Published in Wetmore Spectator,
March 20, 1936
By John T. Bristow
This, 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.
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.”
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 littlewords—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.