Memoirs continued... Page 6 While I was with the railroad I was sent out collecting freight bills, and many times delivered same downtown to the Produce Exchange, and usually passed through New Street where I noticed the gilt lettering on the doors and windows of the stores announcing that they were bankers and brokers. I now recalled these places and made up my mind to apply for work there. It occurred to me that it must be a good business to be a banker and work in a nice comfortable office, taking in money, and so I decided on the spot to try one another of these bankers until I landed a job. I picked out one of the offices with a big window marked "Stock and Bonds," and entered. I found myself in a long room with a long line of chairs facing a high blackboard. The chairs were occupied by a crowd of men all sitting with their hats on, smoking cigars and looking at the blackboard. At right angles to the blackboard was a partition with a window, where a man in his shirt sleeves, also with a hat on, was calling out something to a man who walked up and down a platform in front of the blackboard and marked figures on the board with white chalk, and then men seemed to go to the window and leave money and receive a piece of white paper which they watched carefully from time to time and compared with the figures on the board. What it was all about and what this all meant was Greek to me. I watched for a while, and then asked one of the men sitting in a chair near me if they needed a boy. The man looked up at me in surprise and said, "How in Hell should I know?" and then went on staring at the blackboard. I was so discouraged I decided they had more help here than they needed and so I walked out. I then entered another office a few doors above the one I first tried. And there again was another blackboard with another crowd of men sitting with hats on, gazing at this blackboard as if their lives depended on it. No one paid the slightest attention to me and I noticed a number of queer-looking individuals coming and going without anyone speaking or noticing them. I wondered if they too were looking for a job. They looked seedy and careworn, but they all seemed interested in the blackboard. As I was about to leave this place, a young man entered carrying a number of cigar boxes under his arm and an open box in his hand, and he stopped in front of me and said, "Cigar, 5 cents--have one?" I was so glad to speak to somebody, I said, "No, thank you, I don't smoke." And he, looking me over, said, "Long or short?" I said, "I'm just short of six feet." He laughed and said, "Oh, I mean are you a bull or a bear?" I was dumbfounded; I thought he was crazy. I replied, "Do I look like either? Maybe I am from the country, but you cannot josh me." Well, he laughed until he cried, and then I must have looked very serious, for he said, "Were you looking for someone?" I replied [that] I was looking for a job. He then called out to the man sitting at the window in his shirt sleeves, wearing a silk hat and smoking a big black cigar, "Hey, Charlie, need a boy?" With that the man looked up from a telegraph instrument he was listening to, and taking his cigar out of his mouth, called, "Board boy?" The cigar peddler then asked me if I could write figures, and when I said, "Sure," he told me to tell Charlie. So I approached the window, and Charlie said, "Ten Dollars a week?" I said, "Yes," and then he asked me to come the following morning at nine thirty. I walked out of that place on air. Just to think of it, coming to business at 9:30! I had to get to the pier at 7:30 every morning. This meant sleeping two hours longer in the morning, and not only that, it was $40.00 per month instead of $25.00. I returned to the pier, received my pay check, and told Mr. Morgan, the cashier, that I was going to be a banker and had a big raise in pay and a fine position, and starting in to work at once the next day. I also boasted in the boarding house that night that I could see myself within a short time the president of a big New York bank. The next day I commenced to work at my new job. I was very awkward making figures, and it was hard for me to locate the names on the blackboard. There were A.S.R. and M.O.P., C.B.Q., and N.Y.C., and a whole batch of other combinations. Under each one I had to make a line of numbers and after each each number a fraction beginning with 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, and so forth, up to 7/8, and then the number would change to a higher or lower number as the case might be; and it was difficult for me to keep track of all of these numbers and fractions and place them in the right column. One day I made a mistake. Charlie was calling numbers rapidly and I got the figures intended for A.S.R. in the column under N.Y.C. There must have been a bull market in A.S.R., I well remember the figures 122, it started in and it ran up to 126 by eights and quarters, and suddenly an old German gentleman sitting in front of the board jumped up and ran to the window and said, "Close my N.Y.C." I just cannot remember all that happened, but it seemed the German was long of N.Y.C., which had gone down a little, and when he saw it selling, as he thought, at 126 he had five points profit on five shares, and had made $25.00, but instead of that they closed this trader out at a loss and he made a big fuss. Charlie, looking up, saw my figure in the wrong column. He bawled me out and said, "Here's your money, beat it," and that ended my first job in a bankers and brokers office, which I found out later on was a "bucket shop." (A "bucket shop" is either a gambling establishment that formerly used market fluctuations as a basis for gaming, or a dishonest brokerage firm, J.R.) It was after I lost this job that I decided to go back home.

My Return To Canajoharie And so I returned to Canajoharie. I arrived at Palatine Bridge on the morning train. I walked through the covered wooden bridge built by my great-grandfather, which spans the river between these two towns, a sidewalk for foot passengers on the right side, and on the left, the driveways for horses and vehicles. When one arrives in the center of the bridge he is in gloom, the only light is that which comes from each open end and the shafts of golden sunlight streaming through the cracks and crevices of the side planking. As I walked on, I heard the tread of the horses feet along side of me on the wooden planks of the driveway drawing the Hotel Mohawk Bus driven by George, the old darkey, who while lame, could get around lively enough when it came to smashing your baggage, and behind came the Hotel Wagner Bus driven by Jim Crozier, who knew the name of every "drummer" arriving to stop overnight with Uncle Henry Joy, the jovial host of the celebrated Hotel Wagner, known far and wide for its excellent service and cuisine. Can I ever forget Jim Crozier's call to trains, "All aboard, train going west," on New York Central.

The covered wooden bridge over the Mohawk River, after half of it was burnt in a fire in the 1880s. The burnt portion seen on the right was replaced with a metal structure.

The same bridge after the wooden one was replaced with an iron one sometime in the early 1900s, before World War I. This was torn down in the 1940s, and replaced by the present one.

This long covered bridge spanned but half of the river, the other half being an open, more modern, iron frame bridge. Leaving the covered part, I issued forth into the morning sunlight, at my left and beneath me rolled away the beautiful Mohawk River winding its way down the valley in graceful serpentine curves. Banked on one side were the four tracks of the New York Central Railroad, and on the opposite side the "flats" or low lands, bathed in the morning light, and in summer green with fields of corn and garden truck. Leaving the plank walk of the bridge, I paced along the limestone sidewalk protected by a stone wall, wide, low and capped with flat limestone slabs, a favorite place for people to sit and rest and enjoy the view up and down the valley, and also a convenient place to watch the baseball games on the "flats" just below the wall. This wall ran from the river bridge to the yard of the Lutheran Church, a beautiful stone structure. Passing the church, I at last climbed up the incline to the canal bridge spanning the old Erie Canal, which was built high above the canal to allow the free passage underneath of the canal boats. I crossed this bridge, but paused a moment to watch a boat glide slowly by beneath my feet, guided by a coatless helmsman and drawn by a team of black mules driven along the narrow towpath by boy in shirt sleeves, bare feet, and wearing a big straw hat. I proceeded down the sloping side walk and passed the building built directly on the canal to the right of the bridge coming from the Palatine side. I noted the short flight of steps leading up to the door of the bake shop where they create such wonderful "shoo-fly" rolls and delicious long sugar covered buns. My mouth "waters" as I think of them. Right at the foot of the incline, under the bake shop, was the office of the American Express Company. A narrow street here crossed the main thoroughfare, which I followed. Up this lane was located the Bain Coal Yard and just across on the first corner was Tim (?) Grains grocery store, formerly Bart Smith's, that wonderful, happy genial man whom everyone loved during his life, and mourned when he passed away. Then next door to the grocery was H. C. Benzie's, the custom tailor, and you could be sure to find both Mr. Benzie and Mr. Lindholm busily cutting and sewing on our new Sunday suit. Next door to Benzie's I passed Klock's Dry Goods Emporium, and up a short flight of stairs, between this store and the next was H. L. Hueston's law offices, where the Beechnut Packing Company was first born, under the name of the Imperial Packing Co., and, of course, if I went up to call on Mr. Hueston, I would be sure to see the smiling face of Newton J. Harrick, his young clerk beaming at me, and he might say, "Mr. Hueston is detained this morning," leading one to believe on some important case, but perhaps it was a case of late breakfast. The next store I passed was Deifendorf's, the fancy grocer, formerly owned and operated by two most popular and hustling young business men, Mr. Frank Kirby, who was loved and respected as also was Mr. B. F. Deifendorf, the surviving member of this firm. Next store was Martin Frolich, the jeweler, then Fenton J. Stickles, Gentleman's Furnishing Shop; and Fent always wanted to sell me something, whether I wanted to buy it or not. Passing Nultie's Barber Shop, I arrived at the entrance to the Mohawk, formerly Nelli's House, now run by John Vosburgh, one of Canajoharie's popular men, called by his friends "a prince of good fellows;" dear old John, I always think of him as the "Mikado," tall, lean and lank, with his piercing black eyes, his heavy black hair and moustache, his smiling face, and the new story he always sprang on you. When he sang in "The Mikado," that great Gilbert and Sullivan masterpiece, which was so perfectly produced by the Canajoharie Opera Company, he made his entrance on the stage as the noble Mikado costumed in long sleeved silken kimono, followed by a boy whose business it was to keep him covered with a Japanese parasol; and can I ever forget the difficulty Frank Ilse had to keep that parasol over his towering head? I felt certain if I called him this morning I would find him chumming with some of the town "sports," and so I passed on and saw him later. Across the street was Hatters' Clothing Store, and I peeped in and saw Albert selling a swell new suit and noted John doing likewise to a hat purchaser; and away back in the rear of the long store, working over the wide bench, I saw my old friend John Ford cutting out a new suit for some fastidious customer. The second door from Hatter's was the Davis Hardware Store, then Bellinger's Drug Store, formerly owned and operated by A. P. Settle, who became wealthy through his thriftiness and lucky speculations, and possessed a beautiful daughter, Bertha by name, with a wealth of raven tresses, glistening white teeth, flashing blue eyes, and a brilliant complexion, who was also musical and the possessor of a high soprano voice, and echoing down from over the store, where she lived in an apartment with her father, one could hear her singing, "Good-bye Forever, Good-bye, Good-bye." At this point I crossed the street and looked in at Tom Dygurt's Drug Store and saw Tom and Ed Frost talking to Randolf Spraker and Ed Smith. Ed Smith had a wonderfully sympathetic baritone voice, and how he could sing! He was Poo-bah in the Canajoharie Opera Company's "Mikado." I can still hear him sing, "I grabbed him by his little pigtail and on his knees fell he." Then I passed by the Canajoharie National Bank and saw President A. B. Richmond, a cashier, Harry Swartfigure and Jim Cook working over the big ledgers. I then diagonally crossed the tracks of the West Shore Railroad, which at this point bisects the town, and reached the Shaper block. Up the stairway one flight were the offices of Brownwell Fox, Councillor, who was Nankipoo in that same "Mikado" production, Dr. Peter Slone, the dentist, and Harvey Stafford, the insurance broker. In the store on the corner of the Shaper block, occupied by James Dygurt, druggist, I saw my old friend John Shaper, the chief chemist, and I will never meet a truer friend and a finer chap than John, I'm sure. As I crossed the street and entered the Hotel Wagner, I met Tim Crough and James Hallegan, who greeted me, and there standing behind the desk was "Lige" Bundy, the smiling hotel clerk, and seated just back of him was Uncle Henry Joy, the proprietor. Everybody called him Uncle Henry because everybody loved him for his pleasant smile, his cordial greetings, and his hospitality. He was indeed an ideal host, and it was largely due to his personality that the Hotel Wagner became so popular. Uncle Henry Joy was stocky with white hair and moustache and a very large Jack Falstaff stomach, the type of person pictured in romance, and portrayed on the screen as "Mein Host," and he acted the part to perfection. When he saw me Uncle Henry rose and cordially greeted me with, "Well, John, back again? We're all glad to see you, and the folks will be happy to-day." Lige said, "Howdy," and called out, "Hey, Frank, look who is here," and the door leading to the bar from the office opened and Frank Effler, the barkeeper, stepped into the office in shirt sleeves, white vest, black satin necktie with diamond solitaire, holding a towel and a whisky glass he was polishing, reached out his hand, took mine in his warm cordial clasp with, "My, how well you look; I guess the big city treated you well." It is wonderful to return to your old home town and have people welcome you and seem glad to see you, and it is a joy to return and greet these old friends too. My, I was glad to be back. It seemed like heaven to me after experiencing the cold friendless atmosphere of New York, where you could stand on the corner of Broadway and see thousands of people passing every hour and die of homesickness, and the lonesomest part of the world is right there, and if you don't believe it, try it. Continued on page seven ...