Webster City freeman. [volume] (Webster City, Hamilton County, Iowa) 1884-1946, 1917-09-11
From Deming, New Mexico.

the Fort Dodge Messenger and
Chronicle. According to letters re-
ceived by friends of Webster City
| soldier boys at the camp, the For,
Dodge man describes very aptly the
general impression received by the
Second Iowa as a whole. The Fort
Dodge soldier says:
Springing out Of broad waste OF
much sand and very little vegeta-
ton, stands quaint, squat, old-neW
Deming-population 1880 to 1000,
depending on who you ask. Old in
buildings and characteristics of the
time, up to few months ago, when
it was just desert town. New
with buildings, atmosphere and &C
tivities brought by the portion OF
Uncle Sans army which is being
quartered and trained at the camp,
which starts at it's outskirts and
ends some five miles down the rail
road line.
Deming is indeed a quaint mixture
of old and new. Here a hostelry of
years ago, old, dilapidated, dirty in
the extreme. Next door pile of
brick or lumber bearing the name
"The New Hotel Such-and-Such, :"
very new, very hastily built, very
uncomfortable in many cases. A
clean, new hash house" is thanked
with typical old-Mexico chile
stand. An old harness shop has
opened one side of it's store room
for very new and extremely gar
ish jewelry emporium. And so on,
early trading days and the twenti-
eth century (unlimited) stand side
by side.
One cannot help but try to mag
inc what old Buffalo Bill" Cody
would have to say of the immense
and wholly wonderful camp which
bears his name. Even he, no doubt,
world traveller though he was, would
stop and exclaim of the bigness, the
cleanness, the completeness-such a
comparison with "the old days" of
frontier warfare.
AS one runs into Deming, the en-
trance is welcome change from
the scenery of "just outside" There
is fine station, with grassy plots
in front and mere and there ia odd
spots-a large lily pond in the CEN
ter of the largest plot. The station
is large and very completely equip
ped with rest rooms, refreshment
booths, telegraph offices, etc. New
tracks by the mile have been laid
to care for the extra storage and
traffic necessitated by camp build
ing and daily needs. Train loads
are standing on sidings to be un-
loaded, and every day other train
loads of human freight comes roll
ing in. (The camp is growing by
the thousands daily, and it is hard
to get correct statement of how
many men are now here.)
The ''main drags" of Deming form
in rough way in the shape of an
r, with the station at the foot of
the main stroke of the letter. There
are several movies in operation and
several being constructed. A large
theater is being built, and as for
hash houses and soft drink parlors,
they are almost too numerous to
count.
Speaking of drinks-the bars were
all closed the day we left Iowa. We
are trying to figure out whether
they thought we would be shocked at
seeing an open saloon or whether
they surmised that some really terri
die thirsts might be brought from
our fair, much blue-law-ed, and very
bone dry state. Be that as it may,
the fact remains that that hell hole
of Deming" definition by resi-
dent of Tucumucari) can no longer
take pride in that name, for no more
can the cowboys Cor soldiers) get
"all grogged up" and "shoot up" the
town.
The store rooms made vacant by
the closing of the bars are being
rapidly opened up as hash joints,
chile stands or soft drink parlors,
where "near-beer," "almost-beer"
and "not-quite- beer" flows forth in
large quantities. Cor the several
inches of loose sand which is every
where is highly conductive to a won
derful thirst that starts early and
ends very late.)
We haven't been allowed to go to
town much as yet, but those of us
who have been, have decided that
camp looks pretty good nights, ex-
cepting for an occasional "spree,"
from which we would wander sedate-