The Clumsy yarn of a Chicago Liar from the Wichita Eagle

[Janet Harrington]

The Clumsy Yarn of a Chicago Liar

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Wichita Eagle

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Date unknown

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Wichita Eagle:
   The latest indignity done Kansas come from one Kenneth Conn, of Chicago.  This gentleman has been traveling in Kansas, presumably by the box car route.  His little act of deceit to his mother and the brazen lie that he told about Kansas, was brought to light in this city when a letter he had written to his mother, Mrs. Mary C. Conn, 1718 Lawrence Avenue, Jefferson Park, Chicago, Ill., and after sealing it he lost it in a Frisco box-car that arrived here last Thursday.  The letter was written from Columbus, Kas., on the Hotel Middaugh stationery.  In it is an almost open announcement that he wants the folks at home to think that he is in the wild and wooly west, and that his place is one similar to Diamond Dick, or Gentleman Joe fighting for the right among the bloodthirsty Indians and bandits of the plains, deserts and mountains.  The letter is as follows:
  I am writing this letter from a town called Columbus, Kansas.  It is near the Indian reservation, and without a doubt there are more Cherokee full blood Indians around here than there are white people.  I, myself, have seen two shooting affrays between these bad white men and Indians since I have been in these parts.  You know it is a heavy offense to sell Indians liquor.  It is done, for it is very seldom that one sees an Indian walking along sober.
  You may have read of that big gas well that is on fire.  It is said to be the largest gas well in the world.  It is about two miles from a town called Caney, Kansas.  It is a sight I would not care to miss.  The flames reach a height of 150 feet.  I enclose a piece from a Fort Leavenworth paper about it.
  Will also enclose a piece about the outlaws, who are doing damage around here.
  They are supposed to be in the hills and you can see the hills from this town.  They are about four miles distant, and you may have seen greenhorns, but wait until you see them of lower Kansas.  Really, last week several came into Coffeyville, Kansas, (forty-five miles from here) when I was there, and tried to lasso the engine on a train-had never seen one before.  The first is a joke, but truthfully some people I have seen down here have never seen a train of cars.  While listening a man said to a woman in lower Kansas: "Madam, we are gong to put a railroad apast here."  And she replied, "Will it go in the daytime so my children will see it?"
  Every able-bodied man you see around here is a United States deputy marshal.  They are hard fellows.  The fights these Indians mix in are numerous (ugley knife fights mostly).  They don't get in an argument with you; in fact, they don't talk to you.  If one of your moves don't suit them they sail in.
  Everybody indulges in four habits down here.  They are: (1) drink, (2) chew, (3) smoke cigaretts, (4) never try to keep themselves clean; and I might add another one: They do not work, but just loaf around the depot.  One train a day passes here.  If you miss it you have to wait until the next day to catch one.  When you alight from a train here you are under the impression that it is a big town, you see so many people around the depot; in fact the whole town is there: women, chidlren and all-and such an ignorant bunch, too.  If a fellow wears a white collar, buys two or three five cent cigars and treats the bunch at a bottle, he can have anything that's in the town.  Ha, ha!  Tell them wha't in Chicago and they say I'm crazy.  They think a five-story building is impossible.  Of course, some have traveled, but on the whole they are humorous to look at.  Some never shave.  Others come into town as early as 4:40 carrying a double-barreled shotgun, and sit around the deport alld ay.
  There are a lot of revenue officers around here, and they carry their lives in chance, for they are looking for stills where these men make whisky in the hills.  The way they look at a stranger here pretty nearly freezes him.  I am going into the Indian Territory the first of next week, where I will write you my next descriptive letter.
  Now, as a matter of fact, Columbus is a fine Kansas town, of many fine brick buildings four and five stories high, and there is not an Indian living within fifty miles of the place.  It has fine train service, and its people are educated and cultured.
  Coffeyville is far from being the place pictured by this Chicago touter.  neither are there any moonshiners in the hills around Columbus; in fact, Columbus in located on a large plain with practically no hills in the country.
  The poor mother has been saved an endless amount of worry by the losing of the above letter, as it might have been the cause of worrying her into a premature grave.  Picture your own mother without a knowledge of Kansas, or better, suppose that you were in the wilderness of an island of the South Seas.  Such an action is cause enough to make a man an enemy to himself.
  From all indications, this Kenneth Conn was nothing but a gentleman tourist of the freight trains, and probably lost the letter in sleeping off a big hobo spree in a box car beloinging to the St. Louis & San Francisco railway, with the result that the car turned up here with the letter in as above stated.

(Now, do you suppose that the Wichita Eagle went ahead and sent that letter to that poor mother, so that she would at least know her son was alive?)