290401 “My Country Tish of Thee”

You did not misread that title, nor did I misspell it.

 

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) was a popular and prodigious writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Her most productive years were roughly from 1910 to about 1940. One series of her fiction was centered on a character she created named Letitia (“Tish”) Carberry. Rinehart also authored a couple of travelogue type books, among them Through Glacier Park –Seeing America First with Howard Eaton (1916) and Tenting Tonight: A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and Cascade Mountains (1918).

Over the years, the Great Northern Railway hosted, contracted, or otherwise encouraged a whole parade of specialists to aid in trumpeting the glories of Glacier National Park, to which it alone provided convenient and comfortable transportation for many years. These specialists ran the gamut of authors, painters, poets, and photographers.

The GN’s President, Louis W. Hill, hit upon the popular promotional phrase “See Europe if you will, but see America first!” – he did not coin the phrase, but he put it to clever use promoting the GN’s access to and lodging choices in and around Glacier Park (although for the GN's purposes, Hill shortened it to merely "See America First"). Other proponents of the park created the phrase “The Call of the Mountains” to entice people to come to Glacier Park. In this episode of Empire Builders we see the use of both of these iconic promotional phrases.

Enthusiasts of Glacier Park were already acquainted with Rinehart’s work by the time she agreed to supply the railroad with a story to be worked into a script for Empire Builders.

On the April 1, 1929, airing of Empire Builders, Rinehart’s character ‘Tish Carberry journeys to Glacier National Park on an outing with two of her spinster friends, Lizzie and Aggie. The first few minutes of the program belonged to the announcer, John S. Young. He waxed poetic about the many magnificent virtues of Glacier National Park, saying among other things:

If you are normal and philosophical, if you love your country, if you are willing to learn how little you count in the eternal scheme of things, if your soul needs refreshment, harken to the call of the mountains – go west and ride in the Rockies of Glacier National Park. Glacier Park is a land of jagged colorful peaks, of straight spired forests of pine and fir, of great glacier-carved basins in the cool shadowy depths of which lie blue lakes, of hanging glaciers set off by somber cliffs and of flashes of sunlight on the cascades that tumble from hidden lakes and snowfields a thousand feet and more. Here is the last home of the primitive Blackfeet Indians and the last stand of the shy mountain goat and the timid, big horned sheep. Here you may ride trails through snow fields that defy the summer’s sun and along the borders of which are June roses, forget-me-nots, larkspur, bear grass and the brilliant Indian paintbrush – trails of a beauty to make you gasp.

Young then called upon the Old Timer (Harvey Hays) to announce the evening’s story. The Old Timer shared that he was going to borrow a story from his old friend, Mary Roberts Rinehart. The Old Timer said:

You know it’s a funny thing how every now an’ then somebody discovers the great American Northwest all for themselves, an’ when they do, there’s no holdin’ ‘em back. They jest run wild! But my, they certainly do have a good time! There was these three old maiden ladies, Tish, an’ Lizzie an’ Aggie, an’ when they started out to see America first the fun began. Tish, she was the strong minded one, an’ Lizzie an’ Aggie they jest trailed along an’ prayed to be saved. ‘Twas while the war was on, an’ Tish was all fer goin’ to Europe that summer because she craved excitement, an’ Lizzie an’ Aggie, they was well content to stay at home. They was all three a talkin’ it over one afternoon when Tish’s nephew, young Charlie Sands, dropped in, an’ Charlie he told ‘em to go west. Said the finest place in the whole world fer a vacation was out in Glacier National Park.

 

 

The three “old maids” traveled on a Great Northern train from the city out to Glacier Park, where they decided (with no small amount of trepidation) to take a horse ride into the mountains. Just before they set out on this adventure, they bumped into a young man named Jim Bell whose fiancé Helen had been lured into the excitement of motion pictures. It just so happened that a film company was in Glacier Park at that time, and the producer had talked the young woman into taking a role in his film, a story about bandits holding up people in the park. Tish and her friends were told the movie people would be firing pistols with blanks, but that unsuspecting tourists would not realize the holdup was staged for the sake of making a movie.

An illustration from Rinehart's "Tish" - Letitia, Aggie, and Lizzie on the trail

To complicate things, it became apparent to the old gals that their pastor from back home and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Ostermeier, were vacationing in the park, and were about to become unwitting victims of Hollywood bandits – a bit like people caught on “Candid Camera.” The girls determined they would not stand by idly and let their pastor and his wife be subjected to such an embarrassment. They quickly hatched a plan to foil the “bandits” and put them to shame.

Lo and behold, Tish and her friends came upon the holdup as it was going down. Emboldened by the knowledge that the bandits were armed with guns loaded with blanks, the gals used fake guns whittled out of sticks to get the drop on the “bad guys,” who by now not only had confiscated all of the tourists’ valuables (including Mrs. Ostermeier’s jewelry), they had also kidnapped Bell’s fiancé Helen. Mr. Oliver, the filmmaker, was among them, so the old gals assumed he was in cahoots with them for the sake of catching the whole ordeal on film.


Turns out (wouldn’t you know it), the bandits were genuine, and Letitia and her “gang” of old maids actually saved the day by nabbing some honest-to-goodness wanted outlaws. The truth was not revealed to the old gals, however, until the whole assembly had been marched down to Many Glacier Hotel, where the local sheriff showed up and everyone finally learned the true story. By this point in the broadcast, the Old Timer returned to the microphone to explain how things worked out. He said:

Of course the young girl that wanted to be a movie actress was fooled worse then Tish. She hadn’t counted on no real bandits. Learned her a lesson, it did, an’ she an’ young Mr. Bell they made it up on the spot. Last Tish an’ Aggie an’ Lizzie saw of them two they was down by the edge of the lake in the moonlight watchin’ the snow capped peaks of the Rockies.

The Old Timer then went on to explain to the radio listeners that they need not fear the appearance of real bandits in Glacier Park – it was all just a story for the Empire Builders show.

And no doubt everyone lived happily ever after.