Custer County Republican. (Broken Bow, Neb.) 1882-1921, 1906-12-06
I'm STORKVILLE
CENTRE
How Mr.. Blink Cot 1000 Brloks
for Nothing

walls, said Col. Calliper, was Rob-
,ert Blink. Not but what bricks are to
be had in plenty in that locality, for
there is a fine pit of brick clay in the
neighborhood, but stone is cheaper.
And so when Robert Blink built
this house with above ground founda.
ton walls of brick, why, naturally,
those brick supporting walls were con-
sidered remarkable but the walls
themselves were not nearly so remark
able as the manner in which the bricks
contained in them were obtained, with
the incidental fact that Mr.. Blink got
his bricks for nothing 1t was like
this:
"Mr. Blink, as it happened, lived a
Aittle out of the center, on road to the
brick Rims, and right back of his
place. on another parallel road, there
was row of cottages occupied by men
who worked in the brick yard.
Now Blink had cats, and it was not
long after he came there before his
cats became great annoyance to his
brickmaker neighbors in the rear. The
cats would come out into Blinx's
back yard and garden nights
and howl and yowl frightful-
ly and disturb the brickmen's
sleep. Pretty soon, as people do every
where at other peoples cats, the brick
makers began throwing things at
Blinx's-bootjacks and old shoes and
the usual things like that, with the
usual ineffective results, until finally
one night, just by the merest chance,
one of the men picked up and threw
at the worst of the cats brick, which
landed fair and square on it's mark.
after that they threw many bricks,
which rarely hit what they were aimed
at, but which did tear up Mr.. Blinx's
back yard and garden something scan.
dalous. And then the throwing Of the
bricks suggested to Mr.. Blink an idea.
HE had quite piece along there
on his road, and pretty good land, but
the house on it was old, and not much
of house anyway, and Mr.. Blink came
to think about building new one. And
he was a thrifty man, always saving
where he could, and when those bricks
began to come over he had an idea.
How much less would it cost him,
he asked a mason, to have the founda-
;tion of his new house built, If he,
Blink, furnished the material for the
part above ground; and the mason,
said matter of $35 or sac, and SO
Blink set about collecting the bricks
thrown at his cats to provide that ma
'terial; the mason having told him,
when Blink had casually mentioned
bricks to him one day, that If he built
of that material, his top foundation
walls would require about 1000
bricks.
"At the average at which they had
been coming over nights for the pre-
vious two or three weeks, Mr.. Blink
figured that it would take him about a
year to collect that number in this,
way and in that time the bricks
thrown might do considerable damage
in his yard and garden and so he
thought he'd put up little protection
for them. AS it was there was just
post and rail fence running along the
rear of Mr.. BAinx's property between,
that and the brick mems yards, and
now he put up, at the foot of his yard
setting it back about six feet, so that.
when the bricks struck it they would
fall on his own land.
"All cats, everywhere, like to walk,
on the tops of fences and all cats
seem to welcome meeting other cats
there as an amply sufficient provoca-
ton for clawing and splitting, fighting
and bowling; and no sooner had Mr..
Blink got his fence up than all the
cats in Storkville Center, apparently.
came nights to walk ON it; and what
had seemed the frightful bowling of,
Biinx's cats seemed now to the sounds,
produced by this new band of cats as
but the feeble tuning up of a few scat
tering members of an orchestra to the,
sale that breaks loose when the whole
outfit gets going.
"The brick men were stirred ac-
cordingly; and night after night when
they came home from work they
brought valises and carpet bags full
of bricks; and when the cats started
up they did. With the first squak of a.
cat you'd hear brick land against the
board fence and when the cats got
going-why, humph! I've heard what
some people thought was quite some
racket in back yards here in the city,
when cats were caterwauling and peo-
pie were firing reyolvers out of the
windows to scare 'em off and throwing
various odds and ends at EN- that clat-
tered more or less, but all that would
be child's play to what you could hear
out in this quiet country place when
the bricks were laundering on BIinx's
board fence and 40 cats on top of it
were wailing and screeching and
screaming above the uproar.
"All this was music to Blink. Why,
he told me that on a number of morn
ings-he used to get up early to carry
away the bricks hefOra naon1a around