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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>Hello all”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>In our PHD project, we uncovered unpublished manuscripts of short stories written by an early president of the United Workers for the Blind.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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>Peggy Chong<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>[This story has been transcribed as written. No changes were made to spelling or punctuation.]<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>IN THE DARK OF THE MOON<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>Lute Wilcox<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>“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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>“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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>“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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>“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.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>