The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-10-16
SMILING BILLY,
 OF SPRING VALLEY

About hundred miles southwest of Chicago, in Bureau county, Illinois, l is the little coal mining town of i Spring Valley. It is a tiny cosmo D oils, with nearly all the nations of Europe represented among it's 5000 inhabi- tants. A majority of the masculine population is engaged in digging black diamonds from the intestineS of the earth! Like miners everywhere, they l are rather a pugna.cious crowd. Many 1 of them come from countries where the knife is the accepted weapon for ] the settlement of arguments but they soon learn that Spring Valley 5frowns upon such methods, and favors the fists in the arbitrament of difficulties between man and man. In this pre- judice Spring Valley has a tradition to live up to, for it can boast of fhav- ing produced more prize ring heroes than any other town of it's size in the civilized, so to speaw. world. From the days when Billy Myer, the light weight "Streator Cyc1one,'' was the idol of the. coal diggers, of that sec ton of Illinois has rarely been with out a worthy representative in the ring.
 Ask any miner, of those diggfngs the name of the best man Spring Val ley ever produced. however, and you will get but one answer Over the blackened face will come smile of
 
 Billy Papke.'' Yes, even the. Italian miners will tell you that, spite of the fact that Billy is of iTeutonic blood.
 Smiling Billy of Spring Valley, st'the Illinois Thunderboltp the hero, of the Illinois miners, has become a commonplace grocer, more interested in prunes than in punches. but his pugilistic prowess in his days of glory isN still treasured as a sacred memory. by the men of Spring Valley. The .I knew him when club has a large membership in the little mining town, and many are the tales they tell of Papke's youthful days.
 It is going on thirty years since the heart of Papa Papke was galddened by the tidings that he was the father of d husky son. Papa Papke was a German, and made his living by digging coal down in the damp, dark earth. It wasn't luxurious living, for according to the system which, gives the least pay to the hardest and most hazardous work, Papke pere had a hard time to make both ends meet. Billy was one of a brood of children, and his parents were kept too busy feeding and clothing their offspring to pay much attention to 'kultur,"
 The school of hard knocks, kept by old Professor Toll, isn't a pleasant one but for those strong enough to sur yive it has it's advantages. It was
  knew anything about. Occasionally he found time to spend a few hours absorbing the three R's in the village school but he didn't permit it to in terfere with his main pursuits, which were work, baseball and fighting.
 As kid Billy drove. a delivery wagon, clerked in grocery stores, ran errands and toiIed at the mines From the time he was six years old he swase always ready and willing to defend what he considered his rights with his fists.
 His hard, toilsome. poverty-strick- en youth was gladdened 2 by three sources of joy. First, perhaps, came baseball, and as he grew older he enlisted in the town nines playing third base as his favorite position. Ac- cording to the fI knew him when" club members, Billy was a regular ta ge that the umpire couldn't fine him for his pugnacious outburStS. AS Tor putting him out of the game-wel1 the old4timerS of Spring Valley would have just liked to see the "em Dire" that could do that.
 Next to baseball in his young af- factions was boxing. By saving pen- nies Billy managed to get possession of & cheap set of boxing gloves, and after that he staged regular pugilis- tic tournaments on the back lots of Spring Valley. The little Dutchman quickly became the. recognized cham pion, and he found 1t increasingly diff ficult to get opponents without taking on boys twice his size.
 Another favorite possession of Bflly's was a fighting cock. He got little bunch of down and raised it by