A Million Miles From Nowhere

Uncle Ed was the foreman of the stereotype room at the Cincinnati Times Star newspaper. It was run by the Taft family. Howard Taft, who was the father, was at one time president of the United States.

Uncle Ed was the foreman of the stereotype room at the Cincinnati Times Star newspaper. It was run by the Taft family. Howard Taft, who was the father, was at one time president of the United States.

In January of 1916 I left home and Uncle Ed got me a job in a large department store. I didn't like the job so I worked a week and decided I would fly the coop. I left on the night train. I was only 16 at the time and didn't have much money so I got a ticket to Dayton, Ohio, which wasn't very far from Cincinnati.

Early the next morning I went to the outskirts of town to look for a job. The first place I saw was the Ohmer Cash Register Co. They made registers for trolley cars. I went up to the foreman and asked if he could use me. He looked at me a couple of minutes and said he would give me a job for a week. He told me where I could get a nice room nearby for two dollars a week. There was a small grocery near where I stayed that served three meals a day family style and charged 15 cents a meal.

After a week he paid me off but the next day I went to work in an ammunition factory that was making bullets for England who was at the time at war with Germany. I worked on a milling machine and was pretty fast at it. I could turn out more casings than the other two or three guys all put together. Finally in three months I was laid off because I had so much finished work piled up. So I got piece work and made pretty good money.

When I left to go to Columbus, Ohio, the state's capital, I had over $250 saved up. The day I arrived in Columbus I found a job running a grinding machine. I didn't ask the salary as I liked to give them a couple of days to see what I could do. It wasn't like today.

Today a man goes to the boss and asks for a job. If the boss says come in tomorrow, the man says what do you pay? If the boss says work a week and I'll pay you what you're worth, the man would say, "Damn if I'll work for anybody that cheap."

I went from Columbus, Ohio to Toledo, Ohio. There I got a job in a burlesque house. I did different jobs from ticket taker and usher to assistant stage hand. They had good shows even if the jokes were out of Joe Miller's Joke Books of the late 1800's. In one joke one fellow would say to another, "Who was that lady I saw you walking down the street with yesterday?" The other man would say, "That was no lady, that was my wife." Another story I liked was where one would say, "Let's be friends to the end." The second would say, "Friends to the end." The first would say, "Lend me $10." The second would say, "That's the end."

I used to like vaudeville and the biggest circuit was the Orpheum. I saw Sally Rand and her fan dance and Gypsy Rose Lee. You would think they danced in the nude but they had skin colored tights on. I also liked George Burns and Gracie Allen, who also played the Orpheum circuit.

I heard many of the old songs for the first time at the vaudeville shows. I remember "She was Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage," "When You and I were Young Maggie," "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree," "In the Good Old Summer Time," Let Me Call You Sweetheart," Take Me Out to the Ball Game," "Casey Jones," "School Days," "Down by the Old Mill Stream," "Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet," "On the Sidewalks of New York," "After the Ball was Over," "Sweet Rosey O'Grady," and "My Wild Irish Rose." There was also a song I liked about a fellow who stuttered which went:

Oh hell, oh hell, oh Helen please be mine,
Your feet, your feet, your features are divine.
I swear, I swear, I swear that I'll be true,
Oh damn, oh damn, oh damsel I love you.

I went to Detroit, Michigan and got a job as a counter man in a hotel restaurant and bar. It was near the outskirts of Detroit so I was able to bank a little money.

A young boy I met talked me into taking a job as a deckhand and I traveled all over the Great Lakes. We were late in getting back to Detroit but beat the ice jam. I worked for another restaurant in town but it was a lonely Christmas.

A couple of days after Christmas I went to a vaudeville show and a girl sang a song that went:

You're a million miles from nowhere
When you're one little mile from home,
That's how the story goes
The story often told.

You leave the gates of Heaven
When you leave Mother's arms to roam
You're a million miles from nowhere
When you're one little mile from home.

I was back home for New Years, 1917.

*****

I really liked this story. Dad put a lot of detail of his early travels into it. It's hard to believe that life was like that 90 years ago.

Dad would say that if you shook the family tree, a bunch of nuts would fall out. Maybe he wasn't that far off. Because when rereading the story, it's easy to see that he left out everything that was happening in the family.

My Ex could not find an "Uncle Ed" in the family tree. Lizzie had two brothers and Julis had five older brothers and two younger ones so Dad had plenty of uncles, but no uncle named "Ed." Well, although my Ex can't come up with an exact date because she couldn't find their marriage certificate in Cincinnati, possibly due to a courthouse fire, Lizzie Fink and Julius White were most likely married sometime before Eula White was born in February of 1888. As I mentioned in More Than My Share, Julis died, according to his death certificate, in April of 1909. By the 1920 census, Lizzie was now married to Edward Herd. He was listed in the census as a foreman of the stereotype room at the Cincinnati Times Star newspaper. By juggling the dates, my Ex is fairly sure Ed and Lizzie were married in 1916 but doesn't have a marriage record.

It sounds like Ed and Dad had a good relationship although, according to Dad's story, he left home approximately one month after he turned 16. Part of this could have been caused by a girl who came into the story who Dad never mentioned in his brief writings and who remains nameless because Dad never told anyone that I know of her name. Or due to his interest in burlesque, he could have met her in the variety show he worked for. Anyway, from what I can remember hearing, at a young age, Dad met an older woman, married her, had a daughter (my missing half-sister), and then left her and never looked back until he was in her mid-40's and decided he would like to see his daughter. By then names, places, and dates were permanently lost and the daughter was never located.

The story was rejected by Colorado Old Times and has never been printed until now.