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Published in Wetmore Spectator,

March 20, 1936

By John T. Bristow

T his, then, is the continuation of the story of my father’s tanyard; with related incidents—hoarded memories of the old days back a half century, and more. They are solemn reminders that “Time flies.”

That tanyard was, I might say, a howling success while it lasted. Besides the tanyard, my father owned a bunch of boys, and those boys, semi-obedient and helpful, really did some commendable things, but when encouraged and abetted by the other town boys of that happy, care-free age, their doings were not always something to be commended.

Taken by the large—including, of course, the English and the Irish and the “Dutch,” and a couple of Swedes — they were, I must admit, a dare-devil bunch. And I might as well confess now that I was, perhaps, the most devilish one of them all. Anyhow, I became a printer’s “devil” at an early age.

My father made good leather—and he knew how to get the most out of it. Being a shoemaker, he made it up into good boots and shoes and gave his boys a good leather dressing whenever they needed it—that is, when their deviltry came within his notice. The Lord knows there were hundreds of times when they escaped only by narrow margins. And had my father been a little more vigilant, this day of which I write promised to be the red-letter day.

There were two outstanding events that day, either of which would have merited knee-strap activity. In case you don’t know, the shoemaker’s knee-strap, besides being useful to hold a shoe in place while the artisan works, is a persuasive instrument of correction when applied with vim and vigor at the right time and place.

As already informed, in a previous article, the creek had been dammed and there was a fully officered Damsite Company, with Michael Norton as life-saver, whose actual services, as Jake Geyer now recalls, never amounted to more than his crossing himself three times before going into the water. A large wooden box, with metal bottom, used for cooking the sumac-tanbark mixture, when not otherwise in use served as a boat on that fine body of water.

Jim Cardwell, a Kentuckian — and brother-in-law of Andy Maxwell, the Indian fighter mentioned in previous writings—who held a responsible position as coal-heaver at the railroad chutes close to the tanyard, when not otherwise engaged, helped the boys occasionally with the work of maintaining the dam—and even helped my father sometimes. All this he did out of the goodness of his heart, glad to be helpful. He was a grand old sport, even with his one weakness. Jim loved his booze and seemed to have a mania for sharing his bottle with others. He even gave Eagle Eye, the Indian featured in a preceding story, a nip of his “firewater” one day, and my father raised Ned about that. It was unlawful to give liquor to an Indian.

Having the distinction of being the only enterprise of the kind in this part of the West, that tanyard was made a sort of port-of-call for all comers—local and transient.

“Lord” Perry graced the tannery with his august presence one day. He was of the old English Colony folk and drunk or sober, proclaimed himself a British peer. He was a “remittance” man.

On this occasion, after riding in from his Colony home, Perry had stopped up town and was comfortably full when he reached the tanyard. He slipped the reins over his horse’s head and asked me to hold the animal while he held audience with Jim Cardwell. “Hand if you let ‘er go,” he warned, “Hi’ll cut y’r hears hoff.” I dropped the reins as soon as he was in “spirited” conversation with Jim. The “Lord” soon forgot about me—and the horse also.

“Lord” Perry had the poise and the marks of the gentleman he represented himself to be. Also he loved his drink, and indulged himself freely. When he had taken on about so much, he would invariably mount a chair, or anything handy that he could climb upon, and attempt to make a speech, always prefacing his harangue with “Hi’m a gentleman hand a scholar, by-god-sir, by-gosh!”

In this instance, Perry had climbed upon the tank-boat which was standing on edge. After making his usual salutory and puncturing it with his long arms waving hither and thither, he stood for some moments groping for words which did not present themselves with what might be called kaleidoscopic rapidity. Then one of the gang—designated here as the one intrusted to ‘old the Nobleman’s ‘orse — casually leaned against the prop, causing it to topple from under the distinguished Englishman.

His Lordship then lost some of his aristocratic poise and a modicum of his temper. A nervous person, with bombastic tendencies, he literally exploded when he hit the well-tramped terrain about the tanvats. To be accurate, he made a rather awkward display of himself in a furious outburst of Anglo-American profanity, in which he branded, correctly, a certain member of the gang as a “Blarsted, ’ artless hupstart!”

“Tut, tut, my Lord,” said Jim. “It was an accident.”

“Haccident, my hye!” retorted Perry, sharply. Jim Cardwell then felt it incumbent upon himself to offer something to assuage his Lordship’s agony, to pour balm upon his troubled soul. Good old Jim! How could we have managed without him. He once move proffered his bottle. And another drink was directed with grace down the Perry gullet.

At the tanyard there were six vats, each, four by six feet, which were set three feet into the ground, with the tops about one foot above ground.

A wild black cherry tree, at this time loaded with ripe cherries, stood close to one of those vats. On account of its fruit and its fine shade it was the delight of all the boys. Especially was it inviting to my little brother Davey Cullom, who, though fourth in point of spacings from being the baby or of the home, was still his mother’s darling little curly-headed man.

There was an erroneous notion that black cherries would make one tipsy—in a mild way. It was also claimed that choke cherries, some of which grew in the next bend above oh small trees like plum trees, were poisonous. That was erroneous, too.

Davey Cullom attempted to walk around on the edge of one of those tanvats, and fell in. The vat was filled with strong ooze, leachings from the oakbark and sumac. With the process then employed by my father it took four months to tan a calfskin—but Davey Cullom got his hide tanned in about fifteen minutes. Not with the ooze, however. It was because he could not walk, in a test, the twelve-foot length of a ten-inch board without stepping off.

Davey told his father that he had eaten too many cherries. But the gang knew he was fibbing. Davey Cullom was already “pickled” when he fell into that tanvat. And had it been any place other than the tanyard, my father could have had olfactory evidence of his offspring’s condition—but in a tanyard, there is but one smell.

After it was all over but the shouting, Davey’s father shrilled, “Howl, you pusillanimous little devil, howl! Maybe you’ll now stay out of that cherry tree.”

Just at that moment Jim Cardwell came staggering up from the creek bank, flourishing his bottle. “Anybody want a drink?” he queried. My father took the bottle and threw it into the creek. He never drank. He was awfully peeved. He swore. And let me say now whatever my father did, he did it well. “Jim,” he accused, “you’ve been giving Davey whiskey from your rotten old bottle!”Davey Cullom stopped his howling long enough to say, “No, daddy, it was the cherries; honest it was.” He supplemented his little lie with the further information that it was not the choke cherries, but the black cherries, that he had eaten. Then my father said, “I’ll cut that damned black cherry tree down tomorrow.”

Jim Cardwell laughed, drunkenly, and inquired, “Got a match, Bill?” My father didn’t smoke, and he didn’t have a match. Then Jim mumbled, “Furnish my own whiskey, find my own match.” He fumbled in his pockets and produced a match.

Jim walked over to the curly-headed boy who had lied so cleverly, and said, “Now, Davey, we can show Bill that you didn’t drink any of Jim’s old rot-gut.” Placing the match and a dollar in Davey’s hands, he said, “Bet you that dollar you can’t blow out the match.” Jim looked at us boys and grinned in a maudlin way. “Light the match and then blow it out, Davey, and the dollar is yours. John and all the boys here know you won’t take a dare; and I dare you!” he taunted. It was then I wished that I could make little crosses like Michael Norton to ward off impending disaster.

Jim staggered backwards a little as he continued. “But don’t light the match, Davey, until I get away. I know my old whiskey breath will burn like a house afire.” Davey Cullom stared, looked foolish and finally said, “I don’t want your dollar, Mr. Cardwell.”

I shall now explain. Speaking for the gang as well as myself, we thought Davey would put the stuff to his little lips, then, with a wry face, push it away—perhaps spill it on the ground, which, of course, would have tickled us immensely. But the little fellow, feeling that he must make sure of winning the dare, took not one but two small swigs of the raw stuff. Booze was booze then, and it took only a very little of it to make a small boy wobble. If it will help any to put over my alibi I will say now that the “pusillanimous little devil” made that face.

Now a bright idea struck one of the gang. I believe it might have been Will Gill—now Dr. W. W. Gill, of Enid, Oklahoma. He would know, of course. Anyway, someone had said, “Come Jim, let’s get your bottle.” They managed somehow to get into the tank-boat and they rowed out to deep water. And there, from some unexplained cause, the boat capsized. Michael Norton crossed himself three times.

Then the whole bunch—lifesaver, officers, and all—plunged into the water without stopping to remove clothing, which wouldn’t have been a very big job, at that. Jim was saved, of course. And appreciably sobered.

As intimated in the foregoing paragraph, the clothing worn by the tanyard gang during the summer months was almost nil—negligible, at any rate. Always there were rents and patches, and more rents. But the gang did not care.

The next day after Davey’s debauch my father came blustering into the house, and bellowed, “Now, who in hell has taken my axe?” My mother said to him in her sweet, calm way, “Oh, don’t be so fussy, William—Davey loaned your axe to Jim Cardwell last night.”

Attaching no significance to this fact, nor sensing forebodings, my father laughingly said, “I wonder what Jim thought he could do with an axe, in his pickled condition?” I should like to tell you now that he found that out, to his dismay, all too soon.

He was a good feeler, was my father, happy as a lark when things went right—and not at all ugly even when he swore, not counting of course the tempo of the sulphurous words of easement which he sometimes released. Just habitual, understand. The indiscriminate use of swearwords was as natural as long-whiskers to the old pioneer. He whistled a lot, and sometimes tried to sing, but he was hot very good at that.

Having first boots to mend for a patron of his shoe-shop, my father was late in reaching the tannery this day. The ruffled condition which had broken forth with the axe inquiry now relegated from his thoughts, he whistled while he worked, and this too in bad taste in the presence of his patron.

It had fallen to my lot to remain at the house for a while, the home and the shoeshop being one and the same place. A packing case containing alum, tallow, neatsfoot oil, and lampblack, had been received by express the day previous. I was to take from this packing box some alum, powder it fine, then dissolve it in warm water. It was to be used at the tannery in the day’s workout of the hides from one of the vats. It was to firm them. A hide in the jelly stage is as slippery as an eel, and it was always a chore to get them safely landed on the work bench.

My father would work the ooze out of the hides with a slicker—a piece of plate glass ground smooth on the edge. Then he would rub the alum in with the same devise, before returning them to the vat which would be refilled with fresh ooze. Later, after the six vats were worked out, the hides would again be put upon the bench, when tallow and neats-foot oil would be worked into them with that same slicker. It would come into play again when he polished the blackened leather. All handlings at the bench called for vigorous rubbings. So vigorously did he attack them that he would sweat. Oh, God, how that man did sweat! Being in fine fettle, and late on the job this day, he would rush the work, and whistle—and sweat all the more.

Consider now for a moment that cherished black cherry tree—the tree which, in a spasm of idle talk, my father had threatened to cut down. It was a large tree, as black cherry trees grow, more than a foot through, and tall with good spread. Under this wild cherry tree reposed my father’s work-bench. Also under this tree was the ash-hopper in which lye was made from wood-ashes to remove the hair from the hides. As a protector from the hot summer sun the tree was well nigh indispensable.

The sun rose that July morning sixty years ago on a rain-soaked world—a perfumed, growing world; sparkling; invigorating. The brook at the tannery, slightly augmented by the early morning shower, gave forth a soft, dreamy murmur as it poured over the dam. Birds sang sweetly in the tree tops. Jim sang also, though rather poorly, as he put the finishing touches on the job to which he had set himself. Save for the depressing knowledge that later in the day things would sizzle in steaming humidity, with old expansion of noisome tannery fumes, all was fine and vely.

Came now my father, gayly whistling, to his beloved tannery. Davey followed. The other boys were already there. With a puzzled look on his face the daddy of that happy-go-lucky bunch stopped suddenly in his tracks. He surveyed the surroundings in considerable disgust.

At first I thought my father was so overcome by the shock that he was not going to say anything. Well, he didn’t—exactly. Maybe he couldn’t. But it was none the less certain that a violent change of mood had taken place. The thing he saw had stilled his gay whistle—and whereas only a few moments before could his voice but have taken up the glad song of his heart he would have sung beautifully, now he cursed prodigiously!

And Davey howled some more.

That “damned” black cherry tree was gone—cut down, trimmed, and neatly piled. Jim had mistaken Davey’s purpose in bringing him the axe. He had done his work well. The morning sun flooded the tanvats and the work-bench. By noon it would beat down upon them with torrid intensity.