291216 - The Coming of the White Man

Eighty-five years ago today, the Great Northern Railway went on the air with another segment of Empire Builders. This time, the story was “The Coming of the White Man.” The tale was written by a man named Ben Hur Lampman.

Author Ben Hur Lampman
Photo accessed at findagrave.com; posted by contributor Ron Moody.

Without a continuity to reference for this broadcast, the facts of the performance are once again very limited. I do have a press release, and a couple of published news blurbs developed from the press releases that all say pretty much the same thing.

The press release issued by Harold M. Sims of the Great Northern Railway contained the following description of the show:

 
FOR RELEASE ANYTIME                   From Harold M. Sims,
AFTER DECEMBER 9, 1929.               Executive Assistant,
                                                                 Great Northern Railway,
                                                                 St. Paul, Minnesota.
 

A fantasy based on the Coming of the White Man with a young and an old Indian chief as the central characters will be one of the high lights of the Empire Builders’ program for Monday night.

The locale of the modern western romance of which the fantasy is a part will be Portland, Ore., the city of roses. The story was written for Empire Builders by Ben Hur Lampman. The cast includes Harvey Hays as “The Old Timer” and Virginia Gardiner.

Bob MacGimsey, the phenomenal three-part harmony whistler who appears exclusively in Great Northern programs, will be featured in Indian songs with Andy Sannella and his recording orchestra.
 

This program will be broadcast, from 10:30 to 11 o’clock Eastern Time; 9:30 to 10:00  Central Standard Time; 8:30 to 9:00 Mountain Standard Time; and 7:30 to 8:00 Pacific Coast Time, over the following stations: WBZA, Boston; KYW, Chicago; WLW, Cincinnati; WBAP, Dallas-Fort Worth; KOA, Denver; WJR, Detroit; WEBC, Duluth–Superior; KPRC, Houston; WREN, Kansas City (Lawrence); KFI, Los Angeles; WJZ, New York; WKY, Oklahoma City; KDKA, Pittsburgh; KGW, Portland; WHAM, Rochester; KWK, St. Louis; KSTP, St. Paul-Minneapolis; KSL, Salt Lake City; WOAI, San Antonio; KGO, San Francisco; KOMO, Seattle; KHQ, Spokane; WBZ, Springfield; KVOO, Tulsa.

Ben Hur Lampman (1886–1954) was a writer and journalist who spent the majority of his life in Portland, Oregon. Born in Wisconsin and raised in the small town of Neche, North Dakota, Lampman followed in his father’s footsteps and entered the newspaper business as a young man. He married and came out west in 1912 to the town of Gold Hill, Oregon (just outside Medford) and went to work at the local paper. Lampman’s career advanced in 1916 when he hired on with the major newspaper of the state, the Oregonian, in the city of Portland. By 1921, Lampman had become an editor of the paper’s editorial section. Over the course of his lifetime, Ben Hur Lampman had many essays published in such magazines as Atlantic Monthly and the Saturday Evening Post. He also had at least a couple of books published, and in 1951 was named Oregon’s Poet Laureate. After he died in 1954, a state park bearing his name was established near Gold Hill.

With little more to go on than the press release for this broadcast, I think I’ve discovered something that may have inspired Lampman as he penned the story for this broadcast. As a prominent resident of the city of Portland, Oregon, Lampman must have been thoroughly familiar with the city’s landmark public space, Washington Park. First named simply “City Park” when established with just 40 acres in the 1870s, Washington Park had swelled to about 200 acres by the 1920s (and today covers over 400 acres). There are a few sculptures in Washington Park, one of which is called “Coming of the White Man.” This sculpture, designed by artist Herman McNeil (1866-1947), was commissioned by the family of a prominent man of the Pacific Northwest, David P. Thompson. Among many other accomplishments in his illustrious 67 years of life, Thompson served as Mayor of the City of Portland. He passed away in 1901 – the sculpture of “Coming of the White Man” was dedicated in Washington Park in 1904.

Vintage postcard view of Herman McNeil's statue, "Coming of the White Man"

McNeil’s sculpture featured two Native American men, one of whom represented Chief Multnomah. Since Ben Hur Lampman’s story was said to feature two Indian men (one older, and one young), I suspect it was this statue that inspired Lampman in writing his story. Historian Don Colburn has written about Lampman that he was:

. . . a master of the short verbal sketch, a mini-essay inspired by ordinary turns of everyday life. He could find insight — leavened by wry humor and playful language — in the most mundane happenstance. One column ruminated on how urban bystanders act when a pedestrian’s hat blows off in a gust of wind. Others dealt with the dilemma of the ‘returned vacationist,’ Armistice Day, a bootlegger’s dead dog, a garden spider, pipe smoking, wild ducks. Many reflected on Oregon’s natural landscape.

I can envision Lampman taking a stroll in Washington Park and then sitting on a bench near the statue of “Coming of the White Man” to write his fictional story.

Only about a month after this broadcast of Empire Builders, another story by Lampman was used. It was called “Steelhead Fishing” and again featured Oregon locales. It might be mere coincidence, but many years later Lampman published a book titled “The Coming of the Pond Fishes.”

Speaking of coincidences, there seems to be more than just a circumstantial association between some of the principals of the Empire Builders radio series. In this case, I refer to some of the authors of Empire Builders continuities. At a minimum, I know that Harold Sims, Ben Hur Lampman, and Dan Markell all had shared experiences in the news trade in Portland, Oregon.

Sims was born in Minnesota, but lived for a few years in Pocatello, Idaho. Sims was a partner in the creation of the Pocatello News in 1919. He remained in the news business there and in another southern Idaho locale, Twin Falls, until about 1920. After a messy divorce sometime in the early 1920s, Sims relocated to Portland, Oregon, and went to work for the Oregonian newspaper there, beginning in 1924. By this time, Ben Hur Lampman was well established with the Oregonian, and it’s possible that Sims worked with him, or even reported to him – but that’s speculation. From the research I’ve done, it appears Sims stayed on the payroll of the Oregonian until November, 1927, at which time he joined the Great Northern Railway.

Another man who authored some stories for Empire Builders was Dan Markell. He, too, worked in the newspaper business in Portland, Oregon. He wrote for the Portland Telegraph.

To what degree these three men knew each other prior to crossing paths in their work for the GN’s Empire Builders radio series, I cannot say. But my coincidence meter is beginning to red-line.

 

 

Postscript

For several years now, my mom has been dealing with severe hearing loss. She approached an organization called Canine Companions for Independence, and they provided her with a wonderful black lab named Hassie. This very loving and giving animal was my mom's constant shadow, always alerting her to things like phone calls, doorbells, and even tea kettles steaming on the stove. She was, much like any dog who enters and lingers in our lives, very much a part of the family. Just two days ago, as I was composing this week's blog entry, I learned that Hassie had passed away very suddenly. She will be cremated, and my parents will bury her ashes in their rose garden, with a statue of St. Francis of Assisi looking over her remains.

I write all this in large part to segue into an essay by the author of this Empire Builders broadcast, Ben Hur Lampman. In some circles, it is considered his most beloved piece of writing. In 1925, Lampman came across a question posed by a reader of the Ontario (Oregon) Argus, but chose to respond in an editorial in his own paper, the Oregonian.

Where To Bury A Dog

by Ben Hur Lampman

There are various places within which a dog may be buried. We are thinking now of a setter, whose coat was flame in the sunshine, and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought. This setter is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry strews petals on the green lawn of his grave. Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub of the garden, is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavorous bone, or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder. These are good places, in life or in death. Yet it is a small matter, and it touches sentiment more than anything else.

For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, questing, asking, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where that dog sleeps at long and at last. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream he knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture land, where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained, and nothing lost -- if memory lives. But there is one best place to bury a dog. One place that is best of all.

If you bury him in this spot, the secret of which you must already have, he will come to you when you call -- come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again. And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel they should not growl at him, nor resent his coming, for he is yours and he belongs there.

People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper pitched too fine for mere audition, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them then, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth the knowing.

The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.