The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1919-09-19
OF r"nSHING
d. NOT BASED ON FACT
Herbert Corey Visiting Laclede Told
In Missouri Home Of General That
He Was Just an Ordinary Boy and
Not in Any Sense Remarkable.
By Herbert Corey.

Not in Any Sense Remarkable.
BY Herbert Corey.
Laclede, Mo-, This is the first ar
ticle of faith in Laclede-pronounced
Layclede, with a stress on the first
syllable if you adhere to the local
convention
ssJohn Pershing was just an ordi-
nary boy. He was noways remark
able"
There are other articles in the La
Sclede confession of faith. The story
of the melon patch and the shotgun
loaded with salt is bitterly denied.
The allegation that he had fight
whit the father of a large and OBJ
streperous pupil at the Prairie Mound
school is sneered at. The yarn that
his brother Jim stole the future gen
erals pants in which to go counting
and that the future general caught
him courting and made him take OIL
the purloined pants sends flush OF
rage to the Laclede countenance. The
charge that John and Jim did on oc-
casion sit up as late at 9 o'clock
at the village tavern is repelled furl-
ously.
ssThe Pershings were not that sort
of people," is the Laclede position.
-.sThev were nice, honest, God fearing
folks
The penury of the recollections or
inventions thus far produced about
Gen. John J. Pershing's life in this
hamlet, in which he was born, seems
to sustain the Laclede position. Ever
since General Pershing was sent to
France reporters and magazine writ
,ers and serial authors and movie men
have locusted down on the village.
They have talked to every man and
woman who knew the Pershing fam
ily. Rambling stories by negro farm
hands:
sSeem LAX it was Genuel Pushing
did that. Yessuh. Pm most suah it
was Genuel Pushing" have been
reported and amplified. But when
the most had been done nothing col
,orful or romantic stands revealed OF
Pershing's early life. He was a
studious, hard working, dogged
youth. He was not brilliant schol-
ar, but what he learned he held. He
did not go ACQUIRING, he did not
drink, he worked hard and he did not
fight. The most lurid episode found
by scraping the very bottoms of the
memories Of Pershing's former fa-
miliars is of an occasion when some
boys rode down from Cream Ridge.
s'It seems to me-" said Mrs. Cap
tain Henley, ''that l heard once that
the Pershing boys got into fight
with the Cream Ridge boys and Mrs.
Pershing came out of the house and
stopped them But I don't know. 1t
was long time ago."
Just About Average.
It is the story of an average good
boy with good average ability and
plenty of determination that is re-
,vealed, rather than that of burgeon-
ing hero. When Pershing was born
in Laclede, on September 13, 1860,
it was frontier town of 800 people.
"a barefoot town." Judge Clay Big
gers calls it. It is still one story
town of perhaps 700 inhabitants.
There are two banks, weekly, news
paper, barber shop, two combina-
tion drug, soda and periodical stores,
a grocery store in which fresh meat
is handled, two other general stores
and an undertaken.
The one hotel is locked up most of
the day, because the hotel keeper is
busy at the lunch stand, in fragrant
neighborhood to the pig and poultry
shipping yards at the depot. Laclede
is marked with 'sg" on the Burling-
ton time card, because certain train
stops there on Sundays. The young
ladyhood of Laclede wears silk stock
ings, just as young ladies do every
y sm6ere else. Most people have Fords
are not advertised by men,
Gi5,ic- cry more than the vernal equi-
= nox-hut on warm summer nights
big cars filled with young folks some
times cruise slowly 'along the main
street, singing songs that are not all
Sazz and rag. Some of them were
sung by grandfathers and grand
mothers in creaking OK wagons. In
the center of the town-the railroad