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.
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 cidervinegar—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 inNebraska, saying he would have to move from the place he was staying, on account of the peopleinthe 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.
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.”
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 nightuntil 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 tohumiliatethem, 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.