INNOCENT FALSEHOOD About twenty years ago, I was going with “Dutch” Roderick, in his car, to Kansas City, starting at four o’clock in the morning—and Minnie Cawood, with her two and one-half year old Ruthie, were going along as far as Leavenworth. We stopped at the H. P. Cawood home, and “tooted.” Minnie came out, and Harry followed, carrying Ruthie in his arms. She was fussy, and Harry said, “Don’t cry—your partner is out here in the car.” Ruthie said—well, had she not been such a sweet kid as to call me her partner, I’d be tempted to say she told a “white” lie, when she said, “I thought he would be there.” FATHER AND SONS 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.