which I could catch only, “A man with two elevators—.” My reputation was
now redeemed.
The so-called “Board of Trade” had long since passed out. It was never
a Board of Trade, anyway. Its operations were limited to the sale of one
old canning factory building, and the location of Mr. Reckeway—that is,
if we do not choose to count the location of Mr. Abbott. You know, I was
a member of the Board, with dues and absentee penalties paid in full.
Now, let’s get this straight. I wouldn’t have been so resentful as to
induce a live merchant like Mr. Abbott to move in on the homefolk. I
just told him of the behavior of some of the Board members, and that
I might have to deny him space in my paper. “Oh,” he said, “I
don’t believe you will want to do that to me.” He winked. Well, I
didn’t—really.
Mr. Abbott had been thinking things over ever since the time I had asked
him to surrender his space in the interests of that elaborate write-up.
Said he figured it would now be OK for him to bring me copy for a
half-page advertisement announcing his location in Wetmore.
There were, however, many proposals advanced — but always they met with
opposition from some member or members of the Board. In general, they
kicked like the proverbial “bay steer” whenever something was advanced
which might be helpful to one and detrimental to another. I think Mr.
Worthy and I were the only ones who did not protest their proposals—such
as bringing in Mr. Reckeway. And, frankly, until it had come to a
showdown, I was not favored with too much information as to what Michael
had up his sleeve.
I don’t know where they could have found a better man than Mr. Reckeway
for the place—but he was no miracle man. Handicapped as he was, he
found the going rather tough. And having found out also that the Board
Committee’s prophesy was only a myth—that an elevator alone could not
make two bushels grow where only one bushel grew before—after a few
rather lean years, he departed for greener pastures. I believe Mr.
Reckeway made good in the flour milling business at Girard, Kansas.
The Board of Trade sponsored (Reckeway) elevator, after years of
idleness, has been torn down. Goff and Netawaka, like Wetmore, each now
have only one elevator. And still the grain does not roll into Wetmore
as was anticipated by the Board of Trade enthusiasts. Perhaps the old
town may someday be favored with another set of progressives—who do not
know their onions.
I reiterate, there is no lingering malice in this writing. Collectively,
year in and year out, the oldtime Wetmore people, despite all
differences, were the best people I ever knew—and I lived in relative
harmony with them for a long, long time. I’ve lived a lot of living in
the old home town.
And, thankfully, I’m still here.
FAMILY AFFAIR Not Hitherto Published—1947.
By John T. Bristow
In the foregoing article I made reference to Theodore Wolfley’s poor
marksmanship, with a revolver. When possible, I like to back up my
assertions with proof. I now quote from a letter dated at St. Louis,
April 5, 1941, written by T. J. Wolfley to his sister May Purcell,
commenting on my writings in The Spectator, in which I likened a
Belgrade story to a hot Wolfley editorial. It was at a time when a
Hitler delegation was in Belgrade endeavoring to put pressure on the
Yugoslavs to force them into the war on the Hitler side. The quote:
“I received the copy of the Wetmore Spectator, which you so kindly sent
me. Thank you for it. I was interested in the story from Yugoslavia; and
flattered to be even remotely connected with the incident by my friend
John Bristow, who professes to think that if I wasn’t in St. Louis,
I might be running a newspaper in Yugoslavia. . . . Just as in the
political wars he mentioned, I was sometimes more friendly with the men
I opposed than with the ones I favored. But the people liked it and it
was then the accepted slogan to give the people the kind of news they
wanted. . . . John was a good newspaper man and a good squirrel hunter,
so we thought a little expert shooting might lend realism to the
picture. But I wasn’t a good shot. I couldn’t even hit the imposing
stone when it stood on the side against the wall. But I remember John
could hit a penny when it laid on the floor at the leg of the imposing
stone. So we depended upon John’s ability as a shooter to keep the
enemy away. . . . Show this to John. A good many things happened in the
Spectator office even after I quit, similar to the way they happen in
Yugoslavia. He may remember some more.”
Well, yes—I do remember one more. Always one more. But first I want
to say that Theodore verifies the point I made in the preceding
article—that he could not even hit the leg of the imposing stone, in his
gun-practice. To those who are not familiar with the mechanics of the
print-shop, the imposing stone is a heavy slab of marble mounted on a
stand about waist-high, on which the forms of the newspaper are made up.
When the Spectator was in its first year, I helped Theodore Wolfley
carry out one of his “bright” ideas which gave him some sleepless
nights. His sister Mary, still too young to carry on a flirtation with
a grown man, had embarked on a whirlwind romance with a Central Branch
railroad engineer. The heavy grade at the John Wolfley farmstead five
miles west of Wetmore, made it possible for the engineer and the girl to
exchange notes. And when they might desire a few moments time together,
it was said, he would drop off at the crossing near her home, and then
grab onto the caboose—and the fireman would take the long freight train
into Goff.
Theodore told me that, as her older and wiser brother, he intended to
break it up. He said it had got to a point when a talking to would do
no good—and the girl was too big to spank. We printed a ten-line item in
the Spectator, branding Mary’s Romeo as an all round bad character, even
had him arrested and jailed for drunkenness—and credited the item to one
of Atchison’s daily newspapers. After printing one copy for the Wolfley
family perusal, I lifted the spurious item before running the regular
edition.
Theodore commuted on horseback between farm and town at that time. He
took the “doctored” paper home with him. He watched Mary read the item.
He said she wrinkled up her nose, shook her head as if she meant to
get even with someone. When he came back to the office the next day, he
said, “I guess that will hold her.” But it didn’t.
On the following day Theodore discovered the item had been cut out of
the Spectator—and he rightly suspicioned it had been turned over to Mr.
Romeo. He came to the office in agitated confusion. He asked me, “What
paper did we credit that darned item to?” He had maligned an Atchison
man and credited the item to one of the three Atchison daily papers—the
Champion, the Patriot, or the Globe—which made him liable to attack from
two angles. But luck was with Wolfley. John Reynolds, the engineer,
came back promptly with his daily exchange saying the item referred to
another John Reynolds living in Atchison—and the romance went merrily
on.
Theodore would have felt a lot easier had he known there actually was
another John Reynolds living in Atchison. And though the second Mr.
Reynolds had a shady record, he was never guilty of the things the item
charged the engineer with. I have penned a line on this John N. Reynolds
in another article. John A. Reynolds, the engineer, was really an
honorable man, with high standing in Atchison. I came to know him well
in later years.
I shall carry on from here — after this paragraph — without Mr. Wolfley.
But I’m not forgetting the Romeo engineer. And I should say here that
Mary’s romance terminated without hitting the rocks, and that Theodore
never had any complaints from Atchison. And I might say further, as a
last tribute to my old friend, that Theodore Wolfley went from here to
Phoenix, Arizona, and became editor of the Daily Republican, owned
by ex-Governor Wolfley, of Arizona, (no relation), where he played up
Republican politics to his heart’s content. From there he went to the
St. Joseph (Mo.) Daily Gazette, where I imagine he would have been a
loyal Democrat. And from St. Joe he went to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat
as Financial editor. While in St. Joe Theodore wrote me that he was
holding open for me a place on the Gazette paying four and one-half
times the ten dollar weekly salary I was getting here. That was
considered “big money” then. But I had promised Curt and Polly Shuemaker
that I would remain on the job here when they bought the Spectator from
John Stowell. Curt Shuemaker was blind—lost his eyesight from close
bookwork in the Morris store and as the first cashier of the Wetmore
State Bank. I could not quit them cold—but I was trying to find them
a reliable printer when Curt sickened and died suddenly, leaving The
Spectator in need of an editor as well. The quickest way to help out
Polly was for me to buy The Spectator—at my own price. Not an unfair
price, however. When Theodore was back home a short time before he died,
having just read my manuscript of the Green Campbell story, he proposed
that we buy The Spectator from the Turrentines—just to show the people
what we could do. From past experience, I knew he could have shown them
plenty—and I was afraid he might insist on doing it.
Some years after Mary’s romance, I was walking past the depot in Wetmore
with the girl who afterwards became my wife. Her home was on the south
side of the tracks, near the watertank. The noon passenger train was at
the tank. As we came abreast the engine the engineer hopped down from
the cab, pulled off a leather gauntlet glove, and met the girl with a
hearty handshake—and some hurried palaver. She introduced him as Mr.
Reynolds.
But you know, passenger trains must move on time — and when alone with
the girl, I said, “Let me see your hand.” She said, “Oh, you’d never
get a speck of dirt from shaking hands with Johnny Reynolds; he’s really
quite particular about keeping himself clean of engine grime.” I learned
later that she had told the truth in this particular—but how the
devil did it come she knew so much about him? I said, “I think I know
something about him that you do not know.” Then I told her about his
exchange of notes with the Wolfley girl.
She laughed and said, “Were you expecting to see a note in my hand?
You don’t need to be afraid of Johnny Reynolds. He is engaged to a Miss
Spelty, in Atchison.”
“Johnny” Reynolds had roomed at their home in Effingham before the
family came to Wetmore, when Myrtle Mercer was eight years old. Being
a very courteous man, he “made over” all members of the Mercer family
whenever and wherever he might chance to meet them. And he had gotten
lunches from their home in Wetmore.
After her husband’s death in 1888, Myrtle’s mother had rather a hard
time providing for her family of five girls, ranging in age from two to
sixteen years. She was advised to open a boarding house for trainmen —
and others—but it settled down mostly to providing lunches for the two
local freight train crews which passed through here about the noon hour.
I think it was not very helpful. She was an excellent cook, and her
twenty-five cent lunches were too elaborate to make money, even in those
days. The passenger trains had stopped here for dinner before this.
The hotel charged trainmen 25 cents—as was customary at all stops—while
passengers paid 35 or 50 cents. Hence a 25 cent precedent for trainmen.
The pinch was lifted, however, some years later, when Mrs. Mercer
was granted a Government pension—for herself and the two younger
children—with several years back pay. Though only 39 years old when he
died, John Mercer was an “honorably” discharged soldier. He had enlisted
in 1864, when only 15 years old. How he managed to get in at that age,
is presumed to be the same as other under-age boys got in.
One time when I was riding the local freight to Atchison, I saw Tom
Haverty, the conductor, an Irish Catholic, open his lunch basket. It
contained a big porterhouse steak cooked just right—it was a steak that
would cost at least $2.50 now, with very few trimmings. I know that
steak was cooked just right, for my wife had learned the art from her
mother, and she had cooked many a one to the same turn for me. Well,
Tom Haverty picked up that steak, held it as though he thought it might
bite, walked to the opposite side of the caboose and chucked it out an
open window.
It was Friday.
After selling my newspaper, I found time to “putter about” on my farm
one mile down the creek from town. I actually did a lot of worthwhile
work, cleaning up the bottom land of brush, trimming hedge, and cutting
cockle burrs with a “Nigger” hoe. I usually stuck a sandwich in my
pocket for lunch—but sometimes Myrtle would prepare a real dinner, even
steaks like I’ve been describing, carry it in a basket, sit down on
the ground with me in the shade of hedge or tree, fight flies and gnats
while eating, and pretend to enjoy it.
One morning she said I need not take a lunch—that she was going to cook
a real dinner, bring it down to the farm, and eat it with me. I told
her I would come for dinner, and save her that long walk. She insisted
that she “loved the walk, loved to get out in the open,” and I told her
where to meet me.
But she caught a ride most of the way. Green Goodwin, conductor of the
local freight, told her to come aboard the caboose, that he would stop
the train out near the farm and let her off. He had gotten lunches from
her mother’s home. She said, “Mr. Goodwin said my lunch basket smelled
good — like old times. He told a passenger in the caboose that he could
always be sure of getting a good lunch at our home. I sure appreciated
the ride, and I offered to give him my part of the lunch, but he
wouldn’t take it. I’ll bet that traveling man who peeped in the basket
wouldn’t have turned it down. But Mr. Goodwin did eat two of the
cream-puffs: he said they were as good as the ones mamma used to put
in his lunches. That leaves four cream-puffs for you—if I don’t eat any
myself.” What manner of man would have eaten four cream-puffs—just then?
Myrtle felt pretty chesty about getting this ride—to think Green would
stop his train on a steep grade, to save her the walk. Well, it was a
pretty steep grade—and it was kind of Green to give her this lift. It
recalled the time when, on several occasions, freight trains had stopped
at that same place to let me off. And when the train had started to move
again I could easily have beaten the engine to the top of the grade, in
a running walk. But that would not Tiave been what I had been taken on
the engine for, in town. I walked, or trotted slowly, ahead of the train
pretty close to the creeping engine, shooing grasshoppers off the rails.
After the 1874 invasion of grasshoppers freight trains could not make
that grade until the rails were cleared of hoppers—and I had to stay
close to the engine so that the hoppers would not fly around me and
settle on the rails again. I was always “Johnny on the spot” to catch
those rides. To ride the engine was a thrilling experience for a
twelve-year-old boy.
While eating our lunch that day, a covey of half-grown quail came out
from between the rows at the end of a cornfield. Myrtle said they were
so cute that it was a shame to kill them. “And if you shoot any more
of them,” she declared, “I will not cook them for you.” I said that I
guessed I could cook them myself—that I had roasted them suspended on a
stick over a fire in the woods.
“Well,” she said, “I’ll cook them, of course—but I promise you that
I will never eat any more of them.” I tried her out on six birds. She
cooked them, of course—and kept her promise. And then, in due time, I
also thought they were too cute to be killed. But I continued carrying
feed to the quail, in snowy times.
While Wolfley said I was a good squirrel hunter, quail was really my
game. I trapped them in my younger days, and shot them when old enough
to be trusted with a gun. I “potted” them. In the old days quail
sold for 5-cents each and no one would think of wasting a charge of
ammunition on a single bird, especially while on the wing; though I did
once shoot a lone quail sitting on top my figure-four cornstalk trap,
under which were twenty live birds. We made our traps then with any old
thing we could pick up and bind together. The twenty trapped quail had
followed a tramped out path in deep snow, baited with a thin scattering
of shelled corn, with a more generous supply of kernels under the
trap—thus to engage the lead birds while the others were coming up, lest
an impatient bird might go after the nubbin on the treadle and spring
the trap too soon. I think trapping and “potting” were legal then. I
winged them in later years, same as other sportsmen were wont to do.
One time while coming home from the farm on a Sunday morning about
eleven o’clock, three teen-age boys caught up with me. They said they
were from Fresno, California. I questioned them a little about Fresno,
and decided they were telling me the truth. Also, I knew they were
not professional tramps—and that they were hungry. I took them to the
Wetmore hotel, and told Bill Cordon to give them their dinners, fill
them up with double orders. One of the boys had about worn out his
shoes—the sole of the left shoe was dragging, making it hard for the boy
to keep up with his pals. While they were waiting in the hotel for the
dinner call, I went to my home and hunted up a pair of shoes—almost new
shoes, which pinched my feet—and took them, with a pair of clean socks,
to the little fellow, and started them on their way back to Fresno,
walking of course. On parting, the boy wearing my shoes, asked me
why had I taken so much interest in them? I told them that I might be
tramping myself someday, maybe even get as far away from home as Fresno,
and in that event I hoped to meet them all again. This is what I told
the boys. For the correct answer—it is enough to know that my people
live in Fresno. One of the older boys said, “Never doubt, we’ll be
there—if we ever do get back home.” And though I have been in Fresno a
number of times since, I never had the pleasure of meeting any of them.
I lost their names.
Now—the $64 question!
A real honest-to-goodness professional tramp had hurriedly passed me by
before the boys had caught up with me. I had a couple pork sandwiches
in my pocket. My first thought was to offer them to this fellow—then
thought that maybe he was not a tramp. A tractor had been running on a
farm east of my place, and this fellow was just about smeary enough
to have been the driver. I let him pass—and later saw him go into the
depot. The wife and I were preparing to eat the sandwiches which were
on the table still wrapped in oil paper. Then, this professional tramp
showed up at our kitchen door, asking for a handout. Taking the two
wrapped sandwiches off the table, I said, “Here you are, my man—I’ve
been saving them for you.” I told him that had he not passed me by in
such hurry on the railroad tracks, that I would have offered them to him
then. He said he had been sick, and was hurrying to get in out of the
weather. It had been “spitting” snow—which, I imagine, had caused my
dinner guests at the hotel to wonder why did they leave their homes in
sunny California. My home was two blocks away from the depot—and this
was the tramp’s first call. Now—had this fellow “read my number” in
passing on the railroad track? Or, did he read the sign at my home? It
was said in the old days that tramps had a way of marking the favorable
houses. My wife never let an applicant go away without something, little
or much, to allay his hunger.
I shall drop back a few years now and expand a bit on the trials and
tribulations of my wife’s family—before she was my wife, understand.
Married at the age of sixteen, and left a widow at the age of
thirty-three, with little more than the home and a houseful of kids—all
girls, at that — Kate Mercer found herself in a highly discouraging
predicament. Deprived of the bread-winner, the almost new five-room
house on an acre of ground down by the creek, on the “wrong side of the
tracks,” could now hardly be called a home. It had been ideally situated
for the husband and father, who had been section foreman here for eight
years.
There was no county welfare aid here then, as there is now. There was,
however, in practice at that time the “good neighbor helping hand.”
It consisted of raising a temporary fund by the circulation of a
subscription paper. But when such a course was proposed by sympathetic
neighbors, Mrs. Mercer, strongly backed up by her oldest daughter,
declined to permit that. They would try somehow to get along without
charity. They would go out and work. Thus, an up-hill drag was in store
for them.
Myrtle finished her schooling in May—though she said that with the
readjustment problem confronting the family, and consequent worries, she
feared she had made a rather poor job of it. Then she went out to work
as domestic, or maid—just plain “hired girl” it was termed then. She
worked two weeks in the home of the aristocratic Augusta Ann DeForest
during the illness of Miss Mary Randall, the regular long-time maid.
Myrtle said she could not have wished for a more congenial place to
work. She dined with the family, notwithstanding the traditional rumors
which said that such breaches of table etiquette were not tolerated in
that home. And she said Mr. Henry, whom gossip claimed never even got to
see the other cooks, was especially considerate, and told her not to try
to overdo. That would be Mr. Henry, all right.
Myrtle worked for the eccentric Mrs. Draper, who was the mother-in-law
of Charley DeForest. And she worked for Mrs. R. A. DeForest—and as
chambermaid at the Wetmore hotel while her mother was the cook there.
Of all her domestic “positions” Myrtle said she felt more at ease, and
liked best to work for Linnie (Mrs. R. A.) DeForest. Linnie was the
sister of the gracious Alice McVay, mentioned in another article. And
Linnie was the mother of Harold DeForest, now living on a farm two miles
northeast of Wetmore.
Myrtle worked five weeks that first year for a young married couple
who had come down from Granada to set up housekeeping in Wetmore with
scarcely more than their love to go on. She quit them before the man
had accumulated the money to pay her. The loss was only ten dollars, she
said—but ten dollars would have been something toward keeping the family
together. Myrtle said, “There ought to be a law preventing people from
marrying before they are financially prepared for it.”
That was a statement worthy of a philosopher.
In the early winter of that first year the family went back to Illinois,
the home of Mrs. Mercer’s people. Again Myrtle worked out at her
enforced occupation as “hired girl.” Jennie, the second girl, went
temporarily to an aunt, Mrs. Esther Noble—her father’s sister—in
Bloomington. Georgia stayed with her aunt, Mrs. Henry Ham, in Bureau
Junction. Kathy and Jessie remained with their mother in the home of
Mrs. Mercer’s father, John Leonard, in Bureau—which railroad town was
the home of the Mercers before they came to Kansas. They were all back
in Wetmore within a few years.
James F. Noyes, a well-to-do retired farmer, living in Wetmore, adopted
Georgia. He and his wife Jennie could — and did — give her a good
home. But after the novelty of the new life for the child had worn off,
Georgia would “run away”—and go back home. The several occasions when
she did this, made sorrowful times for the family. When matters became
really serious, Georgia’s foster parents took her on an extended trip to
visit Mrs. Noyes’ brother, George Scott, in Oregon, hoping to cure her
of her homesickness. Georgia married Don Cole and reared a family of two
boys and three girls in the Noyes home. She never lost contact with all
members of her mother’s family.
Then there was an opportunity to have another of the girls adopted into
a childless home. I don’t think the matter was considered seriously
— not favorably, anyhow — but Myrtle said she “Threw a fit.” No more
adoptions, if she could help it. She’d just “bedarned” if anyone could
have Jessie, the baby. So it came to pass that she got the care of
Jessie herself—after her mother had married John Hall, and gone to live
on a farm one mile west of Powhattan.