Epistles from Pap: Letters from the man known as 'The Will Rogers of Indiana' Part 14

In conclusion, let it be known no n.a.z.i spy will ever be able to report back to whoever he reports to the elusive number on our trusty gas stove.

Very respectfully,

LAND AWAY FROM HOME

October 23, 1943

Mr. Eugene M. Anderson 20061 Hull Detroit, Michigan

My dear Eugene: Enclosed find Russellville Bank draft. . . for $550 . . . in full payment of the balance owed by Ared Shaw and wife to you for the 27 acres plus north of the N.Y. Central station here in Putnam County. I am also enclosing a receipt for $1 from Central National Bank, which . . . charged each of you the sum for holding the papers.

I tried to peddle your contract but the chiselers had this excuse and that for wanting you to discount it. This is no time for discounting, and everybody knows it. Banks are glad to get good loans at straight 6% mighty glad. I took it up with Russellville Bank and they wanted it. So they got it. . .

I expect you are glad to get the matter off your hands. It is no fun to own land a long ways from home. I have tried it--in fact I am trying it all the time--have land in Kansas and Texas I can't get rid of, and it's a nuisance. The southwest Kansas land is 160 acres, flat as a pancake--you could make baseball diamonds all over it--and never had a plow in it. Father traded a horse and buggy for it in 1893 or 94. Never saw it. It is in dry country.

We have just paid taxes (very small) all these years until about five years ago I leased it for oil to the Standard Co. at $1 per acre. They have never drilled a well, but keep it for speculation, and each year pay $160. So, if that keeps up, we'll have our money back come 20 years more, or more or less. . .

Very respectfully,

LET THE BRIDE CALL THE TUNE

Advice to an only son who has become a prospective groom. Note: The future bride's name was Frances Haberkorn, but Pap, who nicknamed everyone, called her "Francisco." (Undated)

My dear Frank, From your letter, matters matrimonial in our family seem on a most decided up-swing. I didn't realize you had gone so far, but right now, once and for always, you can rest a.s.sured the "old man" is with you 200%. Wife and husband choosing is for the individuals themselves. Outsiders should look on, keep out, keep mum--and worry to themselves all they want to. I did a mighty good job of picking, and I'm perfectly willing to accord the rest of you the same privilege.

Your letter said Francisco would be down to have a final say in the matter--or words to that effect. That's right. That is the way it should be. You'll find a groom is the most unnecessary necessity modern society ever inveigled an unsuspecting public into. He bears about the same relation to a first cla.s.s wedding that a dust cap does to a 12-cylindered, leather upholstered Packard.

Perhaps by now you know more about when and where. Naturally, the balance of us would like to know something about that too--especially if any are expected to be "among those present".

. . . If I am expected to be present, I'll have to arrange for somebody to do the milking, and get my s.h.i.+rt to, and back from, the laundry--both of which take varying times. But whenever, wherever and however, you can count on Munny for an absolute certainty, even if you can't count positively on a bride. Munny would be there to forestall any subst.i.tutions. If it is to be in Alaska, you can count on Munny trying on parkas tomorrow, and practicing blubber her next meal.

As ever,

Pap summoned up the following allegory in advising family members not to interfere with the wishes of the prospective bride for her own wedding.

To All and Sundry of the Clan of Durham of Putnam County, Indiana,

Greetings:

Legend hath it when the daughter of Simonides of Iulis was about to wed, a controversy arose between her and the prospective groom's kinswomen and some of his kinsmen as to what wines were to be served at the wedding feast. She contended for a wine whose grapes were grown on the east side of a mountain and facing the morning sun. His kindred strove for a less palatable but more potent wine whose grapes were grown on the south side of a neighboring mountain.

The controversy arose to political and diplomatic importance.

Forsooth, she, having all the best of it in comeliness, charm, personal interest and common justice, prevailed--as all brides- to-be should, concerning their nuptial arrangements.

At the wedding feast his people were served with hemlock--thus forever ending the "in-law" question for her, and thereby reaffirming an almost unbroken precedent that in the days of your Grandfather Durham was summed-up in these cryptic words: "He who pays the fiddler shall call the tune."

Moral. It were better a volunteer of bridal suggestions to a bride-to-be were buried in the sands of the sea at low water mark where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours, than intimate anything, anytime to HER, and thereby court a return of the Iulisian custom.

(The foregoing went by mail, postage prepaid, to all members of said Clan whose addresses were known this May 21, 1944)

SOME SIMILARITY

Frances' father was Henry Haberkorn, a vice president and trust officer of the largest bank in Detroit. Pap was chairman of the board of one of the smallest banks in Indiana. He made the following observations regarding this "similarity."

(Undated)

My dear Frank, I wrote one letter to Francisco, and one jointly to her father and mother. This week I received replies. Frances wrote a nice, sensible, fine letter. Your pappy Haberkorn did the honors for himself and wife. The letterhead disclosed he is one of the Vice Presidents of the National Bank of Detroit. He facetiously referred to the fact we had another thing in common--we both were connected with the banking business.

Which reminded me of Charlie Buchanan, who appeared before the Railroad Committee of the House in 1917 with a bill to allow the Louisville, New Albany & Corydon Railroad to charge more than 2 cents per mile on pa.s.senger trains on his Road. Charlie was President of said R.R. and it was a separate railroad corporation in truth and in fact. He was also Auditor, Treasurer, Gen.

Freight and Pa.s.senger Agent--and Conductor on their one and only train. His Road ran from Corydon and connected with the Southern at Corydon Junction some 8 miles of main track. He told us the following tale:

As do all R.R. Presidents, he went to their convention in Chicago, and there struck up Pres. Williams of the New York Central for an exchange of courtesies of pa.s.ses--he to give Williams a pa.s.s on the L.N.A. & C. Railroad, and in return, Williams to give him a pa.s.s on the N.Y.C. Williams seemed to have not heard of Charlie's Road and asked him where it was. Charlie told him. Williams still was puzzled and asked how long the Road was. Charlie answered it was a little over 8 miles long.

Williams said, "Don't you think you have a h.e.l.l of a lot of gall when you have an 8-mile Road and we have over 16,000 miles?"

Charlie answered, "I know that Mr. Williams, but yours ain't a d.a.m.n bit wider."

He got the pa.s.s.

And also our Committee recommended his bill unanimously. . .

And so, as between the L.N.A. & C. and the N.Y.C., and the National Bank of Detroit and Russellville Bank, I can't just put my finger on it, but hazily, there is some similarity, of some kind or other.

As ever,

THE CONSTRAINED ROMANCE OF UNCLE ERNEST

Pap's conviction that family members should not meddle in affairs of the heart was on his mind, and showed again in the following letter. It was written long after the death of his older brother, J. Ernest Durham, generally referred to as "Uncle Ernest," but the memory of a romance impeded by an overzealous family was still vivid.

April 25, 1944

Dear Frank: . . . Long, long ago I wanted a diamond like you want a bride. And so, I bought and sold calves, colts and horses; hauled campers to and from Eel River Falls; graded the old ball park at DePauw; etc., etc., and worked in staid, dependable, conservative, old Russellville Bank at $2 per week & board and clothes (I'll say it was conservative--Uncle Ernest started it in 1893 and had his first note loss in 1907. . . ). I spliced my money, went to Walk's (the old tune jeweler at Indianapolis) and bought myself one. They said it would be a good investment. They were only half right. It was an investment . . . Then the ring and I went on to college, and time went on.

Uncle Ernest liked the looks of said diamond--but not the price-- and from time to time would borrow it. He had smaller fingers and would wrap white grocer's twine around the base until the ring about fit; then go to the Bankers' State Convention at Indianapolis, where, in trying to be a good fellow, he would eat a lot of cheese, pickles, blind robins, drink maybe a couple bottles of beer, and come home with an upset stomach and a h.e.l.l of a headache. Thence to Billy Gardner's drug store for a new box of acetanilide.

Eventually, Frank Kennedy's girl went to some woman's college in Illinois to take music. Her teacher was a spinster of questionable age, named Colgate, from New York, New York. It was claimed, either by her or Frank's wife, she was a kinswoman to the dental cream and dirt-removing family of that name who have the big clock in Jersey across from New York City. Mother and Aunt Margaret were inclined to doubt it. Anyway, the teacher came home with her pupil at the end of the year for a visit. Uncle Ernest was invited down for supper next night.

That took a good deal of preparation. He spent most of the day away from the Bank getting ready. Frank Kennedy, the pupil's father, and host of the evening, was our leading barber. He cut Uncle Ernest's hair and shaved him. Uncle Ernest filled the galvanized wash tub extra full and took a thorough bath behind the kitchen stove. That took off about everything except the ink stains on his fingers. Mrs. Forgey, who with her husband, Jim Forgey, kept house for Uncle Ernest, recommended lemon juice, or maybe it was green tomato juice, for finger ink stains, but said she couldn't do anything about the ink stains on his best suit which she was cleaning and pressing. Uncle Ernest had won a bottle of cologne or Florida Water in some sort of a shooting gallery attached to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show at the Chicago World's Fair in '93. He hadn't used much of it, so he doused a little of that here and there. . . All told they did a pretty fair job of grooming. The evening was a success and much praise was given Mrs. Kennedy's salt-rising bread and culinary art.

Uncle Ernest had a Model T of several years back. He had used it hard, and one day, trying to head-off a calf in the barn lot out at the old home farm east of town, had run through the gate with the door open. The door hit the gate post and was torn off. He had to tie it shut with baling wire. That meant he had to keep it shut and get in from the other side all the time. Most of the fenders held their respective places by virtue of more baling wire. He had also misjudged the height of some limbs on a tree up in the north pasture, and torn a hole in the rubberized textile top that leaked when it rained anything above a heavy dew. The back end of the coupe was loaded with an a.s.sortment of axes, grubbing hoes, pitch forks, spades, post hole diggers and so forth. Besides that, it had the mud of three counties plastered inside and out, and the upholstery showed sizable patches of cotton wadding. The car in general looked bad enough, and entirely too tough for social usage, but the thing that disqualified it absolutely for his impending purpose was that he had parked it overnight under a blackbird roost, and anybody who had done that in mulberry and cherry time knows what I mean.

Uncle Ernest had antic.i.p.ated the visit by swapping his Ford for my new chummy little Saxon roadster--35 miles to the gallon--and wherein, a woman companion couldn't keep very far away from you.

Their first trip was decorous and above suspicion. They went to the Rockville Chautauqua to hear William Jennings Bryan, and Cole Younger the famous outlaw and bank robber, lecture on "Crime doesn't pay." They got in by 9 p.m.

Their next foray was a bit more questionable. I think they went to a box supper over toward Montezuma. In order that there be no confusion and Uncle Ernest bid-in the wrong box, she pasted a picture of that women's college on the outside of her box. Uncle Ernest bid-in the right box and got to eat supper with her. They got in just after midnight, according to Frank Kennedy's wife's timetable.

However, any necessary atonement was made next day, Lord's Day, when they went to Crawfordsville and heard Dr. McIntosh, President of Wabash College, read his "Shakespeare, the Apollo Belvidere of English Letters."

Things gradually went from late to later, until one night they didn't get in at all--not until after sun-up. They had succeeded in running my Saxon off the road, sprung an axle and busted a light and fender, in a suspiciously out-of-the-way place between Deer's Mill and the Shades of Death. They said they got lost, and confused going downhill. I agree on the latter. Anyway, they hadn't crossed the state line.