Connecticut western news., 1910-10-06
DRUM 66 YEARS.
 OLD IN PARADE
Atlantic City Hears 6. A. R.
 R8iC LustiIy Beaten.
OWNER TEN YEARS ITS SENIOR
Sounder of Onsets First Played In Polk Presidential Campaign and Later Through Civil War-Sanford West Never Wounded Until Kicked In Eye by Nebraska Mule.


 West Never Wounded Until Kicked
 In Eye by Nebraska Mule.
 A drum made sixty-six years ago out of an ash tree at Redwood, Fulton county, N. T., was played at the na- tional encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic at Atlantic City. It was made by two brothers, ten and twelve years of age.
 The younger of the boys played the drum through the campaign that elect ed James K. Polk to the presidency. Later he played it clear through the civil war and drummed the Thirteenth l Illinois infantry into every engagement In which it participated. Today he is an inmate of the Soldiers home at Orting, Wash. The drum went with ] him by slow stages across the conti- nent, and it went back with him to the l Atlantic City encampment
 The drummer, Sanford O. West, is 1 now seventy-six He is a little old man, blind in one eye and weighing not much more than loo pounds, but he puts the fire and energy of boy into his drumming.
 He can drum standing with his back to the drum as we'll as face front. He l Is born drummer. crazy for the drum from the time he wore his first trou sers. He drummed at public meetings before he was eight.
 One of Pioneer Family.
 West comes from one of those old American families which eternally go west. His people arrived in New Eng land some time in colonial days. By 1884 they had got as far as Redwood, N. l., where they were pioneers. There Sanford drummed in the Polk campaign, curling up to sleep on the mems coats between the speeches. By the time Lincoln was running for president the family had got to Illinois, and young Sanford drummed through that campaign too. The Thirteenth Illinois infantry was the first that en- listed for three years. West was nev CT out of commission one day of that three years, nor did he miss one en- gagement.
 His hat was shot off his head at Lookout Mountain, but not hair of his head was touched. At the first at- tack on Vicksburg the sharpshooters aimed at him when he was stopping over and sent two bullets through the wrinkles of his blouse, but didn't scratch him. It was his business to drum the boys into the fight and then help carry the wounded off the field on stretchers. At | Ringgold, Ga, they shot through the | leg the man who was handling the stretcher with him. West carried him | off the field on his back, got another man and went back for the fellow he had left on the stretcher. He seemed to bear a charmed life.
 By the time the war was over Illi- nois had grown too tame and civilized for the West blood. West moved to l Nebraska and made his home there for the most of his life. It was while ranching in Nebraska that he met the wound that was due him in the war. Wounded by Mule.
 A Nebraska mule did what the Con- l federate sharpshooters were never able to do. The creature kicked him on for life Twenty-eight pieces of his skull were removed from the wound, and a permanent indentation was made Dn the left side of his head.
 | Still he drums with the same cheer ful vigor and seems as interested in life as any boy Nebraska grew too civilized for him eventually, and he l made his way gradually westward un- til he reached the Pacific. Being un- able to proceed farther he stopped, dis concerted, and has since fingered as near the jumping off place as he could.
 Marquis Lafayette Fowler, leader of the Washington fife and drum corps, IS the old drummer boys side partner. His given name betrays the Revolu- tionary atmosphere that surrounded his cradle. He had ancestors in the Revolution and still possesses the coat of one of. them with its bell buttons.
 An uncle was in the war of 1872 and knew sharp fighting in and around De | the war with Mexico. and MT. Fowler has his fife as well as the one which he himself played in the civil war and several silver flies that have been pre- sented to him as mark of honor.
 He has played the fife for fifty-six years. He played 1t in campaign meet lngs when Fremont ran for president at Charlotte. Mich. He went to the front with the Twentieth Michigan There has never been a year since the war that he has not had charge of a fife and drum corps somewhere. He declares that in an experience of fifty years West is the best drummer he ever knew
 Quick Changes.
 Daughter-There is only one thin! more astonishing than the readiness
 with which Ned gave up tobacco whcl
 we became engaged. Mother-WhHt i
 that astonishing thing? Daughter The rapidity with which he took it U