the first fever stage, as later.
The doctor said I should eat no solids; nothing but soft food for eight days— “ and then,” he laughed, “you’ll not care to eat solids or anything else, for awhile.” That’s when the smallpox patient erupts internally. We settled on cream of wheat, and my sister, not getting the short term well fixed in mind, kept me on that one diet for forty-two days—long after I was well enough to get out. The County Health Officer was afraid to come down from Seneca to release me. He took plenty of time, and then without ever seeing me, issued an order for my release, with a “guess so” attachment.
My sister Nannie, at seventeen, was rather plump — not bulky fat—but after the vinegar treatment she came out as slim as a race horse, and has been trim ever since. An awful lot of cider vinegar —it had to be cider vinegar — was consumed in Wetmore that winter. I believe the vinegar produced an acid blood.
On the first afternoon when the fever was making me pretty stupid, I had spent maybe a half hour sitting by the stove in Bud Means’ store, below the printing office. Near by, there was a water bucket, with dipper, for everybody’s use. I did not drink at the public bucket that day — but when it became known that I had a high fever at that very time, and was now down with smallpox, it was but natural for Bud to imagine that I had tried to cool my fever with several trips to his water bucket. And there was no imagination about the quaff he himself had taken from that dipper, after I had left. Bud told me after I had gotten out—not right away, you can bet your life—that it almost made him sick.
With Elva’s and Eli’s pockmarked faces constantly in mind, I laid awake nights to make sure that I would not, in my sleep, scratch my face, or misplace the slipperyelm poultice, done in cheesecloth, in which my face was swathed. And then, even then, it was awful, a mass of apparently disfigurating open pustules, with face redder than a spanked baby.
After my face had come back to somewhere near normal, I sent my neighbor, Ed Reitzel, up to B. O. Bass’ barber shop to buy—not borrow—a razor and mug, aiming to use them only once. Then, before I had started on that oh-so-awful looking face, I began to wonder if maybe Byron had not sent me his “deadman’s” razor, and I had to send Ed back to make sure about that. I knew that Byron, when telling one of his funny barbershop stories, was liable to do and say things off key. One time he poured nearly a whole bottle of hairoil on my head—which I had not ordered, and didn’t want—while he was looking away from his work, and laughing at his own funny story. Then I had to have a shampoo before I could go to “protracted” meeting that night.
Fixed up with Byron’s razor, I looked a little more like myself, and was now ready to hold an appointment with my girl, who was also the manager of my newspaper business, with the alternate help of Herb Wait and Jim Harvey Hyde, of the Centralia Journal. She had secured for me from General Passenger Agent Barker in St. Louis a pass over the MK&T railroad, to Galveston. George Cawood had sent me word not to show up at his store for awhile after I would get out, and I knew that all the town people were feeling the same way about me. Hence the trip to the gulf.
As instructed, Myrtle met me at the front gate of her home, handed me my credentials and the money she had gotten for me, stood off a reasonable distance, also as per instructions, and said, “You look like the devil.” The cold had enhanced the “splendor” of the blemishes on my face. If she could have said further, “But I still love you in the same old way,” it would have been a more cheerful sendoff for the long journey ahead of me.
But Myrtle was too busy trying to tell me how she had managed my business. She didn’t know it, but she herself had, in prospect, a substantial interest in the printery. Before leaving the office on that dreadful day when my fever was at high pitch—I mean actual temperature—I deposited in my desk a check written in her favor, with no ifs or ands attached, for an amount which would have come near bankrupting me as of the moment—even as I have now, since I am no longer a family man, set aside the residue of my possessions, if any, in favor of the sister who had so bravely, at the risk of her face and figure, stood by me through that smallpox ordeal.
After getting settled in bed that first night, I told my sister about the check in my desk, and also told her that I wanted her to see that it be paid, if, and when, it would appear appropriate to do so. I was remembering at the time the case of Myran Ash and Ella Wolverton, south of town. Ella had waited on him in his last sickness, and in the meantime picked up Myran’s check for $1,000. His relatives tried, but failed, to prevent her from cashing the check.
When I boarded the train at Wetmore that same day, Charley Fletcher, the conductor, coming down the aisle gathering tickets, stopped stock-still, and backed up a few steps, when he saw me. He wouldn’t touch my Mo. Pacific pass until I had explained that it had been in the office all the time during my sickness.
After first calling on my doctor, I stopped in Atchison long enough to buy a suit of clothes and other needed articles. I had left home wearing an old suit, “borrowed” from Ed Murray. On leaving the clothing store I met, or came near meeting, Mr. Redford, bookkeeper at the Green-leaf-Baker grain elevator, whom I knew quite well, having shipped grain to the firm. Taking to the street, he shied around me, but he had the decency to laugh about it—and told me that I would see Frank Crowell, of the firm, at Galveston, if I were going that way. The Kansas Grain Dealers Association was to hold a meeting in Galveston two days hence.
On my way to a barbershop down the street, I had a chat with my doctor again. He was standing on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps leading up to his office, grinning. He said, “Well, your conductor came along while I was standing here, and I asked him what did he mean by bringing that smallpox patient down from Wetmore?” Dr. Howe laughed, and said, “You know, I thought that poor fellow was going to collapse on the sidewalk, and I had to tell him quickly that you couldn’t give it to anyone if you would try.”
There was one small spot on my jaw that had not properly healed, and I had asked the doctor earlier, in the office, if he thought it might cause the barber to ask questions? He said, “No, no—just go in and say nothing.” But after we had talked awhile on the sidewalk, he said, “You better hunt a fire before you go to the barbershop. Your face is as spotted as a leopard.”
At Galveston, I met Mrs. Poynter—she was our Bancroft correspondent—with several of the grainmen’s wives. Usually very sociable, she acted as if she were looking for a chance to run, and I backed out of a rather embarrassing position. Evidently not knowing of my smallpox siege, Secretary E. J. Smiley gave me a cordial ham, even laughed as if he were remembering the illegal grain contract which he and my local competitor had virtually forced upon me, “for benefit of the Association” — a similar one of like illegality, which had, reputedly, within a few weeks therefrom, got someone a 30-day jail sentence at Salina. Other acquaintances in the grain dealers party acted as if they could get along very well without me—and I troubled them no more.
Back home, the people gradually stopped their shying, and in the week I waited for the County Health Officer’s instructions for fumigating the house, I talked matters over with the family. For the peace of mind of our town people, it was decided that everything in the smallpox house should be burned—and my parents and my sister would go to Fresno, California, where my brothers Dave and Frank were in business.
My Aunt Nancy, with her husband, Bill Porter, drove in from their Wolfley creek home, and had dinner with the folks the day I was to start the fires. Bill Porter said it would be rank foolishness for us to burn the stuff. I said, “All right, Bill; drive by this afternoon and I’ll load your wagon.” He said, quickly, “Don’t want any of the things — on account of our neighbors.”
Several years later, the Porter family all had smallpox—and Bill, the elder, died of it. And Bill, the second — there is a third Bill Porter, and a fourth Bill Porter now — tells me that not for six months thereafter did they have callers. Had I loaded his wagon that day of my fire, the loss of my uncle would have made it regrettable—but I don’t think that I would have allowed him to cart away anything, even had he accepted my offer.
Jessie Bryant’s three-months old daughter, Violet, was first in the Porter family to have it, and she was thought to have contracted the disease in a rather peculiar way. Jessie was holding the baby on her lap as she read a letter from her husband, Lon Bryant, who was working in Nebraska, saying he would have to move from the place he was staying, on account of the people in the home having smallpox.
The burning of the things was mostly done that afternoon, but the fumigation would carry over into the next day. To avoid an extra scrubbing of myself, with change of clothing twice, I planned to stay that night in the house, and held back one bed and some bedding. It was in the same room I had occupied, and was first to be fumigated. It would get another dose of brimstone the next day, after the room would be cleared. I opened all windows and one outer door, but the room did not air out readily. The brimstone had penetrated the bed covers so as to make them squeak under touch, and I could hardly get my breath in the room. It was almost dark, and quite cold. I could not sit by an open window, through the night. Then I thought of a roll of linoleum in the kitchen. I put one end of the rolled linoleum in the bed and stuck the other end out the window. With the coat I had worn that day wrapped around my neck, I got in bed, covered up head and foot, stuck my face in the funnel, chinked around with the old coat, and got through the night very well—with little sleep, however.
Our close neighbors did not show undue fright. In fact, they volunteered assistance while the home was under quarantine—but they had the good sense to limit their visits to the middle of the road in front of the house. My brother Sam got out before the red flag was posted, and took refuge in his mobile photo gallery. My father got caught, with my mother, in the kitchen—and remained there and in a connecting bedroom until permitted by the proper authorities to go to his shoeshop. And there, save for one lone kid, he had no callers, for the duration—but, with the help of this boy runner he kept the supply line open to the quarantined house. Louie Gibbons, half-brother of “Spike” Wilson, our old Spectator’s celebrated “Devil,” after spending forty years in Minneapolis, Minnesota, got the urge to see what Wetmore and Holton looks like now—and, after flying to Kansas City, dropped in here for a day recently. When he found out who I was, and I learned who he was, he said, “You know, I used to carry groceries over to your home in the east part of town when you had smallpox.”
Oldtimers who have often heard the expression, applied to persons of dubious ways and stupendous blunders, should not miss the climax in this last paragraph. After I had cleaned myself up with doubly strong solution of corrosive sublimate — which, by the way, salivated me — I called on our neighbors, Don and Cass Rising. Don had been choreboy for the folks while holed up. My face was not pitted, and Don said that I must have had smallpox very lightly, or maybe not at all. I told him I had protected my face because I figured that it would be about all I would have left after the expense of the thing—but if he would send his wife out of the room, I would show him. My hips, and even farther back all the way round, were badly pitted — still very red, almost raw. When I showed him, Don yelled, “Cass, Cass—come in here!” I started to pull my pants up, but he grabbed hold of my garment, saying, “No, no — don’t!” Then he shoved my trousers down even farther than I had dropped them.
And the lady came in.
CORRECT VISION
Little Donna Cole was whimpering in my wife’s arms as Myrtle was carrying her niece to the child’s home after nightfall, with a half-full moon lighting the way. Myrtle said, “Oh, Donna, you must not cry—don’t you see the pretty moon?” Donna stopped her whimpering and after a moment, said, “I can see half of it, Aunt Myrtle.”
GRAPES — RIPENED ON FRIENDSHIP’S VINE
Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
In the preceding article I mentioned an illegal contract literally shoved down my throat. The purpose of this article is to shed further light on that incident—and to show how it got me pulled into court, as star witness. And then too, as a whole, the article gives a “bird’s eye” view of a small town pulling for the good of the town—according to selfish individual tastes.
There is no malice in this writing, no sore spots. But there are some blunt facts. To leave them out, or gloss over the bluntness, would destroy the comedy — then the writing would have no point. There are some “humdinger” situations in it—and I don’t aim to lose them. But, believe me, there is no chip on my shoulder. When one approaches the cross-roads where he can go no farther, when his interests are all centered around the stark grim business of clinging to life, he wants nothing so much as tranquil waters on which to drift leisurely down the remaining days of his existence. I repeat, this article is not meant to be critical.
Starting out with the grain trade in Wetmore, I will say Michael Worthy had been a shipper before I got into the business. He owned and operated a small grain elevator connected with the flour mill originally built by Merritt & Gettys, and later owned by Doug Bailey, G. A. Russell, and Littleton M. Wells, on the south side of the railroad. After the mill and elevator were destroyed by fire in the eighties, Mr. Worthy built a small combined crib and grain house, with a long high driveway, on the location of the present Continental Grain Company’s elevator, west of the depot, north of the tracks. There had been a minor accident on that high driveway, and Mr. Worthy had abandoned use of it. This reduced him to the status of a track buyer.
In the meantime I had bought the Grant Means corn crib—capacity ten thousand bushels—on the north side of the tracks, east of the depot, and filled it with ear-corn, for speculation. When I moved that corn, I saved some money by shipping it myself. And that’s how I got into the grain business, as a side line, in competition with Mr. Worthy.
About this time, the Kansas Grain Dealers Association was born. The Association did not recognize track buyers. In fact, its members fought them whenever they came in competition with the elevators. Just how my competitor, with his inoperative dump, got into the Association in the first place was, of course, his own business. I didn’t care to join the Association—probably couldn’t have got in anyway, as I had no blind dump.
But I was shipping to a house in Atchison that had been forced into the Association to hold its business. I think Mr. Baker had come in only on one foot, however. Anyway, he was sending me sealed bids, and buying my corn against an Association rule which said he must not do that. It took Mr. Worthy nigh onto two years to find this out. And then, of course, it was his duty to report the matter to the Association.
I had a friend in the Mo. Pacific Agent, and whenever I would bill out a car of corn, Ed Murray would give me the waybill which ordinarily would have been placed in a box by the door on the outside of the depot for the trainman to pick up along with the car. I watched for trains, and in event the car had not been taken out, I would put the waybill in the box after I was sure Michael would not snoop.
Mr. Worthy was a devout Methodist, a religiously just man who would not knowingly do a wrong—a wrong according to his lights. He attended prayer meeting every Thursday night. His home was a half mile south of town. On a Thursday I had two loaded cars on track. That Michael had something unusual on his mind this day there could be no doubt. He had stopped by to chat a bit with me while the cars were being loaded. He handled coal in connection with his lumber business, owned coal-bins close by, and had the grace to putter around them a bit before leaving the scene. I hung around on the fringe of the depot that night until Mr. Worthy drove by, as always, in his one-horse buggy, with lantern hanging on the dashboard. I allowed time for him to drive to his home, and a little extra—then dropped my waybills in the box. And that was the night when I should have stood vigil until the wee hours.
Michael snooped. Two A. M.
On the fifth morning after that shipment I got a telegram from Atchison telling me, much as a friend might ask a criminal to come in and give himself up, to go to the Josephine hotel in Holton that day and join the Grain Dealers Association.
Also, there was a circus billed for Holton that day.
I found Michael Worthy and Secretary E. J. Smiley at the hotel waiting for me. There was much stir about the hotel, as if a general meeting was in progress. Mr. Smiley told me that he and Mr. Worthy had a tentative contract drafted, and that I might take my girl to the circus—then I was to drop by the hotel and sign up for membership in the Association, which would cost me $12 a year, in quarterly payments. I was going to take my girl to the circus anyway. Harvey Lynn and Anna Bates, and Myrtle Mercer, were in the hotel parlor waiting for me. We had planned this even before I got that telegram. I had complimentary tickets, and we could not afford to miss the circus to parley over a contract. We four circus lovers had gone to Holton with a livery team, in an open spring wagon.
After the circus, Mr. Smiley asked me if I had any objections to the contract? I told him that inasmuch as I was being pushed in with scant knowledge of what it was all about, and that in deference to my friends in Atchison who were urging me to get in PDQ, that I would sign on the dotted line—and trust to luck. It seemed to be Mr. Worthy’s field day, and he would have had his own way, anyhow. It looked as if it might rain, and I did not want to waste time quibbling over the matter. If need be, I would gladly forego shipping altogether for the life of the contract—which was six months, with renewal privilege — rather than get my friends in trouble.
When I had signed the paper, Mr. Smiley shook his head, negatively, grinned, and said in undertone so that Michael couldn’t hear, “He’ll not want to renew it.” I pondered this for many days, and don’t know that I ever did hit upon the right solution. There certainly was nothing in the contract to alert me on that point. Had Mr. Smiley known what I had decided to do in the matter before I got home that day, he would have been justified in making that prediction.
Well, it rained. It rained “pitchforks.” And, in that open wagon, there were two mighty sloppy girls, and as many sloppy boys—and, to make matters worse, the creek was over the Netawaka bridge. Held up here, I took the opportunity to scrutinize the $3.00 package I had so recently purchased, practically “sight unseen,” and see what they had really done to me.
The contract gave Mr. Worthy two-thirds of the business, and I was to have the other third. If either of us got more than the allotted proportion, he must pay the other one cent a bushel for the excess. We would buy now at a price supplied us from day to day by an anonymous somebody having no permanent address. No matter where located, any member receiving house that we might choose, would confirm our sales. It was September, and the old corn was about all gone. Mr. Worthy had 1200 bushels contracted from Herb Wessel, and I had 3000 bushels coming in from Charley Hannah. By agreement, these lots were not to be counted on the contract.
Harvey Lynn was Assistant Cashier of the Wetmore State Bank, and should have been able to decipher any funny business—but he could see no just reason why Mr. Worthy should be given twice as much as me. Certainly not on account of that old dump.
Anna Bates said, “Why, that old dump, nobody would risk their horses on that rickety high driveway. I’ve heard lots of farmers say they wouldn’t.” Mr. and Mrs. O. Bates were operating the north side restaurant, and as waitress Anna had a good opportunity to hear the corn haulers express themselves.
Myrtle Mercer said, “I know what I’d do. You could let Mr. Worthy have it all, and then go down to his lumber office once a month, and collect. That would give you a third interest in his grain business—just for grapes. That ought to hold him.”
Harvey said, “John, I believe Myrtle’s got something there. You can’t fight with your hands tied.”
“But,” I said, “that clause saying I must buy everything offered, at a designated price, will keep my hands tied.”
Myrtle said, “Think, think, think! Let’s pray that there shall be a way around that. It’s not fair to let Mr. Worthy do all the thinking. It’s only for corn shipped. And you always fill your cribs every winter anyway.”
She was all for the grapes.
As of the moment, Myrtle’s estimate of one-third was correct — but, like a struggling corporation doubling its capital with the induction of new blood, our new set-up raised the buyer’s margin from one cent to two cents a bushel; thus reducing the little man’s share to one-sixth of the gross, with all the expense of handling and shipper’s losses falling on the promoter. And the losses—mostly on account of wet snow-ridden corn being carelessly scooped off the ground into the sheller—were unusually heavy that winter. But Michael, being the man he was, took his medicine without a whimper.
Happily, there was a way around it. An honorable way. Michael said as much himself. Actually, I did not ship one car of corn in the whole six months. But I did spring the market on nearly all the 10,000 bushels of ear-corn cribbed that winter. My crib was 16-foot tall on the high side, with doors or openings well up toward the top, and it took more to get the farmers to bring it to me in the ear. The extra money paid for the shoveling was very generously interpreted by Mr. Worthy as no violation of our contract.
Though I was the loser, a funny incident fits in here. I was bothered some by petty stealing, but never a loss of any consequence. John Irving, commonly called “Nigger John,” head of the only colored family ever living in Wet-more—and, except John, a right good colored family it was — thought it a huge joke on me. He laughed “fit to kill” when he told me that he had climbed up to one of those high doors one night about 10 o’clock, and then dropped down on the inside to the corn, and was filling his sack, “when I gets me some company.” He said a white man, (naming him) with sack in readiness, had dropped down on top of him. He laughed, “That white man, he was sure scared most to def.” Nigger John also told me that he and our deputy town marshal had bumped heads in my corn crib one dark night. “But that’s eber time,” he lied. And John was not what you might call a really bad Nigger. Other men who helped themselves to my corn were not “white” enough to tell me about it.
Also, someone had whittled out a hand-opening, enlarged the crack between two boards on the back side of the crib—with a loss of two or three bushels of corn. When I went down one evening about dusk to close the crib, I saw a very fine old lady—a grandmother—filling her apron with my corn. I sneaked away, praying that she had not seen me.
And again, I had given permission to a crippled man to gather up some shattered corn around the sheller after the day’s run. When I went down late in the evening to close the crib, I saw the man and his wife putting ear-corn in a sack. I didn’t want to humiliate them, so I walked unobserved around to the opposite side of the crib, and made a lot of racket. The sacks contained no ear-corn when I got around to the sheller—and I knew then that they would always be my friends.
Eighty-three dollars was the largest monthly check paid me on that lop-sided contract. With the sixth and last month’s collection in hand, I asked Mr. Worthy if he wished to renew the contract?
“Lord no,” he said, throwing up his hands. “The nice thing about this track buying is, when a fellow knows he’s licked, he can shoulder his scoop-shovel, go home and sleep soundly.”
But it was not so tough on Mr. Worthy as one might think. We had been buying on a one-cent margin. Now we — or more properly he — were working on a two-cent margin, and, barring shipping expenses and losses, he would still be making a cent profit on the third on which he would have to pay me one cent a bushel. It was just galling him — that’s all. He had the old-fashioned notion that one should labor for his money.
Mr. Worthy told me later that he had made the discovery of my billing at two o’clock that night after he had gone home from church. He laughed, saying he had made several futile nocturnal visits to that box before this time. It was luck more than perseverance that had rewarded him at that late hour. A freight train that would have picked up the loads, had it not already been loaded to capacity, passed through at 11 o’clock. Also, he said he had believed for awhile that I was selling my corn on the Kansas City market—and that when I would get enough of this that I would quit. Except on a sustained rising market, the dealer shipping to Kansas City could not compete successfully with the dealer who sold to the receiving houses, on advance bids. And that is how the Association was eliminating the track buyers.
I could not realize at first what tremendous advantage this lop-sided contract would give me. On the face of the contract—no. Decidedly the opposite. Nor was it out in the open for Michael to see. In fact, it was by way of developments mothered by that contract. The Association maintained a weighmaster at all member receiving houses, who would check on member-shipper’s receipts, at 35 cents a car, if desired; but it was not obligatory. Having had some rather unsatisfactory treatment from other houses, I had now found a place where I could depend on getting honest weights. I wrote F. M. Baker, telling him that while I hardly knew yet why the urgency, I had paid for a membership in the Association; and, as I had always had satisfactory weights from his firm, I desired him to disregard the Association weighmaster.
He wrote me, saying he deeply appreciated my statement of confidence in him; that he had been accused of all manner of uncomplimentary things—stated much stronger—and that if he could ever do me a favor, he would do it gladly. Thus was laid the foundation for a real helpful friendship—but, handicapped by that lop-sided contract, it did not come into being for another six months.
On the q~t, we belonged to the same poker club.
When I got a free hand, I also got the corn. We received bids from the purchasing houses every morning, good until 9:30 a.m. Corn bought after this time would be subject to the fluctuations of the day’s market, with a new bid the next morning. Though I hardly know how it got started, it became a fixed routine for the firm’s telegraph operator and buyer, George Wolf—now Executive Vice President of the Exchange National Bank, in Atchison—to call me up after the close of the market. If I had bought corn that day on the basis of the morning bid, and it had dropped a cent, or any amount, he would book it at the morning bid. And if it had gone up he would tell me to hold it for developments the next day. Sometimes the market would go up day after day, and I would not sell until there was a break; and then I would get the last top bid.
That was grapes—ripened on friendship’s vine.
I spent a pleasant hour with George Wolf in his private corner of the Exchange National, three years ago. We discussed old times. I believe George would now vouch for all I am saying here.
I went down to Atchison one afternoon, when corn had dropped a half cent. I had 3,000 bushels that I had bought from Jim Smith, and 10,000 bushels of the Ham Lynn corn which I had agreed to ship for his account, at $5 a car. The corn was several years old, and a portion of the big crib had been unroofed for one whole summer. The grade was doubtful. I did not want to buy it outright. There was a car shortage, too, and I wanted the shipment to take care of the grades as well as penalties, if any, in case the shipment was not completed within the 10-day time limit. Mr. Baker said he would take my 3,000 bushels at the morning bid, and Mr. Lynn’s 10,000 bushels at the present market (one-half cent less) if he would let it go at that. And in that case he would give me credit for the half cent, amounting to $50. He said, rather gruffly, “We don’t owe the farmer anything. There’s the phone. See what you can do with him.” Mr. Lynn accepted the new offer. And he was mighty glad that he did. By the time I got around to telling him all about the deal, corn had dropped several cents. If it had gone up, I don’t believe I would have ever told him. The Lynn shipment totaled 13,000 bushels, with only one car off grade.
I used to take an occasional flyer on the Board of Trade—mostly, I believe, before my good Christian friend, Albert Zabel, told me that it was gambling. I had 7,000 bushels of corn cribbed, and Albert had 3,000 bushels cribbed on the same lots, which he wanted me to sell. Corn was cheap then, and getting lower as the new crop promised a good yield. A good general rain the night before had spurred our desire to sell at once. My top bid that morning was 17 cents.
Ed Murray, agent at the depot, showed me a wire from the Orthwine people in East St. Louis, bidding Mike Worthy 18% cents. I had shipped some corn to the Orthwines. I wired them, offering 10,000 bushels at 18 3/4 cents, same as their bid to Mr. Worthy. Their reply was slow in coming, and I may say that when it did come, the market was off nearly five cents.
I had told Albert that evidently the Orthwine people were waiting for the market to open—and that I was going to sell mine on the Board, and asked him if I should include his in my sale? He studied a moment, then said, “That would be gambling, wouldn’t it?”
I said, “No—not when we have the corn to fill the contract. This will be protection against further loss. We gambled, Albert, when we bought the corn at the ridiculously low price of eleven to sixteen cents a bushel.”
Albert said, “I don’t know about that. If it wasn’t for them weevil in the corn, I would hold it over until next year.” We had previously discussed this, and decided that it would not be advisable to hold it over. He finally said, “No, I’ll not go in with you. I never gamble.” And just think of it, the fellow was buying and shipping hogs—continuing in the business until his finances were “not what they used to be.”
I sold 10,000 bushels anyway, on the Chicago Board — and cleaned up three cents a bushel by the time we sold our cribbed corn at 14 cents a bushel. “Them” weevil had us scared. But the damage was not enough to lower the grade beyond the number three contracted.
In the old days, many of the farmers would shuck their corn early, pile it out in the open on a grass patch or rocky knoll, and then haul it to market after it had taken rains and snows—the more, seemingly, the better. More than once have I gone out to the country, and shoveled drifted snow away for lots bought on contract. It was such corn as this that brought the weevil, which worked mostly in the damp spots. Another trick of the old farmer was to wait for a freeze before shelling and marketing his ground “cribbed” corn. One such car of mine, billed for “export,” and passed by the Greenleaf-Baker firm—that is, not unloaded in Atchison, was reported steaming when it arrived in Galveston. It had passed inspection in Atchison.
Think I should say here—well, really it should be apparent without saying—that our reputable farmers were not guilty of this practice. It was usually floater-tenants, irresponsible farmers making a short stay in the community, who devoted much time to figuring out a way to skin someone. A fellow by the name of Groves, farming the old Adam Swerdfeger place eight miles northwest of Wetmore, contracted to deliver to me 800 bushels of “Number Three, or better” corn at 32 cents a bushel. When the wagons began coming, in the afternoon, I saw the corn was not up to grade, and I held up the haulers waiting for the arrival of the seller. In the meantime I learned from the haulers that it was corn that had been frosted, gathered while immature, shelled while frozen, and stored in a bin on the farm. The fellow had sent word by the last hauler in, that there would be two more loads to follow. When they did not show up at the proper interval, I dumped the loads (in waiting) and let the impatient farmers go home. I knew now from the way the fellow was holding back that I would have a tough customer to deal with—but I would take a chance on him. I felt that I couldn’t afford to keep the haulers, who were my friends, waiting longer. The seller came in with the two loads between sundown and dark. I told him the corn was not up to grade. He said,”Well, you’ve dumped it, haven’t you?” I said, “Yes, for a fact, I have dumped thirteen loads of it—but here’s two loads I’m not going to dump.” But I did finally dump them, on agreement with the fellow to ship the lot separately and give him full returns. The shipment was reported “no grade” and the price was cut six cents a bushel. I paid the man 26 cents a bushel, on the basis of our weight—and was glad to be rid of him. Then, the next day I received an amended report on the car. It was found to be in such bad condition that the receiving house had called for a re-inspection—and the price was cut another eight cents a bushel. And this was mine—all mine.
It seemed to me that nearly everything, in the old days was, in a sense, touched with that horrible word—gamble. And I know that I really did gamble in an attempt to grow a crop of corn on my expensively tiled bottom seed-corn farm down the creek a mile from town, one very dry year.
I hired all the work done, paid out $500 in good money—and got nothing but fodder.
Another time I filled my cribs with 25 cent corn and held it for the summer market. When I was bid 49% cents a bushel, I jokingly told Mr. Worthy that I couldn’t figure fractions very well, and that I would wait for even money. Fifty cents was considered a high price for corn then—but usually when it would reach near that figure, the holders would begin to talk one dollar corn. It was a year when the corn speculators just didn’t know what to do, after the price began to slip.
Alpheus Kempton, over north of Netawaka near the Indian reservation, had 5,000 bushels stored on the farm. He told me he had been watching my cribs, and thought that maybe I had inside information of a come-back in prospect. I too had been watching some cribs, with similar thoughts. The Greenleaf-Baker firm had 20,000 bushels stored in two long cribs at Farmington. As I frequently traveled the railroad—on a pass—and noticed the corn had not been moved out, I thought that maybe, after all, I had not erred in letting the high bids get away from me. I told Mr. Baker that I had been watching his Farmington cribs for a reminder as to when it would be time for me to sell mine. He laughed, saying, “I’ve sold it (on the Board) and bought it back probably twenty times.”
Well, Alpheus and I—we held our corn over another year—and then sold it for 301/2 cents a bushel. May I say that by this time I had brushed up on my arithmetic. And Christian or no, who is there to say I did not gamble that time? I still maintain that I gambled when I bought the corn. However, there were times when I sold 25-cent corn for 70 cents—and most of it went back to the country here. The only advantage that I could see in storing corn instead of buying it on the Board, was the possibility of striking a local market.
And again, I bought 5,000 bushels of wheat on the Chicago Board, at 61 cents a bushel, and margined it with $100. As the market advanced, I bought seven more five thousand bushel lots with the profits, making 40,000 bushels in all. It was a very dry time in Kansas, and wheat was jumping three to five cents a day—and had reached a fraction under $1.00 on the Thursday before Memorial Day, which of course would be a holiday, with no market.
My profit on the single $100 investment was now nearly $4,000.00. I had planned to get out before the close of the market on Thursday, because I did not want to run the risk of carrying the deal over the holiday. But the weather map, just in from Kansas City, indicated clear skies for Kansas over the week-end. This, coupled with the exuberant spirits of the excited dealers on the Atchison Board, caused me to change my mind. One more day of dry weather would likely double my earnings.
The weather man was wrong; horribly wrong.
It began raining in Wetmore about 10 o’clock that night. You’ve probably been lulled to sleep by rain patter on the roof. Believe me, there was no lullaby sleep in the constant rain patter on the roof over me that night. It rained off and on here all day Friday. Everyone I met on the street here exclaimed, “Fine rain, John!” I would say, “Yep”—and think something else. It was truly a $4,000.00 rain, in reverse—so far as I was concerned.
On Saturday morning, the speculators were back on the Atchison Board of Trade floor—to a man. The rain had washed their faces clean of all animation. Mr. Roper, working with telegraph instrument, rose and faced the weary-laden boys. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’ve got good news — for nobody.” The death-like quiet for a fraction of a moment, as if we were standing in the Salt Lake Mormon tabernacle waiting for the usual pin-dropping demonstration, gave way to a concerted sigh. It had rained everywhere.
I sold 50,000 bushels at the opening. My profits were wiped out clean. The extra 10,000 bushels short sale made me $63.75 in about three minutes. And this, added to the return of my $100—and relief from liability—made me feel rich.
Though little or no wheat was grown here at that time, the Kansas wheat farmer was considered the biggest gambler of them all. Even so, having just got out of a big wheat deal, by “the skin of my teeth,” would it not be good business for me to take a “flyer” in some wheat land, and try growing the stuff?
Land in the wheat country was going begging at $300 a quarter—the same land that is now selling up to $200 an acre. Land agents were actually fighting over prospective buyers. Bill Talley, born in Indiana and reared here, was at this time operating a drink emporium in Wetmore, but had lived, and dealt in land, at Cimarron, in Gray County. At the depot, the day I started for the west, Bill told me to go to his friend, Johnny Harper. When I got off the train at Cimarron at 2 o’clock at night, Johnny was there to meet me. We by-passed the leading hotel—a rival agent, F. M. Luther, lived at the hotel—and Johnny took me to a restaurant three blocks away. The next morning Johnny and his partner, Mr. Emery, ate breakfast with me at the restaurant. Mr. Emery was to drive me across the river to look at land. Every parcel of land shown was priced at $300 a quarter. And at every booster stop we visited, the farmer would reply to Mr. Emery’s inquiry: “I would not take $25 an acre for mine.” A few sandhill plums, a dilapidated barn, and weather-beaten three-room house—made the difference. We got back to Cimarron about four o’clock in the afternoon.
As if he were sure I had seen a plenty to interest me on the side of a quick purchase, Johnny produced a map, saying, “Now, which piece have you decided on?” I had made no decision. Mr. Emery then thought I might like to see a big alfalfa field four miles up the river—not that it was for sale, but just to show me how good it was. In truth, it was just to get me out of town. The alfalfa looked good, but you know my mind was fixed on wheat, and this big field did not interest me.
I had company again for supper, and either Mr. Emery or Mr. Harper stayed by me until bedtime. It was Saturday. I needed a shave. Mr. Emery took me through the main business part of the town to a barbershop on the south side of the tracks. And here I came as near getting a skinning as I ever did in a business deal. There were, of course, better shops in town—but competitive real estate agents didn’t go across the tracks for their shaves. In the meantime Mr. Luther had dropped in at the restaurant. He was introduced by Mr. Harper. I asked Mr. Luther if he were engaged in business in Cimarron? He replied, “Yes, the real estate business.” Right away I had a notion that I should like to have a private talk with Mr. Luther. Likewise, Mr. Luther. And don’t think that Johnny didn’t catch on, too.
Mr. Luther bid us “good night,” and stepped outside. Mr. Harper bid me “good night,” and started on his way out—and I went up to my room. We were to start right after breakfast on a drive to Dodge City, thirty miles down the river, where I would get a train for home. I did not go to bed immediately. I went back downstairs for something, I don’t remember what now. Maybe to pick up a little disinterested information from the restaurant man. Mr. Luther came back in at the front door. Mr. Harper followed immediately. I went back up to my room.
The following morning three real estate men ate breakfast with me. Mr. Harper, Mr. Emery, and I started for the livery stable a block away, while Mr. Luther lingered awhile over his coffee. Bill Talley’s friends owned their driving team, and did their own stable work. When they got their fractious horses partly hitched, I made an excuse to run back to the restaurant. Mr. Luther said, “You were over in the neighborhood of the Kelly school house yesterday, I believe. I can sell you three quarters in the same section as the Kelly school house for $200 a quarter, or $600 for the three quarters.” I promised to write him—or see him later.
Mr. Emery drove me to Dodge City, showing me a big 30-acre cottonwood planting on the way, which purportedly was the reason for the drive. It did not interest me. We had cottonwoods at home. Mr. Emery stabled his foaming horses at a livery barn on the south side of the tracks, near the river, a good quarter of a mile from the Santa Fe depot. We ate our dinner at a restaurant close by the depot. It was Sunday. Mr. Emery showed me the town. We visited “Boot Hill” Cemetery, the only visible reminder now that Dodge City was once the wildest and toughest spot in the Old West, and other semi-interesting and some non-interesting places. After walking our legs off, we were now near the depot again.
Mr. Emery wished to look in on his erstwhile steaming horses. Yes, I would go along with him. On passing the depot I dropped out of the line of march on the pretense of wanting to get a line on the through train I was to take that evening. This done, I hiked back to the restaurant, inquired for a real estate office, and was told the Painter Brothers in office above the restaurant were the men I should see. A poker game was in full swing, but one of the brothers—I couldn’t for the life of me remember which one now—took time out to tell me that he could sell me land as good as the best for $200 a quarter. He gave me some literature. We planned to meet again.
I rushed back to the depot in time to meet Mr. Emery on his return from the stable. We walked some more. A local train from the west was due at 3 o’clock. Johnny Harper got off this train—and took over. Mr. Emery bid me “good-by” saying he would now drive his team back to Cimarron. Johnny proposed a walk. We took in the town again—always by our lonesome. He saw me off on the train. I did not learn how Johnny planned to get back to Cimarron. And I didn’t care.
Bill Talley was at the depot when I got back home. He said, “Well, did you see Johnny Harper? Fine fellow, isn’t he?” And, “Did you find anything to suit you?” Yes, I had seen Johnny; fine fellow, too. No, I had not bought anything—yet. But I planned to buy three quarters in the same section as the Kelly school house, from F. M. Luther, for $600. Bill popped his fist in the palm of his left hand, and bellowed, “Damn Luther!”—with shocking prefix.
It is only fair for me to say that ordinarily Bill was not given to the use of such language. But the exigencies of the situation were very much out of the ordinary. With prospect of a cut in commission—and his fear that I might run afoul of Mr. Luther—Bill had gambled the price of a telegram to Johnny Harper. I did not learn the why of this explosion for a little over one year. My brother Frank was considering a trade for a quarter of irrigated land south of the river, two miles from Lakin, and had written from Fresno, California, asking me to look it over, and report to him. On going through on the train, I stepped off at Cimarron, and inquired for Johnny Harper. A by-stander said Johnny was not among the people on the station platform—but, he said, “Here’s his brother.” Johnny’s brother stepped forward, saying he was going west on the train. On the train, he said, “You were out here last year driving with Johnny. Why didn’t you buy, then?”
I told Johnny’s brother that they had “herded” me so closely as to make me suspicious. He said they had to do that to keep their competitors from blocking their sales. He said the competitors would quote a low price on tracts in the neighborhood of the places visited by Johnny’s prospects—and then, if the prospect decided to buy, the competitor would discover that his partner had just sold it to another—but he always had other bargains to show him.
Johnny’s brother also told me that our friend Talley had gotten into an altercation with Mr. Luther, and that the Cimarron man had knocked the whey out of our Wetmore boy—all while the latter was connected in the realty business with brother Johnny.
If I could have gone out there wholly on my own—that is, without any helpful interference from Mr. Talley, and maybe got lost on the big flat beyond the sandhills just south of the river for a week, I could have made a potful of money. I had planned to buy two sections. But, instead, I bought 80 acres of rather swampy bottom land here for the same money, $2400 — and then spent $1800 more to install five miles of drain tile.
This tiling was a gamble that paid big dividends.
Michael Worthy, my late semi-partner in the grain business, had better luck than I. He bought Gray County wheat land in the neighborhood of the Kelly school house — which was to be passed down as a huge profit-making legacy—even to the third generation.
Oscar Porter was a track buyer at Bancroft until Jim Wilcox, elevator owner, crowded him out. Being a track shipper, Oscar was not eligible to come into the Association — nor was I, but somehow I had been roped in. Porter wanted to know how I did it, that he might do likewise. I could give him no helpful information. His next step was to start legal action to compel me to divulge the secret. I was subpoenaed to appear in court—supposed to be the star witness—in a complaint lodged by Mr. Porter against the Association.
County Attorney S. K. Woodworth called me aside, said he knew I had the information to smash the Association, if I would just give. He said I could tell the truth—he added, “and I know you will,” without fear of having it used against me. I asked him if he were thinking of the time when I had slightly stretched the truth—but I really had not done this — in behalf of his candidacy, in my newspaper? He laughed at that.
I told Sam that he could depend on me to answer his questions truthfully, as always—he laughed again—but that I would not make a statement. He said he would not ask me to do that. I was not particularly in sympathy with the Association, but I did not want to volunteer information against it—and then, too, my Atchison friends and my partner Michael were entitled to some consideration.
I answered the County Attorney’s questions truthfully, and I believe satisfactorily—but still they did not get what they wanted. I had the information, of course, but Sam and Oscar knew too little about the business in hand to formulate the right questions. I believe they did not know about that illegal contract.
If they could have had Michael and our illegal contract, written in violation of the Sherman Act, brought into court, they would have had a case. But then it was I, a lowly track buyer comparable to the complainant, who had by some hook or crook, aided by a swift kick in the pants, bolted through the barrier that was keeping Oscar out of the Association.
LOCAL “BOARD OF TRADE”
Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
This, a continuation of the preceding article, brings us up to the second phase of my grain dealing experience. The businessmen, and some who were not so businesslike, organized what they called a Board of Trade, purportedly for the enhancement of the town’s interest—but, in reality, as events proved, to locate an outside man in the grain business here.
Goff had two merchants advertising in my newspaper — one a particularly live businessman—quoting prices, and drawing trade away from this territory. Even people living right here in town would go up on the noon train, and come back at four o’clock, loaded with purchases.
There had been discussions as to whether or not it was morally legitimate for the local paper to accept outside advertising when in competition with the home merchants—and the publishers all around had decided that it was quite legitimate, especially when the home merchants did not make liberal use of the paper’s space. Yet, I doubted if it was wise for me to do so. However, I do not think I was violating the code of loyalty when I prayed for a live merchant like Mr. Abbott.
The Board of Trade had come to life in Moulton De-Forest’s office across the hall from my printing office, on a Thursday night. My name, mentioned for possible membership—I was told, later—was discussed at length. I was the culprit, at least it was I who owned the vehicle carrying the price-smashing ads which were making them unhappy. And though I was at the time publishing The Spectator, doing job printing, buying and shipping grain, writing fire insurance, selling real estate, and making more farm loans than both the other assembled loan agents, there was doubt if I should be classed as a businessman, in the true sense. Stupid as this may seem, it is a fact. The reason for it is not apparent—yet.
There were in this organization men who had been at odds, even fighting mad, over other activities. It seemed as though something nasty was always brewing then. The man who had not so long before been petitioned to leave town, and the fellow who had borne the liberally signed document to the printing office for public exposure, were now working together in an effort to push me around, simply because I had been so indiscreet as to accept outside advertisements.
The leading Prohibitionist had been especially active in trying to clean up the town. It had provoked the imbibers and the “blind-tiger” boys. They got up a petition asking the Prohib to leave town, and brought it to the Wolfley printing office, where I was in charge during the editor’s absence. I refused to print it. They berated me plenty. But they got handbills printed elsewhere—now signed “Committee.”
The Prohib did not choose to leave town.
One of the “boys” got gloriously drunk—and bragged a little. The Prohib and the Drunk met in the middle of the main town square. There were a lot of people on the street. Ed Cawood, quite young then, is the only one now living that I recall. The Drunk struck at the Prohib, missed, and fell flat in the street. He had to have help to get up.
Years later, I heard a brother of the Drunk, a highly respected, and ordinarily very truthful man, in telling the story, say that his brother (called by name) beat the Prohib up scandalously. You can’t rely on what the old fellows tell you. You’ve got to know it—or let someone who does know it, tell it. Hearsay, after it passes through a generation is not reliable.
Here I wish to say that, except the grain business, the sidelines enumerated herein were acquired from the long established agency of S. C. Shuemaker, at the same time I bought the newspaper after his death, and that I was not butting in on anyone’s prior rights. Also, I want to say that the ones having those unreasonable notions, had axes to grind.
However, a committee came over to my office, and asked me to join them in Moulton’s office. I gave them $1.00 membership fee, and noted the freshly written by-laws calling for an additional dime for each and every time I might be absent from the regular Thursday night meeting. Keep this in mind.
The members who had no axes to grind were pretty decent. They felt the need of something to counteract the inroads the Goff merchants were making on the local merchants’ business, and decided that a full front-page write-up in The Spectator was desirable. It was promised for the second week ahead. Nothing was said about paying for this service—and no payment was expected.
Henry DeForest told those dominating members that they were acting like spoiled children, or worse—imbeciles. It is really surprising to what absurd lengths some fairly just people will sometimes go in trying to force their will upon others.
Now, Thursday night was always a busy night with us — but it was doubly so the next Thursday night. The Board fellows decided that they could not wait two weeks for the write-up, and asked me to advance it one week. I told them that we would accommodate them it we could get Mr. Abbott to reduce his space, or forgo the advertisement altogether. Mr. Abbott would oblige. And this was the straw that ultimately broke the spinal column of the Board of Trade.
Our full office force burned the midnight oil that Thursday night—and then some. The Board members trudging up to Moulton’s office could have looked in on us and seen that we were having no picnic. But, by golly, we were a little proud of our accomplishments, hoping it would please. And it did. The thing that caused me to lose faith in the Board was that paltry dime assessed against me for missing the meeting.
The prime purpose of the Board was to locate an outside man in the grain business here, backed up by a stronger purpose of one of its members to sell an old canning factory building to be converted into an elevator:—plus one up-and-coming young doctor who was crying for an opposition paper, with political slant. The business was delegated to a committee of four—the canning factory owner, a relatively new doctor, and two other men.
At this time doctors, after petty politicians, were the bane of the local papers. It was considered by the profession unethical for them to advertise—yet, too often, they craved top newspaper recognition when only minor mention or none at all was due. The case in hand was the third, with as many different doctors, with which I had to contend—in every instance for what the paper failed to say about them, or what it did say about some other doctor. But I want to say that our old reliables, Dr. J. W. Graham, and Dr. Thomas Milam, did not fall into this category.
However, the cases I had t o deal with were really mild — mild indeed to the one which threatened to do mayhem, or worse, to the whole office force, when I was printer on T. J. Wolfley’s Spectator. A doctor who had come down from Granada and located in Wetmore, sent word that he was going to pay us a visit at 10 o’clock of a Saturday morning for the express purpose of cleaning out the whole office. The offending item was a week old, and the demanded retraction in Friday’s paper had, as viewed by the Doctor, added “insult to injury.”
Theodore Wolf ley really enjoyed a scrap—and managed to have something on tap nearly all the time. He represented one faction of the local Republicans, and Moulton DeForest, when not a pronounced Prohibitionist, essayed to control another faction. The Doctor, a husky farm-bred boy in the Granada neighborhood, now on honored citizen of Wetmore, was a rantankerous Republican allied with the De-Forest faction—until he switched to the Populist party without losing any part of his rantankerous attributes.
Anticipating in advance the proposed call from the Doctor, Wolfley procured a revolver, and he and I practiced shooting the thing in the office, from a distance of ten feet, with target pinned on the leg of the imposing stone. He never hit the target once, but he broke a window pane all of two feet above the stone. He always shut his eyes and flinched before pulling the trigger.
I was supposed to be stationed at the imposing stone, in pretense of performing my regular duties, with iron side-stick—a lethal weapon when expertly wielded—in readiness for my part of the defense, if, and when, the Doctor might extend his belligerence thus far.
The printing office at that time was over the old Morris store on the north side of the main street. A stairway went up on the outside, with turnback to the front porch above. At the appointed hour, heavy feet pounded on the stairs. I had all of one minute in which to visualize my precarious position. With each step on the stairs my nervousness mounted. The irate intruder would of necessity be stationed somewhere between the editor and his foreman. The thing that worried me was my boss’ unpredictable marksmanship.
But it was not the Doctor’s heavy feet on the stairway. He had sent his understudy, Joe Eyman, who also was a husky bigfooted farm-bred boy from up in the Granada neighborhood. Joe fixed matters so that the Doctor and the Editor could talk it out between themselves. And in good time Joe became eligible to write MD after his own name. He then married Hattie Smarr, and they went to Sundance, Wyoming, to hang out his shingle. She was known in later years, in Wetmore, as Mrs. Stalder.
I am not sure if the belligerent Doctor’s grievance was professional or political. Probably the latter—but I do know that he was touchy in a professional way, for he later accounted for one-third of my unfavorable experience with doctors, as earlier mentioned in this writing. His successor in the Granada field had sent in by our Granada correspondent, a dollar’s worth of advertising, in the form of a personal, which had piqued the Old Doctor, causing him to do a bit of rantankerous snorting at me. But I did not rush out and buy a gun. I used the weapon I already had. The paper ignored him—and that whipped him into line in about one year. And he was ever after that my friend—with full ‘appreciation of the silent power of the press. He was a good doctor, and a good fellow—when he was good.
As Populist crusader, the Doctor was a success. His advertised meetings drew big crowds. He always brought in a principal speaker. One time he had two billed for the same night—”Sockless” Jerry Simpson and “Peruna” Jerry Botkin—but he got Mary Ellen Lease, instead. The Doctor and his two very fine little girls, Bertha and Belle, led the singing. The Doctor himself was not a noted vocalist—but he bore down heavily on the refrain of his favorite Populist song, “Turn The Rascals Out.”
Also, let me add that any time the editor of a local paper lets the politicians handle him, he is going to be woefully out of luck. Politics was dirty then. If an editor was a Republican, he was expected to engage in mud-slinging, shying the muck at all and sundry Democrats, regardless of their standing as citizens. The mere favorable mention of Republican candidates was not enough. And if he were true blue, he must keep up a barrage against editors of Democratic papers, and vice versa, a sort of nonsensical exchange of blasts. I steadfastly refused to be drawn into their political scraps. They called me a “mugwump.” But Gov. E. N. Morrell said—put it in writing—that inasmuch as I had succeeded in keeping my political skirts clean that I was a high-minded Republican. My hardest task was to hold down a brilliant and goshawful sarcastic local politician who wanted to engage in muck-raking, over the assumed name “Samantha” in my paper.
Politics was something to be shunned by me—that is, from a business standpoint in connection with the publication of the newspaper. I once went over to Edgerton, in the Missouri hills beyond Rushville, to investigate an offer of $1,000 bonus for the establishment of a newspaper. I struck the town at a time when a teachers’ convention was being held there. The banker, who was on the committee welcoming the teachers, was also on the committee pulling for the paper, and he had arranged the appointment with me. Mistaking me for a professor, he gave me a hearty handshake, and welcomed me along with the teachers getting off the same train. When I got up town, I called at his bank—and was “welcomed” again.
“What’s your politics?” he asked.
“Republican,” said I.
“Your train leaves in one hour,” said he.
I did not know Missourians as well then as I do now. The banker laughingly said, “Stick around awhile—I will talk the matter over with you when I get a moment’s time.” He told me that there were only two Republicans in the township; that I could run the paper as an Independent until election time, and then I would be expected to be a good Democrat—a real old “Missouri Mossback” and no foolin’, I think the order would have been. I judged they did not want a newspaper. They wanted a political “organ.”
On invitation of the banker, I attended a meeting in the school house, which was set in a natural oak grove — and met many sociable and interesting people. In the gathering, there were a lot of pretty girls—and all in all, it looked to me as if it would be a swell place for a young fellow to settle down. But—while I wouldn’t know why I was a Republican, I couldn’t pretend to be something that I was not.
A young doctor from Goff had come here to make his professional start. He first took his old schoolmate, Ecky Hamel, to task for calling him by his given name, demanding that he be addressed as “Doctor.” Ecky had gravitated from country school teacher to printer and reporter, and thought he himself was some pumpkins, too. But I don’t think this was held against the Doctor when Ecky wrote the five-line item that touched off the explosion—caused the Doctor to whoop-it-up for a competing paper.
The offending item merely said that “Dr. Jermane of Holton, who had operated on Lyman Harvey here last week for appendicitis, had died of a like operation at Holton this week.” A Philadelphia lawyer could have found no fault with this—but the local doctor thought it was a reflection on his professional ability. Knowing that he had brought the Holton doctor here to do the job, and knowing also that the local doctor had been duly recognized in the item reporting the Harvey operation, I thought he had no kick coming — and let it go at that. And anyway, Mr. Harvey had also died of his operation.
The complaining doctor was a hustler, socially a good fellow, very much on the way up in his profession, when a catastrophic repercussion reduced him to the level of the ice-man. As attending physician, he had brought into the world an illegitimate child whose birth was a great embarrassment for its little mother and the maternal grandparents. And on a subsequent call at the country home he discovered the child was missing. I am not familiar with the details at this stage of the affair, but rumor had it that the doctor turned sleuth and dug up the fact that the child was buried in the back yard.
The home folks, older members of the family, contended that it had died of natural causes—pneumonia, I believe. The doctor was wholly within his rights when he reported the matter to the authorities—but he did not prove an apt witness in court. Two older doctors from the north part of the county, combined and “proved” in effect, on the witness stand that the young doctor did not know enough about such matters to make a case.
In the ice business in a southern Kansas town the fellow made good. And though the “injured” doctor had kept on whooping-it-up for a competing paper until he did, with the help of some disgruntled politicians, put me out of the newspaper business, I’m glad to say he was not one to carry a grudge beyond the time of its actual usefulness to him. Just for old friendship’s sake, he wrote me from the office of his artificial ice plant—owned jointly with his brother—complimenting me on one of my articles in W. F. Turrentine’s Spectator. This note on the background of the doctor is given here for reasons which will appear later.
J. W. Coleman, publisher of the Effingham New Leaf, having conceived the idea that a string of local papers along the Central Branch, would be the motive power to land him in a fat political job, came here to negotiate with me for the Spectator. My paper was not for sale. The doctor and the political boys combined to persuade Mr. Coleman that a second paper would be preferable. It would seem the MD and PB’s did not want to crush me on the spot—or maybe it was their idea of one huge joke to let me die a slower death. In either event, it was the wedge that pried me loose from The Spectator. I sold to Coleman. I did not permit this to cause me to break with the Doctor and my political friends — as there was the outside chance that they might have been misquoted by the over-anxious purchaser. And then, too, it was not long before I really liked it. It afforded me time to give my full attention to other more congenial matters — for getting married, for instance. The wife said it was a great stroke of good luck for me.
I had weathered one brief, and I may say clean siege of competition, which had proved that the town was not large enough to support two papers. P. L. Briney, with his two daughters, Bertha and Olive, wholly on their own—that is, without MD’s or PB’s moral support—established and published the Enterprise for about one year. Unable to make a go of it, Mr. Briney sold the whole outfit—exclusive of the girls, of course—to me for $125, his first asking price.
Mr. Coleman did not last long enough here to do the political boys any good. He got off on the wrong foot in an early issue. He attended a recital given by Edith McConwell’s music pupils—and ridiculed it. Our people did not like to have their kiddies ridiculed—nor their music teacher either, who was once a kiddie here herself. However, after a few issues by Coleman, Art Sells, also of Effingham, took charge, and gave the people—not the politicians—a very satisfactory paper. Coleman gave up his political aspirations, sold his two papers, and took the job of City Editor for the Atchison Daily Globe. However, Coleman’s successor, W. F. Turrentine, held forth twenty years longer than the fourteen years that I had published the Spectator before giving up the ghost about five years ago. The idle plant is still in Wetmore.
To give a clear picture of the grain situation I should explain that Mr. Baker, of the Greenleaf-Baker grain firm, of Atchison, had asked me why would it not be a good idea for me to build an elevator here? I told him that I did not think there would be business enough, from year to year, to justify me in so doing—which, I might say, was a fact fully demonstrated in later years. I pointed out that with the large feeding interests here; and in the north territory, particularly at Granada, where the Achtens sometimes bought as much as one hundred thousand bushels of corn for feeding cattle and hogs; that practically all the south territory was in pasture land; and with two elevators at Goff and- two at Netawaka, we could hardly expect to draw trade away from them without making costly inducements, as we were now doing in our track buying.
Mr. Baker said, “Well, then, I’ll build one for you. It will save you paying a premium to get the corn, and make it more convenient for you to handle it.”
I think the Board members did not know this at the time of organizing. But the committee, composed of the man who had a canning factory building to sell, and the doctor who wanted a competing newspaper with political slant, both uncompromisingly for the Goff man, and two other men who had a tendency to view things in their proper light, met with a representative of the Greenleaf-Baker firm in ‘the opera house here. The spokesman for the committee told Frank Crowell, Mr. Baker’s brother-in-law, and member of the firm, that they preferred to locate their man Reckeway, because it would bring another family to town and consequently make a bit more business for the local merchants. Mr. Crowell told them that we would like to have their friendship and co-operation—but, regardless of whether or not they located Mr. Reckeway, that his firm positively would build the elevator as planned. The two silent members on the committee packed power enough only to delay action.
As it is now all water over the dam, with not even a trickle of cankerous aftermath, it is not my purpose to show up the old Board of Trade boys in a critical light—but it was evident that they were not being guided by the Golden Rule. They knew the Greenleaf-Baker people were going to build an elevator, when they located their man. They knew also that in normal crop years there would hardly be business enough here to sustain one elevator. As a sort of excuse for them pulling for the Goff man, the spokesman said to me, “You know, if we don’t get our man located this year, we may never get an elevator. We have never had a corn crop like this before, and we may never have another one.” It was not strictly a Christian act—and I suspect they never had any regrets for having turned the trick. It was apparently their way of building up the town—and, incidentally, securing a buyer for an old canning factory building.
The Canning Company, a local organization, having failed to bring in the expected returns, and having accumulated debts in excess of its ability to pay, had liquidated, the building going to the highest bidder, one Theodore Wolfley by name—uncle of Editor Theodore Wolfley. Then, later, it was planned by the holders of the worthless canning factory stock—and others—to try to recoup their losses by the establishment of a cheese factory, with an eye on the old building as a prospective site. It was then that the present owner hopped out and bought the old canning factory building, hoping to turn a neat profit. But the cheese factory promotion fell by the wayside. It was then patent to the purchaser that he had over-played his hand. Knowing these facts, one can better understand his sudden anxiety for an elevator—for the good of the town.
Their prospect, W. M. Reckeway, who had been operating the Denton elevator at Goff, likely misunderstanding the Committee, gave out an interview in the Goff Advance, saying that they had bargained for the Worthy dump, and that it was his intention to build a modern up-to-date elevator in Wetmore, but J. T. Bristow had slipped in and bought it away from them—the inference being that the good people of Wetmore who had longed for an elevator for lo these many years, would now have to take what they could get—something less than would have been the case had Bristow behaved himself.
Had this been true—the way I look upon such matters — it would have been both shrewd and legitimate business on my part, though it would have left an ominous smirch on Mr. Worthy. But it was far from the truth. The Board Committee had not bargained for the Worthy dump.
As has been pointed out, the Greenleaf-Baker Grain Company had already planned to build an elevator here for my convenience, as a shipper—but of course the company was not in the market for the old canning factory building. My Company, as well as their prospect—not the Committee — wanted a better location. Mr. Baker instructed me to buy the Worthy dump, solely for the location.
Knowing the canning factory owner like a book, I did not even suspect that they would consider the Worthy location. And as a matter of fact, the Board Committee apparently did not want the Worthy dump—only, at any rate, as a last resort. When I called on Mr. Worthy, he said, “I’ve given the Board of Trade fellows an option on it for $200, good until noon today. Come back here promptly at twelve o’clock. Now don’t wait until after dinner,” he warned. The Committee went to Mr. Worthy after one o’clock, asking for an extension of the option. That old canning factory was still in the way. And the owner did not exactly pat me on the back, but looked as if he wanted to when he learned that I had bought the Worthy dump. I did not get the doctor’s reaction to this—but I do know that, though we continued on friendly terms—we never had any clashes — he continued to “harp” for a competing paper, with political slant.
Mr. Reckeway, being handy with hammer and saw, converted the old canning factory building into an elevator in time for the fall business. The people, including the Board of Trade boys, had an erroneous notion that an elevator operator could pay more for corn than the track buyer, and while the reverse is true, they had located their man with this belief. Then that new man did give me a merry chase—in fact he put me completely out for a spell. He paid more for corn than I could get for it. How come? Well, the BT boys gave credit to the old canning factory. They were wrong of course.
It may be a little early to bring this in—but Mr. Reckeway was making some profit on the sale of a carload of flour he had brought in, but he could not count on a repeater in this line, for he had already been told by the canning factory vendor—who sold flour in his general store at substantially higher prices—to cut it out. It was made plain to the fellow that he had not been brought here to compete With the home merchants.
I’ll get around to aft explanation of how and why Mr. Heckeway bid up the price on corn—but this seems the opportune time to slip in a line about the entry of a business which led all competition. And lo, the man was from Goff, the town which had furnished me a competitor in the grain business, and a politically minded doctor who wanted a competing paper—and ironically enough, the town whose advertising merchants, C. C. Abbott, John Wendell, and George Bickel, were the thorns that had been pricking the Board of Trade boys’ sensitive hides.
Mr. C. C. Abbott, the live merchant—the man whose advertisements in my paper had given so much concern at the Board of Trade’s first meeting, and was the cause for that elaborate write-up, had moved in on them with a complete new stock of general merchandise, locating in the old Stowell brick building, the present Catholic recreation hall.
Now, let ‘em kick!
The energetic efforts of the dominating member of the Board Committee to close a deal for the sale of that old canning factory building had, unwittingly of course, also paved the way for the entry of some live competition for himself.
Mr. Abbott became my best advertiser. Legitimate, too. He paid, in trade, three to five cents a bushel premium for ear-corn, and turned it to me at the market price. Also, there was a general come-down of prices in the other stores. Now was I, or was I not, working for the best interests of the town?
Evidently Mr. Reckeway had a threefold purpose in bidding up the price of corn. He wanted to build up a reputation, wanted to crush competition, and at the same time discourage the Greenleaf-Baker people in their plans to build an elevator here. The word got around that I was going to try to operate the Worthy dump “as is.” It would have not been fruitful for them to let Reckeway know the truth at this stage of their dickerings—hence the circulated report that I had bought the Worthy dump, aiming to operate it myself.
Nor did Mr. Reckeway know that the order for the lumber in special lengths had been given to a mill in Arkansas the day after I had bought the Worthy dump, when he betook himself to Atchison in an effort to dissuade the Greenleaf-Baker firm from building, pointing out that he had the grain business corralled here; that I was now a “dead duck,” without standing in my own community. Mr. Baker was not impressed by Mr. R.’s pleadings.
Mr. Reckeway had been shrewd enough — or lucky enough—to sell, in early fall, a sizable quantity of December corn at a price above the settled market. He had been sloughing off his profits to the farmers to create atmosphere—and to stop me. Many of his old Goff customers were now bringing their corn to him in Wetmore, a high testimonial of his popularity—and a welcome morsel for the aggressive half of the BT Committee to peddle in support of their earlier expressed contention that an elevator man could actually pay more for corn—even, so to speak, pull rabbits out of a hat.
Had Mr. Reckeway made it win, it would have been good business. As it was, I’m not shrewd enough to say whether it was good business or bad business. The one certainty is that he did not make the goal he was shooting for.
Owing to delay in getting the lumber, the Baker elevator did not open for business until January 5. Reckeway had now quit playing for atmosphere. Then, we both got more corn than we could conveniently handle, as a car shortage had developed, which slowed down shipments.
We had a little bad luck the very first day the Baker elevator was opened for business. We were getting corn from three shelters, about 4,000 bushels that day—and some of the wagons came in after dark. Elmer Brockman, the builder, was looking after the elevator end of the first day’s run. I weighed a wagon, told the driver to wait for Elmer to signal him in with his lantern.
Something had gone wrong, and Elmer had taken his lantern and stepped out of the driveway. Mr. farmer, after pulling up and stopping, decided that he didn’t need a lantern to guide him—and he drove on in and got one horse part way in the open dump. The horse lost patches of hair in two or three places, but was not otherwise injured. The next day the fellow came back and wanted to sell me the horse for $100. The old plug was worth only about $40. I didn’t want to buy the horse at any price, and I didn’t want the man to go away dissatisfied. And I suspicioned—correctly—that some of my competitor’s supporters might be back of the fellow. I suggested that I send Milt Cole, the liveryman, out to the farm to examine the horse—and that I would pay him whatever amount that the two of them might decide would be just. Mr. Cole said $40 would be a big plenty—and I paid it. Then, about a week later the farmer, pleased with his high-handed stroke of luck, had the nerve to tell me that I was an easy mark, that the horse was as good as ever, and that I had virtually thrown away forty dollars.
Now, this man was on a farm owned by an Illinois man—a Mr. Smith, who had entrusted me with the rental of the place. The farmer had contracted to pay cash rent, with a clause in the contract stating that in case of drought, or for any cause lowering the normal yield, that a substantial reduction would be allowed. Mr. Smith was a firm believer in the old principle of “live and let live.” But he soon found out that it wouldn’t work so well here. And anyway, it was mostly his sister’s idea—she having an interest in the land.
The tenant had asked for a reduction. Well, Mr. Smith came to my printing office one day, borrowed my shotgun, pulled on new overalls, and went out to his farm to hunt a bit. He found the tenant at the house, asked for and received permission to hunt. Mr. Smith said truthfully he had just got in from Minnesota, and casually asked about crops in general here. The tenant said they had been good, and he bragged a little about how well he himself had done that year. Mr. Smith’s sister lived in Minneapolis, and he had gone around that way to get her to yield a point on that stiff “live and let live” idea of hers—and to discuss plans for selling the farm. I sold it for them, later.
Might say here that another tenant the previous year had asked for, and received a reduction. The man had sold his corn. He patted his pants pocket, and told me, “I’ve got the money all in here. They’ll have to settle my way, or not at all.” He was entitled to a reduction and I was sure Mr. Smith would do the right thing. And he did. I said to the tenant, “If you should lose that money we would have no chance to collect anything. Put your money back in the bank where it will be safe. If anything comes up, I’ll notify you in time for you to get it out before attempting to force a collection.” He said, “On your word, I’ll do that. Can’t sleep very well with the money in my britches, anyway.” This man was Albert W. Dixon. Don’t care to name the other fellow.
This rather unusual incident got “noised” around, and the tenant:—the farmer with the “crippled” horse—being what he was, thought he might just as well do a little more gouging. Mr. Smith said to me, “Make that fellow pay in full—and get rid of him.”
Still Mr. Reckeway was not satisfied. Having failed in his efforts to block the building of the west elevator, he now began a play to get control of it. And, finally, he did get it. During a grain dealers meeting at the Byram hotel in Atchison, Frank Crowell told me that my competitor was still after my “goat”—that Mr. Reckeway had just renewed his offer to give them all his shipments, if he could get control of the west elevator.
I said, “For heaven’s sake, let him have it—if it means anything to you?” Please note that Mr. Crowell and Mr. Baker were my sponsors. They would not let me down.
Reckeway closed the west elevator.
When the new crop began to come in, I resumed track buying. I could have forgiven Mr. Reckeway for trying to squeeze me out—but now I would have to show him how badly he had been misled by his promoters, when he told the Greenleaf-Baker people that I was a “dead duck.”
We now had a new man in the depot. Agent Larkin was a fine Christian gentleman, an active church man. Also, he had a wife, and a pretty daughter who was a popular elocutionist—and a flock of 200 chickens. He did not impress me as a man who could be influenced or bought for a few kernels of corn. However, when he asked permission to scrape up the waste around the car we had just loaded, it gave me an idea. I was not expecting any favors from this agent — but I wanted to forestall the efforts of my competitor in demanding a division of cars on a comparable basis of his grand-elegant physical representation. When the boys would spill too little corn while loading the cars, I often climbed into the car and kicked out an extra bushel, sometimes more, before reporting the car ready for sealing—and of course I wouldn’t object to Agent Larkin gathering up the spilled corn, for his 200 chickens. I was getting an equal division of cars, and that was all I could reasonably expect—more, in fact, than seemed equitable to my competitor, with his investment in an owned elevator and his shrewdly acquired control of the Greenleaf-Baker elevator.
The idea that an elevator operator could pay more for corn than the track buyer was all wrong. An elevator is a convenience to the shipper, and helpful to a community — but don’t forget for one moment that the grain producer must pay for it all. When track buying, I usually kept two men at the car, one inside the car and one to help the haulers shovel off their loads. I paid them 15 cents an hour. Tom and Juber Gibbons were horses to work then—but don’t look at ‘em now! And in long hauls, I would take the drivers to dinner at the Wetmore hotel, and feed their teams at Cole’s livery barn. The haulers, who were the seller’s neighbors, would complain about having to shovel the corn—but they, in turn, would bring me their corn for these extra helps, and extra money. One farmer who sold me 3,000 bushels said, “My neighbors will kick like the devil about having to shovel off their loads—but I reckon I kicked too when I shoveled off my loads when I was hauling for them.”
On the basis of those magnificent holdings, Mr. Reckeway took his troubles to the higher-ups. Agent Larkin called me to the depot. Reckeway was there with a special representative of the railroad — the “trouble shooter.” Reckeway told his side of the story—very correctly, I must say. He owned outright an elevator, and he had control of the Greenleaf-Baker elevator as well — and that firm was getting all his shipments. And, as a clincher, he said, “You know the Greenleaf-Baker people are heavy shippers over your railroad. They have elevators all along the Central Branch.”
The special agent then asked me: “Have you any storage for grain?”
“Yes,” I replied, “a bin with capacity for two car loads of shelled corn.”
His next question: “Did you ever have to pay demurrage for holding a car over-time while loading?”
Again I replied, “Never.”
The special agent’s final question, the one I was hoping he would ask me: “Where do you ship your corn?”
I said, “To the Greenleaf-Baker people in Atchison, as always.”
Reckeway’s countenance showed surprise, if not real anger. The agents both laughed.
Turning to Agent Larkin, the special agent asked: “Has he told the truth in all three instances?”
“Absolutely,” said my chicken-owner friend.
“Then, give him every other car,” said my newly found friend.
And Mr. Reckeway stalked out mumbling in jumbled English and German, of which I could catch only, “A man with two elevators—.” My reputation was now redeemed.
The so-called “Board of Trade” had long since passed out. It was never a Board of Trade, anyway. Its operations were limited to the sale of one old canning factory building, and the location of Mr. Reckeway—that is, if we do not choose to count the location of Mr. Abbott. You know, I was a member of the Board, with dues and absentee penalties paid in full.
Now, let’s get this straight. I wouldn’t have been so resentful as to induce a live merchant like Mr. Abbott to move in on the homefolk. I just told him of the behavior of some of the Board members, and that I might have to deny him space in my paper. “Oh,” he said, “I don’t believe you will want to do that to me.” He winked. Well, I didn’t—really.
Mr. Abbott had been thinking things over ever since the time I had asked him to surrender his space in the interests of that elaborate write-up. Said he figured it would now be OK for him to bring me copy for a half-page advertisement announcing his location in Wetmore.
There were, however, many proposals advanced — but always they met with opposition from some member or members of the Board. In general, they kicked like the proverbial “bay steer” whenever something was advanced which might be helpful to one and detrimental to another. I think Mr. Worthy and I were the only ones who did not protest their proposals—such as bringing in Mr. Reckeway. And, frankly, until it had come to a showdown, I was not favored with too much information as to what Michael had up his sleeve.
I don’t know where they could have found a better man than Mr. Reckeway for the place—but he was no miracle man. Handicapped as he was, he found the going rather tough. And having found out also that the Board Committee’s prophesy was only a myth—that an elevator alone could not make two bushels grow where only one bushel grew before—after a few rather lean years, he departed for greener pastures. I believe Mr. Reckeway made good in the flour milling business at Girard, Kansas.
The Board of Trade sponsored (Reckeway) elevator, after years of idleness, has been torn down. Goff and Netawaka, like Wetmore, each now have only one elevator. And still the grain does not roll into Wetmore as was anticipated by the Board of Trade enthusiasts. Perhaps the old town may someday be favored with another set of progressives—who do not know their onions.
I reiterate, there is no lingering malice in this writing. Collectively, year in and year out, the oldtime Wetmore people, despite all differences, were the best people I ever knew—and I lived in relative harmony with them for a long, long time. I’ve lived a lot of living in the old home town.
And, thankfully, I’m still here.
FAMILY AFFAIR
Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
In the foregoing article I made reference to Theodore Wolfley’s poor marksmanship, with a revolver. When possible, I like to back up my assertions with proof. I now quote from a letter dated at St. Louis, April 5, 1941, written by T. J. Wolfley to his sister May Purcell, commenting on my writings in The Spectator, in which I likened a Belgrade story to a hot Wolfley editorial. It was at a time when a Hitler delegation was in Belgrade endeavoring to put pressure on the Yugoslavs to force them into the war on the Hitler side. The quote:
“I received the copy of the Wetmore Spectator, which you so kindly sent me. Thank you for it. I was interested in the story from Yugoslavia; and flattered to be even remotely connected with the incident by my friend John Bristow, who professes to think that if I wasn’t in St. Louis, I might be running a newspaper in Yugoslavia. . . . Just as in the political wars he mentioned, I was sometimes more friendly with the men I opposed than with the ones I favored. But the people liked it and it was then the accepted slogan to give the people the kind of news they wanted. . . . John was a good newspaper man and a good squirrel hunter, so we thought a little expert shooting might lend realism to the picture. But I wasn’t a good shot. I couldn’t even hit the imposing stone when it stood on the side against the wall. But I remember John could hit a penny when it laid on the floor at the leg of the imposing stone. So we depended upon John’s ability as a shooter to keep the enemy away. . . . Show this to John. A good many things happened in the Spectator office even after I quit, similar to the way they happen in Yugoslavia. He may remember some more.”
Well, yes—I do remember one more. Always one more. But first I want to say that Theodore verifies the point I made in the preceding article—that he could not even hit the leg of the imposing stone, in his gun-practice. To those who are not familiar with the mechanics of the print-shop, the imposing stone is a heavy slab of marble mounted on a stand about waist-high, on which the forms of the newspaper are made up.
When the Spectator was in its first year, I helped Theodore Wolfley carry out one of his “bright” ideas which gave him some sleepless nights. His sister Mary, still too young to carry on a flirtation with a grown man, had embarked on a whirlwind romance with a Central Branch railroad engineer. The heavy grade at the John Wolfley farmstead five miles west of Wetmore, made it possible for the engineer and the girl to exchange notes. And when they might desire a few moments time together, it was said, he would drop off at the crossing near her home, and then grab onto the caboose—and the fireman would take the long freight train into Goff.
Theodore told me that, as her older and wiser brother, he intended to break it up. He said it had got to a point when a talking to would do no good—and the girl was too big to spank. We printed a ten-line item in the Spectator, branding Mary’s Romeo as an all round bad character, even had him arrested and jailed for drunkenness—and credited the item to one of Atchison’s daily newspapers. After printing one copy for the Wolfley family perusal, I lifted the spurious item before running the regular edition.
Theodore commuted on horseback between farm and town at that time. He took the “doctored” paper home with him. He watched Mary read the item. He said she wrinkled up her nose, shook her head as if she meant to get even with someone. When he came back to the office the next day, he said, “I guess that will hold her.” But it didn’t.
On the following day Theodore discovered the item had been cut out of the Spectator—and he rightly suspicioned it had been turned over to Mr. Romeo. He came to the office in agitated confusion. He asked me, “What paper did we credit that darned item to?” He had maligned an Atchison man and credited the item to one of the three Atchison daily papers—the Champion, the Patriot, or the Globe—which made him liable to attack from two angles. But luck was with Wolfley. John Reynolds, the engineer, came back promptly with his daily exchange saying the item referred to another John Reynolds living in Atchison—and the romance went merrily on.
Theodore would have felt a lot easier had he known there actually was another John Reynolds living in Atchison. And though the second Mr. Reynolds had a shady record, he was never guilty of the things the item charged the engineer with. I have penned a line on this John N. Reynolds in another article. John A. Reynolds, the engineer, was really an honorable man, with high standing in Atchison. I came to know him well in later years.
I shall carry on from here — after this paragraph — without Mr. Wolfley. But I’m not forgetting the Romeo engineer. And I should say here that Mary’s romance terminated without hitting the rocks, and that Theodore never had any complaints from Atchison. And I might say further, as a last tribute to my old friend, that Theodore Wolfley went from here to Phoenix, Arizona, and became editor of the Daily Republican, owned by ex-Governor Wolfley, of Arizona, (no relation), where he played up Republican politics to his heart’s content. From there he went to the St. Joseph (Mo.) Daily Gazette, where I imagine he would have been a loyal Democrat. And from St. Joe he went to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat as Financial editor. While in St. Joe Theodore wrote me that he was holding open for me a place on the Gazette paying four and one-half times the ten dollar weekly salary I was getting here. That was considered “big money” then. But I had promised Curt and Polly Shuemaker that I would remain on the job here when they bought the Spectator from John Stowell. Curt Shuemaker was blind—lost his eyesight from close bookwork in the Morris store and as the first cashier of the Wetmore State Bank. I could not quit them cold—but I was trying to find them a reliable printer when Curt sickened and died suddenly, leaving The Spectator in need of an editor as well. The quickest way to help out Polly was for me to buy The Spectator—at my own price. Not an unfair price, however. When Theodore was back home a short time before he died, having just read my manuscript of the Green Campbell story, he proposed that we buy The Spectator from the Turrentines—just to show the people what we could do. From past experience, I knew he could have shown them plenty—and I was afraid he might insist on doing it.
Some years after Mary’s romance, I was walking past the depot in Wetmore with the girl who afterwards became my wife. Her home was on the south side of the tracks, near the watertank. The noon passenger train was at the tank. As we came abreast the engine the engineer hopped down from the cab, pulled off a leather gauntlet glove, and met the girl with a hearty handshake—and some hurried palaver. She introduced him as Mr. Reynolds.
But you know, passenger trains must move on time — and when alone with the girl, I said, “Let me see your hand.” She said, “Oh, you’d never get a speck of dirt from shaking hands with Johnny Reynolds; he’s really quite particular about keeping himself clean of engine grime.” I learned later that she had told the truth in this particular—but how the devil did it come she knew so much about him? I said, “I think I know something about him that you do not know.” Then I told her about his exchange of notes with the Wolfley girl.
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.
While eating our lunch that day, a covey of half-grown quail came out from between the rows at the end of a cornfield. Myrtle said they were so cute that it was a shame to kill them. “And if you shoot any more of them,” she declared, “I will not cook them for you.” I said that I guessed I could cook them myself—that I had roasted them suspended on a stick over a fire in the woods.
“Well,” she said, “I’ll cook them, of course—but I promise you that I will never eat any more of them.” I tried her out on six birds. She cooked them, of course—and kept her promise. And then, in due time, I also thought they were too cute to be killed. But I continued carrying feed to the quail, in snowy times.
While Wolfley said I was a good squirrel hunter, quail was really my game. I trapped them in my younger days, and shot them when old enough to be trusted with a gun. I “potted” them. In the old days quail sold for 5-cents each and no one would think of wasting a charge of ammunition on a single bird, especially while on the wing; though I did once shoot a lone quail sitting on top my figure-four cornstalk trap, under which were twenty live birds. We made our traps then with any old thing we could pick up and bind together. The twenty trapped quail had followed a tramped out path in deep snow, baited with a thin scattering of shelled corn, with a more generous supply of kernels under the trap—thus to engage the lead birds while the others were coming up, lest an impatient bird might go after the nubbin on the treadle and spring the trap too soon. I think trapping and “potting” were legal then. I winged them in later years, same as other sportsmen were wont to do.
One time while coming home from the farm on a Sunday morning about eleven o’clock, three teen-age boys caught up with me. They said they were from Fresno, California. I questioned them a little about Fresno, and decided they were telling me the truth. Also, I knew they were not professional tramps—and that they were hungry. I took them to the Wetmore hotel, and told Bill Cordon to give them their dinners, fill them up with double orders. One of the boys had about worn out his shoes—the sole of the left shoe was dragging, making it hard for the boy to keep up with his pals. While they were waiting in the hotel for the dinner call, I went to my home and hunted up a pair of shoes—almost new shoes, which pinched my feet—and took them, with a pair of clean socks, to the little fellow, and started them on their way back to Fresno, walking of course. On parting, the boy wearing my shoes, asked me why had I taken so much interest in them? I told them that I might be tramping myself someday, maybe even get as far away from home as Fresno, and in that event I hoped to meet them all again. This is what I told the boys. For the correct answer—it is enough to know that my people live in Fresno. One of the older boys said, “Never doubt, we’ll be there—if we ever do get back home.” And though I have been in Fresno a number of times since, I never had the pleasure of meeting any of them. I lost their names.
Now—the $64 question!
A real honest-to-goodness professional tramp had hurriedly passed me by before the boys had caught up with me. I had a couple pork sandwiches in my pocket. My first thought was to offer them to this fellow—then thought that maybe he was not a tramp. A tractor had been running on a farm east of my place, and this fellow was just about smeary enough to have been the driver. I let him pass—and later saw him go into the depot. The wife and I were preparing to eat the sandwiches which were on the table still wrapped in oil paper. Then, this professional tramp showed up at our kitchen door, asking for a handout. Taking the two wrapped sandwiches off the table, I said, “Here you are, my man—I’ve been saving them for you.” I told him that had he not passed me by in such hurry on the railroad tracks, that I would have offered them to him then. He said he had been sick, and was hurrying to get in out of the weather. It had been “spitting” snow—which, I imagine, had caused my dinner guests at the hotel to wonder why did they leave their homes in sunny California. My home was two blocks away from the depot—and this was the tramp’s first call. Now—had this fellow “read my number” in passing on the railroad track? Or, did he read the sign at my home? It was said in the old days that tramps had a way of marking the favorable houses. My wife never let an applicant go away without something, little or much, to allay his hunger.
I shall drop back a few years now and expand a bit on the trials and tribulations of my wife’s family—before she was my wife, understand. Married at the age of sixteen, and left a widow at the age of thirty-three, with little more than the home and a houseful of kids—all girls, at that — Kate Mercer found herself in a highly discouraging predicament. Deprived of the bread-winner, the almost new five-room house on an acre of ground down by the creek, on the “wrong side of the tracks,” could now hardly be called a home. It had been ideally situated for the husband and father, who had been section foreman here for eight years.
There was no county welfare aid here then, as there is now. There was, however, in practice at that time the “good neighbor helping hand.” It consisted of raising a temporary fund by the circulation of a subscription paper. But when such a course was proposed by sympathetic neighbors, Mrs. Mercer, strongly backed up by her oldest daughter, declined to permit that. They would try somehow to get along without charity. They would go out and work. Thus, an up-hill drag was in store for them.
Myrtle finished her schooling in May—though she said that with the readjustment problem confronting the family, and consequent worries, she feared she had made a rather poor job of it. Then she went out to work as domestic, or maid—just plain “hired girl” it was termed then. She worked two weeks in the home of the aristocratic Augusta Ann DeForest during the illness of Miss Mary Randall, the regular long-time maid. Myrtle said she could not have wished for a more congenial place to work. She dined with the family, notwithstanding the traditional rumors which said that such breaches of table etiquette were not tolerated in that home. And she said Mr. Henry, whom gossip claimed never even got to see the other cooks, was especially considerate, and told her not to try to overdo. That would be Mr. Henry, all right.
Myrtle worked for the eccentric Mrs. Draper, who was the mother-in-law of Charley DeForest. And she worked for Mrs. R. A. DeForest—and as chambermaid at the Wetmore hotel while her mother was the cook there. Of all her domestic “positions” Myrtle said she felt more at ease, and liked best to work for Linnie (Mrs. R. A.) DeForest. Linnie was the sister of the gracious Alice McVay, mentioned in another article. And Linnie was the mother of Harold DeForest, now living on a farm two miles northeast of Wetmore.
Myrtle worked five weeks that first year for a young married couple who had come down from Granada to set up housekeeping in Wetmore with scarcely more than their love to go on. She quit them before the man had accumulated the money to pay her. The loss was only ten dollars, she said—but ten dollars would have been something toward keeping the family together. Myrtle said, “There ought to be a law preventing people from marrying before they are financially prepared for it.”
That was a statement worthy of a philosopher.
In the early winter of that first year the family went back to Illinois, the home of Mrs. Mercer’s people. Again Myrtle worked out at her enforced occupation as “hired girl.” Jennie, the second girl, went temporarily to an aunt, Mrs. Esther Noble—her father’s sister—in Bloomington. Georgia stayed with her aunt, Mrs. Henry Ham, in Bureau Junction. Kathy and Jessie remained with their mother in the home of Mrs. Mercer’s father, John Leonard, in Bureau—which railroad town was the home of the Mercers before they came to Kansas. They were all back in Wetmore within a few years.
James F. Noyes, a well-to-do retired farmer, living in Wetmore, adopted Georgia. He and his wife Jennie could — and did — give her a good home. But after the novelty of the new life for the child had worn off, Georgia would “run away”—and go back home. The several occasions when she did this, made sorrowful times for the family. When matters became really serious, Georgia’s foster parents took her on an extended trip to visit Mrs. Noyes’ brother, George Scott, in Oregon, hoping to cure her of her homesickness. Georgia married Don Cole and reared a family of two boys and three girls in the Noyes home. She never lost contact with all members of her mother’s family.
Then there was an opportunity to have another of the girls adopted into a childless home. I don’t think the matter was considered seriously — not favorably, anyhow — but Myrtle said she “Threw a fit.” No more adoptions, if she could help it. She’d just “bedarned” if anyone could have Jessie, the baby. So it came to pass that she got the care of Jessie herself—after her mother had married John Hall, and gone to live on a farm one mile west of Powhattan.
Mr. Hall’s first wife, and mother of his four children, had stayed several months in Mrs. Mercer’s home while taking treatments of Dr. Haigh for the chronic ailment which caused her death. He had come over weekly to pay the bills. And he therefore knew just where to find himself another wife—provided.
Graduate Wetmore Public Schools—Class 1899.
No, Girls—It’s not her Graduation Dress.
Artist’s Idea—1904.
Mother of Virginia, Ruth, John, and Betty.
The deliberating period was another trying time for the girls — but after thorough consideration, mother and daughters were in complete agreement. It would perhaps be best for all of them, especially for the overburdened mother. And it was really good for all of them—the Halls included.
The Mercer girls all finished their schooling in Wetmore. The two younger girls could have gone with their mother—it was so arranged—but they preferred to remain in Wetmore, most of the time. Jennie was offered the chance to work for her keep in Conductor Carlin’s home in Atchison, while taking a course in the Atchison Business College. She soon switched to the home of her uncle Stewart Mercer (a tailor) and his wife Mina, to act as baby sitter for little Esther, their first born. The Spectator, by virtue of some timely solicitation by Jennie’s older sister, and an advertising contract, contributed the tuition fee. Then Jennie went to work for a grain commission company in the Kansas City Board of Trade building. She worked in that one building as secretary and bookkeeper for different grain firms for the remainder of her life—more than thirty-five years. She never married.
Not that Jennie never had the chance. She turned down Danny Cromwell, a Kansas City boy, after he had secured the license. His sister Kate, a true friend and a very sensible girl, told Jennie that he had nothing, that he was sickly, without prospects—and that she would do well to sack him.
Then, too, Jennie had prospects of marrying her boss. But, after years of happy anticipation — you could see it written all over both their faces when they spent a vacation week with her relatives in Wetmore—it developed that this romance also was fraught with intolerable aspects. Her Romeo lived with, and was the sole support of an aristocratic mother who was allergic to working girls. Oh, those aristocratic mothers! A wise Nineteenth Century girl needed no advice. What think you a Twentieth Century girl would have done?
Jennie was helpful in securing positions in Kansas City for her younger sisters. Kathy worked as cashier and bookkeeper for the B. F. Coombs Produce Company down by the market, at Fifth and Main. She married Luther P. Hyre — and reared a family of three girls and one boy, in Kansas City.
I think Kathy was the only one of the girls to inherit in a high degree her mother’s Irish wit. I don’t care if she was my mother-in-law, Kate Leonard - Mercer - Hall was a witty woman. And what’s more, I never could understand the why of so much criticism of the mother-in-law.
Also, little Virginia Hyre, Kathy’s first born, was a bright kid. Note this. Percy Worthy had gone to the farm with me to get a load of posts. Little Virginia, my wife’s short three-year-old niece, tiny and talkative, was taken along. The posts were in a small depression on the edge of a cornfield. I lifted the little girl out of the wagon and stood her on higher ground. She remained quiet while we loaded the posts. When Percy started to pull out, the front wheels of the wagon hit soft ground, sinking to the hubs, stalling his big bay team. He lashed the horses—mildly of course—and yelled fearsome notes of encouragement. Virginia set up a howl—screamed as if the lashes and frightening words were falling on her little tender person. Percy climbed down off the wagon to investigate. Virginia stopped her howling and said with broken sobs, puncturing each word with her little right hand swinging up and down, “I know what’s the matter, Uncle John. You-just-got-too-many-posts!”
And again, nearly a year earlier, after the child had spent a month in our home, Virginia’s mother had come out from Kansas City to take her baby home. At the last minute, when they were seated in the passenger coach, Virginia decided she did not want to leave us, and she tearfully argued the matter with her mother—to no avail. As the train started to move the little girl, tiny and tearful, standing up in the seat, thrust her head and outstretched arms out an open window, and sobbed, “Uncle John, don’t you want me?” That did something to me. The fact was, we did want her. And I could have made the flying catch all right—but her wardrobe would have gone on to Kansas City. Virginia came back to our home, later, and started to school here, but she “fell out” with her teacher—and was carted back to Kansas City again. “I just don’t like Miss Peters” is all we could get her to say. Miss Myra Peters was the primary teacher who had for many years been adored by the little tots.
After a brief spell as Kathy’s assistant with the Coombs Company, Jessie came back to try country life again. She married Will Hall, her step-father’s son. One time when Myrtle and I were visiting the Halls they took us to a Masonic program and supper in Powhattan. I was sitting with Mr. Hall when a friend of his from Hiawatha asked, “Who is that pretty girl in red over there with your son?” Mr. Hall said, drolly—he was a slow talker when he wanted to be impressive—”Well, she is my wife’s daughter; and my son’s wife.” The friend looked puzzled for a few seconds, then said, “I get it.”
I shall now have to drop back once more. At this time Myrtle Mercer was working in my printing office, and she and Jessie were living in the home place down by the creek. My brother Theodore and his wife Mattie, living on my Bancroft farm, had given Myrtle a Great Dane puppy. It grew into a very large dog. With Vic as protector, the girls felt secure in their rather isolated home between the timber and the tracks. Hoboes were numerous along the railroad in those days. The girls were not bothered by tramps, with Vic around.
Historically noted, the pup’s mother, aided by a visiting male dog of like breed from over near Hiawatha, had got herself in bad repute by taking down a stray cow that had come into the front yard where the tender spring grass made better pickings than were obtainable on the roadside. After being poorly wintered, roadside pickings were the cow’s only chance for sustenance. The cow was the property of a roving family consisting of father, mother, and five kids, that had wintered in the Jake Brian farm house a half mile away. The cow was trespassing, of course—but there were the kids to be considered. My brother paid the man for the cow. He already had possession of her. She was still down in his front yard. But in time, she got up—and was driven with other stock six miles to Uncle Bill Porter’s pasture for a summer’s outing. She never got back.
When the pup was brought to town, the record of the old dogs followed—and as he grew to be a monstrous dog he was feared by some people who knew him only by his breeding. Then the town got a mad-dog scare. Vic was reportedly seen fighting with the suspected mad-dog down in the lower part of town—on “Smoky Row.” The informer recanted later—but that did not help matters after Vic had been killed by order of the City Marshal. I think the dog’s overly-advertised ancestry had marked him for annihilation. Thus, “the sins of the parents were visited upon the son” to the extent of needless distrust.
Vic was a good dog.
Myrtle said she couldn’t believe her dog was seen fighting with another dog on the town-side of the tracks, as he was never known to leave the home alone. But she felt that it was best to be on the safe side. And then too an order was an order. She wished that it had come a week earlier, so as to have saved her the dollar tax she had paid the City Marshal for the privilege of keeping Vic another year. It was a tragedy that the girls’ watchdog was to be killed because of that false alarm.
Here I will put in a word on my own hook. I knew Ed Lazelere had stuck the pup headfirst into a rubber boot and given him a treatment designed to keep the dog at home. It really worked. In his mature years Vic was never known to leave the premises alone, and seldom with either of the girls. His one mistake in his puppy days was when he followed Myrtle, unbidden, to the Lazelere home.
Frosty Shuemaker was detailed to do the shooting. I went along to help get the dog away from the house. Vic was in the back yard in the shade of an apple tree. He wouldn’t budge for us. Myrtle came to the back door, and said she would have Jessie lead him over to the creek bank west of the house. Frosty and I went around to the front of the house, and then west on the outside of the yard fence to where there was an opening in the enclosure.
Jessie and the dog came running. Vic stopped broadside opposite the opening, and was knocked down with a single charge from Frosty’s double-barreled shotgun—when Jessie was halfway back to the house. She did not look back. She held in until the booming report of the shotgun — then let out a terrific squawk. We dragged the dead dog outside the yard fence and left it in a weed patch. Vic was now the City’s dog. The Marshal would get a dollar for burying him.
Back at the house Myrtle, red-eyed and sorrowful, asked me what had become of Jessie? I found the kid in a patch of marijuana over by the east line of the grounds, lying face down—crying her heart out. And I think I dropped a few tears, too. You know, there are times when you can’t fight them back.
COMPLIMENTARY TO THE “KIDS”
Here, I wish to pay my respects to the “ Kids”all “Kids.” And especially the childrenborn of parents living in my home—separate apartment—with whom I have had close
and pleasant association.
Complimentary to MY LITTLE PAL
Also, I was brought up with kids—ten in my father’s family; eight of them younger than me; all boys but the last one. And then, too, after my marriage, the wife’s nieces, Josephine, Donna, and Lucile Cole; Virginia, Ruth, and Betty Hyre; and Mary Jane Hall, were in turn very much in our home—which, altogether, has instilled in me a profound respect for the kids. Girls preferred.
Cloy spent the first five years of her life in my home—separate apartment. When she was about one year old, I often carried her down town and got her an ice cream cone. She was just beginning to walk, that awkward period when a child has to spraddle and step fast to hold its equilibrium. At times when she would be with her mother on the settee at the north end of the 22-foot front porch when I might choose to come around from my apartment to the south end, she would make known to her mother her desire to be put down on the floor, and she would come cooing with outstretched arms for me to pick her up. And while she could not talk, her mind was, I’m sure, on a cone somewhere down town. I never aimed to disappoint her — but one time when I had been working in my Rose Garden and was plenty tired, I tried to talk her out of it, put her off. She could not understand all I was saying, of course—but she caught the general idea all right. Never again did she come a-cooing to me with outstretched arms. This is not to say we did not get more cones.
When Cloy was about four years old, she had a line-up for me to participate in a social activity of the family. I said, “No, Cloy, I couldn’t do that—I don’t belong. She said, “Well, gee—you’re one of us, ain’t you?”
When hardly five years old, Cloy found me, at night, standing on the old National Bank corner. She asked me if I would give her a nickel—said she had one nickel, and wanted to buy a 10-cent lipstick at the Wells store for her mother. I said, “Cloy, your mother does not use lipstick.” “Oh yes she does,” said Cloy, “the kind that don’t show.” I did not have a nickel, and offered to go with her to the Wells store. She said, “Can’t you get the change at the drugstore?” I said, “Come along, I’ll get it for you,” and headed for the restaurant operated by her father and mother and her aunt Genevieve Weaver. As we were passing the drugstore, she said, “Get it in here.” I said, “No, let’s go to the restaurant.” She said, “Well, bring it to me here”—and she sat down on a bench. When I gave her the nickel, she skipped across the street to the Wells store—and I went back to the restaurant. In a little while she came in with her purchase, grinning. She opened it, and proceeded at once to paint her fingernails right before her parents, still grinning. Nellie said Cloy had “deviled” them for that extra nickel to get the nail polish — and that they had turned her down. It was plain then why she had said to me, “I knowed durn shore if I’d find you, I’d get it.”
I could keep on writing about this kid until the “cows come home”—but I won’t. This paragraph shall suffice. We were coming up from town, hand in hand, when Cloy, fairly bubbling over with good cheer, said to me, “You never did let me see in your rooms.” I said, “Well, come in now and take a good look.” When inside, she said, “Gee, it stinks in here.” Defendant pleads nolo contendere.
These two fine little youngsters have been in my home—separate apartment—since time began for them. And I’ve instilled in their heads the ice cream cone habit. Their mother has told them that they must not ask for the cones—but together we’ve worked out a way around that. Whenever I meet Karen, bright-eyed and smiling, in my path, I say to her, “Well, go in and tell your mother.” I never know how she gets it over to Marjorie—but we are always off at once, usually with a mighty active little trailer not far behind. When brought into my presence in the yard, before she could talk, Karen, doubtless thinking of a cone, would point the way down town and then run ahead for about a rod. When this did not bring the desired results, she would take me by the hand and lead the way, humming like a contented kitten sometimes purrs.
When hardly three years old, Karen ’ s mother sent her, with an older little girl from across the street, on an errand down to Hart ’ s store. They both “fetched up ” at the restaurant where I get my meals. They found me “in ”— but Karen, in the lead, did not give me so much as a single look. They marched on past me, climbed — with much effort — onto the counter stools. Charlie Shaffer asked them a couple of times what they wanted — but they just stared. Charlie then glanced over toward me, laughing, which was equivalent to saying, “You take ‘em, ” and then I had gotten over my laughing spell, I called Karen over to me, and asked her if they would like cones.
Her little head went up and down a couple of times. They got their cones, and went out pleased. And I was pleased, too. When the annual Wetmore Fair was in progress I found Karen, slightly more than four years old, sitting primly on a bench among strangers at the down-town end of the block on which we lived, and I sat down by her. She proudly told me she had on a new dress — a little yellow creation—which I later suspected she had been told to keep clean. I told her she looked nice—and this she accepted with true womanly grace.
It also developed that she had been permitted to go thus far only in advance, to await the coming of her mother and Harry—but she did not take the trouble to tell me this. I asked her to go with me to the drugstore for cones. She hesitated a moment as if she were remembering something—and then declined to go, but she said, “I thank you for asking me.”
On my return from the post office, I observed the little yellow dress was still on the bench—and, as Karen had been so nice about it, I stepped into the drugstore and bought a couple of cones, aiming to pick her up on my way home. Then, too late, I realized my mistake. The children saw me with the cones as they turned the corner with their mother enroute to the program on the Fair grounds in the next block. With apologies, I gave the cones to Marjorie, thinking to make her jointly responsible for messing up her children.
Well, the next day when we were getting cones at the drugstore, I asked Karen if she had gotten her new dress soiled with the cone last evening. Karen laughed—and said, “You know something. Daddy and mamma ate the cones—but mamma gave me one bite.” I did not hear from Harry on this score, but assumed matters had been properly taken care of. The moral is: Never give a kid a messy treat after mama has cleaned it up for public appearance.
ANOTHER BRIGHT LITTLE STAR
The little Fresno, California miss was ushered into my presence. My sister then went back outside to continue with the watering of her flowers. Standing off at a reasonable distance, Connie Jean Moser, from across the street at 1010 Ferger, said, “Aunt Nannie told me to come in and get acquainted with Uncle John.” Attracted at once by the little visitor’s proud carriage, pleasant expression of face, and trim little body not burdened with too many clothes, I told her that for me this should be a real pleasure.
Little girls, from three to six, in all their innocence, have always made a hit with me. This is not to say I do not appreciate them when they are older. But in general they lose a lot when they get smart. And here now was beauty and apparently innocence at its best. A little reserved at first, Connie Jean declined my invitation for her to sit with me on the sofa, where I had been writing on a tab. She climbed into a chair, twisted, and got settled with her little bare feet sticking straight out at me. She told me her name, her age, and where She lived—and that she had a boy friend named David.
Not wanting to lose an interrupted thought, I picked up the tab and wrote a few lines. This done, I now found Connie Jean Moser, four years old, sitting close up by my side, on the sofa. She asked me to read what I had written. I said, “Oh, Connie, you wouldn’t understand it.” Then she commanded, peremptorily, “Read it!” I told her I was writing a book, and if she would promise to read every word of it when she got big enough that I would send her the book.
“Oh, a book,” she said, happily, a light breaking in upon her understanding, “I could take it to school like Oralee.” Oralee Johnson, ten years old, is Connie Jean’s next door neighbor. I told Connie that Oralee, when four years old, had paid me several rather affectionate visits when I was in Fresno six years ago—but Oralee was getting too big for that now.
“Yes,” she said, “Oralee is big. ”
Connie Jean squirmed and twisted on the sofa, as children will, causing the straps sustaining her little sun-suit to slip off her shoulders, annoying her to the point of alarm. I said, “Don’t let the straps bother you, Connie—you will not lose your suit.” She smiled, and her blue eyes opened wide. “If I would lose ‘em,” she said, “it would be too bad—got nothing under ‘em.”
A very good man once said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.”
LLEWELLYN CASTLE
Published in Wetmore Spectator—Seneca Courier-
Tribune—Goff Advance—Topeka Daily
Capital—October, 1931
By John T. Bristow
A half century ago England got rid of some of her surplus inhabitants by sending them over to this country to “root hog, or die” as the old saying is. They drifted in here “like lost leaves from the annals of men.” Colonies were planted in numerous sections of Kansas. Nemaha County, with her great sweep of vacant rolling prairies, inviting, snared one of those colonies.
The settlement known as the old English colony was on section twenty-five, in Harrison township, five miles northwest of Wetmore. The section was purchased from the Union Pacific railroad company by the Co-operative Colonization Company, of London, about 1870.
The London Colonization Company had about six hundred members. They drew lots to determine who would be the lucky—or unlucky—ones to come over first, expenses paid.
John Fuller, John Mollineaux, George Dutch, John Radford, Charles McCarthy and John Stowell were the original six to enter upon the duties of conquering this land—virgin wild land it was. Except John Stowell, all these men had families, but they did not all bring their families over at first.
An eight-room house was built in the middle of the section and all managed to live in it for a while. It was called Llewellyn Castle. Later, lean-tos were built on two sides of the big house, and finally, some smaller buildings were erected around the original house. The men were supplied, meagerly, with funds to equip the farm.
The idea of the Company at first was to make a town in the center of the section, and cut the land up into 10-acre tracts. They seemed to think that ten acres would make a respectable sized farm. The town of Goff, a mile and a half away, got started and the Colony town project was abandoned. Also the 10-acre farm plan was changed to forty acres. The lumber for the improvements was unloaded at old Sother, a siding on the railroad a mile and a half south of the Colony section. There was a postoffice at old Sother. Nothing else. Not even a station agent.
Later arrivals of the Colonists included the Wessels, Beebys, Perrys, Coxes, Ashtons, Trents, McConwells, G ates, Morden, Hill, May, Conover, Weston, Helsby, Weeks, Mrs. Terbit, and others. Still later, other members of the Colonization Company come over after the local Company had ceased to exist –gone bankrupt, it was charged, because of the extravagant management of the non-producing misfits sent over here to start operations. At this late date it could not be ascertained just what was the text of the contracts between the parent company and the members sent over here. But the impression is that if all had gone well additional lands would have been acquired to accommodate other members. The members, however, kept on coming regardless of the lack of advance preparation.
They scattered out on other lands, mostly around the Colony—usually 40-acre tracts. They were miserably poor. And the privations were many. Mrs. Terbit, having no mode of conveyance, used to walk all the way in from the Colony and carry home on her shoulder a 50-pound sack of flour.
Isaac May settled on the 40-acre tract one mile south of Wetmore, which is now the home of George W. Gill. May lived in a dug-out. John Stowell settled on the north eighty of a quarter five miles southwest of Wetmore—known as the Joe Board place, and still later owned by Charley Krack.
George Cox settled the south eighty, which is still in the Cox family—now owned by George’s son Fred, of Goff.
The Colony project was a glorious and ignominious failure from the very first, with romance and intrigue ever in the ascendancy. Those poor Englishmen were as green as the verdant prairies of springtime that lay all about them. And the inexorable hand of Fate pressed down on them heavily. They were besieged by droughts, grasshoppers, prairie fires, blizzards, rattlesnakes—and, worst of all, an abiding ignorance of all things American. When Llewellyn Castle was torn down in later years, a den of rattlesnakes—twenty two in number—was found under the house.
Tom Fish told me that the snakes were offer heard flopping against the floor, underneath, while the house was occupied.
Those poor misfits had not a chance. And it was little short of criminal to send them over here so empty handed and so illy equipped for the duties imposed upon them. But they were now all a part of the big, sun-filled Golden West. And they were too poor to go back.
Many are the causes advanced for the downfall of the Colony project, but the one cause on which all seem to be unanimous, more or less, is that “They were a bunch of rascals.” This is probably an error—or partly so, at least.
Internal friction with a very shady but treeless background undoubtedly played its part. But I would rather suspect that the main cause was ignorance, or to put it more kindly, a lack of knowledge. Tom Fish, our faithful mixer of British-American juris-prudence—three times Justice of the Peace backs me up in this contention. Says Tommy, “They just didn’t knower anythink about farmin.” Our Tom attended their meetings back in London at the Newman street-Market street headquarters.
But whatever the facts, and admitting that there were among the Colonists no replicas of the man who walked along the Galilean shores two thousands years ago, still I do not subscribe to the general belief that those Colonists were all rascals.
Had they succeeded, handicapped as they were, it would have been a miracle—and only in ancient history do miracles spring fullblown from questionable beginnings. A condition soon developed among the Colonists on section twenty-five where it was “every fellow for himself and may the devil take the hindmost.” True, there was a lot of poor management and some shady, if not to say crooked, transactions. And it appears one man did rather “Lord” it over the others—took the lion’s share of everything.
George Cox, a carpenter—they were practically all tradesmen was sent over to superintend fencing the Colony lands. And, very much to the merriment of the natives, he did that fencing in the dead of winter, when the ground was frozen. The postholes he and his countrymen dug that winter cost the Company one dollar, each. Such frozen assets were, of course, conducive to the downfall of the Company.
But George Cox was not the fool that his ice-bound fence would indicate. The real fault was on the other side of the big pond. The Company sent Cox over here in midwinter to build a fence. He was without funds. The larder at Llewellyn Castle was low—distressingly low. And his brother Englishmen needed immediate succor. There was money for George Cox only when he worked. And he couldn’t afford to put in all his time that blizzardy, snowbound winter hanging onto the coat-tail of one of his brother countrymen while the bunch of them played ring-round-the-stove in that old Colony house to keep from freezing, as he once told me he was compelled to do. So, then, what was really wrong with George’s congealed fence idea?
Like other Englishmen, after coming here, George Cox had a lot to learn, of course. He was the complainant in a lawsuit involving the ownership of a cow. John J. Ingalls was attorney for Theodore
Wolfley, the defendant. The illustrious John J. queried, “What color was your cow, Mr. Cox?”
“Bay,” said George. The court laughed, and told Cox to try again. “Well,” said George, “I ‘ave a bay ‘orse, and my cow’s the same color as my bay ‘orse.”
Then, from over the seas, came the jovial Mr. Murray, clothed in authority and a superabundance of ego—English to the core. He had been sent over here to make an audit of the Company’s estate. Murray stopped first at Wetmore and partook freely of Johnny Clifton’s “alf-and-alf.” He was a free spender and made friends here readily.
In pursuance of his duties, Mr. Murray said to those Colony delinquents, “Wots the jolly old idea of all this reticence? Hits most happallin! I want to see the books, by-jove.” One of those derelicts exclaimed with a little more mirth than was becoming, “I-si, just listen to ‘im, fellow! Wants to see the books, ‘e does! That’s rich! Si, mister we don’t keep henny books!”
Then in unison they shot words at Mr. Murray which were the same as “You get the hell out of here.” Murray demurred, and not having read the storm signals quite right, he bellowed, “Ave a care! Want that I should report you for this hincolence? Hits very hunwise for you to hact this wy!”
But when the old shotgun was brought out from its hiding place an awful doubt of his own wisdom assailed the jovial Mr. Murray. Those true sons of Briton actually chased the auditor away with a shotgun.
In employing the hit-and-miss English words here I am relaying them to you as best I can from memory as I caught them from one, maybe two, of the original six, many, many years ago. The quoted words are not my own. If you could have known the men and could apply either the Stowell or Radford pronunciation and accent you would improve it a lot. And don’t forget to speed up a little.
There are now few of the old-time typical English with us. And the language of those who came over a long time ago has become Americanized to such extent that the younger generation here have no conception of just how delightfully funny was the talk of a fresh Englishman. However, some of those who came over as children and Even some of the American born who had good tutors retain a percentage Of the pronunciation, but the inflection and speed which characterized their ancestors have been lost.
After the collapse of the Colony enterprise the unallotted part of section twenty-five fell into the hands of Captain Wilson, of London.
He was an officer in the Company. Later, Captain Wilson’s interest was acquired by William Fish, also of London, and a member of the Company. In England William Fish was superintendent of the Great Northern railroad. He came over here in 1881. He was a pensioner, and did not renounce his allegiance to the Crown.
Captain Wilson thought a lot of the Colony scheme. He was to have given his fortune at death to the first male child born on the Colony section. That honor fell to Alfred Wilson Mollineaux, first son of John Mollineaux, born 1874. While conversing with Alfred Mollineaux a few days ago, he said to me, “But since I didn’t get me ‘eritage I’ve dropped the Wilson part of it. Wot would be the good to bother with it now?”
The Mollineaux heirs are the only descendents of the originals holding an interest in section twenty-five in recent years. Alfred now owns the south 80 of the northwest quarter. Harry sold the north 80 two years ago to Otto Krack. Otto paid $6,000 for it, including the growing crop. The old house on the place, built more than a half century ago, is the original John Mollineaux home. The other lands in the section have long since passed to new owners.
There are now only two of the old Colonists living. William Wessel, familiarly called “Teddy,” came over in 1873. He is 89, and lives with his daughter, Mrs. John Chase, in Goff. William Conover lives with his son Edward, on a farm adjacent to the old Colony section. He is 89.
I took a drive about the old Colony section a few days ago seeking to refresh my memory and gather additional data for this article. At Goff I found Teddy Wessel in the Sourk drug store. Still living over the broken dreams of the past, Teddy exploded, first-off, “They were a bunch of damned rascals.”
In course of the interview I asked Teddy if he knew anything about a racy romance at Llewellyn Castle many years ago. “I should say I do,” he said. He had a momentary flash of it. That was all. Then his mind began to fag. Laboriously, tantalizingly, the tired feelers of his mind went fumbling into the dark pool of the past, trying desperately to capture the lost details, but the whole works went under—ebbed away like a fadeout in a movie.
George Sourk, who was sitting by and coaching the old fellow a bit, said, “You’ll have to give daddy a little time, John. He’ll remember it all right.”
Daddy swam up out of it all right and sure enough recollections were upon him with a bang. But the main topic was still submerged and in its place was an ugly memory that should have been dead long ago. “They were damned rascals,” is all he said.
It is assumed that my very fine old friend’s poisoned arrow was aimed only at the shades of the original six, or, at most, only those who had the actual management of the Colony affairs.
Teddy Wessel’s run of hard luck started before he left London. It seems he bought something—or thought he paid for something—he didn’t get. But Teddy can thank his stars that there was at least one crooked countryman in his close circle. Teddy trusted a friend to purchase first-class passagenfor himself and family. The friend bought cheaper tickets on a slower ship, and pocketed the difference. The fast ship passed the slower one in mid-ocean and was lost, together with all on board, when one day out from New York.
A happy—and I believe equitable—solution of the matter would allow the reader who had a friend or relative among them the privilege of exempting such one, and thus still leave Teddy some targets for his arrows. For my own part, I think I should like to exempt that little nineteen-year-old boy, John Stowell. In later years, after he had come to Wetmore and engaged in business, I worked for John Stowell in his lumber yard, and in his brick manufacturing plant, and finally, as type-setter on his newspaper. He was not a crook.
I grew up along with those bally English and I think I knew them pretty well. They were not all rascals. The Colony section was only five miles away from Wetmore as the crow flies. And as the crow flew then so did I gallop my mustang along the prairie grass lane while carrying mail between Wetmore and Seneca, passing Llewellyn Castle on the way.
There were few fences in the way then. Just prairie grass and wild roses and more prairie grass. And lots of prairie chickens. I have seen acres of them at one time on the hillsides in the vicinity of Llewellyn Castle.
There was no blue-grass then. And no timber along the route anywhere until the Nemaha was reached just this side of Seneca, at the old Hazzard place.
And later, in 1887, when I was a compositor on T. J. Wolfley’s Seneca Tribune, and made drives home with Sandy Sterling’s livery team, practically all of the twenty-six miles of road was still only a winding trail.
Willis J. Coburn, the contractor for that Star mail route, went with me on the first trip. He took me to the home of his old friend, John Radford, who had then left the Colony and was living on the old Scrafford place adjoining Seneca on the south. I put up with “Old Radidad”—as we afterwards called him when he came to live in Wetmore—for about a month, and while they treated me kindly, I didn’t like their English ways.
And when I announced my intentions of throwing up my job Willis Coburn said I should then put up at the old Fairchild Hotel, which was on a side street north from the upper end of the main street. It was a stone building. Besides being immaculately clean, the Fairchilds were related to the Jay Powers family in Wetmore and that made a bond between us that held for the duration of my mail carrying activities. There were two stops on the way—one in the Abbey neighborhood, and one at old Lincoln.
As compensation for my services as mail-carrier, I was paid fifty cents each way, up one day and back the next—twice a week. And I was glad to get that. Our mail-carriers here in Wetmore, covering about equal distance, with only two hours on the road, draw about seven dollars a day.
When Willis Coburn offered me the job I was short of the required age, sixteen, and I was wondering how I would get by without swearing to a lie, when our good old postmaster, Alvin McCreery, solved the problem for me. When he swore me in, he said, “Now, don’t tell me your age.” He shook his head, negatively, and repeated, “Don’t tell me your age.”
At the Radford home in Seneca, I learned enough about the old Colony to make a book, but much of it is now shrouded in a fog of haze. On the occasion of our first trip, Mr. Radford and Mr. Coburn discussed Colony matters freely in my presence. It was July, and it was out on the border of the big orchard which came right up to the back door, under the shade of an early harvest apple tree, where they sat and talked.
I have to admit that at the time I was more interested in the golden fruit hanging on the apple tree than I was in the conversation, but I got enough of it to know that there would be a good story in it, if I could but remember more clearly. Mr. Radford’s agile mind ground out astonishing facts as steadily as a grist mill that afternoon. Whatever else may be said of John Radford, he was an educated man. And he had a wonderful sense of humor.
As I remember it, or partly remember it, the high light of the afternoon’s conversation—the thing that tickled the men most—was a racy romance that had budded, bloomed, and died at Llewellyn Castle. The male participants were of course Wetmore men—one artisan, one professional. But somewhere along the time-worn trail between that old apple tree and my present quarters, separated by three and fifty years, the details of that affair are lost. And like the characters who made it, that romance has crumbled into dust—is now a part of the past.
But the phantom of the bally old thing, elusive though as a half-formed thought awakened by a stray wisp of forgotten fragrance, still hovers over section twenty-five. And if memory were but a trifle more elastic I could entertain you with something more than the tattered shreds of Llewellyn Castle’s most charming romance—a jolly old love-spree staged and destroyed by the heartless hand of Fate.
MORE ABOUT THE COLONY FOLK
Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
The Colony folk, men and women, came to Wetmore to do their trading—and to sip ‘alf-an-’alf, beer and whisky. At that time there was quite a lot of immigration from England, and Britons were scattered about over the prairies in all directions—and in general they were all regarded as Colonists.
William Cawood, with his two sons, Walter and Prince, came direct to Wetmore from Scarborough, England, in the spring of 1870. Other members of the family—George, Charley, Emma, Kate, and their mother—followed in the fall.
William Cawood was a large man—a man of means, a man of dignity, ideas, and mutton-chops. In England he was a contractor and builder—and a good one, too, it was said. Here, he built his meat-market, and his residence, his horse stable, his cow barn, and his pig sty, all under one roof. The structure, founded upon pine studding set in the ground, was on the alley end of four lots north of Third Street and west of Kansas Avenue. The boys at school across the street to the east thought a new telegraph line was coming to town. In later years, wondering if my memory had served me well, I asked Prince Cawood if it were true that those studding were set in the ground? He said, “Every one of them.”
Walter Cawood was a large man like his father. He played an important part in the making of this story—or rather this incident. An outstanding episode of the early days was a free-for-all fight on the main street in Wetmore, with Colonists predominating. It was the year 1870—maybe 1871. Can’t be sure about the exact time. That brawl is recorded in local history as “English Boxing Day”—though in England, the day after Christmas is known as Boxing Day, This one occurred on a muggy summer day.
At this time Wetmore’s main street was flanked with three buildings on the south side, and four on the north side, in blocks one and four—all well toward the west end. Lush prairie grass still grew on the east half of those two blocks. A long hitchrack was in the center of the ungraded street.