The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-09-08
Abe Gordon Describes Okla
homa Cantonment Camp.
Country's Topography Threat
ems Him With Poetry.
PUT HIM ON THE WOOD PILE
Driving Rhymes and rawlings
to the Winds.
Kansas Boys. Like the Camp
Chosen for Them.

Kansas troops destined to Fort Sill,
Okla, for intensive training before
starting to France are not going to
lonely or desolate place at all. In
fact, according to a letter received
today by the State Journal reportorial
staff from Abe Gordon, a member Of
the First Missouri ambulance corps
and formerly reporter for the State
Journal, the beauty of the camp would
move one to poetry, providing, of
course, one does not get 'jazzed" on
the woodpile as did the writer.
The letter from Gordon, in part,
follows:
/ 81 intended last night to grind out
a little rhapsody on the beautiful
stretch of country into which we have
been dropped. But this morning 1
was jazzed on the wood pile and I've
lost all my sense of art and beauty
and my intense love for the rollick-
ing hills that suddenly drop 800. 400,
maybe 500 feet to the scrawny
nary a bit of incline breaks the drop.
| Abe Looks on Beauty.
| Yesterday 1 lay in the shade of a
tree on the side of one of these hills
the side opposite the abrupt break
On the plain below 1 saw the line of
mess halls-horseshoe shaped-be-
hind which many camps will soon be
laid. There's something infectious in
the beauty of the country here. And
as 1 lolled under the tree, 1 realized
fully all the beauty of the place
stretching away on all sides-some-
times breaking into hills that rear up
nearly a thousand feet and then
trickle away into narrow valleys be-
tween other hills. And as 1 saw all
this l expected to grind out a little
! bit of descriptive 'litachoor'
| VaSto daU xr-Io
heart was in the highland and my soul
was in the skies
Poetry Leaves Him.
This morning 1 was jazzed on the
wood pile. And now my soul is filed
| with grief. And my hands are COW
cred with blisters that have lost their
outer covering. They're sore-so d
sore.
$50 there'l be no 'potree' in this
piece.
1T was on one Saturday night last
June the telegraph wire licked off a
little story advising the world that the
First Missouri Ambulance company
had been called out for three months
of intensive training before galIivant-
ing of to Paree.
Those three months glided by be-
fore we fairly got settled Every once
in while see a bunch of fellows
from Topeka-among them the Hon
E. w. lWHSdIt- late OI a wen KNOWN
press association On August rs we
blew into Fort Sill along with wind
storm that carried all of over Okla
homa and most of Texas into the res
ervation. Wed left Riley at noon OF
the day before.
Oklahoma's Dry, Too.
For at least twenty-fours hour.
every man in the company stood GU
. in the middle of the road and un
. corked in sulphurous style a highl,
complimentary opinion of the localit.
that was .choosed' for US. We go
over that tho, in a couple of days
The fellows are getting to like tfli
place more and more every day an,
) Lawton, three miles away, carries
; kick in either hand one of the ser
: geants and myself counted eighteen
recently emptied 'skee' bottles in tn
r hind end of a pool hall q couple o
nights ago."