Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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The dance pavilion was well patronized between celebrations—and the town populace turned out of evenings for a stroll to the spring. It was really popular. Then a flood, an unusually big flood, swept the park clean of all improvements. The large frame dance-hall came to anchor on a projection of land on the present Bill Winkler farm nearly a mile down the creek. The town jester said that as the pavilion floated away the piano was automatically playing “Over the Ocean Waves.”

The mineral spring is still here—but that’s all.

At one of the big celebrations about the turn of the century a farmer brought his family to town in a spring wagon. He tied his team on the town-side of the picnic grounds, leaving a three-year-old child asleep in the wagon. When the parents returned after taking in the picnic, the child was gone. Then the picnickers began a search which lasted throughout the night. All roads were covered for four or five miles out. One searching party went four miles west on the railroad track—then turned back, believing a small child could not travel that far. The section men out Wetmore found the mangled body of the child in a small wash by the side of the railroad about a half-mile beyond the point abandoned by the searchers. An early morning freight train had bumped it off a low bridge. Then there was much speculation as to how a small child could have traveled that far—even hints, unwarranted suspicion, of foul help. Then there was a story afloat about the conductor whose train had struck the child. When told of the killing, it was claimed, he cried and said had he known a child was lost along the track he would have walked ahead the train.