[Colorado-Talk] A blind author from our past

[Peggy Chong]

Hello all"

 

In our PHD project, we uncovered unpublished manuscripts of short stories
written by an early president of the United Workers for the Blind.  Some are
not politically correct to be published today. Some are shareable, if the
reader considers these were written 100 years ago.  Lute Wilcox, Our UWB
president from about 1915 till the mid 1940's was a publisher and a printer.
He had his own magazine, Field and Farm.  In his magazines, he wrote many of
the editorials and published some of his works.  But as many of us who have
a book out, waiting to be purchased, he found it hard to get other
publishers excited about his work and publish a book of his short stories.

 

Below is one of his short stories he shopped to magazines and book
publishers outside of Colorado.  Keep in mind while enjoying his work, this
was written 100 years ago.

 

Peggy Chong

 

[This story has been transcribed as written.  No changes were made to
spelling or punctuation.]

 

IN THE DARK OF THE MOON

Lute Wilcox

 

            The fact that Henry Hawkins was the most pious member of the
Wheat Ridge society did not prevent him from plastering his Blue Bird fruit
ranch with a big mortgage, "just to keep things running," as he expressed
it. This incumbrance kept him moving so glibly in time that it became an
obscession that haunted his work and made a nightmare of his dreams.

            Something had to be done to meet the payment in the autumn and
here was a whale of a peach crop coming on with the prospect that the low
prices for the fruit would be eaten up by the freight charges, just as had
happened last year and then what? The place would have to go to Jefferson
Reynolds, the banker with the marble heart, and then- exile.

            The thought was so exasperating that it sidetracked all his
religious proclivities and, human-like, it drove him to the desperation of
crime, just as thousands of good men had gone down at the tempter's call.

Back in New Jersey he had learned the secret of making stone fence from
innocent apple cider and had furthermore learned how to turn ripe fruit into
the choice brandy such as grandfather liked so well. The idea was a
desperate one of course, with the country full of prohibition hounds always
on the trail of inconspicuous offenders, but what of it? There was the land
plaster at the Reynolds bank and there also were mamma and the children.

Betty was coming on through her last semester at the Senior High and she
ought to be going to the State University at Boulder, for she needed
finishing as the other girls were graduated, and so nothing would do but to
listen to the devil's bidding.

A moonshiner's calling was not such a terrible conclusion after the still
had begun paying and there was an unholy prifit in the business, to say
nothing about all those unsalable peaches going to waste.

"I'll rig up a battery of stills over there in the glen where the bramble is
so thick that a weasel couldn't squeeze into it. Then I'll run an outlet
pipe down into the hog lot by the cottonwoods along the river and in this
way the spent mash will be worked into pork to make a double profit and
leave no scent.

It was a masterly scheme and would work all right he reckoned so long as the
brethren in the church did not get onto it. They were such an unchristian
set of mischief mongers and were more to be feared than the hootch scouts,
because these high-jacks would be more insistent in demanding their pound of
flesh.

After two or three mysterious trips to Denver with the farm truck, always
returning in the night, the stills with condensers, twenty-ounce copper
coils, thumping barrel, gasoline, sugar and yeast, the plant was ready.

Then came a troop of Italian children from the city to gather the
overripened fruit. The absence of the packing crates was not noticed by the
kids, who merely had to fetch in their lug boxes and dump the Elbertas,
which in turn mysteriously disappeared by the following morning.

Meanwhile Betty had become overly wise to Dad's nocturnal operations but
said nothing. She discovered that the manufactured cogniac was stored for
the time in the old spring house in five-gallon kegs, which made them
convenient. There were more frequent trips to town with the truck, but
always after nightfall.

Along about this juncture a brilliant scheme came to Betty's mind. Why
couldn't she be just as cunning as dear old daddie? Simple enough. She had
longed for years to take up horticulture as a profession. Now was the proper
time to start a rose garden and get the slips going without delay. Jake, the
chore boy, plowed out some furrows for her back of the garden and close to
the spring house.

"Fine," giggled Betty as she went out that night and transplanted half a
dozen of papa's kegs in the trench, covering them with the mellow soil the
plow had left. Pa brought out a bundle of root stocks for the rose
plantation and thus the propagation process went on. Many a sly filching
from the spring house was slipped over on the old man who had so much peach
jack that he never missed any of it nor did the church folks, the hootchers
or any of the neighbors get onto the business.

One day at the picnic Fred Reynolds confided in Betty that he was going to
lose his betrothed sweetie, the rich girl whose father owned the First
National bank in the city, because this capricious creature with the modern
ideas, had come right out flat-footed and would not marry him until he could
stock their cellar with some rare old booze such as the other newlyweds of
her set were getting for the entertainment of guests. 

"It's a prodigious proposition and worst of all it means the price of my
future happiness," and he let out a sigh as long as a fence rail as he gazed
wistfully at Betty.

The girl had known Fred Reynolds all her life and come to think of it she
felt that he could be trusted. "So that's the lion in the path, is it? Well
old chum, what would it be worth to you in cash to crawl out of the
dilemma?" She saw a chance to get rid of her cache at the topof the market
for wet hardware and asked if he could use twenty kegs of rare old fruit
juice with the kick in it at $40 the gallon.

"Do you pretend to say you can get all this for me? I knew you were
resourceful but I never rated you as Alladin's sister. I will get the dough
for your dealer in a week but it must all be done confidentially, you know."

The contract was closed without further parley. One day a week later Fred
telephoned that he would call that evening and they would have a little
stroll in the peach orchard.

They soon consummated the deal. Much to Fred's astonishment Betty led him to
her sub-rosa garden where they dug up the buried treasure, just as if it had
been Captain Kidd's precious trove, and loaded it onto the young man's car.

            There were two weddings on Wheat Ridge that fall. Fred Reynolds
went to live in the new bungalow on Capitol Hill. Betty loaned her own lover
the sum of four thousand dollars to emancipate him as a clerk in a grocery
store and then to set him up in business for himself.

            Thus it was after all that she did not go to the State
University. As for dear old Dad, his life was spared when he lifted his
mortgage on the Blue Bird and everybody was happy except the country folks
who never got onto the inside facts.

 

 

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