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Show J Rfir CROY yfflf Si - VVH (CLl w.n.u.servic 5 , THE STOItY THUS FAR: Amos Croy ictUed on a farm In Missouri, where he ' married and a son, Homer, was horn. ) Sunday meant church, company for din- er, and steer weight guessing. Dehorn-? Dehorn-? Ibj of the calves, curing of hams, weaning wean-ing of calves and sausage making were all part of his work. The Croys attended the Omaha Exposition, where Homer saw all first horseless carriage, "hula" danc-K. danc-K. tn and the flrst motion picture. Rcnzo, J the hired hand, whom everyone liked, but J the girls would not keep company with, ) finally left. He returned years later and bought a farm and was thereby ac-',' ac-',' cepted, being a member of landed gentry, gen-try, a real class distinction. His wife be I came a leader In the community. I ' ' CHAPTER XV i As Pa and I walked out across the farm, he told me with a sort of rush-jlng rush-jlng eagerness the things that had 4 happened. The stock well had had la cave-in and he'd had to take off Jthe platform, lower a scaffold into the well and brick up the wall. He'd Jgot a new zinc float for the horse tank; didn't know how it'd work when the tank froze. He asked, with the same rushing ., eagerness, my "judgment" on things my judgment which was so feeble J in comparison to his. Did I think ' we ought to turn the steers, or feed them out? I told him as best I could, ;jfout there was that pull to do the J things I had my heart set on. Yet, the Croy farm did look lovely. ... That evening I heard Pa coming -ito the house for the milk buckets, and I got up and went out. "Homer, "Ho-mer, you needn't help tonight," he said and marched ofT with the buck--ets. At night Pa usually read our farm papers, but tonight we visited. Ma asked again about the food and ;about the bed. Had I gone to khurch? She was silent when I explained ex-plained I had had to work on Sun-Iday, Sun-Iday, and I wished heartily I had managed to get in some church attendance. at-tendance. What did I do on my day off? When I told her that I went to Lake Contrary and roller-skated, she j I wanted to know what "kind" of people peo-ple went there. I told about my trip to the south St Joseph stockyards. Pa could hardly get enough of that. "You didn't see any of the Clay Robinson Robin-son men, did you?" Clay Robinson J,was the name of the firm we shipped aio, but of course I hadn't seen him, inor any of his buyers. I Ma and I were alone, and a fine personal understanding floated over nils and folded us into its warmth, j Our voices grew lower and lower, i-jand we became more conscious of Jieach other, and closer and closer jjln understanding. Then she began to pinch a fold of her dress, with k.her thumb and forefinger, as she so often did when she was thinking, but jH0t knowing quite what to say. Then ishe said it in a choked whisper "Homer, you didn't have anything to If do with bad girls, did you?" "No, Mother," I said firmly. She released the fold and settled pack in her chair, ffl The boys and girls in our section Wwent to Drake University, Grinnell -College, William Jewell College, -Park College, or to the University of fcllssouri. Now and then one strayed MI to the University of Kansas. Or jo the University of Iowa. Only one boy in our county went to Harvard. But hi! father was rich and could lfford he things the rest of us Oouldn't. When he came back, instead in-stead of having his neck shaved jltraight across, he had what he .ukalled a "feather-edge" neck hair-ntut. hair-ntut. It opened our eyes to the pos-i pos-i pibilities of an eastern education, (ft I wanted to go to the University H Of Missouri, but there was the matter mat-ter of money; and I had the same Reeling of inadequacy I had when I "'iad thought of going to high school, -Aould I make a success among all pose smart girls and boys? But I llJlld want to go. University! Even jjj'fce name had a thrilling sound. I When I proposed it to Pa, he I1 bought of the cost; but he was li)leased. His boy goin' off to school, j, ctfhere would be the matter of work. j0ut he could manage it some way or t'Mer. His boy must get him an education. ed-ucation. Pa . . . who had hardly ii Any. I found he was thinking in the raerms of farming. When I told him Iprt did not want to study agriculture t all, he was hurt. Well, I must ork out such things for myself, he supposed. fThe decision meant expenditure. -"tPe bought a valise, so I would not jfl' ave to take the old telescope with I.le mouse hole, and a tin camel-i camel-i jlljacked trunk, with a special hat arrangement, ar-rangement, like 'Renzo Davis'. Pa jerei tid Ma took me to the depot (Wa-, (Wa-, 8h, this time) and I got on the plraln, and, once more, my little Jorld slid away from me, a ttOther boys and girls were on the $aln. but I was too shy to get acquainted. ac-quainted. I ' nad the name of a rooming (Je?use and- toggtog my precious va-Oiie, va-Oiie, started out looking for the ad-Jf.es' ad-Jf.es' Therethrough the trees I ' .ueht a ghmpse of the university. I aw the five ancient ivy-cov-$jred columns and the great build-,PB build-,PB lining the campus, and the boys d girls walking briskly and confl-yently confl-yently up and dowru again j wos till ' " ' 1 would 8 back home III tJ to get a permanent job on a newspaper. . All . my life I have been like that fearful when I have entered a new situation, gaining confidence con-fidence little by little as I accomplish accom-plish some small bit. Some people are supplied with great self-confidence and seem never to have any doubts. But not I. I don't think in all my life I have undertaken anything any-thing that at first I wasn't afraid I would faiL j How simple we were; how "green." If I had never been away from home but twice, I am sure many others hadn't, either. I am sure that more than half were from farms; the others from small towns the ones I had once thought of as "city people." But I was soon to meet real city people. At my table at the boarding club was a boy from Brooklyn. I could hardly get over staring at the strange creature. crea-ture. There was the problem of earning money, but it worked out better than I had hoped, for I got a job corresponding for the Kansas City Star, and my St. Joseph paper. Then, to my delight, I began to sell small fry to the eastern magazines, such as The Critic, The Circle, The Gray Goose, Four-Track News, The Bohemian, Bo-hemian, The Quill, and to The Bellman, Bell-man, which was published in Minneapolis. Min-neapolis. None of them survived my efforts. But this work wasn't any hardship, for I suppose one-fourth of the boys had to earn extra money. mon-ey. The ways mostly used were getting a laundry route, driving a bread wagon, or opening up a trou- J0& i I was in my sock feet. ser-pressing establishment in the back part of one's room, or taking pictures of football games and selling sell-ing them to the students while victory vic-tory was still sweet. And always there was work on the state farm which was run by the school's Agricultural Agri-cultural Department. Seventeen cents an hour was paid for digging postholes. I thanked God I could run a typewriter . . . the pay was about the same. It was not long before I was working work-ing on the school weekly, and, after a time, I had a department, and, when I was a junior, I became editor of the annual, The Savitar. And I started a humor magazine which is still going. I wish I could capture some of those thrills today. I wanted to be considered sophisticated. sophisti-cated. But I didn't realize what a firm grip the farm had on me. I could not buy the suits that the St. Louis and Kansas City boys wore, but I tried to look jaunty and a man-of-lhe-campus. But the farm had its hand twisted in my collar. One night one of the boys brought a very sophisticated man to my room and introduced him as Nelson C. Field without explaining anything about him. I was in my sock feet, which was the way I had rested on the farm, and was pecking away on my Barlock. It was a shock, later, when I found he was the national organizer for Delta Tau Delta fraternity fra-ternity and had turned me down because be-cause I was too rural. Later, however, how-ever, when the chapter was going, I was asked if I would join. At the end of the first year. Pa came to the depot to meet me, and I was back on the farm again. My mother was not so well as when I had seen her last; a thin, hollow-eyed hollow-eyed look had laid hold of her which touched me to the heart. But she was glad to see her son who had been to the university. She listened eagerly as I told of school doings. "What kind of boys do you associate with. Homer?" "With good boys," I told her. "Did you get to see much of the Agricultural Department?" Pa asked, and I knew what was in his mind Maybe I would enter up in farming. I worked all summer and every spare moment pecked away on my Barlock. When fall came I went back to the university, very sure of myself now and smiling at the bewildered be-wildered freshmen. Big events are hard to see, and often we don't see them until long afterward; and so it was now. The university was expanding and taking tak-ing on new ideas. Some of them seemed wildly extravagant to tha legislators who had to appropriate the state's money. But little by little, lit-tle, new departments were added, new equipment was put in. One of these new ideas came from the editor of the paper in the town where the university was located Walter Williams. He talked it over with the president of the university, but the idea was so new, so utterly unheard of, they realized they would never get it past the farmers-for-the-most-part legislators unless they proceeded with great circumspection. circumspec-tion. The two of them took the idea to George S. Johns, editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who not only had a son Orrick Johns in school, but was also a far-seeing man. But I knew nothing of all this machinery ma-chinery of preparation this fathering father-ing of a new idea until one day I saw an announcement on the bulletin bulle-tin board that set my heart jumping. jump-ing. It asked all those who were interested in newspaper work to leave their names with the secretary to the president. Interested in newspaper news-paper work! Why, that was what I lived for. -I tore in as fast as I could. A week or so later, I got a letter from the secretary asking me to come to his office on a certain evening eve-ning at a, certain time. I shook a little, boys being boys, then I connected con-nected it with the mysterious notice on the bulletin board: Nine of us filed in, when the time arrived, much mystified. In a few moments Walter Williams walked in! How plainly I can see him that great Midwestern journalist a small man with a thin, quavering voice, a homely face and a down-hanging un-derlip. The upshot of it was that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had made an offer to take us to St. Louis and keep us, with all expenses paid, and let us get out one number of that paper. St. Louis! All expenses paid! Were we interested? If so, please sign. I could hardly whip out my fountain pen fast enough. When it was all over, I was elected head of the group and thus became (although (al-though I didn't know it at the time) the first student in the first school of journalism in the world. I don't remember how many of the boys had been in St. Louis, but I hadn't, and I think I was a cross-sample. cross-sample. We got off at Union Station, Sta-tion, bewildered, in spite of ourselves, our-selves, at its hustle and bustle." But this lasted only a few moments, for Carlos Hurd, representing the paper, swooped down on us, a very urbane man of the world. It wasn't long before I found myself my-self in the biggest and most fashionable fashion-able hotel I had ever seen in my life the Planters. Immediately I had a return of inferiority and felt ill at ease and out of place. And the other boys were looking to me for leadership! He took us to a magnificent (so it seemed) dirfing room, and colored waiters, wearing what I thought of as evening clothes, put bills-of-fare into our hands. I didn't know how to order, and I don't believe the others did, either. I find myself embarrassed as I set this down; and I only set it down in order to give as clear a picture as I can of what the young man in the Midwest in my day was like. How small his world was, how simple and naive he was in comparison to the dashing college lad of today. My eyes fastened on something I could understand and I half whispered whis-pered to my waiter that I wanted jerked beef and ice cream. Carlos Hurd saw the embarrassment we were laboring under, and put in an order for us, all the same thing. We breathed with relief and sat stifl and upright, a contrast to the laughing, laugh-ing, joking, confident group we had been on the train. Alter dinner we felt a trifle more at ease; but it was still a bewildering world. The next morning someone told us to lock our rooms. I locked mine and started to put the key in my pocket, but I ran into an unexpected problem. Attached to my key was a strap of iron about the size of a six-inch ruler. I put it in my pocket, but it was most uncomfortable, as I went down the elevator. I was not going to let that defeat me, so I promptly went upstairs to my room and managed to pry the strap of iron off. I left it there and put the key in my pocket where it would be safe. That evening when I came in and saw people having their keys handed to them from a set of boxes, I hurried upstairs and pried the strap of iron on again. I did not mention it to anyone, let alone Carlos Hurd who, I knew, was having his own private thoughts. The big day arrived. The St. Louis Lou-is Post-Dispatch Junior came out. I was disappointed when I saw it; was this all there was to show for so much hard work? But there was my name as editor-in-chief. I proudly sent a copy home. A few days later I got a letter from Pa. It said "I am glad you got a trip to St, Louis." (TO BE CONTINUED) i |