How I Became a Columnist
I fell for it • Journalism school guinea pig • Promiscuous roller skaters • A three generation household goods sale • Some nursing home friends • Life began at forty • A fine old hen • Santa passed me up.
At the bottom of this manuscript Lilburn had written, “This talk was given before the annual meeting of the Missouri Writers Guild the last time it was held in Columbia.” No date was given, but probably about 1975. At the time, he was Secretary-Treasurer of the Guild. Then in his 80s, he was writing a weekly column for the Boonville Daily News.
 “Our members would like to know the secrets of how you became such an interesting columnist when you were 80 years old.” President Calahan said when he invited me to talk to you today.
I remonstrated. I told him: with no journalism background, I was - if anything - a rank amateur and would not feel at home addressing you clever, successful members of the Guild. When I read in the Guild News of your accomplishments, generally consistent sales of stories, poems, books and plays, I feel sinfully covetous of your talents. And pitifully aware of my limitations. As for my literary achievements, if any, I must say they have been done “by ear,” just as some people play music. I have never heard of any rules for constructing a column by ear.
Despite my protests, I found myself on the program. So - I’ll tell you some of the events I’ve dredged from my memory which culminated in my column-writing.
The most remarkable thing about me producing a column, is that the idea of doing it never entered my mind. During the past 60 years I unknowingly was gathering material for it. You wish to know how the idea got into my mind?
First, let me say I’ve discovered that the two necessary ingredients to writing a column people enjoy reading are: to have a pinch of ability to write and plenty of ideas to write about. Uncolumnly conscious for 60 years, I was trying to improve my ability and fill my memory storehouse with ideas.
As for learning to write, I began during an early romantic period by subscribing to a correspondence course in letter writing offered by Pretty Girl Inc., with daily lessons. I learned the art of choosing the word to express exactly the thought I had in mind. The course yielded me nothing I could sell but there were fringe benefits, until finally, rejection slips caused me to change schools.
In college, I entered a contest for $20 in gold offered for the best essay about “The Weird and Uncanny in the Writings of Hawthorne and Poe.” Although there was another contestant, I won. I was so delighted I felt inspired to devote the rest of my life to writing about weird and uncanny things. To be able to do this I planned to enter the Missouri School of Journalism in the fall.
However, the opportunity to become a self-made rich banker in a small town changed my plan. I began at the bottom as janitor (they call it custodian now) and carried in fuel to feed the pot-bellied stone and fetched six buckets of cistern water from the home of a widow a block way. I could have gotten it closer, but the bachelor president wanted to shower the widow with attention. Of course, I had no idea at the time he would be good material for a column now!
I had anticipated extra time in the bank to improve my writing expertise but I was very busy writing names and figures in big ledgers. I never got anything ready to send out for publication except semi-annual statements of the condition of the bank. They were always accepted. Having continual acceptances made me very vulnerable in later years to rejection slips.
Some of the bank customers were interesting characters and memories of them were preserved in my storehouse. There was Mrs. Bodgett, who came in twittering a request that I make out her check for fifteen cents. She had to pay her washer-woman, she said, and added, “It’s a constant drain.”
And Jim Lowe, an old man who moved to town from the hills bringing polecat liniment for “rumatiz” to sell, always attracted our customers to listen to him as he sang a warning:
O boys, let the girls alone
An’ give ‘em plenty of room.
If one you wed, she’ll knock you on the head
With the bald-headed end of the broom.
After 25 years as a banker, I was not rich, so I took my insurance business and moved across the street. Policies written sold well with few rejections. It was also necessary at the time that I take over the management of the family farm where fruit was the main crop, chiefly apples. Customers who came to the sales shed to buy apples also supplied many ideas which were deposited in my memory bank. It was amazing, the politeness of one husband and wife, each insisting that the other should choose the variety to be bought, each saying, “It doesn’t make me any difference, you choose.”
It was well I had a competent secretary in the insurance office, and an efficient overseer on the farm, for I was bitten by an antique bug infatuation. The only thing which seemed to help me was open-air riding over the country buying antiques to refurbish my century-old house. Little did I dream I was gathering material for a column decades later!
There was the old lady who wouldn’t sell me a table. She said, “You are such a good friend I couldn’t sell it to you. I’d give it to you if I didn’t want to keep it myself. I used many schemes to soften her into a sale, but to no avail. Finally in response to a wild thought, I asked her to “lend/lease” it to me. And she did. Most of you are too young to recall when our government “lend/leased” so much that it seemed an individual was unpatriotic not to do it.
Something happened in 1937 which really put me on the main track of literary effort. A local historical society was being organized. I had always been so busy with other things I hadn’t had time for history. However, I was induced to attend the dinner meeting. The dinner was fine but the proceedings following it bored me. I was sleepy, wishing I were home. And suddenly, in the time it took me to raise my cup for a sip of coffee to keep me awake and set it down, I had been nominated for president and elected by acclamation. I had been “framed” by the late Judge Roy Williams, whom many of you will remember. I didn’t appreciate it and told him as kindly as possible what I had heard Jonah tell the whale the second time he met him (and the whale had lost his appetite), “If you had kept your big mouth shut, it never would have happened.”
However, in later years I never missed a chance to thank the Judge for railroading me into an active role in the society. It opened a whole new field in which literary fruits were growing, like research, publication of historical stories, the recording of every marked grave in the 214 cemeteries of Howard County. I had recorded everything about my father’s life of 90 years in the community he could remember. I was saving all the informational sap I could get from older men and women whom I tapped as if they were sturdy old sugar maple trees.
About this time, Mr. Ernest Kirschten, of the editorial page of the St. Louis Star-Times, invited me to write him some letters about life as I had known it on our farm for his editorial page. Surprised and delighted, I labored over eight or ten of them and sent them to him. In due time all of them appeared on the editorial page. Could a benefit have a better fringe than that? And he made the fringe longer by writing, “I cannot tell you how delighted all of us on the Star-Times editorial page have been with your letters. They brought an authentic and enjoyable taste of rural Missouri to us city dwellers. We hope you got as much pleasure out of writing them as we did from reading. I sincerely trust you will continue to find time to send more.”
It occurred to me that if they were that good, he could at least send me postage for mailing them; in fact, they should be worth money. I did no more letters for Mr. Kirschten and we never heard from each other again.
Later, I realized how foolish I had been to chop up like a common dandelion in my yard, an opportunity to cultivate any potential for writing. It might have improved my style so I would have made a better showing by the time I prepared a manuscript and sent it to my friend, Fred Simpich, the Associate Editor of the National Geographic Magazine. Not that I had hope of the magazine using it, but I knew Fred would give me his candid opinion of its merits.
The first part of his reply was like a gentle massage to my spirit. He wrote: “You choose your material with skill that borders on genius. If you could write it as well as you pick it, you would be another Thornton Wilder. Your manuscript holds all the elements of another ‘Our Town’ or ‘The Bridge of San Luis Rey.’ Wilder could take your copy and make a big seller out of it.”
What pride I felt! But it fell immediately as I continued to read: “In its present form I could not suggest any publication that would use it. You will have to do it all over using specific rules of story writing. I hope this does not hurt your feelings. I could write you a glib letter telling you how swell your stuff is, but that wouldn’t help.”
I did appreciate his candid criticism. I wasn’t a bit surprised by what he wrote about doing it over. However, Thornton Wilder and I have never gotten around to it yet.
It was a wonderful balm for my spirit to be told I could gather good firewood, even if I couldn’t burn it in my fireplace because it didn’t have a proper draft.
Meanwhile, the State Historical Society of Columbia and the Missouri Historical Society of St. Louis published some articles which I had prepared and given at their meetings. Of course, they pay nothing to ward off starvation, much less for riotous living. But as one editor assured me, “It is my experience that the satisfaction of seeing one’s name in print, fringe benefits and other compensations outreach monetary reward.” After my experience with Mr. Kirschten, I never questioned the truth of it.
However, upon occasions when checks have come for something I have written they are so delightfully tangible.
About this time, the Missouri Writers Guild had a fall meeting in Boonville near my home, because I think it was the home of their president, Ellston Melton. A speaker for one of their sessions failed to appear and Mr. Melton asked me to pinch-hit for him with a talk I had just given for the Historical Society. I did so and attended the additional sessions. They were such pleasant people I wished to join them.
In due time, I filled in an application with a puny list of publications . . . and was advised to send one more (“Surely you have one more,” they wrote). As you well know, nothing for which only fringe benefits have been paid is acceptable. They were so kind they said if I didn’t have a third something to send, they would hold a special board meeting to consider my membership.
I was accepted after a period of suspense and have enjoyed being a member ever since.
By now you should have insight as to my many sources of ideas for a column. In regard to how I started writing it, I must say it was by chance. The Cooper County Record is published in Boonville weekly by Ellston Melton, a member of our Guild. For many years, his wife, Opal, wrote a delightful column laced with subtle wit, under the heading, “My Say.” One week she casually mentioned the expression “filling the pulpit.” It reminded me of an unused story in my files which I had written about myself when, as a youth, I had heard our preacher announce: “Next Sunday, Bro. Marvin will fill the pulpit.” I mailed it to Opal Melton, thinking it might be of timely interest.
Since it is my first column, I would like to read it:
Since my earliest years, announcements of church services have intrigued me. When I first heard a preacher would “fill the pulpit next Sunday,” childish curiosity really turned on. I wondered what he would fill it with and went to see.
I well remember my disappointment when the pulpit was as empty when he pronounced the benediction as it had been when he announced the first song. My mother explained all preachers, through the grace of God, try to fill the pulpit with a spiritual something which is invisible. Through the years I have seen many who came to New Franklin and labored hard to do it.
Some, young and vigorous, had new shovels provided by divinity schools. Some middle-aged had well-worn scoops. A few old ones had little but calloused hands.
But none could accomplish it without the help of the congregation, help for which he was always begging. Help which some were reluctant to give because they had paid him to do this work and expected him to do it all by himself.
When called upon, the women were right handy with spades of prayer, but only a few men would dig with them.
Every one of the preachers got so discouraged each year about filling the pulpit, he sent for an evangelist reputed to have a drag-line of excellence and personality to help him. But even the two of them couldn’t get it done without a lot of local help.
The church members were exhorted to pray in public as well as private, to go to anyone the audience thought to be in need of soul salvation, to flex their spiritual muscles by responding to many other propositions.
Those who felt in need of prayer should stand up. Those who felt themselves saved already might raise their hands . . . to restore brotherly love, men should visit their enemies.
Brother Shook asked one night that all in the choir who wanted to go to Heaven to go down and stand around the pulpit railing. Everybody went but Bella Scruggs, who stood like a lone tree on the prairie.
The congregation suffered shock. They had known Bella ever since she was born, an only child of indulgent parents. She had had everything she wanted, of course, but that would not be like going to Heaven!
Generally at the end of a revival the pulpit would seem filled, but after the evangelist with his drag line had been gone a while, sunken places would appear and sooner or later, the problem would have to be tackled anew.
I was older but no less curious when an evangelist announced he would preach the next night on “It Wasn’t Done in a Corner.” The church was packed with those who wanted to know what wasn’t done in a corner.
Squire Doolin hoped to goodness it had nothing to do with Battle Axe plug.
His sermon was based on John 18:20. “I spoke openly to the world, I even taught in the temple where the Jews resort and in secret I have done nothing.” His sermon was eloquent but even so, some of the congregation went out feeling a little “let down.”
At a funeral, Rev. J.A. Snarr chose for the spiritual reading the story of the death and raising of Lazarus. He always read with an inherent flair for the dramatic and stressed, “Lord, by this time he stinketh for he hath been dead four days.”
Completely carried away by his presentation of the story, some of the audience were thinking it really had been four days since Mrs. Bud Grabitt had died, when it fact it had only been two. Squire Doolin stopped short of reaching for his nose with thumb and forefinger, while others sniffed and were brought back to reality by the fragrance of the flowers on the casket.
I was surprised and pleased to receive a note from Melton, the editor, advising me, “The enclosed pittance is a mere gesture of appreciation for ‘Filling the Pulpit,’ which we plan to run this week in Opal’s space. We hope you will not object to our using it or be offended by the small pay. It is my experience and observation that the satisfaction of publication and fringe benefits outweigh monetary rewards. We would welcome frequent contributions from you. It would give variety and change.”
For a while I was “Guest Columnist” until Opal, wishing to be relieved of the responsibility, turned the column over to me. It was Ellston and Opal Melton who planted the idea of me doing a column and helped it to grow.
Two years later, Mr. Melton suffered an illness which necessitated changes in the format of his paper and the method of publishing it. The use of my column was curtailed. It was at this point that Wally Lage of the Boonville Daily News invited me to do a column for his paper, writing, “I have enjoyed them. Please begin as soon as possible and send as often as possible. I’ll run them as often as I get them, but I want to be sure we don’t alienate Mr. Melton. At the end of the month you will receive a check.” (We didn’t alienate Mr. Melton.)
As far as the “ups and downs” of writing the column (as mentioned on the program) there are many “ups” but no “downs” worthy of mention, but I try to keep it as natural as possible.
My column “goes to press” each Monday on the editorial page with the heading, “Lilburn Says,” along with a picture of me, sometimes a different one each week (fringe benefit). I was pleased with the one which appeared last week. It looked more like Rock Hudson than any used before!
The monetary rewards, the checks, for writing the column are tingley tangible, though they don’t ward off starvation or send me reeling into riotous living. But they are not to be despised. On the other hand, the fringe benefits feed my spirit and make it fat.
Human nature being the same always, almost daily I read something in the papers which reminds me of a story filed away in my vault (my office was once a bank) which looks like a pack rat’s nest.
You must agree with me that I had no “ups and downs” getting the column in the papers. But preparing the column is something else. The original draft of the idea is no chore, but revising it, making phrases concise and choosing words which convey the exact meaning I wish to express is difficult for me. Which brings to mind especially the use of the word which carries one’s thought.
Last year in a contest among the daily newspapers in Missouri, judged by members of the Oklahoma Press Association, the Boonville Daily News won 17 out of 20-some honors. Perhaps you can imagine my pride when I learned that my column had been mentioned honorably. But there was a notation which mentioned two of my columns specifically, one as a “knee slapper,” and further comment, “The key to his writing is the fact that he tells it all and does so in a low-key literary style.”
I wrote to some friends who had gone to the Journalism School and the former editor of a magazine and asked how I should react to the statement that I write with a low-key style.
One wrote that it must be just a sneaky term that has crept into use, she had never heard it when she was in school, but she had heard it at a church meeting when someone announced, “Let’s keep it low-key.”
Another said, “I would assume that ‘low-key literary style’ must mean you don’t go in for elaborate stylistic tricks, artificial forms or bombast. Perhaps they mean ‘he tells it like it is, man, he tells it like it is.’ “
I enjoy all kinds of people - excluding no one. I don’t feel important - I just enjoy the fringe benefits that come with being a columnist.
I wondered if I would ever have enough benefits to make a fringe for my literary shawl. As time passed, I found benefits of various sorts, and together they fringed quite well on my shawl.
Not along ago I failed to get copy to the Daily News office for a column in a Monday edition. I think it had never happened before. Later in the week, when I visited a lady in the hospital, I was greeted with, “What’s the matter with you? You didn’t have a column in the paper!”
The pleasure of knowing someone missed it was immeasurable, greater than my regret at having been delinquent.
Fathering a child column born every Monday on the editorial page, ushered into the world by Dr. Daily News, is fringeful, an honor duly cherished. What a fringe benefit!
Being told by Sallie Strithum and Wanda Clickfast and others, “I enjoy your columns and cut them out for a scrapbook for my grandchild” warms me like coming into a warm room during our energy crisis.
It is intriguing when someone I have never seen before greets me with “How are you, Mr. Kingsbury?” Or a clerk in a store equally strange to me asks: “What can I do for you today, Mr. Kingsbury?”
Sometimes there is a chance for me to apologize for my non-recognition. It is good to be absolved when told, “Oh, we have never met, but I read your column and see your picture in the paper.”
It makes fringe when Johnny Wiggleberg crushes my hand in greeting and says, “O boy (imagine being called that), did I get a kick out of reading your column last Monday!”
Imagine Biddie Lustrop calling to say she had just read my column in which I wondered if there was anything new under the sun except pantyhose maybe, and warning me not to go too heavy on research to find out.
And an old Boonville girl, Elizabeth Carey of Smithton, wrote a letter to the Daily News and added a postscript: “I do enjoy Kingsbury.” That was a bright spot in the fringe. Sadie Crakwell, in a reckless mood, inquired, “Why don’t you publish the best columns in a book?” And Kittie Bushwhack and Tommie Creature, more reckless still, said some of them are as good as things in the Readers’ Digest.
So the editor was right about my “fringe benefits and other compensations” outweighing the monetary reward.
But the weight of the fringe on my literary shawl will never throw me off balance. It gets trimmed sufficiently. Threatena Woodscare anonymously called to warn me, “If you don’t quite writing about our people, you are going to be blown up.”
I was in a Boonville store where I was not acquainted with the clerk who waited on me. I didn’t think he knew me. Wishing to pay for my purchase by check and feeling the need of establishing my credit, I asked him, “Do you ever see ‘Lilburn Says’ in the Boonville Daily News?”
“Yes,” he replied forthrightly, “but I don’t read it.”
Lilburn wrote more than 700 columns between 1968, when he was 84 years old, and his death in 1983.
The letters, articles and texts of talks he gave provided abundant fodder for him to masticate into columns which often titillated his readers. Some of these have been included in previous sections because of their relevance to topics dealt with. Here we have reproduced a selection of columns reflecting Lilburn’s deep interest in the history and culture of the Boonslick Country and insight into the eccentricities and activities of its people.
Lilburn drew from many sources for his column. Some were triggered by items he came upon when reading long ago paper files. Others came from stories he remembered hearing, and some stemmed from personal experiences. The following column is a blend of those three.
"I Fell for It"
Ninety years ago, according to the Boonville Advance, the Boonville Council of the State Barbers’ Association completed arrangements for entertainment of the delegates who will attend the annual convention in this city Monday and Tuesday, January 17 and 18, 1884.
The manager of the Opera House has offered the use of the house free of rent. Our citizens have subscribed freely to defray the expense of entertaining their guests. There will be about 200 barbers from over the state in attendance.
. . . Jackson Monroe, undertaker, gives special attention to preparation of remains for transportation. Customers from Howard County will have all ferriage charges paid and goods delivered on ferry boat if preferred.
. . . And there was a large sign over one business house on Main Street, viz: A.M. Koontz’ Cheap Store.
In 1942, the late Judge Roy Williams of Boonville talked of “Early Days in the History of Boonville” to the local Historical Society, and related an interesting story of Jacob Wyan, an early merchant. The Judge quotes Mr. Whitlow (presumably Mr. R.W.) as saying it was a large frame building painted green with a gallery all around it. But there was something more interesting than Jacob Wyan’s general merchandising, Judge Williams related.
There were three chums in Virginia (from whence Jacob Wyan had migrated) named Jennie, Mary and Nancy. Wyan, after making his start in Boonville, went back to Virginia and married Jennie; they had a daughter and she named the daughter after her chum, Nancy. Jennie died. Mr. Wyan went back and married Nancy. They had a daughter and named her Mary. Nancy died and Mr. Ryan went back and married Mary. They had a daughter and named her Jennie. He was a master at keeping his stock renewed.
. . . Another good story in which a woman was involved was told by the Judge:
“In 1938, the first warlike preparations were made as the Mormons had encamped in our beautiful state. Three companies were organized in Boonville, a member of which was my grandfather, and tradition in the family has it he did not want to fight the Mormons as he had nothing against them, but my grandmother said, “It is all right to kill any man who has more than one wife, and Marcus you must go.” Marcus went. The Mormons surrendered, however, and the soldiers returned.
The Boonville Daily News has some of the finest reporters in the state gathering news from all over the counties. Yet, something can happen on their very front door step, practically “under their noses” and they might not know of it.
On the 23rd, High Street was parked solid with motor vehicles. I double-parked my car with the motor running and hurried in hastily to deliver a package. In like haste, I departed, missed a step on the “stoop” and fell sprawling on my right shoulder on the concrete sidewalk.
An inventory indicated no broken bones. I could use my right arm below the elbow and lift the right upper arm with my left! I didn’t see a soul (witness) except the driver of a school bus who had pulled up behind my car and stopped. I didn’t see him as I carried my shattered hulk to my car, loaded it and drove home.
After a week of hospitalization at home, a kind letter arrived which fixed my resolve to build another column. The letter:
Dear Mr. Kingsbury: Too often I’ve missed telling someone I’m pleased with them - or love them - or admire them - or miss them, and although we are strangers, I don’t want to miss telling you how much I enjoy your column each Monday. Thank you for writing it. Sincerely, Sallie Saidit. (Not her real name.)
Sallie, my appreciation shall never allow me to think of you as a stranger.
Journalism School Guinea Pig!
By 1974, Lilburn had developed such a reputation as a historian, genealogist, collector and interesting personality that he had been extensively interviewed and written about. He had become a prime target for students in the University of Missouri’s Journalism School featuring-writing classes. He writes about all this in the column reproduced below.
Instructors at the Missouri University Journalism School assign special work to some of their students to test their progress.
A collector friend of mine told me of one young woman who was directed to call at her home, gain an interview, take pictures inside and then write a story about her personality. It was to be based on furnishings and their arrangement in the house.
My friend said, “I’m afraid it didn’t go so well. The young lady didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm about old things, my flower decorated copper wash boiler to hold magazines for instance, my stained maple syrup bucket which contained my knitting. Not to mention my coal hod emblazoned with the colorful head of a Landsdown sheep, a sort of trademark in my family.
“However, tea and toast seemed natural to her though I do not think she had the least interest in the rarity or the aesthetic value of my Tea Leaf china on which it was served.
“As for personality, I think she concluded mine was mixed from rearing a large family during my earlier yeas and going overboard about antiques in my later ones.
“She took many pictures but I permitted none of me. I heard her instructor spurned all of them but one. He criticized it, saying it was ‘too busy’ (too many things in it without a central figure, me!)”
During the last three years I have had many journalism students wanting to experiment with me. Each asked for an appointment for an interview and taking pictures. Each assured me that through cooperation I might enable him to produce a story which would stimulate his instructor to give him a higher grade.
I had wondered the first two years why I was chosen as their victim. By the third year, I had concluded it was due to my prestige which comes unsought and without effort to every one “who lives to a ripe old age.”
Mark von Wehrden, the affable young man who asked me to help him in 1973, got exactly what he wanted. Confidently, he had drawn his own plan, inches by inches, for a full-page story in the Columbia Missourian. If accepted as he anticipated, it would prove his proficiency in this special line of work and keep his grade up to its usual A status.
Mark was a hunter, who needed no bird dog to flush up a covey of facts in an interview or to point telling camera shots. He hunted in my office, on my home premises, and during a Sunday service at my church. When he heard I was headed for Al and Bettie Crow’s home in Boonville to be a host at their part of the Celebration of the Festival of Leaves, the young man begged to go with me.
Everywhere he had asked me to forget he was around. This seemed difficult at the time. I didn’t realize how well I had complied with his request until I saw the 35 pictures of me, practically all of them shot from ambush.
Robert Burns wrote:
O wud some power that giftie gie us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder
frae us and foolish notion.
In the quarter page “close-up” of me “in repose” in the Columbia Missourian, the tip of my tongue is peeping out from between my lips. Have others always seen me like this? In a series of three pictures taken at Betty Crow’s home, first, I am meeting an attractive woman, our faces serious; second, more serious and her upper arm is tight in my grasp; third, she has escaped and our faces register delight.
Maybe, and I hope, seeing myself as others see me will “frae monie a blunder and foolish notion” frae me.
Promiscuous Roller Skaters
In this age of permissiveness it is laughable that a skating rink would have caused a rash of pimples of displeasure on the spiritual face of some good old Methodists of New Franklin. But it did, in 1912.
Kincaid and Sprinkle had been licensed to set up a skating rink on vacant lots on the south side of the business block, in a large tent. From its opening, it attracted good crowds, young, middle-aged and numerous elderly. Beginners afforded onlookers seated around the sides oft he rink much amusement when their feet slipped out from under them. The town was hungry for such sport.
Mrs. Flossie Fluke, director of the Methodist choir, has been a devotee of roller-skating in her teens. She was among the first patrons and after a little practice found she could still do the fancy skating didoes of her youth.
It all seemed very worldly to some of the Methodists. There was much talk about it. The wife of our minister dropped into the rink one night to see if what she had heard about the place was true. Her visit was short. On her way home, she stopped to tell Mrs. Burr, a Methodist woman who worshipped from afar, about it. Every ounce of Mrs. Burr’s overweight was shocked.
The next day our minister felt impelled to tell Mrs. Fluke that his wife cried all night after seeing her “skating promiscuously with all those men.” And to leave a deeper impression, he added, “Mrs. Burr thinks it is just as bad as dancing, holding hands as you do.”
At the Wednesday night prayer meeting our minister brought up the matter of the rink and asked for free expression of opinions. The majority kept silent, but one brother present spoke from his heart. “There are three things I must content with in this town, the pool room, the skating rink, and the dance hall where they are doing that awful turkey trot. The girls raise their skirts until their stockings show.”
To improve the spiritual complexion of her critics, Flossie Fluke gave up skating but was present regularly sitting on the onlookers bench, sometimes with tears in her eyes. Buck Dempsey would dance by and entice her. “Come on in, the fallin’s fine.” When the good Methodist girl, Miss Sallie Hoan heard this she remarked, “Of course, he meant falling from grace.”
A Three-generation Household Goods Sale
This is a story I recorded about a household goods sale held about 25 years ago:
It was a cold morning for a sale. A sharp wind got right under one’s clothes and laid a chilly hand on his backbone if he had not dressed against such an invasion. Hundreds of foresighted people had come prepared to stand out in the weather for hours. This was an auction of household possessions accumulated by three Elliott family generations.
The goods for sale were displayed in a row which circled the big house. The house itself was empty except the big sitting room. It had been left intact with a hot log fire in the fireplace so that guests might come inside for warmth. Chairs and other furnishings including a Seth Thomas clock marking time on its shelf, would be moved out and sold last. Thus the traditional hospitality of the family would be extended to the very end.
Outside the crowd milled around before the sale began. Many were visiting as at a homecoming. But most of them were inspecting things of especial interest. One woman was hovering over a brass hanging lamp with clear glass prisms. She confided to her friend, “I’m going to buy this if it doesn’t go over $7. My husband gave me the money for a birthday present and I want to put it in something I can always keep.”
An expression of a “Gone with the Wind” lamp, its bowl and global shade splashed with red roses, conflicted with the opinion of another plain-spoken woman who declared, “I wouldn’t have the gaudy thing in my house. But I don’t doubt it will bring several dollars.”
A third woman put it, “Several dollars your foot! They’ve got a standing bid of $40 put on it.”
Men passing along the line experimented with everything with a movable part. They opened and shut the door of the bird cage, turned the wheel of the cherry seeder, and worked the old hand corn planter.
The women thumped glass bowls and goblets and listened for tones to establish age and quality. They examined silverware for hallmarks. They lifted and replaced the lid on every covered glass and china bowl.
Someone asked a lady who stayed in the sitting room if she were not interested in buying anything? She replied she wanted nothing but the Seth Thomas clock which would be sold last. She was just waiting where she was comfortable. No matter what was bid against her, she was going to have that clock.
The sale was halted while someone whispered in the auctioneer’s ear that one of the ladies feeling chilled had gone into the sitting room, collapsed and died.
The auctioneer removed his hat, announced the unfortunate happening in his saddest tone and said, “Let’s have a moment of silent prayer out of respect for this good woman.” And with almost his next breath, his hat back on his head, he cried, “How much am I offered for this elegant ‘Gone with the Wind Lamp’?” It blew the price ceiling at $45. The light in the face of the woman who hoped to get the brass hanging lamp for $7 went out long before it was knocked off to another bidder for six times as much.
The patient woman in the sitting room got the Seth Thomas clock she was determined to buy. The sale was over by late afternoon. Before sundown every article of household goods which had encircled the house had vanished; the yard was as clean as if it had been swept with a broom.
Except for grass in the yard, flattened by human feet, one would not have suspected it had been the scene of feverish auction activity all day long.
And if there had been curtains at the windows and smoke coming out of the chimneys, one not knowing better might have run in again to sit a while with Charlie Elliott, the last of the three generations who had lived there.
Some Nursing Home Friends
Two or three years ago I was in the hospital able to walk in the halls. A nurse told me of a patient down the hall who had asked her to tell me he would like me to come and see him, that he had known of me for a long time and he wanted to meet me. When she told me his name, I realized it was a gentleman clock collector whom I had planned for some time to go and see.
Upon sight I instinctively liked him. We had a pleasant visit. I left his room with the intention of furthering our friendship. A couple of days later I went back. He was gone. I could learn nothing from the nurses except he had been moved and they did not know why or where.
Last fall, after another stay in the hospital, I stopped at a convalescent home for five weeks. I soon learned my erstwhile acquaintance was there, helpless, with his wife pushing him through the halls in a wheelchair. I was told he could hear conversation but was unable to respond to it in any manner. His eyes were like windows with the shades drawn.
One day his wife asked me if I would like to come in their room to see him. He was in his chair. As I sat down by him, I grasped his hand as if greeting and continued to hold it while relating the meeting I had had with him in the hospital and liking him so much.
For a moment, like light flicking on when you open the door of your refrigerator, recognition registered in his eyes and he squeezed my hand until it hurt. Then he was gone again. It was the most moving moment I had ever experienced.
Recently, I read what a gentleman wrote of nursing homes. “A nursing home is a community of men and women with memories and experiences they treasure, people who were once a part of the neighborhoods and churches the rest of us inherited. In short, people are like the rest of us except they are older than most of us and living through complications that very probably await you and me.”
This is a very good view of the patients of a nursing home and one I had entertained as a visitor. I think one can never appreciate, until he becomes a resident himself of a nursing home, the personnel who make things move like clockwork. From administrator down to the newest recruit, they were the most attentive, kind, loving group of people I have ever known.
One of the oldest ladies used to sail into the dining room unaided, as straight as a flagpole, every curl of her hair in place and in a different dress every day. She reminded me as she glided to her table and sat down of a ship sailing in and docking at the wharf. We became friends.
She walked the halls for exercise and sometimes finding an empty chair would sit down to rest. One day I found her thus and I rolled my chair up by hers tete-a-tete fashion for a talk. She spoke fluently of the days when she lived in the country before disabilities had forced her into the home. This occasion was on Sunday before the election. She said:
“When one loses her sight until she can’t see the food on her plate, can’t hear well, and has her troubles as I do, I think it would be a blessing if I could pass on. And I am ready to go any time.” After a pause, she continued, “But I do hope I’ll live until after election day to hear that Ronald Reagan is elected President.”
Life Began at Forty
As far as pressed, blown and cut glass are concerned, life for began at 40. Of course I knew something about glass, of glass panes in the windows of our houses. I knew I had eaten ice cream out of glass dishes of beautiful colors at Aunt Fannie’s. But I didn’t know the difference between a tumbler and a goblet in water glasses. I knew a little about cut glass. Once I was commissioned to pick up a cut glass vase at Gemelich and Schmidt’s store in Boonville and bring it back to New Franklin on a train. It was a present for one of our teachers. Between the store and the depot, my feet slipped from under me and the vase went to pieces in the fall. To this day if anyone asks me where the Christian Church is in Boonville, my first thought is to reply, “On the corner where I broke the cut glass vase.”
But I learned a lot about glass one day when I went with a knowledgeable friend to an auction in Columbia. It was held in the back yard of a private home, people crowded the lawn. My attention was attracted to a prosperous looking prominent social matron who held the spotlight as she seated herself in one of the chairs to be auctioned, near the table on which many articles were contained. She asked someone to put a hassock under her feet and thus esconced she was ready to meet the best bidders of the day.
Bidding was brisk and things brought prices which astonished me. Each time an article from the table was offered, the pompous matron commanded the auctioneer, “Let ME see it.” She ran her fingers around the top and base, looked at it intently and rubbed the bottom of it before she handed it back so the auction might proceed.
To my friend I said, “What is that old junk they are selling?”
“Pressed glass,” he replied. Conversation ensued between us.
“Who pressed it?”
“A lot of factories made it years and years ago, some of it is very old.”
“What do people want with it?”
“Antique collectors use it with their old furniture. They feel if adds atmosphere to their houses.”
“Why does the pompous lady rub each piece like Aladdin used to rub his lamp?”
“She feels it to see if it is proof.”
“What’s proof?”
“A piece of glass is said to be proof if it has no chips or cracks, is in perfect condition. And she feels the bottom of it to see if it has a pontil.”
“Heaven’s sake, what is a pontil?”
“The pontil is a rough place on the bottom, all the old blown glass had them.”
“Why does she look at it so closely?”
“To see if it is three mold. Three mold is much more desirable than two or four.”
“Well I wouldn’t give a nickel for any of it.”
“Let’s see if we can go into the house, she may have a lot more glass inside,” said my friend, tired no doubt of answering my questions.
We walked into a room in which glass things in many colors were displayed, red, blue, lavender, purple, white, green and yellow. I was delighted to see it. “Plenty of atmosphere here,” remarked my friend.
I was really “taken in” by one bowl with bumps that looked like warts on it and remarked, “I wish I had this bowl, I am going to buy it if I can. Where do you suppose all this stuff comes from?”
“Mrs. Reeker goes all over the country looking into peoples’ attics and cellars. They are tired of it and she is able to buy it for practically nothing. Some of it, they give her the stuff just to get it out of the way. That bowl you want probably didn’t cost her a quarter.”
I learned that once around the turn of the century a grocer had given my mother a berry set, a purple bowl with six sauce dishes, a sugar and a creamer. It was purple with gold trimming and is today called the Croesus pattern. The set now retails for $194.50. She became tired of it and when somebody indicated she would like to have it, it was given away. Goodbye atmosphere!!!
A Fine Old Hen
One of the most gracious collectors I have seen recently is a woman in her eighties, as spry as a cricket. She goes to the newspaper office every work day. She boasts of 1800 pitchers in her collection. She also has a collection of hooked rugs of her own making. And, in what she called her “hen-house,” she had glass and china chickens of all sorts. She told me when she acquired the hen, which was her favorite, she had to choose between a new dress and the chicken. She sacrificed the dress. “Mr. Kingsbury, she said, “I have never regretted my decision.” When one leaves, the strongest impression is of her gracious personality - of what a fine old hen she is - rather than of pitchers and rugs.
Santa Passed Me Up
Christmas trees are such an inseparable part of our Yuletide celebrations we can hardly believe they were ever unknown in this country.
A German immigrant who had come to this country in 1824 trimmed the first tree of which we have record. He was Charles Felton, a political refugee who was the first professor of German literature at Harvard University. He married Ellen Lee Cabot of the famous Cabot family of Boston. They had one son, Charles Christopher, born in 1830 and two years later the first Christmas tree was trimmed for him in the Felton home.
According to Ellen Cabot Felton’s memoirs of her husband published in 1844, “Every Christmas since Charles was two years old, his father dressed a Christmas tree for him after the fashion of his own country. This was always the happiest day of the year for him. He spared no pains, no time in adorning the fine spruce tree and making it as beautiful as possible.
The memory of the first Christmas tree impressed upon my mind was a beautiful one at Clark’s Chapel in 1890. Both of my parents were born, reared and married near that church and were members as were their children. After their marriage they moved to the home where I now live, 1 1/2 miles north of New Franklin. But their church membership remained at Clark’s Chapel until 1890 when Rev. J. Marshall Dempsey, a popular evangelist influenced them to become members of the church at New Franklin. Although we as a family attended services at Clark’s Chapel every time there were none in New Franklin, our names of course were no longer on the membership roll.
We went to the Christmas exercises at Clark’s Chapel. They were good but naturally I was impatient for the time when the Christmas treats would be distributed by Santa Claus. I thought he would never get around to finding a treat for me. And since I was no longer one of Clark’s Chapel children, a fact unfortunately I didn’t realize, he never did. Nothing ever “came upon a midnight clear” louder than my weeping and wailing which accompanied Santa Claus’ “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’ as he retreated down the aisle.
Never since then have I suffered a greater emotional crisis. I have never forgotten Cousin Mamie Smith, the young woman who sacrificed her sack of candy to shut up my protesting mouth. Long ago she moved to the place where it is said good people wear crowns with stars on them. There must me an extra bright one in hers for being kind to a sqaulling brat on Christmas Eve.
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