Volume 10 , Issue 18

Herb Gold Memories

"Linda, Interesting to note that you would come up with something on Herb Gold. In at least partial answer to your question "Who was Herb Gold?", I offer the following columns that I wroter fairly recently. This is about all I know about him, but I have seen his picture.

Article One...
"Herb Gold, whom I never knew, has been described to me as a man who almost daily walked about the square with a small notebook and the stub of a pencil in hand gleaning information from what he observed and who he talked to. One never knew what he would come up with, as he was quite secretive about his business. But his ramblings ranged from the mundane to the interesting, as he reported on who was in town shopping, making comments on construction projects, the government and politics, and almost anything else that came to mind. In the mid-?30s and the heart of the depression, you can imagine that he had plenty of food for comment.

But considering today?s political climate, here?s a little paragraph that perhaps we should all keep in mind. After making a comment or two regarding the dangers of voting party politics regardless of whether their platform items were good or bad, he wrote the following paragraph:

?I let the Republican caucus get plumb by me this time. Hope the Lincoln democrats were not as sleepy as I, but that they turned out in full force and chose the best they have on the Board of Directors. It behooves the citizenship to be alert. To achieve success we must be wide awake. Political success in its final analysis means the welfare and well-being of community, state and nation. Unselfish devotion to the country?s interest is the criterion of party service.?

Article Two...
When I first began writing this column, several old-timers around town mentioned that they thought it was similar in some respects to those of Herb Gold. Gold lived a few miles north of Alva, but came to town and went about the square talking to people, visiting city and county offices, and checking in various businesses, gathering information for a column entitled Street Pickups. I never knew Mr. Gold, but he has been described to me as somewhat small in stature and always handy with a notepad and a stub of a pencil. Some of his columns were in the material given to me by Eleanor Ring some time ago, and I offer some of his gleanings here. All of the writings are from the early to mid-thirties. Come in, Herb:

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?Waynoka was left plumb ?lawless? yesterday. Among the visitors from that town were Mayor Walter Cope, Marshalls Billy Patton and Frank Clemons, Lawyer Everett Wellborn, Editor Gene Hilton, Dan Bolar and Elmer Bixler.

?B. H. Bicknell has a letter from his old home town in Vermont, telling of the terrible winter they?ve had back there. The ground is frozen to a depth of six feet and all the water pipes in town are frozen solid. People are in constant fear of fire.? Note: (B. H. Bicknell was the father of Brooks Bicknell, former Alva Review Courier editor. Ben once owned the Bicknell Department Store on the southwest corner of the square and spent his latter years as a salesman for Tyree?s Mens? Wear. He worked well into his eighties.)

?Looked into the sheriff?s office yesterday as Dewey Randall opened the morning mail. He got several checques to pay back taxes. I was astonished at the brevity of the delinquent list; most of the accounts were small. I believe Woods County is making a record in tax-paying. Our folks are a pretty good bunch.? (Note: The year of this publication is 1931, two years after the ?Black Friday? market crash of 1929.)

?Harvey McGreevey grew reminiscent on the school question. In his day teachers were glad to get $30.00 a month and rode six miles to and from school on horseback. But times have changed since. Then an eighth grader was allowed to teach. Now a teacher has at least two thousand dollars invested in his or her education. Then board only cost $2.50 per week! Now few farmers care to board the teacher. It is well for the taxpayer, who sports a limousine, to remember that the school teacher, too, is human. I am glad sensible liberality toward schools is coming into fashion again.

?One trouble with this time of the year is that the Summers are short and the Winters are too numerous. ?The world do move. I recall that almost 20 years ago Dr. Osler in a speech declared that no man deserves to live beyond 40. After that he might as well be knocked in the head or chloroformed for all the good he could do. Osler was even then a hopeless back number himself. There was a time when it was deemed proper for people to grow old. When men reached the age of 50, they thought they had done enough. They then sat down and let the children and women do the work. They grew long beards, looked wise and expected others to call them Mister. Sitting around idle, like an old cultivator in a fence corner, they soon rusted out and, ere they reached the 60 mark, were carried out feet first.

?Not so now. Men nowadays are ashamed to be idle. Are ashamed to be dependent on the kids. They scorn being fawned upon, preferring to be met on even terms by their fellow men. They?ve learnt that they can keep fit by doing useful work, that rust rather than wear is the bane of mankind.

Note: (Hmmmmm,... Maybe I?ll keep working for a while.)" -- Submitted by Jim Barker
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