It must have been in 1960 or 1959 - after we had tamed the Bowen Cemetery and it had been easy to mow for several years that I myself got talked - mostly by myself - into Tackling the Highland Cemetery, which had missed mowing for several years and was in a deplorable condition.
We had handled the Bowen Cemetery fairly easily as there were several of us on the job and we had several mowers, of which the two Lacos furnished by Berr Bowen - were by far the best for such difficult conditions, the cemetery having not been mowed for several years.
We had tackled the Bowen Cemetery in 1952 and I had since bought two improved Lacos, they being much lighter and easier to push, the first ones did excellent work, but were so heavy that pushing them over the rough cemetery ground was one way of separating the men from the boys.
I toiled at the Highland Cemetery
as my cousin Ben Bowen liked to have plenty of help and being
the boss of the job - he always called on me as I had so many
relatives buried there.
Slow
Going at Highland
I had very slow going in the Highland Cemetery the first years as so many limbs had fallen from the oak trees and been covered by annual layers of grass and weeds and the limbs and small stones were impossible to see and the mortality rate of mower blade tips were distressing.
If I could have burned off the cemetery the job would have been easy as the hidden limbs would have been consumed by the holocaust and the stones would have been easily seen. I think there is a law against burning off cemeteries and I had no wish to become obnoxious to the police and the grand old church was just across the fence in the churchyard amid the same rank mess of dead vegetation and setting a fire was not to be thought of.
I have seen bad grass fires and am not anxious to see more of them. I have seen oat shocks set on fire on two occasions by lightning and the big oak tree in the churchyard and cemetery were struck by lightning several times during the years when I worked there and the lightning rods had been stolen from the church before I started mowing there. Considering the times that I had to gather pieces of green oak and chunks of green bark that lightning had knocked from the trees one of which almost shaded the church - it seems that providence must have protected the old church.
This recalls a stormy night fifty odd years ago when lightning struck the top of a long dead cottonwood giant tree whose top was hollow and full of nests and the wind was blowing blazing fragments through a light rain towards the rear of the barn.
By the light of a kerosene lantern I chopped down the tree. Dead cottonwood doesn't chop easily, but the light rain kept me cool and the lightning kept me scared and the house had lightning rods and I was young.
I eventually finished mowing the cemetery - probably setting a world record for time spent in mowing a cemetery once.
A few ladies on their stray way home from a neighborhood club meeting stopped in while I was working in that mess one day looking for certain graves and as I was pretty tired - except for my jaw bones - I went over to talk a little.
I had left the vicinity 36
years before, but I still knew some of the old neighbors and we
were wondering how far north the graves extended. I afterwards
found that they were farther than we thought.
Condition
of the Church
One day while I was mowing, Ralph Cockshoot and a friend stopped in to see the old church and came back to the cemetery where I was mowing. We had been partners in working a farm of his and were and are friends and he said he played a tune on the piano and it was still in pretty good shape.
There was just one window pane broken at that time and the church was in very good condition.
I intended to replace the pane, but it was rounded at the top and before I took one out for a pattern there were others broken and I gave it up as a hopeless job.
With the cemetery finished at last, the next problem was the church yard.
It seemed logical that it was the obligation of the owners to protect their property from grass fires, but I could likely mow it while I was trying to contact the owners and get their opinions when I didn't even know who all of them were.
So I started another project
and removed the danger of a grass fire though the danger of the
church being struck was still apparent as the rods had been stolen
and the lightning had struck in the church yard and cemetery more
often than I ever knew of in so small a space - a storm coming
up was a signal for me to load my tools and leave.
Memories
of Highland Church
The old deserted church was once a busy place. My mother and my wife's mother worshiped there as young girls and I have often seen it hard to find a place to tie a horse or a team. We always had good crowds at gatherings that were put on to raise money for the church.
I particularly recall a strawberry festival when a family who seemed to take their religion more seriously than most of us, furnished the strawberries in a large amount. We had tables set up in the churchyard and I saw the king-sized dishpans that we used for mixing bread and washing dishes in heaped with berries.
It seems ironic (I stumble for a word) and most tragic that this most excellent and deeply religious family, the C.L.D. Millers, were, as I believe, the only family who went to the church to lose a son in battle in World War I. I suppose it was the autos that killed the old church, that and the regulars moving away and dying off.
Raccoons moved in and the
hunters tried to get them out, the plaster and lath taking quite
a beating.
Quality
Lumber
This exposed the peerless lumber used in the old church, lumber saved from giant white pine logs floated down the river into Clinton "Sawmill Town on the Mississippi" and other river towns. Don't ask for that kind of lumber now; it apparently doesn't exist.
That was lumber. It resisted decayed to a remarkable degree and you could drive a nail in a board near the end and it didn't split. I used to take my lunch in the church and admire the timbers that were exposed where the lath and plaster were gone and wonder how high I would bid on the church when it was auctioned off as I supposed it would be.
Henry McDermott must have been pleased with the quality of this lumber. I remember my father saying that Henry furnished the lion's share of the money to build it and that Henry was a frugal man, but could always be depended on to help a religious cause.
I had expected that if the church didn't burn and it sold too high for me to buy, there would be plenty of money to pay for keeping the church yard mowed, but it was disposed of without my knowledge while I was visiting in New Mexico, so I am still "holding the sack."
I think my father's house - built on the Barton farm - then Walker and then Bartleson farm - was built in 1894 or 1893, and the lumber was still good at that time.
This house was built by two Atlantic carpenters, Blair and Heaton.
The mason and plaster work was by George Bills.
When Blair cut the first pair of rafters, someone said, "Wait to see if they fit before cutting anymore," but Blair said, "My rafters always fit," and went on sawing - they fit perfectly.
As I worked alone in the Highland
Cemetery, I became pretty well acquainted with the names on the
stones. While I didn't know all of the persons buried there, I
knew several.|
Tragedy
of Mamie Howlett
One of the graves was that of Mamie Howlett. Her death was about 1896 and must have been one of Benton Township's most tragic happenings.
They lived at Benton Center - where Byron Rogler lives-and her father may have been the township's "road boss" who would have a supply of used bridge planks for repairing bridges and culverts, though he may have just used some bridge planks as many farmers did as they were used then for many purposes. This very young girl had fallen on a plank and her head was impaled on a bridge spike.
The girl must have been just about my age and while I never saw her, (we lived only two and one-half miles north), I remember people would always be asking, "How is the little Howlett girl?" She must have lived a week or so, but she had to be terribly injured. Even in this day and age she probably would have died. Of course, we had no telephones or mail delivery or cars at that time, so news was slow getting around. That was about 80 years ago, but I still think of it when I am pulling spikes out of planks. I hope the likes of it never occurs again. Of course bridges and culverts don't have so many planks now. My cousin Ben Bowen, who had worked for years with me at the Bowen Cemetery, came down to see how I was coming with the Highland Cemetery and mentioned that there was no G.A.R. marker on the Thomas Barhan grave.
He seemed to be the only soldier buried there. A Parker girl who taught our school two miles west of Highland told us in history class that her father was with Sherman on his march to the sea, but he must be buried in Anita, though there are Parkers buried at Highland. I had the Brayton Legion Post order a brass marker for Barhan and in two or three years it disappeared.
When you figure that a very high percentage of people are honest and that surely a high or at least reasonable number of thieves would have strong inhibitions against stealing from a soldier's grave, it must leave this class pretty small. Thomas Barhan and his brother-in-law, Will Eakens, both fought when "war to make men free" wasn't just an old cliché. People have not been sold on the auction block since 1865.
I knew Will Eakens in later
years and he happened to speak of the large number of horses among
the dead at Gettysburg. This surprised me as I had always thought
of Gettysburg as a clash of infantry and artillery and a time
when Stonewall Jackson wasn't there to win the battle for Robert
E. Lee. Jackson's men, like Cromwell's Ironside, prayed first
and won the battle afterwards, but Jackson was dead in Virginia.
Mysteries
of War
Here is an enigma.
Robert E. Lee refused to lead his country's army in putting down the rebellion and instead joined the rebels and had a big part in keeping the tragedy alive for years and has been and still is honored perhaps even more than Sherman. Great and good a commander as Washington was, he certainly was not a great general and his best and bravest helper was, of course, Benedict Arnold. Arnold's exploits are legion. At Tyconderoga, Ethan Allen took the glory and it isn't well-known that Arnold was even there.
The forlorn hope caper in
Canada when Montgomery was killed and Arnold wounded... The naval
battle on Lake Champlain which delayed Burgoyne for one year...
The wonderful dispersion of St. Leger's army with the help of
the partially insane General Schuyler who saved Fort Stanswick
and doomed Burgoyne... Arnold's heroic and reckless exploits at
Saratoga while Gates "sulked in his tent" - the key
battle of the revolution. Arnold is remembered today with hate
and loathing. I say that his posthumous pardon is long overdue.
John
E. Walker
Here is the grave of Moses Barton who lived two miles west of here and owned the farmhouse where I was born. My grandfather Walker bought the Barton farm and gave it to my parents, probably for a wedding present.
My father, John Edgar Walker, who was born four miles west of Brayton in 1859, didn't seem to like farming too well, so after he was 21 years old he went to Las Vegas, New Mexico, and took a job as night watch for the big mercantile firm of Brown and Manzanares.
There were a lot of very rude
people in Mexico at the time, about 1880-1881, but he never told
of his life there. In fact, he never told much of his life anywhere.
He wasn't inarticulate; let's just say he wasn't much of a storyteller.
The
Old Farmstead
The house where I was born in 1890 stood about half way between the present house and the road.
On the other side of the road straight across was a two-story granary with an outside stairway that led to the second story where the Grange Society held their meetings.
Just a few rods north was a well in the road a little east of center, and a windmill, wooden, of course, and boarded up like a building. This was said to be a great refuge for pigeons, but it was gone before my time-though I have filled the well a little when it settled after a hard rain. I suppose it is under concrete now. The old school house was on the southwest corner of the "forty" across from the house - the middle forty - and I used to plow up a few objects in that corner.
The school had been used by some as a church before Highland was built and some of my relatives came there one cold winter night in deep snow to a revival meeting.
They were horseback and in the deep sled tracks horses ran over a skunk, but it was so terribly cold that they thought they were not damaged, but the stove in the church was red-hot and after awhile the smell became so pronounced that people were craning their necks and sniffing to try and locate the origin. These boys tried to help by craning their necks, also trying to locate the seat of unrest.
Parts of the old windmill wheel and ware were still round when I left the farm in 1918. It was wonderful how that old wood resisted decay. I remember the name was Halliday. My father's heart not being in farming might have explained why he built a new house when we had a pretty, old house instead of the barn, which would have earned a price of a new house in a few years.
We just had a 16 by 32 foot stable with a haymow that held one load of hay; the center was 6 feet high with the rafters sloping sharply to the floor each side, a miserable excuse of a barn. I cracked my head on those rafters - it helped to be a little dumb in the first place - but father wouldn't allow a barn to be built. He said we didn't need one - but my brothers built one after his death, the last good barn that I know of being built. There are just pole sheds now.
It seems like we got improved
hay loaders - tractor pulled - so as to let the man loading keep
his balance and sling big forkfuls to unload, just about the time
to start baling hay in the fields and not using the big haymows.
The biggest part of the 1890's were considered pretty good times.
A
Nightmare
The Spanish-American War in '98 and the Boer War in 1900 made a good market for horses, and the gold strikes in the Klondike and the South African Rand made money more plentiful, but when I was small there were many tramps abroad. It was soon after Cox's Army went through Atlantic that children were warned to keep away from tramps and gypsies. The tramps were mostly just people out of work who often slept in barns and they caused me to have some horrible dreams.
Our haymow had a large opening over the feedway when the horses were facing each other and we would stand on the manger and scrambled up into the mow a few feet above and we came down feet first. The stable was across the road from the house and a few rods into the barnyard which was a little downhill from the house. I dreamed that I had gotten down to the barn alone just before dark. The barn was empty, and as I came to the open door, I saw a man's leg coming from the mow. I was terrified and ran for the house. The road had been freshly graded. This part of the dream was real. The side towards the house where we crossed the road on foot was cut pretty steep for little kids to climb over and as I came to it, running like my feet were in glue, I just couldn't climb the bank and woke up scared to death.
I had the same identical dream time after time and would pass the road knowing that there was a tramp in the barn, but I was drawn to the stable like I was being pulled by a rope.
I was still having the same dream and the road was still graded and I was still that little boy after I was half grown.
If I ever get a chance I'll
tell President Ford about the beatings my head took from the rafters
of that hay mow and have him tell me his experiences while playing
football without a helmet, but that may be one of President Johnson's
tall stories.
Older
Relatives
A quarter mile north of our place was a large farm owned by my Grandfather Walker.
When I was three years old, my father walked up there to see his grandfather Bowen, who lived there with his family at that time, and I went along.
They were building a whole corn crib and that was the only time I ever saw my Great Grandfather Bowen. I remember him as a fairly tall, slender man dressed in black, and I thought he looked like pictures of a preacher in his long black coat. He sat down in a rocking chair and died not long afterwards.
My uncle Joe Walker moved there in about 1896 and afterwards married Jessie Pratt. Hallie Walker, who married Carrie Harris, was born there in 1899.
Grandfather Walker died in
1899 and Jay Walker inherited land in Audubon County and moved
there, leaving the old house vacant in 1900. The farm was then
owned by U.S. Walker, who lived nearby.
The
Ghost House
Charles Walker, who afterwards became a lawyer in Anita, was born in the Audubon County place. The house being vacant in 1900 and no stock being kept there, the horse weeds took over and the place seemed spooky, but the orchards had the best eating apples I ever ate, and the upstairs had lots of old magazines, and to a nine year-old boy who liked to eat apples and loved to read, it was just the place to be and I was often there.
The old house was not strange to me. I was often there when Jay Walker "batched" there and his wife was our near neighbor. I had gone to school with her and her brothers, but it hadn't been so lonely then. The house had been vacant before, maybe around 1880, and some of the blithe spirits in the area had a habit of spending evenings there playing at cards.
Someone had engineered a rather cruel practical joke on another and it seemed like a good idea to get even with him.
A few of them hatched up a ghost caper to give him a scare and it grew into a regular part of the entertainment.
There was a chimney through the upstairs that was far bigger than common chimneys, it seemed to me. I saw it often in 1900 as it was in my reading room. It was at least 5 feet square. There was a story that a woman had lived there after her death who was dirty, and she came to the house in spirit form and mourned. When the ghostly commotion started upstairs, the ringleaders would take the smoky lantern and lead the pack upstairs and have the ghost between some of them as they walked around the giant chimney which was out to the center of the room and see that the light wasn't too close. Then they would seem to be scared worst of all. The ghost could drop out of a window which seemed low for an upstairs window or stay if he wished.
One night a half grown boy came to see a little excitement and when the panic started, he was near one of the leaders who deliberately tripped him, and the crowd ran over him like a herd of cattle. It was a shameful thing to do, and the man must have had one or two extra drinks as the boy could easily have been killed or crippled for life.
The boy was cruelly trampled and bruised as might have been expected, and when asked about it in later years, he still hadn't seen any humor in the situation and replied pretty soberly: "They nearly killed me."
It wasn't long before drunken people started coming with guns and the ghost walked no more.
The new owner, Uncle U.S.
Walker, moved there in 1901 and built a new house and two barns
and two double corn cribs, but the place was never the same afterwards.
The
McVeys
Uncle hired a man named Charley McVey who moved his family into the other house and they had a busy year.
There was an old dry well near the house that I doubt was more than forty feet deep and lined with brick. Charley and Andrew Nelson, the regular hired men, took out the brick and they used it in the cellar of the new house.
Charley had done some well digging with a spade and seemed to have no fear of the well caving in on him. The bricks were laid without mortar so were easily taken out, and Charlie did the work cheerfully as he did everything.
They dug a well and two cisterns and a lot of pipeline trench that year. It was a very busy year - 1901.
The McVeys were baseball players and started us playing ball in school and Charley sent me word to come up one Sunday and we would go across the fields about a mile to the Bower Creamery where he was to play with the "creamery nine."
This was 1901 when the country was full of baseball teams. So I saw my first baseball game. Charley was a good player, a natural athlete.
They moved farther away two years later and eventually lived down by Berea , south of Anita. They brought back word about a fine young wrestler named Earl Caddock, who could throw just about anybody. It turned out in a few years that he could. Charley came to our place when cars were about as scarce as hen's teeth in a Model T and wanted me to go with him a few miles away to visit a neighbor.
We hadn't much more than started when he slid over and said I was the driver. I hadn't ridden in a car but a time or two, but he knew I could or so he said, and he taught me to drive. He must have done a good job as I have driven a car most of the years since when I had money to own one and have never had or seen an accident.
The Ghost House farm had many
permanent building sites on it. One of the houses was sold by
Charley Bowen to Jim Rourick and is still on the Rourick farm
across the road from Kitelingers. Here is an unusual thing. Both
the Ghost House and the Barton House, where I was born, had twin
rows of current bushes from the house to the "little house
out back" probably for a guide on dark nights. I have not
seen them anywhere else.
The Moses Barton tombstone is in the Highland cemetery. He may
have been the first to settle on our old place, but if my father
had the abstract of the farm, I have never seen it. Barton had
fenced a good deal of the farm with red cedar posts, said to have
been shipped from Pennsylvania, sharpened with the lower end treated
in a kettle of boiling tar.
The posts were driven with
a cast iron maul and a 4 inch strip (1 X 4) spiked on the side
of the post leaving room for the one by six fence boards to fit
in between without being nailed. That must have been done long
before my folks came about 1885, but many of them were in use
when I left in 1918.
School
Memories
Along about 1895, before I had started to school (the school had been moved over on the section line where it belonged), my older brother and sister came home one day after school and said that the big boys and the teacher had dug a cave for a clubhouse to play cards and had got the materials from our fence.
They had told the kids that they had gotten the materials from a neighbor's fence, he having offered it to them, but the neighbor's fence was wire and they had seen them taking the boards.
Father took a spade and axe after supper and turned the clubhouse cave into a catastrophe.
This poor excuse of a teacher was not a fair sample of the teachers of that time.
Dr. Koob of Brayton, one of the most honorable of men , had taught our school before that while he was working his way through medical school. Blanche Noon, a famous local teacher, was teaching the school and boarding at our house when I was born.
My father was a fairly strong Republican, and he had named my older brother after President Harrison. Blanche Noon, being Irish was probably a Democrat. At any rate she named me and, probably seeing I was to need an illustrious name if I was ever going to be known to many people besides the police, she named me Marion Lancelot after General Francis Marion and one of King Arthur's knights.
Pappy countered after she was gone by naming the next boy Reed McKinley and the last one Theodore Roosevelt.
Moses Barton's daughter married Jessie Cannon. There were Cannon families living on the farm where Max Walker now lives. One of their children was Arthur Cannon, who married Daisy Heath, our most excellent Brayton historian.
Arthur Cannon worked some
in area vicinity and often visited at our place where his mother
lived as a girl.
An
Accident with a Gun
When my father came back from his night watch job with Brown and Manzanares in New Mexico, he had several guns - a rolling block Remington buffalo gun, a model 1873 Winchester 44 and two Colt Frontier 44 pistols or revolvers.
One day while he was still
living in the old house, a neighbor was there and was interested
in the working of the rifle. Father showed it to him. It was supposed
to be empty, and he pointed it up, worked the lever, pulled the
trigger, and sent a bullet up through the upstairs where Mother
was sweeping the floor. I don't believe he ever fired another
gun as long as he lived. When his brother-in-law Jim Barhan went
to Canada in 1911, he gave him the gun and Uncle Jim killed a
moose with it. My brother's disposed of the pistols. They would
have had some value on today's market.
The
Brown Family
Another local family buried at Highland were the Browns . I think the family came from New England and was a respected family and considered fairly well-to-do.
I remember hearing people say "there never was a more honest man then Jim Brown."
People also said that the Browns didn't seem able to see that some of the people who came there were bad company for their boys. They lived in our school district, but at that time the Benton Center School was maybe half a mile farther north than it is now and the Browns went there to be on the same side of Troublesome Creek which sometimes overflowed.
The oldest son, Frank, was known as a quiet hardworking boy of excellent character, but an unfortunate love affair had left him melancholy and bitter.
I never heard details of the affair . Maybe a less serious person could have shrugged it off, but Frank seemed to find surcease in riding and drinking in bad company. An old man said, "Frank Brown was quiet and well-behaved to the day at his death except when drinking " I had never heard anyone speak of his death without regret.
One day Frank Brown was chased in deep snow by a sheriff's posse from Exira. He was chased south towards Benton Center where his sister lived on the old Byron Rogler farm.
The posse was shooting and the horse was badly shot up, but Frank seemed to be unhurt. As he came to the corner and turned west, his sister ran onto the road and begged the men to not kill her brother, but they didn't stop, and Frank turned north on the first road (it's been closed for years) and turned east on the next road and then north and then east again to the same road on which he was originally going south toward Benton Center .
His apparently dying horse took him back to his sister's place again and he was lucky enough to find a fresh horse and disappeared in a hurry
The horse surprised everyone by living and was used for years in a livery stable.
What Frank had done to cause Dick Griggs to try so hard to kill him, I'll never know.
I lived a half mile from one of his sister's for more than 20 years and his brother worked for me and with me a number of times, but they never spoke of their trouble and neither did I.
Some time later John Anderson of Exira came to the Browns to get company to enjoy the Atlantic saloons.
Frank was working for a farmer southwest of Benton Center, but his brother Grant (and I think there was another) went to the farm to get him. Frank had money, and Grant and John Anderson were probably low on funds.
Frank must have been willing to go and they went to Wiota and left the horses (I suppose in a livery barn) and took the train to Atlantic.
They celebrated in Atlantic
and young Grant passed out and had to be left in Atlantic which
added a good many years to his life. But others (and I still think
there were three of them) took the train back to Wiota and when
they went for their horses, they walked straight into an ambush
and Frank's troubled spirit was at rest and John Anderson's mad
pranks were at ends.
(For
more information about "The Crooked Creek Gang, click here.)
John
Anderson
John Anderson had been a soldier, as I think his father was also, and he seemed to be the restless, reckless type that was likely to get into trouble, but it seems like all the stories I've ever heard of him were spiced with a rather coarse brand of humor. I remember hearing my folks speaking of him stealing from his own folks and giving it to the poor.
This raffish blend of good and bad humanity made it a rule to claim he was guilty of most any act of deviltry that was puzzling people, and there was a fair chance that he was guilty of some of it.
He once warned a storekeeper that he should take in a barrel of coffee from the loading dock before it was stolen. The merchant told him that he would risk it being stolen. John went home and got a brace and bit half and bored a hole in a board and made a plug to fit. He took a pail and slipped under the porch and bore a hole in the barrel. After locating it over a hole in the platform, he filled the pail, plugged the hole and probably gave the pail of coffee to the poor as I don't think his folks approved of his capers.
Jim Brown had been warned
by a good neighbor that his boys were in deadly peril with the
company they were keeping. I think they had been firing pistols
as they rode out of town. John Anderson's father came from Exira
for his son's body and said, "Well, I'll know where he is
now." He had perhaps decided that his reckless son's life
would be short. I was working for Bill Pond in 1911 and he told
me that he helped carry the bodies off the sidewalk the next morning,
but we were busy and he didn't give any details. At that time
I had heard the story so many times that I knew the number, but
I am almost certain that there were three.
(For
more information about "The Crooked Creek Gang, click here.)
The
Old Neighborhood
When I started to school at Benton Township No. 2, there were
17 families living in the school district and four vacant farmsteads
sites, all on the Max Walker farm.
I think there are now seven or eight families in the district. The W. D. Pratt place used to be the finest place in the vicinity. It was a half mile from my old home and had a nice house and yard with flowers, and the grass was cut with the only lawn mower in the neighborhood.
There were three big barns and lots of other buildings. Mr. Pratt was a perfectionist and everything seemed to be done just as it should be done
The place has been rented for years. When I was at the Bartleson farm sale in 1975, Pete Wilson, who lived on the Pratt place, told me the house had been torn down and no one lived there
When father and I lived on our place, we had a good house, but the less said about the rest of the buildings, the better.
When I left our place in 1918 at the request of Uncle Sam, the Pratt place was still wonderful, but the hand of the master was gone and it was beginning to show.
The old stage route crossed our farm just above the springs. It was in a pasture and traces were still there when I left. It went south through the Pratt place and the Frank Whitney survey for a railroad took the same route and was surveyed right through the Pratt horse barn .
A few years ago, when the Highland Church was still standing, the large Morgan sectional monument near the church was pushed over as were some similar stones in the Bowen Cemetery . The Morgans set the large stone up again. I believe that George Nelson helped with his tractor and front end loader.
It wasn't many years later that the vandals struck again. The Morgan stone was pushed over and four or five others of the same type. They were easily pushed over, but hard to set up again.
The pushing over of the Morgan
stone twice would look like spite work, but it was just too close
and handy. I have known many of the Morgan family most of my life,
and where would you find better people?
Baseball
Teams
This reminds me that the Morgan and Metz families were the core of a most mighty good baseball team, when baseball was popular. The Benton Bloomers at their best were super good. They would play at Exira on the fourth of July and I think they usually won.
Many of them were friends of the Walkers. If father would still be up reading as they drove home late at night, they would salute him with yells of victory.
I remember one July, father
said, "I think the boys must have lost the game yesterday.
I didn't hear any yells last night." Sam Morgan and Mory
Metz, who were a baseball manager's dream, were tempted by Canada's
wheat fields and the team was just another good team after that.
The boys were not expendable.
Return to top of page
These memories were written by Marion L. Walker in the 1970's for the Atlantic News Telegraph.