across the street from the DeForest mercantile corner. Hardly had Mr.
Henry gotten back to his store when Myrtle, looking out the window,
exclaimed, “My gosh—the chaperon! Look out below!” Seeing the chaperon
heading for the shoe store, caused Myrtle to say to me, “It looks as if
some of you brilliant fraters of Faber could have foreseen the damage to
be done by that foolhardy plunge down the gravel slide.” She had picked
up the term, “fraters of Faber,” in the parlors of the Alamo hotel when
the party was welcomed by Mayor Sprague, the Chamber of Commerce, and
the Pike’s Peak Press Club.
The shoe merchant’s wife had taken care of the store during his absence,
and was still on duty. Somehow, during the hour’s visit, the merchant
slipped a pair of new shoes to the chaperon—as was quite proper, since
he had led her down that gravel slide. But his wife seemingly was not an
understanding woman. She followed the chaperon to the railroad station,
and recovered the shoes. No blows, no hair pulling—not at the depot,
anyway.
Another time, while ostensibly vacationing in Colorado—Colorado again,
I’m sure it was—Mr. Henry had a couple of fine flannel shirts washed by
a Chinese laundry-man in Grass Valley, California, and they had shrunk
so badly that he put them back in stock in his store. I’m positive he
told me they were laundered in Grass Valley. Those fine shirts were to
be taken on another outing in Colorado, and one of them got up Pike’s
Peak, too—but those shirts did not find their way to Grass Valley this
time. I know. I wore them.
Years after that sad trip to Omaha, and after he had thrown his fortunes
in with the younger set, Mr. Henry married a mighty fine Wetmore girl,
a school teacher—Miss Anna Gill. The marriage license gave their ages
as over 21, which was correct as far as it went. A closer tab would have
revealed his age as being somewhere around 54, and hers a full decade
above the stated figure. This romance also “hung fire” for several
years. In fact, it was hard to tell just when it began.
More than once have I walked with Mr. Henry the mile to her country
home, when I thought my friend Alex Hamel, or maybe Rodman DeForest, or
Johnny Thomas, or my brother Sam, was the top man there. We were not, of
course—Mr. Henry and I—walking out together of a Sunday evening to see
the same girl, but had I been pressed to make a choice of the half dozen
girls who congregated there, Miss Anna would have been that one. It was
not clear to all just who was going to see whom.
Alex Hamel’s most cherished memory of his suit was the fact—so he told
me—that while walking out in the night with Mr. Henry and the girl,
arms in arms, Alex on one side and the tall stately highbred gentleman
(Alex’s description) on the other side, he had reached over and kissed
Miss Anna. Alex did not say whether or not she had inclined her head
toward him for the reception of that kiss in the dark.
It was no comedown for the “highbred gentleman” when he married the
harness-maker’s daughter. Mr. Henry died, in retirement, in 1917.
His widow and son Carroll, later, moved to Boise, Idaho. Augusta Ann
DeForest died in 1895. Her husband, Isaac Newton DeForest, had died ten
years earlier.
During a ten days stay in Los Angeles, following Christmas (1947), at
the home of my nephew, W. G. Bristow, and his wife Ethel, and visiting
the Weavers — Raymond, Nellie, and Miss Cloy—Tom DeForest called with
a new automobile and drove me to his home at Santa Anita, a restricted
residential section in the foothills, where I met his wife Hilda, his
daughter Mary, and his son Tommy. He also drove me over to the west
side to call on the Larzeleres — Ed, Mabel, Ella and her husband Lester
Hatch, and their daughter Miss Drusilla, who writes feature (society)
articles for the Los Angeles Sunday Times. Tom, son of Moulton and Mary
(Thomas) DeForest, is in possession of the original DeForest family
bible. From those records, and from Tom himself, I verified facts set
forth in this article.
Tom DeForest has a $50,000 home only a little way up the canyon from the
famous Santa Anita race track. After showing me through the home and
we were on our way out, Tom spied some freshly baked pumpkin pies on
a table. I imagine they were pies baked for a family outing “below the
border” in Old Mexico, where Tom said they were going the following
morning for a three-day fishing trip. He said, “I think we ought to have
a piece of pie and a glass of milk before we go over to Larzelere’s.”
While eating the pie, Tom expounded glibly, as only a DeForest could, on
his liking for pumpkin pies in general and particularly the one we
were eating—and his detestation of the so-called pumpkin pies made from
squash. As we were going out the door, his wife whispered to me, “I made
that pie out of Tom’s despised squash which he grew himself here in the
garden.” Tom has an extra lot back of his residence where he digs in the
good earth to keep himself fit.
T. M. DeForest is a former Wetmore boy who made good. He told me that
when he landed in Los Angeles about 1908, Ed (Bogs) Graham, another
Wetmore boy, staked him to a meal ticket. As we were driving past
the business location — confectionery store, I believe — of Ed’s twin
daughters, Marion and Maxine, very close to the Larzelere home, Tom said
he had a warm spot in his heart for the girls because of the lift he
had gotten from their father, long since dead, when things looked pretty
blue for him.
Tom DeForest started his restaurant career with a push-cart, peddling
hamburgers and beans of evenings, while studying law during the day —
just to please his father. The hamburger and bean business grew beyond
all expectations—and Tom soon forgot about his father’s wish that he
study law. Tom did not travel the streets with his push-cart. He stored
it back of a bank building in the daytime, and brought it out only of
evenings — keeping late hours, and quite often “wee” hours. When he
housed the business at 2420 North Broadway, it became “Ptomaine Tommy’s
Place.” And it continued to grow. The name made it famous. Tom told me
he could sell the business for $100,000—but he didn’t know what to do
with the money. Then, too, I suspect, the complicated income tax demands
was also a deterrent. That’s what has stopped Jim Leibig — another
Wetmore boy who has made good, at Santa Ana — from turning a big profit.
I think Jim could clean up with as much, or maybe more, than Tom.
Tom DeForest has leased the business to his former help for a percentage
of the profits. He goes to the place only once every day now, (12
o’clock, noon), to check up — and gather in the cash. Pretty soft,
Tommy—pretty soft.
Now, was there ever another man like Henry Clay DeForest? Certainly not
in Wetmore. Mr. Henry was my hero, had been so since the time of his
partnership here with Seth Handley, when I was eleven years old, “under
foot” much of the time in their establishment. And I should have liked
very much to have seen his romance with Seth’s sister materialize.
Although I had seen her but once, I had come to think of her as an
exceptionally desirable lady, a lovely personage like her wonderful
brother Seth. And though it came to naught, I still think it was, in a
way, the most beautiful romance that I have ever known; with the lady
waiting—waiting unto death for the clouds to roll by.
And even with the handicap of being influenced by an aristocratic mother
— if it really were a handicap — Mr. Henry rose, in a community dead set
against such holdings, to the heights in popularity. He was the almost
perfect man — a man after my own heart, and even now it pleases me no
little to remember that I had selected him as my hero early in life.
SMALLPOX PESTILENCE Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
Don’t be frightened. On paper, smallpox is not contagious. That is,
usually it isn’t. But I shall cite one case where it might have been.
Had you been living here in Wetmore fifty years ago, it would have been
about a hundred to one chance that you would have backed away from the
mere mention of smallpox.
Some five hundred others did just that.
It was my first and only experience with the loathsome disease. Also
it was the first — and last — case of smallpox the town ever had. There
were among us, however, several sorry looking walking testimonials
of what that pestilence could do to one’s face. Elva Kenoyer, in her
twenties, unattached and so remaining to the end, was horribly pitted.
E. S. Frager, the furniture dealer, got his pits elsewhere. Eli
Swerdfeger, a retired farmer, had ’ em all over his face, and deep too.
And though he was at that time making his living by doing odd jobs about
town, he wouldn’t for love or money attend me. Said he had his family to
consider.
And Eugene Dorcas, living in the country at the time — later in
Wetmore—had smallpox so badly that the soles of his feet had come off
like a rattlesnake sheds its skin. But, at that, he had nothing on me.
Dr. J. W. Graham, the old family physician, was called in—and, as a
mark of courtesy to me, or perhaps more correctly as a beginning for
launching his son just out of medical school on a like career, brought
Dr. Guy S. Graham along with him. And, in a manner, it was Guy’s first
professional case. They found that I was running a temperature of 105,
and mighty sick, but no signs or even thought of smallpox—yet. The young
doctor remained with me after the old doctor had gone to the drugstore
to get a prescription filled. He sat on the edge of my bed, just
visiting.
At that time, there was a lot of smallpox in Kansas City, and I had been
there about ten days before with a mixed carload of hogs and cattle —
owned in partnership with my brother Theodore—from my Bancroft farm.
Also, I had occupied a seat in the railroad coach coming home, with
George Fundis. He spoke of the prevalence of smallpox in Kansas City,
and his fear of contracting it—and then proceeded to have his attack
almost at once on getting back to his home in Centralia. He might have
been a carrier. George was a stockbuyer—but before this time, he owned
and operated a general store at Ontario.
On the following morning after the Drs. Graham had visited me, I noticed
red spots deep under the skin in the palms of my hands. They worried me.
I sent word to Dr. J. W. Graham appraising him of my fears, and asked
him to not come back. And the young doctor rushed out immediately and
buried his clothes. However, the old doctor was not frightened — so he
said. But he called up the County Health Officer and scared the “puddin’
” out of him.
I had Dr. Graham send for Dr. Charley Howe, of Atchison, known as “The
Smallpox Doctor,” on account of his having stamped out an epidemic at
Lenora with his vinegar treatment, or rather his vinegar preventive.
Dr. Howe first had a talk with Dr. Graham, and decided I did not have
it. He came to see me without putting on his rubber suit. On first
entering the room, however, he said, “You don’t need to tell me
anything, you’ve got it, I can smell it—but I thought you were so scared
of catching it, that you would never get it.”
A few weeks before this I had met Dr. Howe at the depot in Wetmore,
while on his way to Centralia to see a man whom the local doctor
believed might be coming down with smallpox. I had known Charley Howe
for a long time — had worked with him on his brother Ed’s Daily Globe
in Atchison, and worked for Charley on his Greenleaf newspaper before he
was a doctor. When he stepped off the train to tell me about his
findings, I hung back a little from the start, but when he said the
fellow was broken out, I backed still farther away from him before he
had got around to saying it was not smallpox. Dr. Howe laughed about
this, and said, “Oh, you’ll never get it.”
The doctor asked me if I had a shotgun? I told him Dad had one in the
kitchen. He said, “You better have it brought in here. If the people try
to force you away to a pest house, stand them off with it. To move you
now would mean almost sure death.” Dr. Howe told my sister Nannie — she
had been attending me up to this time, and thought she was in for it
too—that she could continue waiting on me, without risk, if she would
ring off my bed with chairs”, come into the room as little as possible,
not touch dishes or anything else handled by me, without rubber
gloves—and take the vinegar preventive, she would be safe. He said the
danger was not so much with the first fever stage, as later.
The doctor said I should eat no solids; nothing but soft food for
eight days— “ and then,” he laughed, “you’ll not care to eat solids
or anything else, for awhile.” That’s when the smallpox patient erupts
internally. We settled on cream of wheat, and my sister, not getting the
short term well fixed in mind, kept me on that one diet for forty-two
days—long after I was well enough to get out. The County Health Officer
was afraid to come down from Seneca to release me. He took plenty of
time, and then without ever seeing me, issued an order for my release,
with a “guess so” attachment.
My sister Nannie, at seventeen, was rather plump — not bulky fat—but
after the vinegar treatment she came out as slim as a race horse, and
has been trim ever since. An awful lot of cider vinegar —it had to
be cider vinegar — was consumed in Wetmore that winter. I believe the
vinegar produced an acid blood.
On the first afternoon when the fever was making me pretty stupid, I had
spent maybe a half hour sitting by the stove in Bud Means’ store, below
the printing office. Near by, there was a water bucket, with dipper,
for everybody’s use. I did not drink at the public bucket that day — but
when it became known that I had a high fever at that very time, and was
now down with smallpox, it was but natural for Bud to imagine that I had
tried to cool my fever with several trips to his water bucket. And
there was no imagination about the quaff he himself had taken from that
dipper, after I had left. Bud told me after I had gotten out—not right
away, you can bet your life—that it almost made him sick.
With Elva’s and Eli’s pockmarked faces constantly in mind, I laid awake
nights to make sure that I would not, in my sleep, scratch my face, or
misplace the slipperyelm poultice, done in cheesecloth, in which my face
was swathed. And then, even then, it was awful, a mass of apparently
disfigurating open pustules, with face redder than a spanked baby.
After my face had come back to somewhere near normal, I sent my
neighbor, Ed Reitzel, up to B. O. Bass’ barber shop to buy—not borrow—a
razor and mug, aiming to use them only once. Then, before I had started
on that oh-so-awful looking face, I began to wonder if maybe Byron had
not sent me his “deadman’s” razor, and I had to send Ed back to make
sure about that. I knew that Byron, when telling one of his funny
barbershop stories, was liable to do and say things off key. One time
he poured nearly a whole bottle of hairoil on my head—which I had not
ordered, and didn’t want—while he was looking away from his work, and
laughing at his own funny story. Then I had to have a shampoo before I
could go to “protracted” meeting that night.
Fixed up with Byron’s razor, I looked a little more like myself, and was
now ready to hold an appointment with my girl, who was also the manager
of my newspaper business, with the alternate help of Herb Wait and
Jim Harvey Hyde, of the Centralia Journal. She had secured for me
from General Passenger Agent Barker in St. Louis a pass over the MK&T
railroad, to Galveston. George Cawood had sent me word not to show up at
his store for awhile after I would get out, and I knew that all the town
people were feeling the same way about me. Hence the trip to the gulf.
As instructed, Myrtle met me at the front gate of her home, handed me my
credentials and the money she had gotten for me, stood off a reasonable
distance, also as per instructions, and said, “You look like the devil.”
The cold had enhanced the “splendor” of the blemishes on my face. If she
could have said further, “But I still love you in the same old way,” it
would have been a more cheerful sendoff for the long journey ahead of
me.
But Myrtle was too busy trying to tell me how she had managed my
business. She didn’t know it, but she herself had, in prospect, a
substantial interest in the printery. Before leaving the office on that
dreadful day when my fever was at high pitch—I mean actual temperature—I
deposited in my desk a check written in her favor, with no ifs or ands
attached, for an amount which would have come near bankrupting me as of
the moment—even as I have now, since I am no longer a family man, set
aside the residue of my possessions, if any, in favor of the sister who
had so bravely, at the risk of her face and figure, stood by me through
that smallpox ordeal.
After getting settled in bed that first night, I told my sister about
the check in my desk, and also told her that I wanted her to see that
it be paid, if, and when, it would appear appropriate to do so. I was
remembering at the time the case of Myran Ash and Ella Wolverton,
south of town. Ella had waited on him in his last sickness, and in the
meantime picked up Myran’s check for $1,000. His relatives tried, but
failed, to prevent her from cashing the check.
When I boarded the train at Wetmore that same day, Charley Fletcher, the
conductor, coming down the aisle gathering tickets, stopped stock-still,
and backed up a few steps, when he saw me. He wouldn’t touch my Mo.
Pacific pass until I had explained that it had been in the office all
the time during my sickness.
After first calling on my doctor, I stopped in Atchison long enough to
buy a suit of clothes and other needed articles. I had left home wearing
an old suit, “borrowed” from Ed Murray. On leaving the clothing store
I met, or came near meeting, Mr. Redford, bookkeeper at the
Green-leaf-Baker grain elevator, whom I knew quite well, having shipped
grain to the firm. Taking to the street, he shied around me, but he
had the decency to laugh about it—and told me that I would see Frank
Crowell, of the firm, at Galveston, if I were going that way. The Kansas
Grain Dealers Association was to hold a meeting in Galveston two days
hence.
On my way to a barbershop down the street, I had a chat with my doctor
again. He was standing on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps
leading up to his office, grinning. He said, “Well, your conductor came
along while I was standing here, and I asked him what did he mean by
bringing that smallpox patient down from Wetmore?” Dr. Howe laughed, and
said, “You know, I thought that poor fellow was going to collapse on
the sidewalk, and I had to tell him quickly that you couldn’t give it to
anyone if you would try.”
There was one small spot on my jaw that had not properly healed, and
I had asked the doctor earlier, in the office, if he thought it might
cause the barber to ask questions? He said, “No, no—just go in and say
nothing.” But after we had talked awhile on the sidewalk, he said, “You
better hunt a fire before you go to the barbershop. Your face is as
spotted as a leopard.”
At Galveston, I met Mrs. Poynter—she was our Bancroft correspondent—with
several of the grainmen’s wives. Usually very sociable, she acted as
if she were looking for a chance to run, and I backed out of a rather
embarrassing position. Evidently not knowing of my smallpox siege,
Secretary E. J. Smiley gave me a cordial ham, even laughed as if he were
remembering the illegal grain contract which he and my local competitor
had virtually forced upon me, “for benefit of the Association” — a
similar one of like illegality, which had, reputedly, within a few
weeks therefrom, got someone a 30-day jail sentence at Salina. Other
acquaintances in the grain dealers party acted as if they could get
along very well without me—and I troubled them no more.
Back home, the people gradually stopped their shying, and in the week I
waited for the County Health Officer’s instructions for fumigating the
house, I talked matters over with the family. For the peace of mind of
our town people, it was decided that everything in the smallpox house
should be burned—and my parents and my sister would go to Fresno,
California, where my brothers Dave and Frank were in business.
My Aunt Nancy, with her husband, Bill Porter, drove in from their
Wolfley creek home, and had dinner with the folks the day I was to start
the fires. Bill Porter said it would be rank foolishness for us to burn
the stuff. I said, “All right, Bill; drive by this afternoon and I’ll
load your wagon.” He said, quickly, “Don’t want any of the things — on
account of our neighbors.”
Several years later, the Porter family all had smallpox—and Bill, the
elder, died of it. And Bill, the second — there is a third Bill
Porter, and a fourth Bill Porter now — tells me that not for six months
thereafter did they have callers. Had I loaded his wagon that day of my
fire, the loss of my uncle would have made it regrettable—but I don’t
think that I would have allowed him to cart away anything, even had he
accepted my offer.
Jessie Bryant’s three-months old daughter, Violet, was first in the
Porter family to have it, and she was thought to have contracted the
disease in a rather peculiar way. Jessie was holding the baby on her lap
as she read a letter from her husband, Lon Bryant, who was working in
Nebraska, saying he would have to move from the place he was staying, on
account of the people in the home having smallpox.
The burning of the things was mostly done that afternoon, but the
fumigation would carry over into the next day. To avoid an extra
scrubbing of myself, with change of clothing twice, I planned to stay
that night in the house, and held back one bed and some bedding. It was
in the same room I had occupied, and was first to be fumigated. It would
get another dose of brimstone the next day, after the room would be
cleared. I opened all windows and one outer door, but the room did not
air out readily. The brimstone had penetrated the bed covers so as to
make them squeak under touch, and I could hardly get my breath in the
room. It was almost dark, and quite cold. I could not sit by an open
window, through the night. Then I thought of a roll of linoleum in the
kitchen. I put one end of the rolled linoleum in the bed and stuck the
other end out the window. With the coat I had worn that day wrapped
around my neck, I got in bed, covered up head and foot, stuck my face in
the funnel, chinked around with the old coat, and got through the night
very well—with little sleep, however.
Our close neighbors did not show undue fright. In fact, they volunteered
assistance while the home was under quarantine—but they had the good
sense to limit their visits to the middle of the road in front of the
house. My brother Sam got out before the red flag was posted, and
took refuge in his mobile photo gallery. My father got caught, with my
mother, in the kitchen—and remained there and in a connecting bedroom
until permitted by the proper authorities to go to his shoeshop. And
there, save for one lone kid, he had no callers, for the duration—but,
with the help of this boy runner he kept the supply line open to the
quarantined house. Louie Gibbons, half-brother of “Spike” Wilson,
our old Spectator’s celebrated “Devil,” after spending forty years in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, got the urge to see what Wetmore and Holton
looks like now—and, after flying to Kansas City, dropped in here for a
day recently. When he found out who I was, and I learned who he was, he
said, “You know, I used to carry groceries over to your home in the east
part of town when you had smallpox.”
Oldtimers who have often heard the expression, applied to persons of
dubious ways and stupendous blunders, should not miss the climax in
this last paragraph. After I had cleaned myself up with doubly strong
solution of corrosive sublimate — which, by the way, salivated me — I
called on our neighbors, Don and Cass Rising. Don had been choreboy for
the folks while holed up. My face was not pitted, and Don said that I
must have had smallpox very lightly, or maybe not at all. I told him
I had protected my face because I figured that it would be about all I
would have left after the expense of the thing—but if he would send his
wife out of the room, I would show him. My hips, and even farther back
all the way round, were badly pitted — still very red, almost raw. When
I showed him, Don yelled, “Cass, Cass—come in here!” I started to
pull my pants up, but he grabbed hold of my garment, saying, “No, no —
don’t!” Then he shoved my trousers down even farther than I had dropped
them.
And the lady came in.