Fragments from Oklahoma

GEORGE MILBURN

Tales of the West, of a man who died by his own conviction, and of a girl too bad to be true

■ BANKER BRIGHAM—Old Man J. W.

Brigham was never wrong about anything. He was that hard-headed. He was president of the First National Bank, and he had enough money to make everything he said right, so far as the other people in that town were concerned.

One day at noon a farmer came in the First National Bank to cash a check for ten dollars. Old Man Brigham was in the bank alone, and he came around to the cashier's wicket to take the check. There was a sign up over the cashier's window, saying: "No errors rectified after leaving window."

The farmer asked to have the money all in one-dollar bills, and Banker Brigham counted them out to him. The farmer turned, and he was walking out, counting the money for himself, when he found a mistake.

He said, "Mr. Brigham, they's a mistake here."

The old banker said: "No, I didn't make no mistake. I give you what your check called for—ten dollars. No mistake about that."

The farmer said, "Yes, but you give me too much money. One of these here is a two-dollar bill, making me eleven dollars here instid of ten."

J. W. Brigham didn't say anything for a minute, and then he said, "Well, I know I didn't make no mistake, but saying, for the sake of argument, I was to have, you should of said something about it before you took your money away from the cashier's window."

The old banker was always right. He would never admit that he had made an error. One night at a church supper he kept talking about his new Buick coupe. He kept calling it coop. Mrs. Weatherby, who was from Rhode Island, heard him talking about his new Buick coop. Mrs. Weatherby liked to correct people's speech, and she said, "Pahdon me, Mr. Brigham, but isn't that word coo-pay? I'm sure it is. Back East we always pronounced it coo-pay."

Banker Brigham looked at her for a moment. Then he said, "Well, you may of called it coo-pay back East, but out here we call it coop. And that's what it is—coop."

• The old man was positive about everything he said or did. One year, the Spring of 1928, there was a man in town getting up a book that was to contain biographies of all the state's prominent citizens. It was called Noteworthy Oklahomans, and everyone who could afford to bought space in it.

The man came to interview Banker Brigham. "I was born in Amsterdam, Indiana, the year of 1860," Old Man Brigham began, "and I'm now 73 years old and my health is good."

"That would make you suty-three, wouldn't it, Mr. Brigham," the man said. "You said you was born in 1860."

"I don't care when I was born," said Banker Brigham, firmly, "I'm 73 years old now."

When he walked home from the bank, J. W. Brigham had to go past a vacant lot covered by a rank growth of weeds. He was always trying to get the city council to have the weeds cut down.

"A big weed patch like that is a disgrace to a civilized community," he said. "I'd have them weeds cut myself and pay for it out of my own pocket, but it's just the principle of the thing. But keeping a big growth of weeds like that is just what harbors the criminal element. A man could get held up and robbed there easy enough."

■ The city council promised to have the weeds cut down, but there wasn't any hurry about it. Meanwhile what'the old banker had said about the weed patch encouraging criminals was a standing joke around town. Old Man Brigham always thought he was so right about everything. Some of the wits thought it would be a good thing to give the old man a scare sometime when he was passing the weed patch.

One afternoon a few of them got together and hid in the weeds at a place they knew Banker Brigham would come by on his way home from the bank. They had taken all the lead out of a paper shotgun-shell and had refilled the shell with polk berries. Polk berries have a reddish-purple juice. The boys had their shotgun loaded with these red berries.

Pretty soon Old Man Brigham came shuffling along, muttering to himself. Garth Jackson, the best shot in the bunch, took careful aim at the stiff, white shirt-front the old banker always wore. Garth fired and the berries spattered red on the white shirt-front. Apparently a hole large enough to put a hat in had been blown through the old man's chest.

Banker Brigham threw up his arms and fell forward in a dead faint. The boys were scared and they cut back through the weed patch and ran to hide the shotgun. Other people came running up to where the old man lay. He was moaning loudly, "O-uh! O-uh-uh!"

They found out that he wasn't injured. They put water on him and chaffed him and brought him to. But they couldn't convince him that he wasn't wounded. Not Banker Brigham. He had heard the shot. He had seen the blood. They carried the old man home and put him to bed.

Mrs. Brigham called in Dr. Boyd. Dr. Boyd examined the old man carefully.

"Oh, doctor," the banker wailed, "I'm bleeding to death! Can't you stanch the blood somehow?"

"No, J. W., you're not bleeding a drop," Dr. Boyd told him. "You just got a bad scare."

"I ain't bleeding a drop!" Banker Brigham exclaimed, rising up in bed. "Here I am with my lungs full of buckshot, and a damn fool doctor tries to tell me I ain't bleeding a drop!" He sank back, exhausted.

Banker Brigham died that night. Dr. Boyd said that he had a cerebral hemorrhage.

DARLING, DARLING—Up until the time of the oil boom the telegraph station was over at the M.K.&T. depot. The depot was about a half a mile from the business district. When the oil boom came the Western Union established an office on Broadway.

The company used to send inexperienced telegraph operators to break them in at the small station -in our town. Most of the time these operators would be girls, but one year they sent a young man named Curtis Grey to take charge of the office on Broadway.

Curt Grey was a tall, good-looking young man, careful about his dress, and very affable. He was easy to get along with, but he was city-bred and none of the men in our town seemed to like him very much.

Curt roomed and boarded at The Kentucky Colonel Hotel, and Mrs. Cobb, the proprietor's wife, said that she had never known a neater, more polite young man anywhere.

■ One night Curt met a girl named Elsie Shulingkamp at a dance in the Louvre Dance Hall on North Broadway. Elsie lived in Red Arrow, a town about eleven miles away, but she had been going around with an oil scout named G. W. Scott. Scott was making our town his headquarters, and Elsie often came down with him to dances.

G. W. Scott was getting along in years. He had a big Marmon, though, and he spent money freely, and most people spoke of Elsie as his mistress, because she had been kind of loose even before Scott came to town.

The night Curtis Grey met Elsie she had had a spat with Old Man Scott. She and Curt danced several dances together, and by the time Elsie was ready to go home Curt was crazy about her. Scott had gone off somewhere in his car, leaving Elsie flat apparently, so when Curt asked her to let him take her home in his Ford coupe, Elsie said he could.

He took her home, the eleven miles to Red Arrow, and by the time he got back to his hotel room late that night he was idiotic with love. He was convinced that he had found the ideal woman. Taking her home he hadn't touched her. He hadn't even kissed her goodnight. He didn't know how far he could go with Elsie.

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That night when he got back, he sat down and wrote Elsie a loveletter. Instead of writing her a regular love letter, he took a sheet of hotel paper and wrote on it,

Darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, darling, . . .

completely covering the page. Then he addressed an envelope to her, put the pageful of darlings in and went out that night and mailed it at the postoffice.

The next morning Curtis Grey overslept and got down to breakfast late. It was eight o'clock and he should have had the telegraph office open at that time. He was waiting for his oatmeal.

At the next table Old Man Scott and Bill Slocum were eating slowly.

"You look like the Wreck of the Vespers this morning," Curt heard Bill Slocum tell Old Man Scott.

"Yeah? Well, I had a run-in with the li'l gal last night."

"You're losing your grip, Scottie. You better start looking up the Lost Manhood ads in the Police Gazette."

"No, it wasn't that. The way it was, she got on her ear about something up at the dance last night and when I went out to get a pint, why she went off with some boob in a Ford coop. But I drove on up to Red Arrow and got her out again. I didn't get back here till four o'clock this morning."

"What's the matter? Ain' you going to ea' your oatmeal?" shrieked Lizzie Clemmons, the waitress at The Kentucky Colonel.

"No," Curt said and he walked out of the dining room.

He went straight to the postoffice, where he tried to get the letter back. He described it to Postmaster Elder. The postmaster said that it had gone out on the 7:05 passenger north.

Curt sent the postmaster at Red Arrow a telegram. It was too late. Elsie got the letter.

Elsie thought that the love letter, a page covered with "darlings", was so cute she showed it to G. W. Scott when he came after her that evening. Scott read it and laughed and slapped his thigh.

"I'll take care of this," he said, and he put the letter in his coat pocket.

"No, give it back to me!" Elsie said.

"Le'go me before I slap your god dam jaws."

One noon, three days after he had sent the love letter, Curt heard a falsetto voice call to him out of the Economy Drug Store, "Oh, darling!" This was followed by a roar of laughter. When Curt made his next round of the block, instead of going past the drug store, he cut through the courthouse square and opened up the telegraph office fifteen minutes early.

Not long after that a crowd of the boys came in the telegraph office with Scott to send a night letter. When Curt took it across the desk to count it he found that it was to Elsie Shulingkamp at Red Arrow, and that all it was was fifty "darlings".

"I can't send this, Mr. Scott," said Curt. His voice was trembling.

"Why can't you send that?" said G. W. Scott belligerently.

The other men tittered.

Curt reached across the counter and got Scott's head in the crook of one arm. He began pounding the old man in the face. Scott, his eyes swelling, and his nose dribbling blood, reached over and picked up a big, heavy telegraph rate book. He cracked Curt in the back of the neck with it. The telegraph operator slumped down. He was out for a few minutes.

Pretty soon he got up and commenced to close up the telegraph office. Then he went to his room at The Kentucky Colonel and began getting his things together. He left town on the evening train. The telegraph office was closed for three days.