The Texhoma Times (Texhoma, Okla.), Vol. 21, No. 14, Ed. 1 Friday, December 28, 1923 Page: 2 of 8
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TBI TIME*, TXXH OKA. OKLAHOMA
inniiiinnnininimimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinna
A QUESTION
OF CLIMATE
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
IHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIilllllUIUIIIIilllllllliC
CwH*. im. W *• Ce.
COLONEL MURJUSON bad three
Initials, so the naturally
railed him "Alphabetical" Mor-
rison, and dropped the "Colonel." Ha
«MM to ov part of the country In an
•arty daj—he used to explain that
they csogfct him In the trees, when
be was drinking creek water, eating
^as> inrrsl and running wild with a
buffalo tall for a trolley, and that the
first thing did. after teaching
ew and yawp that old Alphabetical square board building at the sad of
is visionary. Here 1 can get a can- the street. But every day for the past
nlng factory and nobody eats the tea years be has been coming to our
goods; I hustle up a woolen factory, office for hia bundle of old newsfta-
aiid the community quits wearlnj pera These he reads carefully, and
trousers; I build for them a street
car line to haul them to and frotn
their palatial residences, and what
do the sun-baked human mud-turtles
do but all Jump off the log lnte the
water and hide from them cars like
they were chariots of fire? What this
town needs Is not factories, nor rall-
at a price
mud. and make a few thousand men
who will build up a town."
It has been fifteen years and ever
since Colonel Morrison put on his lonr
coat and high hat and started for the
money markets of the Best, seeking
whom he might devour. At the close
of the eighties^be Colonel and all his
tribe found that the stock of eastern
tapltallsts who were ready to pay
prices for the fine shimmering
sky and bracing osone of the
est was running low. It was aal<l
In town that the Colonel bad come to
the end of his string, for not only
were the doors of capital closed to
him in the East, bat newcomers had
1m -v. . . . „ ,m . stopped looking for fsrms at home.
J" wm nothln« 10 d0 bnt
the credit of Alphabetical Morrison urk-knivee with other
him to sat *f s plate, was to set
Mb at wMktt the grading gang that
was lay**** Cottonwood
Walnut ***• tod putting the IM >
stoae to fen Wis. Ht was one «f
originalwho laid e**
" Ultlil from the UlUfo-
I'MMBc. and was appoint-
' umlftee to take the
for the tnspec-
Oorn tm aanwaa ri
sd one
matter ta W
INTERESTING NEWS ABOUT bumpy dirt road to his house.
THE FORD FACTORIES Non® of them purchased.
—_ j Acting on the advice of one of the
The Die making division of the Ford real estate men, the owner spent five
1 cootie
to Write something for our paper on ord when within eight weeks it design half mile as good as the State road,
the future of the Queen City, though ed and manufaitured a complete set The property was Bold ~
much ofterier bis articles are retro- cf 4^ and tools necessary for the pro ■
apectlve. He is the president of the Auction of the New Tudor Sedan body,
Old Settlers' and oaee or S1X months would previously
twice a year he brings In an obituary ., . . . .
which he has written for the family of have been consideredla standard of
roada nor modern improvements—OM «r,me old-timer. speed for such an undertaking.
Alphabetical can get them—but the Cne WWJ,d thlnk th„ M ,dler wouW Contributing greatly to the speed in
next great scheme I go Into Is to go ^ t nulganc# ta , busy place, bnt, en producing these tools were the mechan
down the river, get some good red the we ai| like old Alpha ical-electric engraving machine, avail-
betlcal around our office. For he Is : able now for only two years.
an old man who has not grown sour. j. were by Ford (
wrinkly r. freg.hr"ofD°:..!r engineer,n the original^sign of
and tha noise that came from his , curves and sweeps before the dasired
lusty lungs In the old daye Is subsld- ; staunchness and beauty of appearance
Ing. But he haa never forgiven Gen j was secured and the final designs
era! Durham, of the Statesman, for ] were turned over to the Tool Design
saying of a flgbt between Alphabetical Department. In all 110 new bodies and
and another land agent back In the pUQC^2 were required to produce the 1
sixties thst "those who heard It pro- { iw#p whkh like
noun red It the raoit Tocml engagement 1
they had ever known." That is why
be brings bis obituaries to us; that
which included the cost of tha road,
plus a profit on the road, within one
month of Ha completion.
What happens in one case will hap-
pen in another. A good road greatly
increase the value of all adjacent real-
ty, especially farms.
Creosoted Posts
Last a Lifetime t
aapiu
E
j
"Scrubs" have no plaoe oa
the farms of today. Scrub cat-
tie, scrub hogs, scrub horses-
all ure giving away to purebreda.
"Scrubs" are unprofitable.
that he wm the only person In the
crowd with money enough to pay the
ferryman when he reached the Mis-
souri river, though he had only
enough to get himself serosa Bat In
•ptte of that the road was built, and
tbaagh tt missed our town, It was be-
es use we didn't vote the bonds,
though old Alphabetical went through
the county, roaring In the school-
bouses. bellowing at the crossroads,
and doing all that a good, honest pair
of lungs could do for the cause. How-
ever, he was not dismayed at his fail-
ure, and begun Immediately to organ-
ize a company to build another road.
We Anally secured a railroad, though
It was only a branch.
Over hi* office door he had a sign
—"Land Office"—painted on the false
hoard front of the building In letters
as big as a cow, and the flrst our
newspaper knew of him was twenty
years ago, when he brought In nn
order for some stationery for the
Is why he does us the honor of bor-
rowing papers from us; and that Is
why, on s dull afternoon, he likes te
sit In the old sway-back awlvel-chalr
and tell us his theory of the Increase
In the rainfall, his notion shout the
Influence of trees upon the hot winds,
his opinion of the disappearance of
the grasshoppers. Also, that is why
we always save s circus ticket for ol.l
Alphabetical. Just as we save one for
each of the boys In the office.
other Ford oar bodies are made from
pressed steel sections assembled to a
hard wood and metal frame.
As master dies were completed Uk
went to the mechanical-electrical en-
graving machine, which has revolu-
tionized die making and has done away
with eighty per cent of the h_nd work
and these machines cut into steel ex-
act replicas of the master dies.
Overation of these machines is mat
interesting. Movement of the tracer
down and swap Jack-knives with other
land agents, and as they bad taken
moat of the agencies for the best In-
surance coni !n !<■■« while the Colonel
was on drew |-:ir:i-'«\ there was noth-
ing left f r I.;i • :<> bnt to run for
justice of r ie • . > and. being elect-
ed, do what he 11 iiM to make his
tenure for life.
Though be was elected, more out
of gratitude for what he had tried to
do for the town than because people
thought he would make a fair Judge,
he got no further than his office In
popular esteem. He did not seem to
wear well with the people In the dally
run and Jostle of life. During the
forty years he has been In our town,
be has lived most of the time apart
from the people—transacting Ills busi-
ness In the East, or locating strangers ' He .lid not reply at once. bu. Die results in me
He linn not been one j tiinitvl his paper over anil over, appar- j with the least inr>ental and physical ei-
One day he came Into the office In j *****
a bad humor. He picked up a country , reproduced transferred to the
paper, glanced It over, threw It down, j cutter by electric impulses and so sen-
kicked from under his feet a dog that i sltive is this tracer to pressure that it
had follow ed a subscriber Into the ' has been possible to cut the form of a
room, and slammed his hat into the human finger in tough steel simply by
waste-basket with considerable feel a finger under the point ass it ;
Ing ns he picked up a New York ^ ^ forth>
P0"We„—well, what's the matter with ! The si^fic^t feature however, is
the Judiciary this morning?" someone that in the Ford Organization nothing
asked the old man. is spared to produce the ;.ne*t possi-
but ' ble results in the shortest time and
on new lands. . .
of us, and there were stories afloHt ; ently looking for something to Inter | fort on the part of the workmen by
thnt his shrewdness had sometimes ! est him. Gradually the revolutions of ■ providing them with every mechanical
caused hlin to thrust a toe over the J his paper became slower and slower. | 0i(j jnventive genius has devised,
dead-line of exact honesty. In the | and finally he stopped turning the
Commercial club. At that time we toWT1 be never heljied us to fight tor ! paper and began reading. It was ten
had not heard thai the town support-
ad a Commercial dub—nor had any-
one else heard of It, for that matter—
for old Alphabetical was the presl
dent, and his bookkeeper, with the
MIm dropped ofT her name, was sec-
retary. But he had a wonderfully
alluring letterhend printed, and
seemed to get results, for he inade a
living while his competitors starved.
Later, when he found time, he organ
Ized a real Commercial club, and had
himself elected president of It. He
used to call meetings of the club to
discuss things, hut as no one cared
much for his mon> iogties on the fu-
ture of the town, li e attendance was
often light. He ! sued circulars re-
ferring to our vlll.i^e as "the Queen
City of the Prairies." snd on the cir-
culars was a nutp. showing that the
Queen City of the I'ralrles was "the
railroad axis of the West" There
was one road running Into the town:
the othera old Alphabetical Indicated
with dotted lines, and explnlned they
were In process of construction. |
He became possessed of a theory
that a canning factory would pay In (
the Queen City of the Prairies, snd j
the flrst step he took toward building ;
it was to Invest In n high hat, a long j
coat and white vrst, and a pair of |
inouae-colored trousers. With these
and his theory he went East and re-
turned with a contract. The canning
factory went np, but the railroad rates
went wrong, and the factory was
never opened. Alphabetical blinked
at It through his gold-rimmed *i
for a few week*, and then
a company to tuni It Into a
mill. He elected himself pi*Wd§6t*af
that company and oaed to (NNCg
around to edr paper notices of direc-
tors' meetings, snd while he was In
the office he would Insist that we da-
voted too much space to Idle gossip
and not enough to the commercial
and Industrial Interests of the Qoasa
City.
At timet he would bring In an edi-
torial that he had written himself,
highly excitable and full of ,cyclonlc
language, and If we printed It Alpha-
betical wonld huy a hundred copies
of the paper containing It and send
them esst His office desk gradually
filled with woodcuta and «lnc etchings
of buildings that never existed save
fn his dear old heed, and shout twice
a yeer during the boom days he would
bring than around and has* a circu-
lar printed on which wet* the pic-
tares showing the imaginary puhlte
buildings and theoretical business
thoroughfares st the Quean CHy
Tha woeteo nfll naturally
—« tad ha nerwadsd
capitalists to festal) aa stsrtrte pfeat
la tha building and ft a ftruet^ar
line ft the town, ttough the lengapt
distance tram one aide of tha piece
te the ether waa leaa than tea Meek*
But Alphabetical waa entha«eaa«
sheet tt, and had tha governor come
down to drive the flrst spike. It waa
goM-plated, and Alphabetical pulled It
op and used It for a paper-weight tn
his office for many years, and It la
now the only remindsr there la la
town of the street railway, except a
hard rldxa of earth over the ties In
the middle or Miiln street. When
someone twitted him on the failure
of the street railway he made answer:
"Of course It failed; hera I go
pnwlng up the earth, milking out the
surplus capltnl of the effete East, and
building tip this town—and what hnp
pens? Four thousund old Silurian f.<<
j The Manchester plant of the Ford
Motor Company of England Ltd., the
; largest automobile factory in the
! British Isles, will produce approxi-
mately 30,000 oars during the year
1924, according to * recent report.
The English company, formed in
1910, began operations in a small fac-
tory near London where 570 cars were
turned out in the year. The factory
; was moved shortly afterward to Man-,
| chester, forming the neucleus about
which the present mamoth plant em-
ploying 2,200 men hats developed.
While the company was originally
i dependent on the Ford Motor Compa-
ny in Aimenica for parts, the new
' plant includes on its 31_,924 square
j feet of floor space complete up-to-date
automotive prodoction machinery for
' every important unit. Those the Eng-
| lish Ford car, originally a combina-
tion of American parts and British as- j
j sembly, is now 95 per cent British,
both in (manufacture and materials.
! Since its inception thirteen years
ago the Manchester plant has grown
to be the largest Ford Plant outside
of the United States, and it is esti- ^
mated has directly and indfrectly giv- |
en omployment to 20,000 British work-
men.
*He Llkss to Sit In ths Old Swsybsok Swivel Chair snd Tell Us His
Theory sf the Ineroass In ths Rslnfall."
— ""
those things of which ths town is
really proud: our schools, the college,
the municipal ownership of electric
lights and waterworks, the public
library, the sbolltlon of the ssloon.
snd all of the dozen small matters of
public interest In which good cltlsens
take a pride. Colonel Morrison was
living his grand life, In his tsllor-
made clothes, while his townsmen
were out with their coats off making
our town the sub.-itanttal place It Is.
Bo Id his latter dnya he Is old Alpha-
betical Morrison, it mnn apart from us.
Wo like htm well enough, and so long
ss he cares to be justice of the peace
no one will object, for that Is his due.
But someway, thure la no talk of
making htm county clerk; and there
Is s reason In everybody'a mind why
no party nemos him to run for county
treasurer. He hss been trying hard
enough tar ten yeara to break through
(ha erwat of the common lot areata
that ha haa aa long Ignored. One Ma
U tt r*ile meeting*—a rather wtafc
HMmMm. chubby-faead aid *n ~
aa tha edge of the crowd, ready to
ha oaDafl oat tar a (pack. But aa
eaa carta hie nemo; no one cataa par-
ticularly what old Alphabetical haa to
aay. U*g ago tie aald all that ha
eaa ay to our people.
The aaly thing that Alphabetical
evar nrganlied that paid waa a fam-
ily. In the early days he mansged ta
fit a home clear of Indebtedness sad
was ahrewd enough to keep It out of
all of bla transactions. Tow-headed
Morrisons tilled tha achoolhouse. and
twenty yeara luter there were so
many of his girls teaching school that
the school board had to make a ruling
limiting the number of teachers from
one family In the city school, In order
to force the young Morrison girls to
go to the country to teach. In these
days the girls keep the house going
ami Alphabetlm! I* u notary public
and ' it JjjMre of the peace, which
P^
or flfteeu minutes before he spoke.
When he put down the paper his
cherubic face was beaming, and he
said:
"Oh—I know I'm a fool, hut I wish
the Lord had sent me to live In s
town large enough so thst every dirty
faced brat on the street wouldn't feel
he hud a right to call me 'Alphabeti-
cal' ! Dammit, I've done the hest I
could! I haven't made any alarming
aucceas. I know It. There's no need
of rubbing it In on ma" He wss
silent for a time with hiB banda on
bis knees and his bead thrown back,
looking at the celling. Almoat im-
perceptibly a smile began to crack
his features, and, when he turned his
eyes te the man at the desk, they
were dancing with merriment, aa he
aald; "Just bsen reading a piece hera
In tha Sun about the Influence of
climate oa humah endeavor. It aaya
that lo northern letltudsa there la
store esygea la tha air and ti
breathe futer, aad theft blood Howe
faster, aad that haaps their liver ja>
las Trouble with aa has always
ben climate—ataggtek Beer. If I had
Juet a Uttle mora oxygen Meatlag
round In m agateta, tha woolen mill
would still be running, the etreet ears
would be going, and thle town would
have bed forty thouaand Inhabitants
My fatal mlstske was one of latitude.
But"—end he drewled out the word
mockingly—"but 1 guess If the Ix>rd
had wanted me to make a town here
He would hsve given me s different
kind of liver!" He slapped hi* kneee
as he sighed: "This la a funny world,
and the more you Bee of It the funnier
It gets." The old man grinned com-
placently at the celling for a minute,
and before petting out of hln chnlr
kicked hi* shoe-heels together mer
rlly, wiped his glnsxes as he rose, pnt
his bundle of papers under his arm.
and left the- office whlstl
2 CHILDREN AND NEGRO
DIE NEAR CLOVIS, N. M.
Clovis, N. M., Dec 11—Three were
frozen to death in the storm whWh
swept this region yesterday and last
night. Two boys, ages 4 and 9 yeans,
and a negro man whose name is un-
known.
The two children were the sons of
Joe Centrell, a rancher living eigteen
miles southwest of Friona, Texas.
They were found frozen to death at HO
o'clock last night, after having been
missing six hours. The children took
refuge in an old school building. An-
other child of the five who were in the
group, was almost dead when found.
The other two became frightened, and
left when an old stove blew up in the
building.
A negro whose name was not given
out by the police, was found dead in
bed this moming in the shack where
he lived alone. He had been in ill
health for some time. Scant bed cloth-
ing and no fire in the house lad tha po-
lice to believe he froze to death soma
time bat night
A FARMER'S PROFIT
ON BOAD BUILDING
Shart Highway Sells Valuable Pia*
arty. <
A land owner in a Southern State
had a large property of many acres, a
beautiful house, and a big peach or-
chard in bearing, Family circumstanc-
es naule it necessary for him to sell
hia property, which was valued about
a hundred thousand dollars. Putting
it in the hands of some able real ae-
tata men, the property owner received
several calls from prospective pur-
chasers. He wet those purchasers at
the railroad station, motored them six
over a good State road, and a
• ■ &< ^
**-- .
I
These posts era trusted
by tha Preteurc-Vac-
uum Process, in taring
thorough penetration ot
the Craooota.
The same it true of Psnes
Posts. At best, ordinary un-
treated fence posts last only about
8 years. Over and over again
you must spend time and money
replacing them. They are ex-
pensive 1
Come in and let us show you
our stock of Long-Bell Creo-
soted Yellow Pine Fence Posts.
They last a lifetime because
they are treated full length with
Creosote. They are resistant to
decay and fire. They'll givs
dependable protection to your
stock and add value to your
farm. These posts are made in
Full Round, Sawed Halves and.
Sawed Quarters.
Kemp Lumber Co.
Why So Many People
Buy Meat From Us
BECAUSE— Every pound we sell is worth
every penny they pay for it.
BECAUSE— People know good meat when
they eat it
The Star Meat Market
WATCHES, CLOCKS & JEWELRY
DIAMONDS
Bracelet Watches, and Pearl Beads
SILVERWARE
SINGER SEWING MACHINES & SUPPLIES
Repairing Our Specialty, Can Fix Anything Right
J. H. M. Bennett & Son
First door south of Kelley Tin & Plumbing Shop
rr DEPENDS
upon where you buy when you want to estimate your
table cost by the month or year.
There are all kinds of grocers in this country.
Some keep prices down to the minimum on every-
thing they sell. Others reduce prices on a few# lead-
ers to attract attention, and push up the price of
every thing else.
We depend upon the great volume of business for
our profits.
Whynot|i?ethe"R
self? If others find it
not find it expensive.
store" a trial
I you
wfll
Come in and see our new line of ladies Ready-te-
wear. We handle shoes for the whole family.
mm
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The Texhoma Times (Texhoma, Okla.), Vol. 21, No. 14, Ed. 1 Friday, December 28, 1923, newspaper, December 28, 1923; Texhoma, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metapth351900/m1/2/: accessed April 18, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.