Part 15

But she caught a ride most of the way. Green Goodwin, conductor of the local freight, told her to come aboard the caboose, that he would stop the train out near the farm and let her off. He had gotten lunches from her mother’s home. She said, “Mr. Goodwin said my lunch basket smelled good — like old times. He told a passenger in the caboose that he could always be sure of getting a good lunch at our home. I sure appreciated the ride, and I offered to give him my part of the lunch, but he wouldn’t take it. I’ll bet that traveling man who peeped in the basket wouldn’t have turned it down. But Mr. Goodwin did eat two of the cream-puffs: he said they were as good as the ones mamma used to put in his lunches. That leaves four cream-puffs for you—if I don’t eat any myself.” What manner of man would have eaten four cream-puffs—just then?

Myrtle felt pretty chesty about getting this ride—to think Green would stop his train on a steep grade, to save her the walk. Well, it was a pretty steep grade—and it was kind of Green to give her this lift. It recalled the time when, on several occasions, freight trains had stopped at that same place to let me off. And when the train had started to move again I could easily have beaten the engine to the top of the grade, in a running walk. But that would not Tiave been what I had been taken on the engine for, in town. I walked, or trotted slowly, ahead of the train pretty close to the creeping engine, shooing grasshoppers off the rails. After the 1874 invasion of grasshoppers freight trains could not make that grade until the rails were cleared of hoppers—and I had to stay close to the engine so that the hoppers would not fly around me and settle on the rails again. I was always “Johnny on the spot” to catch those rides. To ride the engine was a thrilling experience for a twelve-year-old boy.

While eating our lunch that day, a covey of half-grown quail came out from between the rows at the end of a cornfield. Myrtle said they were so cute that it was a shame to kill them. “And if you shoot any more of them,” she declared, “I will not cook them for you.” I said that I guessed I could cook them myself—that I had roasted them suspended on a stick over a fire in the woods.

“Well,” she said, “I’ll cook them, of course—but I promise you that I will never eat any more of them.” I tried her out on six birds. She cooked them, of course—and kept her promise. And then, in due time, I also thought they were too cute to be killed. But I continued carrying feed to the quail, in snowy times.

While Wolfley said I was a good squirrel hunter, quail was really my game. I trapped them in my younger days, and shot them when old enough to be trusted with a gun. I “potted” them. In the old days quail sold for 5-cents each and no one would think of wasting a charge of ammunition on a single bird, especially while on the wing; though I did once shoot a lone quail sitting on top my figure-four cornstalk trap, under which were twenty live birds. We made our traps then with any old thing we could pick up and bind together. The twenty trapped quail had followed a tramped out path in deep snow, baited with a thin scattering of shelled corn, with a more generous supply of kernels under the trap—thus to engage the lead birds while the others were coming up, lest an impatient bird might go after the nubbin on the treadle and spring the trap too soon. I think trapping and “potting” were legal then. I winged them in later years, same as other sportsmen were wont to do.

One time while coming home from the farm on a Sunday morning about eleven o’clock, three teen-age boys caught up with me. They said they were from Fresno, California. I questioned them a little about Fresno, and decided they were telling me the truth. Also, I knew they were not professional tramps—and that they were hungry. I took them to the Wetmore hotel, and told Bill Cordon to give them their dinners, fill them up with double orders. One of the boys had about worn out his shoes—the sole of the left shoe was dragging, making it hard for the boy to keep up with his pals. While they were waiting in the hotel for the dinner call, I went to my home and hunted up a pair of shoes—almost new shoes, which pinched my feet—and took them, with a pair of clean socks, to the little fellow, and started them on their way back to Fresno, walking of course. On parting, the boy wearing my shoes, asked me why had I taken so much interest in them? I told them that I might be tramping myself someday, maybe even get as far away from home as Fresno, and in that event I hoped to meet them all again. This is what I told the boys. For the correct answer—it is enough to know that my people live in Fresno. One of the older boys said, “Never doubt, we’ll be there—if we ever do get back home.” And though I have been in Fresno a number of times since, I never had the pleasure of meeting any of them. I lost their names.

Now—the $64 question!

A real honest-to-goodness professional tramp had hurriedly passed me by before the boys had caught up with me. I had a couple pork sandwiches in my pocket. My first thought was to offer them to this fellow—then thought that maybe he was not a tramp. A tractor had been running on a farm east of my place, and this fellow was just about smeary enough to have been the driver. I let him pass—and later saw him go into the depot. The wife and I were preparing to eat the sandwiches which were on the table still wrapped in oil paper. Then, this professional tramp showed up at our kitchen door, asking for a handout. Taking the two wrapped sandwiches off the table, I said, “Here you are, my man—I’ve been saving them for you.” I told him that had he not passed me by in such hurry on the railroad tracks, that I would have offered them to him then. He said he had been sick, and was hurrying to get in out of the weather. It had been “spitting” snow—which, I imagine, had caused my dinner guests at the hotel to wonder why did they leave their homes in sunny California. My home was two blocks away from the depot—and this was the tramp’s first call. Now—had this fellow “read my number” in passing on the railroad track? Or, did he read the sign at my home? It was said in the old days that tramps had a way of marking the favorable houses. My wife never let an applicant go away without something, little or much, to allay his hunger.

I shall drop back a few years now and expand a bit on the trials and tribulations of my wife’s family—before she was my wife, understand. Married at the age of sixteen, and left a widow at the age of thirty-three, with little more than the home and a houseful of kids—all girls, at that — Kate Mercer found herself in a highly discouraging predicament. Deprived of the bread-winner, the almost new five-room house on an acre of ground down by the creek, on the “wrong side of the tracks,” could now hardly be called a home. It had been ideally situated for the husband and father, who had been section foreman here for eight years.

There was no county welfare aid here then, as there is now. There was, however, in practice at that time the “good neighbor helping hand.” It consisted of raising a temporary fund by the circulation of a subscription paper. But when such a course was proposed by sympathetic neighbors, Mrs. Mercer, strongly backed up by her oldest daughter, declined to permit that. They would try somehow to get along without charity. They would go out and work. Thus, an up-hill drag was in store for them.

Myrtle finished her schooling in May—though she said that with the readjustment problem confronting the family, and consequent worries, she feared she had made a rather poor job of it. Then she went out to work as domestic, or maid—just plain “hired girl” it was termed then. She worked two weeks in the home of the aristocratic Augusta Ann DeForest during the illness of Miss Mary Randall, the regular long-time maid. Myrtle said she could not have wished for a more congenial place to work. She dined with the family, notwithstanding the traditional rumors which said that such breaches of table etiquette were not tolerated in that home. And she said Mr. Henry, whom gossip claimed never even got to see the other cooks, was especially considerate, and told her not to try to overdo. That would be Mr. Henry, all right.

Myrtle worked for the eccentric Mrs. Draper, who was the mother-in-law of Charley DeForest. And she worked for Mrs. R. A. DeForest—and as chambermaid at the Wetmore hotel while her mother was the cook there. Of all her domestic “positions” Myrtle said she felt more at ease, and liked best to work for Linnie (Mrs. R. A.) DeForest. Linnie was the sister of the gracious Alice McVay, mentioned in another article. And Linnie was the mother of Harold DeForest, now living on a farm two miles northeast of Wetmore.

Myrtle worked five weeks that first year for a young married couple who had come down from Granada to set up housekeeping in Wetmore with scarcely more than their love to go on. She quit them before the man had accumulated the money to pay her. The loss was only ten dollars, she said—but ten dollars would have been something toward keeping the family together. Myrtle said, “There ought to be a law preventing people from marrying before they are financially prepared for it.”

That was a statement worthy of a philosopher.

In the early winter of that first year the family went back to Illinois, the home of Mrs. Mercer’s people. Again Myrtle worked out at her enforced occupation as “hired girl.” Jennie, the second girl, went temporarily to an aunt, Mrs. Esther Noble—her father’s sister—in Bloomington. Georgia stayed with her aunt, Mrs. Henry Ham, in Bureau Junction. Kathy and Jessie remained with their mother in the home of Mrs. Mercer’s father, John Leonard, in Bureau—which railroad town was the home of the Mercers before they came to Kansas. They were all back in Wetmore within a few years.

James F. Noyes, a well-to-do retired farmer, living in Wetmore, adopted Georgia. He and his wife Jennie could — and did — give her a good home. But after the novelty of the new life for the child had worn off, Georgia would “run away”—and go back home. The several occasions when she did this, made sorrowful times for the family. When matters became really serious, Georgia’s foster parents took her on an extended trip to visit Mrs. Noyes’ brother, George Scott, in Oregon, hoping to cure her of her homesickness. Georgia married Don Cole and reared a family of two boys and three girls in the Noyes home. She never lost contact with all members of her mother’s family.

Then there was an opportunity to have another of the girls adopted into a childless home. I don’t think the matter was considered seriously — not favorably, anyhow — but Myrtle said she “Threw a fit.” No more adoptions, if she could help it. She’d just “bedarned” if anyone could have Jessie, the baby. So it came to pass that she got the care of Jessie herself—after her mother had married John Hall, and gone to live on a farm one mile west of Powhattan.

Mr. Hall’s first wife, and mother of his four children, had stayed several months in Mrs. Mercer’s home while taking treatments of Dr. Haigh for the chronic ailment which caused her death. He had come over weekly to pay the bills. And he therefore knew just where to find himself another wife—provided.

Graduate Wetmore Public Schools—Class 1899.

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No, Girls—It’s not her Graduation Dress.

Artist’s Idea—1904.

Mother of Virginia, Ruth, John, and Betty.

The deliberating period was another trying time for the girls — but after thorough consideration, mother and daughters were in complete agreement. It would perhaps be best for all of them, especially for the overburdened mother. And it was really good for all of them—the Halls included.

The Mercer girls all finished their schooling in Wetmore. The two younger girls could have gone with their mother—it was so arranged—but they preferred to remain in Wetmore, most of the time. Jennie was offered the chance to work for her keep in Conductor Carlin’s home in Atchison, while taking a course in the Atchison Business College. She soon switched to the home of her uncle Stewart Mercer (a tailor) and his wife Mina, to act as baby sitter for little Esther, their first born. The Spectator, by virtue of some timely solicitation by Jennie’s older sister, and an advertising contract, contributed the tuition fee. Then Jennie went to work for a grain commission company in the Kansas City Board of Trade building. She worked in that one building as secretary and bookkeeper for different grain firms for the remainder of her life—more than thirty-five years. She never married.

Not that Jennie never had the chance. She turned down Danny Cromwell, a Kansas City boy, after he had secured the license. His sister Kate, a true friend and a very sensible girl, told Jennie that he had nothing, that he was sickly, without prospects—and that she would do well to sack him.

Then, too, Jennie had prospects of marrying her boss. But, after years of happy anticipation — you could see it written all over both their faces when they spent a vacation week with her relatives in Wetmore—it developed that this romance also was fraught with intolerable aspects. Her Romeo lived with, and was the sole support of an aristocratic mother who was allergic to working girls. Oh, those aristocratic mothers! A wise Nineteenth Century girl needed no advice. What think you a Twentieth Century girl would have done?

Jennie was helpful in securing positions in Kansas City for her younger sisters. Kathy worked as cashier and bookkeeper for the B. F. Coombs Produce Company down by the market, at Fifth and Main. She married Luther P. Hyre — and reared a family of three girls and one boy, in Kansas City.

I think Kathy was the only one of the girls to inherit in a high degree her mother’s Irish wit. I don’t care if she was my mother-in-law, Kate Leonard - Mercer - Hall was a witty woman. And what’s more, I never could understand the why of so much criticism of the mother-in-law.

Also, little Virginia Hyre, Kathy’s first born, was a bright kid. Note this. Percy Worthy had gone to the farm with me to get a load of posts. Little Virginia, my wife’s short three-year-old niece, tiny and talkative, was taken along. The posts were in a small depression on the edge of a cornfield. I lifted the little girl out of the wagon and stood her on higher ground. She remained quiet while we loaded the posts. When Percy started to pull out, the front wheels of the wagon hit soft ground, sinking to the hubs, stalling his big bay team. He lashed the horses—mildly of course—and yelled fearsome notes of encouragement. Virginia set up a howl—screamed as if the lashes and frightening words were falling on her little tender person. Percy climbed down off the wagon to investigate. Virginia stopped her howling and said with broken sobs, puncturing each word with her little right hand swinging up and down, “I know what’s the matter, Uncle John. You-just-got-too-many-posts!”

And again, nearly a year earlier, after the child had spent a month in our home, Virginia’s mother had come out from Kansas City to take her baby home. At the last minute, when they were seated in the passenger coach, Virginia decided she did not want to leave us, and she tearfully argued the matter with her mother—to no avail. As the train started to move the little girl, tiny and tearful, standing up in the seat, thrust her head and outstretched arms out an open window, and sobbed, “Uncle John, don’t you want me?” That did something to me. The fact was, we did want her. And I could have made the flying catch all right—but her wardrobe would have gone on to Kansas City. Virginia came back to our home, later, and started to school here, but she “fell out” with her teacher—and was carted back to Kansas City again. “I just don’t like Miss Peters” is all we could get her to say. Miss Myra Peters was the primary teacher who had for many years been adored by the little tots.

After a brief spell as Kathy’s assistant with the Coombs Company, Jessie came back to try country life again. She married Will Hall, her step-father’s son. One time when Myrtle and I were visiting the Halls they took us to a Masonic program and supper in Powhattan. I was sitting with Mr. Hall when a friend of his from Hiawatha asked, “Who is that pretty girl in red over there with your son?” Mr. Hall said, drolly—he was a slow talker when he wanted to be impressive—”Well, she is my wife’s daughter; and my son’s wife.” The friend looked puzzled for a few seconds, then said, “I get it.”

I shall now have to drop back once more. At this time Myrtle Mercer was working in my printing office, and she and Jessie were living in the home place down by the creek. My brother Theodore and his wife Mattie, living on my Bancroft farm, had given Myrtle a Great Dane puppy. It grew into a very large dog. With Vic as protector, the girls felt secure in their rather isolated home between the timber and the tracks. Hoboes were numerous along the railroad in those days. The girls were not bothered by tramps, with Vic around.

Historically noted, the pup’s mother, aided by a visiting male dog of like breed from over near Hiawatha, had got herself in bad repute by taking down a stray cow that had come into the front yard where the tender spring grass made better pickings than were obtainable on the roadside. After being poorly wintered, roadside pickings were the cow’s only chance for sustenance. The cow was the property of a roving family consisting of father, mother, and five kids, that had wintered in the Jake Brian farm house a half mile away. The cow was trespassing, of course—but there were the kids to be considered. My brother paid the man for the cow. He already had possession of her. She was still down in his front yard. But in time, she got up—and was driven with other stock six miles to Uncle Bill Porter’s pasture for a summer’s outing. She never got back.

When the pup was brought to town, the record of the old dogs followed—and as he grew to be a monstrous dog he was feared by some people who knew him only by his breeding. Then the town got a mad-dog scare. Vic was reportedly seen fighting with the suspected mad-dog down in the lower part of town—on “Smoky Row.” The informer recanted later—but that did not help matters after Vic had been killed by order of the City Marshal. I think the dog’s overly-advertised ancestry had marked him for annihilation. Thus, “the sins of the parents were visited upon the son” to the extent of needless distrust.

Vic was a good dog.

Myrtle said she couldn’t believe her dog was seen fighting with another dog on the town-side of the tracks, as he was never known to leave the home alone. But she felt that it was best to be on the safe side. And then too an order was an order. She wished that it had come a week earlier, so as to have saved her the dollar tax she had paid the City Marshal for the privilege of keeping Vic another year. It was a tragedy that the girls’ watchdog was to be killed because of that false alarm.

Here I will put in a word on my own hook. I knew Ed Lazelere had stuck the pup headfirst into a rubber boot and given him a treatment designed to keep the dog at home. It really worked. In his mature years Vic was never known to leave the premises alone, and seldom with either of the girls. His one mistake in his puppy days was when he followed Myrtle, unbidden, to the Lazelere home.

Frosty Shuemaker was detailed to do the shooting. I went along to help get the dog away from the house. Vic was in the back yard in the shade of an apple tree. He wouldn’t budge for us. Myrtle came to the back door, and said she would have Jessie lead him over to the creek bank west of the house. Frosty and I went around to the front of the house, and then west on the outside of the yard fence to where there was an opening in the enclosure.

Jessie and the dog came running. Vic stopped broadside opposite the opening, and was knocked down with a single charge from Frosty’s double-barreled shotgun—when Jessie was halfway back to the house. She did not look back. She held in until the booming report of the shotgun — then let out a terrific squawk. We dragged the dead dog outside the yard fence and left it in a weed patch. Vic was now the City’s dog. The Marshal would get a dollar for burying him.

Back at the house Myrtle, red-eyed and sorrowful, asked me what had become of Jessie? I found the kid in a patch of marijuana over by the east line of the grounds, lying face down—crying her heart out. And I think I dropped a few tears, too. You know, there are times when you can’t fight them back.

COMPLIMENTARY TO THE “KIDS” Here, I wish to pay my respects to the “Kids” — all “Kids.” And especially the children born of parents living in my home—separate apartment—with whom I have had close and pleasant association.

Complimentary to MY LITTLE PAL

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Also, I was brought up with kids—ten in my father’s family; eight of them younger than me; all boys but the last one. And then, too, after my marriage, the wife’s nieces, Josephine, Donna, and Lucile Cole; Virginia, Ruth, and Betty Hyre; and Mary Jane Hall, were in turn very much in our home—which, altogether, has instilled in me a profound respect for the kids. Girls preferred.

Cloy spent the first five years of her life in my home—separate apartment. When she was about one year old, I often carried her down town and got her an ice cream cone. She was just beginning to walk, that awkward period when a child has to spraddle and step fast to hold its equilibrium. At times when she would be with her mother on the settee at the north end of the 22-foot front porch when I might choose to come around from my apartment to the south end, she would make known to her mother her desire to be put down on the floor, and she would come cooing with outstretched arms for me to pick her up. And while she could not talk, her mind was, I’m sure, on a cone somewhere down town. I never aimed to disappoint her — but one time when I had been working in my Rose Garden and was plenty tired, I tried to talk her out of it, put her off. She could not understand all I was saying, of course—but she caught the general idea all right. Never again did she come a-cooing to me with outstretched arms. This is not to say we did not get more cones.

When Cloy was about four years old, she had a line-up for me to participate in a social activity of the family. I said, “No, Cloy, I couldn’t do that—I don’t belong. She said, “Well, gee—you’re one of us, ain’t you?”

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When hardly five years old, Cloy found me, at night, standing on the old National Bank corner. She asked me if I would give her a nickel—said she had one nickel, and wanted to buy a 10-cent lipstick at the Wells store for her mother. I said, “Cloy, your mother does not use lipstick.” “Oh yes she does,” said Cloy, “the kind that don’t show.” I did not have a nickel, and offered to go with her to the Wells store. She said, “Can’t you get the change at the drugstore?” I said, “Come along, I’ll get it for you,” and headed for the restaurant operated by her father and mother and her aunt Genevieve Weaver. As we were passing the drugstore, she said, “Get it in here.” I said, “No, let’s go to the restaurant.” She said, “Well, bring it to me here”—and she sat down on a bench. When I gave her the nickel, she skipped across the street to the Wells store—and I went back to the restaurant. In a little while she came in with her purchase, grinning. She opened it, and proceeded at once to paint her fingernails right before her parents, still grinning. Nellie said Cloy had “deviled” them for that extra nickel to get the nail polish — and that they had turned her down. It was plain then why she had said to me, “I knowed durn shore if I’d find you, I’d get it.”