The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1919-04-19


Werner managed magniflcently
with the limited means at hand. Be
fore he was nineteen mothers were
warning their sons against him, and
brothers their sisters. Buzz Werner
not only was tough-he looked tough.
His name was not really Buzz. His
mother called him Ernie, and she alone
in all Chippewa was unaware that her
son was the town tough guy. But
even she sometimes mildly remonstrat-
ed with him for being what she called
kind of wild. If BUGS real name was
lost in the dim mists of the boyhood,
the origin and fitness of his nickname
were apparent after two minutes con-
versation with him. Buzz Werner was
called Buzz not only because he talked
too much, but because he was a brag-
CART. He buzzedI
By the time Buzz was fourteen he
was stealing brass from the yards of
the big paper mills down in the flats
and selling it to the junk man. At
nineteen he was running with the
Kearney girl.
Twenty five years hence Chippewa
will have learned to treat the Kearney-
girl type as a disease and a public
menace. Which she was. The Kear-
ney girl ran wild in Chippewa, and
Chippewa will be paying taxes on the
fruit of her liberty for a hundred years
to come. The Kearney girl was a
beautiful idiot, with a lovely oval face.
and limpid rather wistful blue eyes,
and fair. fine hair, and a long slim
neck. The Kearney- girl was forever
running up and down Grand Avenue,
which was the main business street
She would trail up and down from the
old armory to the postoffice, and back
again. When she turned off into the
homeward stretch on Outagamie Street
there always skunk after her some
stoop- shouldered, furtive, Looping youth.
But he never was seen with her on
Grand Avenue. She had often been up
before old Judge Colt for some nasty
business or other. Old Judge Colt
melted out justice according to his
lights. This nymph it was who had
taken a fancy to BUZZ Werner. It
looked very black for his future.
The strange part of it was that the
girl possessed little attraction for,Buzz
1t was she who made all the advances
Buzz had sprung from very decent
stock. And something about the sultry
EMBELLISHMENTS of this girl repealed
him, though he was hardly aware that
this was so. Buzz and his gang would
meet down town of Saturday night,
very moist as to hair and clean as to
soft shirt. They would lounge on the
corner of Grand and Outagamie, in
front of Schroeders brightly lighted
drugstore. watching the girls go by.
This corner, or Donovan's pool shack,
was their club, their forum. Here they
recounted their exploits, Dragged of
their triumphs, boosted of their girls,
fiexed their muscles to show their
strength. And all through their talk
there occurred again and again a GER
tain term whose use is common to their
kind. Their remarks were prefaced
and interlarded and concluded with it.
so that it was no longer an oath or
a blasphemy:
"Je's. 1 was sore at m. told i'm
where to get off at. Nobody can talk
to me Ike that. Je's. should Say not!'
If Buzz's family could have heard
him in his talk with his street-corner
companions they would not have cred
tied their ears. A mouthy braggart in
company is often silent in his own
home, and Buzz was no exception.
II the Werner family had been city
folk they would. perforce, have bur-
,rowed in one of those rabbit-warren
tenements that Zine block after block
of city streets. But your small-town
laboring man is likely to own his two
story frame house. with a garden patch
in the back and a cement walk leading
up to the front porch, and roast pork
on Sundays. The Werners had all this.
no thanks to Pa Werner; no thanks to
Buzz, surely; and little to Minnie Wer-
ner, who clerked in candy store and
tried to dress like Angie Hatton. whose
father owned the biggest pulp and
paper mill in Fox River Valley. No,
the house and the garden. the porch
and the cement sidewalk, and the pork
roast all had their origin in Ma Wer-
ner's tireless energy, in Ma Werner's
thrift: in her patience and unremitting
toll, her n.mble fingers and bent back,
her shapeless figure. and unbounded
and unexpressed (verbally. that is)
love for her children. An expert stone
mason by trade, Pa Werner could be
depended on only when he was not
drinking, or hen he was not on strike.
or when he a not quarreled with the
foreman. An anarchist, Pa-dissatis-
fed with things as they were, but with
no plan for improving them.
1t was in May, fine warm sunny
day, that Ma Werner, looking up from
the garden patch where she was spad-
ing. mans old battered felt hat
perched grotesquely atop her white
head, saw Buzz lounging homeward,
cutting across lots from Bates street,
his dinner pail glinting in the sun. L
was four O'Clock in the afternoon. >
AS Buzz espied her-his gait became
a swagger. At sight of that swagger
Ma knew. She dropped her spade and
plodded heavily through the freshly
turned earth to the back porch as Buzz
turned in at the walk.
Whats the matter, Ernie? You amt
sick, are you?"
Nav"
He took the back steps at bound
and slammed the kitchen door behind
him. Ma Werner followed heavily af-
ter. Buzz was hanging his hat up be-
hind the kitchen door. He turned with
a scowI as his mother entered.
She abandoned pretense. Ernie.
your pail be awful mad. You know
the way he carried on the last time
Let him. He amt worked five days
himself this month"
Buzz turned toward the inside wood