Cal Stewart was the most popular American spoken-word recording artist of the early twentieth century, and he was the first performer—as far as I’m aware—whose live appearances were routinely promoted on the basis of his recordings rather than the other way around. I’ve been researching his life, his recordings, and his stage career off and on for the past twenty-five years, and every now and then I’m fortunate enough to run across some new primary source that casts him and his work in an exciting new light. One such source will be the subject of this blog post: a series of letters Cal wrote during 1917 to his agent, Palmer Kellogg (1870-1945), describing his experiences touring Iowa and southern Minnesota with his itinerant theatrical troupe.
Postcard inviting the manager of the Opera House in Dover, Illinois, to subscribe to the Opera House Reporter. If he did, and then kept up his subscription for the next nine years, he might have read Cal’s letters.
These letters didn’t turn up in an archive, or on eBay, or in a dusty attic somewhere. Instead, I found them published as a weekly feature in the Opera House Reporter, a periodical described as “the veteran organ of the rep and one-night troupers in the Mid-West” that had relocated its headquarters from Estherville to Des Moines, Iowa, midway through the series. The Opera House Reporter is pretty obscure, and it’s no wonder Cal’s letters in it ended up forgotten and overlooked for so long. But a few years ago the Estherville Public Library collaborated with Advantage Archives to digitize several dozen issues from microfilm and post them freely online as a resource for local history. A shot-in-the-dark online search led me to one of Cal’s published letters there, and that letter led me in turn to the others. With the present blog post, I’d like to draw some attention to this series for the first time in over a century.
Unfortunately, the online scans of the Opera House Reporter are imperfect and incomplete. Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful they exist at all. But the cumulative effects of problems with microfilming, scanning, and digital curation have left some of Cal’s letters partly or wholly illegible and others missing altogether. For a couple years I’ve sat on this find, thinking I ought to try to fill in the gaps in the text before going public with it. But the perfect is the enemy of the good, and I’ve decided that it’s better to publish what I have now, even in its fragmentary form, than to wait until I can track down better copies that may or may not survive. So be forewarned: what I have to offer here is in far worse shape than Hoosier Hollow, the previously unpublished Cal Stewart play I unveiled here back in 2015—and I remember thinking at the time that it was a mess.
In my transcriptions below, I’ve marked select uncorrected typos or misspellings in red and interpolations in blue.
Fun fact: Palmer Kellogg thought so highly of Cal Stewart that he named his son after him, and Cal apparently attended the christening, since we read: “Mr. and Mrs. Stewart are just now at Chicago, but will be present Sunday evening at the ceremonies” (“Will Christen Baby,” News and Sentinel [Fort Wayne, Indiana], June 13, 1918, p. 8). Cal Stewart Kellogg (1917-2001) went on to pursue a career as a physician and surgeon in Florida, and his son Cal Stewart Kellogg II (b. 1947), Palmer Stewart’s grandson, is an accomplished musical conductor—as of this writing, he’s Music Director and Conductor of the West Valley Symphony. I’d love to know whether any memories of Cal Stewart have been passed along in Kellogg family lore.
Introduction: Opera House Reporter, December 1, 1916, p. 7.
“After many years,” Palmer Kellogg bobbed up again the other day with just as much ginger as in the days of yore. Many, many seasons ago, Mr. Kellogg blew into town ahead of one of the big Whitney musical shows. We met him then but for some reasons unknown to us, he passed up the town until this week when he dropped in to say “Howdy” and arrange a booking for Cal Stewart and his concert party. Mr. Kellogg has been booking Mr. Stewart for several seasons and when here, his first open date was Ground Hog Day, indicating that Mr. Kellogg is a hustler and that the public is anxious to see and hear that genial apostle of Pumpkin Center, once more.
* * *
Letters which Cal Stewart sends to Palmer Kellogg, who is booking the Stewart attraction, designate Kellogg as “Heap-Talk” for the Cal Stewart Co. The return cards runs something like this:
Postmaster:
Please hold this
Until Palmer calls
He is as sensative as a child
And will feel badly
If he don’t get it.The Stewart company this season includes the inimitable Cal, a pianist, a singer, who, by the way, is a sister of Cal’s and a violinist.
Letter #1: Opera House Reporter, January 26, 1917, p. 11.
Cal To His Agent
Sugar Creek, Minn.,
January 21, 1917.Mr. Palmer Kellogg (Heap talk)
Dear Palmer:
On arriving here found the drayman waiting at depot with two hay racks, three Fords and log wagon to take Company and trunks to the opery. He said when he took the job at 20c a trunk round trip, you told him we had 25 trunks, two loads of flat stuff, 12 drops, one load of props and 15 people. Well, I gave him two passes. The girls walked up town and I rode up with the drayman on the trunk. In your advice you say opery house is four blocks from depot and walk. You meant four miles, didn’t you? There are four or five towns as big as this that use the same depot and the railroad don’t run through any of them. And you say three hotels, the Traveler’s Rest, the Great Western and the Higbees. I think you got this out of a Sears Roebuck catalogue. The Travelers Rest is still running or at least trying to; the Great Western is now a Ford round house and Higbees is the section foreman’s home and he only rooms the men who work on the section. On arrival here could not find the manager but found our paper lying back of the picture screen. His wife said they didn’t know what to do with it ’cause there was so much ice they couldn’t get around to put it up, and there was only one store that had a big window and they put two of the picture cards in it for which they gave passes to the store keeper and his family. Finally found the manager. He had been out in the country attending a hog sale. He said we would have a good crowd ’cause he told every one at the sale that we was coming. I asked how many were at the sale and he said he guessed all of twenty. He said we would have to give the whole show as he was to have had a three reel picture ealled “The White Rat’s Dilemma” but the films didn’t come. Wanted to know if I ever heard of it. I told him I thought it had been well advertised in most of the theatrical papers. Well, Palmer we gave the show to capacity. Your advice says seating capacity 400. Its 185 now. The manager said he took some seats out to keep from paying the infernal revenue on them. We had 38 passes out. I got my hair cut for two; the girls got washing done for ten; the town marshall had four for keeping order and I’m glad he had them, and at that I think the high cost of living was the only thing that saved us: no sane person will waste an egg these days. I thihk you must have got this town by phone or else you booked it on a dark night, as your advice says three blocks from hotel to theatre and the main street of the town is only one block long. Beyond that in either direction is just plain terra firma. I told that to one of the natives and he said he used to live here but he moved out to New Brassky. Why you ever booked this will always be a mystery to me. There hasn’t been a crowd here since the early settlers traded plug hats and a string of beads to the guardians for Sugar Creek, and at that the settlers got the worst of it. Note you have booked Lick Skillet and Rumsey Falls for two nights. I am afraid Rumsey Falls is too small for two nights. Don’t book anything under 300 population for two nights.
Best from all,
Yours truly,
Cal Stewart.
Letter #2: Opera House Reporter, February 2, 1917—maybe. The fourteen sequentially numbered scans presented for this issue online represent pages 1, 2, 3, 2 (repeated), 3 (repeated), 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 16. I suspect Cal probably had a letter published on one of the four “missing” pages 12-15. If not, this would have been the only issue of the Opera House Reporter between January 26 and March 30 that didn’t contain one.
Letter #3: Opera House Reporter, February 9, 1917, p. 13.
The opening text of this letter took some reconstructing.
Telling It To The Agent
Nora Springs, Iowa.
Palmer Kellogg
Heap Talk for Cal Stewart Co.Dear Palmer:—
We had an awful time in getting out of Jackson, Minn. No trains from 8:10 Saturday night until 11:50 Monday night. We lost Monday at Worthington and as it was our one chance to see anything resembling a city in sometime, of course we naturally felt quite badly over it.
Your advice said, change cars at Miloma. WE DID. Miloma is “Some Place” to wait for a train, especially at midnight with a blizzard raging. The Depot Master at the Union Station, Miloma, made us as comfortable as possible. He took the hand car out of the waiting room and got real reckless with the railroad company’s coal and loaded up the depot stove until it had indigestion. He brought in some empty chicken coops to use as chairs. The stove didn’t get its act well rehearsed as it did not know what to do with the smoke, so gave it to us and was quite generous about it too. We quit applauding it with the poker and didn’t encourage it in taking any encores.
The night operator at Miloma is quite familiar with the Morse Code, except that portion of it which pertains to calling the Dispatcher and finding out whether or not they are moving trains. He could go out and come in again as often as any human being I ever knew and at each of his out-goings and in-comings we got a fresh installment of the blizzard and while this didn’t increase our warmth and good nature yet it helped the stove to take care of the smoke. By this time the stove was breaking in a new act entitled “The Eruption of Vesuvius.” It looked as though it would get the big time with it; but all joys have an end and our festivities was brought to a conclusion at 9:50 Tuesday morning when a train arrived with an engine pulling it, that looked as though it was a twin brother to the depot stove only it had less smoke.
At Rumsey Falls the manager said you sent him a lot of copper plates but the pictures on them weren’t very good. He put them in the post office window but he didn’t think anybody seen them. When I asked him for them he was some time locating them but finally found his son cracking walnuts on two of them; and the other one was being used by his wife to set the flat iron on. I would suggest that you do not leave more than three cuts in a town that has no paper or printing office.
At our Friday town we had poor business owing to the opposition: Miss Birdie Gingseng had just returned from completing her musical education at the John Deere Conservatory, Moline, Ill., and was giving a free warble-fest at the M. E. Church. And on Saturday May Hobson was following us in with the society drama, “Custer’s Last Charge,” and they were pawning their shucking pegs to see it as it was the society event of the season. Mrs. Hiram Corndogger and her charming daughters, Sarah Ann and Minerva, were giving a box party to the Misses Peachblow from Coon Hollow and the manager was cleaning out the boxes in the opery hall. One was used for a coal bin and the stage cat was raising a family in the other one.
Please try and book a town that has a laundry.
Yours truly,
Cal Stewart.
Letter #4: Opera House Reporter, February 16, 1917, p. 3.
Telling It To The Agent.
Hampton, Iowa.
Mr. Palmer Kellogg.
Heap Talk for Cal Stewart Co.We are snowed in again. This makes the third time in two weeks. It’s getting to be a habit with us. We arrived here to find that Manager Russell had the town billed, saying: “Fair and Warmer,” but the mercury dropped out of the tube. At this writing we are sitting between a miniature snow drift and the radiator. I know it is a radiator because there is a sign over it that says, “Don’t tinker with the radiator.” There is a struggle for supremacy between the snow drift and the radiator and I have my money on the snow drift, as it is now two laps ahead, and growing steadily. I am of the opinion that this is a union radiator and its eight hours are up. From present indications we will be entitled to vote here before we get out.
At Lick Skillit the manager has his own electric light plant. The dynamo is run by a two horse gasoline engine but only one horse is working and the other has string halt and that engine has the asthma and back fires on every third stroke. It coughed at the finish of every joke in my monologue and furnished a poor accompaniment for the violin selections of Miss Rossini’s Brahms Hungarian Gypsy dance, with gas engine obligato. I am afraid it will never be a big seller. You wouldn’t believe what the native said about it, so I won’t tell you; but they were loyal to the gas engine of their own home town.
At Coon Hollow found a fine house and nice manager. I am told they have a nice audience. The manager told me he thought some of putting in orphan vaudeville. He asked me if I knew anything about that circuit. I told him I thought the orphan circuit was what had been called the telephone circuit. He wanted to know if it was much of a circuit and I told him I thought it was a man in New York by the name of Bell who was at the head of it. He said he would write Bell.
Upon our arrival at our Saturday town we found the manager did not have our photos out, but he had out a board containing pictures of every side show break the world has ever known. He said more people would stop to look at them than at ours, and from the manner in which he had them displayed I was glad our photos were not out. My next order for photos will be for the type that are rube and rain proof. There was too much paper ordered for this town. You can’t put up one hundred window cards in a town that has only eight stores on the main street and the manager says they won’t let him put them in the greenhouse and that’s the only thing that has windows enough. I think forty is too big a free list for a town of 400 population. When you give every tenth person a pass the others get jealous and won’t come, and it hurts business. Four dining room girls, two lady clerks in the Emporium and two in the telephone office had your individual passes here. Three of them asked me if you was married. Jim, our property man, business manager and transportation agent, says you are hurting his business. He is compiling the troopers and drummers guide.
If not a town with a laundry, book one that has a wash lady.
Cal Stewart.
Letter #5: Opera House Reporter, February 23, 1917, p. 11.
Telling It To The Agent.
Odebolt, Iowa.
Palmer Kellogg Heap Talk for Cal Stewart Co.
Dear Palmer:
On our move from Rockwell City to Odebolt, you say transfer at Wall Lake, one mile; it’s a mile all right. If the roads were level it would be four. Who signed your baggage contract for this transfer, the man whose name you gave on the contract has been dead five years. I asked the station agent what the man died of and he said he thought it was lack of business that killed him. When our trunks were put off on the platform the section men stopped work to come and look at them. The agent said we were the first ones to transfer there in seven years. When I told him you routed us this way he said you would be a valuable man for Russell’s guide.
Jim, our business manager, property man and electrician, after using eighty cents in telephone calls, finally found a man who had a horse. ? This man said he would haul us over for ten cents a head, and ten cents a trunk; as he was the only one we could get, we had to stand for his extortion so gave him the job and he hauled us over just in time to miss our train, and we had five hours in which to think up names for that horse. I used all the names I knew during the drive; that horse was lame everywhere except his appetite. The man said he bought him of an undertaker. I asked him why the undertaker sold him and he said: “Wall he was too slow for the hearse.” At our Thursday town after the performance I gave a phonograph demonstration on the stage for the local dealer. He said he was willing to pay for it and he did. Then Marjorie Stewart sold the Uncle Josh Jokester and Song Book, and Gypsy Rossini sold the manager’s wife a receipe for a face lotion, and Jim gathered in some names for his troopers and drummers’ guide. The manager wanted to know why we didn’t carry a folding coat and hat rack and check the coats and hats of the audience. He said that was about all that we missed. On our move from Storm Lake to Sioux Falls, the train you picked for us, was one of the things Noah overlooked when the Lord commanded him to take all creeping and crawling things into the ark. The engine of that train had a five foot whistle and a two foot boiler, and as the law requires the engineer to blow the whistle at road crossings, we stopped at each road crossing. That engine couldn’t whistle and run at the same time.
On our Friday move your advice says we get dinner at the Junction. It was noon when we got there and the man who runs the lunch counter had gone home to dinner. Don’t give more than thirty passes in a two hundred town. We have given up all hopes of a laundry. See if you can find some woman that does washing, then book the town. Get her to take passes for the washing.
Cal Stewart.
Letter #6: Opera House Reporter, March 2, 1917, pp. 13-14.
More reconstruction required.
Telling It To The Agent.
West Side, Ia.
Mr. Palmer Kellogg:
Heap Talk for Cal Stewart Co.Dear Palmer:
I don’t know what this is the west side of, but from the names of the residents it might be the west side of a German battlefield.
For over a week I have been trying to figure out what the puzzle was you had signed to the baggage contract for this town. On arrival here I found it was Schoenenhoffenberger. The manager—Mat Huschen, met us at the depot and introduced me to Carl Liedenhein, Julius Swartskopf, Rudolph Meidenkrantz, Heinrch Smelderhans and other prominent citizens.
Marjorie Stewart, who has been singing “If You Don’t Like Your Uncle Sammy”, will tonight sing “Die Wacht Am Rhein,” Gypsy Rossini will play “The Stilly Night,” and I am trying to remember—Du Du Ligst Mir Im Helsen. I think Jim will have to hide.
Your advice says: City Hotel here and your advice is right—they put it all on the table, fire a pistol and shout: “Go!” And we went. “Ach Das Essen.” I can’t remember when the world looked brighter than after a meal at the City Hotel, West Side, Iowa, (No rate for this).
We played for the benefit of the High School Gymnasium at Missouri Valley. One of the boys told me they thought they would buy a dumb bell with their share of the receipts. We had a very strong opposition at Missouri Valley, as it was Washington’s Birthday so they were having a Washington party at the opera house. The main feature of the program was when a well known citizen of Missouri Valley was going to try and emulate Washington, and as there seemed to be a great doubt as to whether he could do it or not—never having done it before, it quite naturally attracted a great crowd. The High School at Missouri Valley is most appropriately named, being an eighty-five per cent grade for nine blocks from the main street. I can now understand how the Egyptians built the pyramids. The students of Missouri Valley High School are looking forward to Commencement Day, when they can take off their skid chains.
We played Cherokee on the 19th. Another manager has taken the Grand Opera House at Cherokee. I am informed that he traded a second hand corn sheller, a Blickensderfer typewriter, a muzzle-loading shot gun, a buggy and a book of trading stamps for the lease. I had quite a conversation with the new manager to be—he should have kept the corn sheller.
The landlord at the hotel at our Wednesday town said when he made a rate of one dollar a day for us, you told him there was nineteen in the company and he had been running all over town getting rooms for us.
At our Thursday town the landlord at the hotel would not let us register until after the evening train came in as he said we would take all three of his rooms and he didn’t want to disappoint any [of] his commercial trade.
At our Monday town, the chairman of the committee wanted to know if our show was a clean one in every particular. As we had all got a bath and some clean clothes that morning, I told him just at that moment I thought it was the cleanest show on the road. Don’t let this interfere with your booking a town that at least has running water.
Jim has his right hand bandaged as he very foolishly tried to enter names in his “Troupers and Drummers Guide,” here at West Side.
The fire whistle at Jefferson emptied the house just as I was making the announcement for the “Uncle Josh Songster and Joke Book,” so I had no sale. Curtail your dining room and Admiral passes and give two to the chief of the fire department.
Cal Stewart.
Letter #7: Opera House Reporter, March 9, 1917, p. 10.
I did my best to reconstruct the illegible parts of the text, but a few words and names remain elusive.
Telling It To The Agent.
Cedar Rapids, Ia.
Palmer Kellogg,
Heap Talk for Cal Stewart Co.Dear Palmer:
You came very near demoralizing the show when you brought us into Cedar Rapids to change cars, and gave us nine hours in which to do it. Upon our arrival here the whole troupe run amuck and I put in two whole hours in getting them rounded up. Marjorie Stewart made a mad dash into a ten cent store and spent a whole week’s salary there. I bought out one whole section of a Dairy Lunch counter. Gypsy Rossini ran out of a department store just in time to catch the train, and at that she was only four seconds ahead of the conductor’s call of “All Aboard.” Jim spent two dollars and eighty cents riding on the street cars. I was told by the traffic officer four times to walk on the side walk and not walk in the middle of the street, and just as we were getting used to city ways, we had to leave; but we improved our time while in the Rapids. I got a new Russell’s Guide and had quite a talk with the publishers of the Guide, and cited them to a number of towns that we had found, which were not in their guide. We attempted to play Reinbeck for the benefit of the band as per your advice, and co[….] Upon our arrival in Reinbeck we found that the band wanted us all right, but was keeping it a secret. The leader of the band, or president, I forget which, is a phonograph dealer and butcher in Reinbeck. While he was in his place of business he sold […] yards of link sausage, and a record entitled “Until We Meet Again.” Just before show time the band played three times in front of the opera house and twice inside and then went home. We waited until 5:40 for the customers to arrive and then we followed the band. In a conversation with the band leader, he said from their standpoint our coming was a great benefit to them, as it was the first time they had been able to get the band all together in over a year. I told him it sounded longer. (Get at least an eight dollar guarantee on all future benefit d[…)]. At our Thursday town the landlord at […] hotel gave us the rate quoted in your advice but charged me twenty-five cents extra for heat as the pipe from the kitchen stove ran through my room. There was a horse collar, a log chain and a pair of stirrups in the room. The landlord said the law made him put them in. I asked him if there was danger of fire. He said not while coal costs what it does now. The dining room girl said she would like to go with a show and asked me what I thought she could do. After hearing her take and deliver four orders, I told her she would make a great shouting juggler. On our Friday move you gave […] drive of twelve miles and said use auto […] Junction. There is only one auto in the neighborhood and the owner of that was using it to run a clover huller. You should have arranged with this man to hull his clover before, or after our date. We rode to town with the rural free delivery man. The word “free” pertains to mail not us. I paid him two dollars per head. I helped him sort his mail and told him all the stories I knew and gave him two prop cigars. We were the last show booked in the town as the theatre goes back into the feed sale and livery business the first of the month.
Cal Stewart.
Letter #8: Opera House Reporter, March 16, 1917, p. 4. The page with Cal’s letter got scanned, at least, but unfortunately it’s largely illegible throughout—I can scarcely make out a single intelligible sentence. You’re welcome to try to decipher it for yourself if you like. Maybe I should organize a contest for the most plausible reading.
Letter #9: Opera House Reporter, March 23, 1917, p. 7.
Telling It To The Agent.
Sabula, Ia.
Mr. Palmer Kellogg,
Heap Talk For Cal Stewart Co.Dear Palmer:
During the past week we have changed cars at North McGregor so often that on our last trip in there, while waiting for the pile driver to side track for the Elkader Limited, the town marshal called me aside and wanted to know my business. Said he had noticed me looking around the depot for several days. I told him it was no fault of mine. It was the fault of a fellow named Palmer Kellogg. He wanted to know if you was the same Kellogg that he knew. I asked him what did the Kellogg he knew did. He said, “Well he came here one time and tried to give a show in the old round house. He flooded the cinder pits for some gals to do swimming acts in. He put some seats on the turn table and put flags on it and used it for a Merry Go Round and charged us a nickle to ride on it. He hired me to push the turn table for him. He said he would give me a pass to the show while I was pushing that darned old turn table around and I didn’t get to see the show, and when I went in the round house to look for him they were all gone. I came pretty near losing my job as marshal and I haven’t heard of him since. Wonder if it’s the same fellow.” I told him I thought it was and no telling what you would have me doing before the season was over. He said: “Well, go in the depot and rest. I’ll bet you need it.” We played Guttenberg, your advice says for the benefit of Community Club, so named because no one in the community is interested in it. At least not to any great extent. If we have war with Germany, travelers entering Guttenberg will have to provide themselves with a passport. Guttenberg reminds me very much of the Platte River in Nebraska, which is three miles wide and an inch deen. Guttenberg is two miles long and a block wide. I think you found this town in Baedecker’s Guide on foreign travel. The Turner Hall Theatre is at one end of the town, the hotel in the other. Margie Stewart asked the landlord if she could get a taxi. He said: “Yes, der taxes vas awful high now, everything vas all the time higher yet.” He also informed us there was not much to be got in Guttenberg with a show. He said: “All vot gets good crowd now is ven der vas Chawtickva or License Burlesque Shows.” And he was right. We got $18.62, our share, and it was not storming any harder than usual. We went from Guttenberg to Elkader, changing cars at Beulah as per your advice. It was 5:00 a. m. when we arrived there and found the depot stove was out of commission. I shall no longer respect the author of the hymn, “Beulah Land.” After waiting four hours we got the mixed train for the city with the cigarette name. Found a real theatre and a real manager and as we were under the auspices of the High School, personally conducted by Mr. George Lentts, a very live wire phonograph dealer. Our stay in the Turkish stronghold was a very pleasant one. The train between Beulah and Elkader is a fine object lesson of the hardships the early settlers had to endure. When we last saw it, there was quite a discussion as to which would have the right of way; the train, a cow or the creek (I have since learned that the creek won). You redeemed yourself by booking us into Savanna. We sat in the Radke Café and I handed Jim the menu. He said you look up this jump as I looked up the last one, but if it’s another drive I quit. On the last drive we made I had to lead the livery man’s horse for eight miles and when I got on his blind side he stepped on me, and I have been thinking ever since that I might as well have walked, but when he found it was not a time table but a bill of fare he signed for next season. If you can get the route of Leon Finch, please follow it. He is a great second man at Prairie du Chien. He left the stage all set for us, our props all in and Manager Harris and I are both of the opinion that his announcement for us did not hurt the business a bit. (Thanks, Leon). Will do it for you some time if you think they won’t mob you after I have done it. We have received our first adverse criticism from the editor of the press at Strawberry Point. I have written the aforesaid editor ? and referred him to that portion of the Scripture wherein Baalam was rebuked by his faithful animal. I can now understand how Baalam must have felt. You should have left this editor another pass.
Cal Stewart.
Letter #10: Opera House Reporter, March 30, 1917, p. 9. There’s no scan viewable online for page 8, which is unfortunate because that’s the page on which Cal’s next letter must have begun. We instead pick the text up where it continues on page 9.
[…]rice. And now for Sabula. Manager Long and the K. P. Auditorium there are both fine. I don’t know whether or not Manager Long is a Pythian but he should be. It takes a “suave man” to run a house in Sabula, especially on a Saturday night. At that time the residents of Sabula take in the sidewalks, lock the doors, take the last train and go to Savanna. So why you booked us in Sabula on Saturday is beyond my ken. If you had left us in Savanna, Sabula would have come to us. They come anyhow. I asked the landlord at the hotel how many trains stopped at Sabula and what Express Company was there. He said he didn’t know but he would call up central and find out, and he did. I learned afterwards that being quite deaf the telephone was the only thing he could hear and the enjoyed talking to it and he missed no opportunity to call up Central. I tried to have a conversation with him, and I said it looks like more snow. He said the ferry won’t run for a week or so. I said no, it looks like more snow. He said I don’t know but I think so. I said (deleted by censor) and he said, “Yes, I have been well.” Our sentence expired on Monday morning and we left for Maquoketa. It’s hard enough to spell this without playing it, and you gave me an order for printing for this town. With the word Maquoketa in it ninety-seven times and the printers wired me that they had my order for croquet and it would be filled promptly and it cost me two dollars and forty cents for telegrams to straighten it out and then the printers spelled in Mosquitika and it made the town peeved at us and as a consequence the Hose Company under whose auspices we played, will have to sell their hose to get even. We had a very pleasant engagement for the Child’s Conservation League at Tipton. Jim joined the League and gave it his most earnest effort. The child that Jim selected was a fine looking blonde about out of the childhood class. Our engagement for the King’s Daughters was not so successful. You said in your advice that as there was one hundred of the King’s Daughters we would do well there. Of the one hundred of the aforesaid daughters there ninety-eight of them were laying off and the other two were applying the Adamson law to their hours of work. There was not a large gathering at our refined an pleasing program of instrumental and vocal numbers (See small bills for time and place). Your advice said on move from West Liberty to Williamsburg, change cars at South Amana and transfer one mile. That mile reminded me of the mile through the packing house district of South Omaha. It’s the longest mile I know of. That mile has several furlongs to spare and still be a good healthy full grown mile and we had eleven minutes in which to do it and catch the local freight on the C. M. & St. P. R. R. and for the first time in the history of the road that train was on time. So while Jim was commandeering a farm wagon to haul us and our trunks that mile I burned up the phone in an earnest endeavor to get the agent and conductor to hold the train. The agent said he would ask the conductor and let me know and finally when I had visions of a drive to Williamsburg the phone rang and the agent said the conductor would hold the train as he and the rear brakeman were helping the section foreman get a ground hog out of a culvert. When we got over that mile and I paid the farmer for hauling us he said for another dollar he would have taken us to Williamsburg. We finally got started and I noticed the head brakeman taking tickets. I asked him where the conductor was and he said he is riding on the pilot of the engine. I said “What is he doing that for?” and he said, “Well, that section boss at South Amana was mistaken, that wasn’t a ground hog in the culvert.” And Jim had just started to help him when the train pulled out. We have always thought Jim was a lucky boy. Will see you at The Reporter office in Des Moines, Saturday the 31st upon which occasion there will be no need of writing it to you and you will then hear a lot of things that The Reporter has refused to print.
Cal Stewart.
There might have been a letter from Cal in the Opera House Reporter for April 6, 1917. The eighteen sequentially numbered scans presented for this issue online represent pages 1, 1 (repeated), 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 8, 9 (repeated), 10, 11 (repeated), 12, 13 (repeated), 14, 15 (repeated), 16. So Cal could have had a letter published on one of the three missing pages—that is, on page 2, 4, or 6. But he states in his previous letter that he’d be in Des Moines the following week and that there would accordingly “be no need of writing” then, so it would make some sense for him to have skipped his weekly letter. There is, at least, a news item about Cal Stewart on page 3 of this issue:
Cal Stewart with his Uncle Josh stories and phonograph tone test demonstrations attracted immense crowds to Harger & Blish’s store and demonstration rooms in Des Moines last Saturday. Cal brought out more people than any other attraction, which they have previously engaged. Though under the care of a physician, Mr. Stewart gave as many recitals as requested. He has been confined to his bed at the Chamberlain Hotel all this week and hopes to be able to pick up his route at Omaha on Saturday.
Last Available Letter: Opera House Reporter, April 13, 1917, pp. 9-10.
Telling It To The Agent.
Des Moines.
Mr. Palmer Kellogg,
Heap Talk for Cal Stewart Co.Dear Palmer:
I felt all along that the date you handed me here would result in tying me up and it did. Was not quite certain just what was the matter but after a conference between an allopath, homeopath, osteopath, chiropractor (Iowa made) and a regular doctor, they arrived at the august conclusion that I had a sore foot and so I have been confined in cell 414 of the Chamberlain Hotel for the past ten days while the doctor has been trying to coax my starboard foot to assume its normal size at $2.50 per coax, and as not much headway was made with the twice daily coax the disciple of Aesculapius decided on cutting down its rations, for some time to come. It can not have pie, cake, pudding, peas, prunes, peaches, pears or sugar, in its tea and coffee, and I had it all figured out that perhaps that would not be such a great sacrifice after all, and then Willie Kaiser had to go and get in bad with Uncle Sam and my patriotism compels me ta further censure the foot’s bill of fare. No longer, or at least until such time as Willie Kaiser gives unmistakable signs of an evident and sincere desire to be good, can that starboard foot have such delicate rations as brot wurst, liver wurst, wienie wurst and haasen puffeffer, oh, that’s the worst yet. This last is taken from the Webster time, which, although in use for some time, has taken a new lease of life owing to our strained relations with Willie Kaiser, nor can it have Swartz brod pumpernickel kallteraufschnitz, kraut, pig’s knuckles mit, and between the prohi laws. (Note the Anheuser refrigerator cars for conclusive evidence of enforcement) and our patroitism. Bock Beer—a long farewell, au revoir and auf wiedersen ! ! ! ! Here enter copious tears followed by many hurrahs, heap huzzas and business of waving flag. It’s going to be hard on the foot but if our country needs it we will diet the other foot. We will be able to hit the trail next Monday the 16th and realizing the changed conditions that will prevail, we are taking advantage of our enforced idleness to arrange a new program as follows: We are to open if possible with “The Star Spangled Banner” with audience standing and light effects but at rehearsal yesterday we found the ukallele was not a patriotic instrument or at least the National anthem as played by Marjorie Stewart on the aforesaid uke would never be recognized as a soul stirring patriotic air. Any soldier, sailor or marine in the service would have good and sufficient grounds for desertion upon hearing “The Star Spangled Banner” rendered on the ukallele; so we decided to sing it. We got as far as, Oh, say, can you see,— pause. Oh, say can you see,—pause, and consultation; again, Oh say can you see,—and there we discovered it was not certain what we could see. Jim said it was in the early twilight, but Marjorie Stewart said, “No it was by the camp fire’s light.” Gypsy Rossini said she thought it was by the first ray of light, (getting warm but not it) and I said by the rockets red light. I knew that was in it some where and it might as well be there, not many in the audience would know the difference, but they all objected so we will open with “Marching Through Georgia.” Jim knows one verse of it. The second number will be a patriotic recitation, “Paul Revere’s Ride.” I will wave a lantern from the top of a set house in 4 and Jim will do Paul Revere on a prop horse. We are building the horse now. It will be quite some excess but we must have this number. During my waving of the lantern Marjorie Stewart will give effect of distant cannon firing with bass drum in wing, and Gypsy Rossini will read the poem, “Listen My Children and You Shall Hear of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” The lights will be well down during the time J[i]m and the prop horse are crossing the stage. We do not want the audience to get the wrong impression of how Paul Revere looked or what kind of a horse he had. Instead of my regular rural monologue I will deliver a recitation entitled “The Pacifist’s Dream,” dedicated to one whose initials are W. T. B. I have a pacifist story to tell after this that ought to be a hit. Here is the story: “Back in Punkin Center in the village board was old Ezera Haskins and Ezra never agreed with any one that the oldest inhabitant could remember of and every time the board would meet nothing could be done cause Ezra would say, ‘Hold on a minute; now I’ve been in the harness thirty-five years, and I know.’ And every meeting night he would tell them of the thirty-five years he had been in the harness and they got tired of hearing it, so finally Jim Lawson said ‘Yes we all know you have been in the harness thirty-five years and the only place the harness shows any wear is in the breeding.’ Jim Lawson, they say, is thoroughly in favor of obsolute preparedness. He is loaded most of the time.
Cal Stewart.
The run of the Opera House Reporter available online ends with the issue for April 13, 1917, but Cal’s letters might have continued to appear in later issues.
Now, it may well be possible to improve on the reconstruction of Cal’s letter series I’ve presented here. The pages that got skipped in scanning may exist on the microfilm, and the microfilm might be legible where the scans—with their limited dynamic range—are not. Maybe the original paper copies were preserved after microfilming and can still be consulted. Other sets of the Opera House Reporter might contain relevant issues too: the New York Public Library catalog lists an incomplete run spanning the years 1910-1920, and the Theatre Museum of Repertoire Americana also claims to hold another partial run with years unspecified. If any of my readers are in a position to follow up on either lead, I’d be grateful for the help.
But the story I want to tell here isn’t quite over yet. Some years after Cal’s death, it seems an attempt was made to repackage his letters to Palmer Kellogg as part of his fictional “Uncle Josh” canon. Not that the letters hadn’t had an element of fiction in them to begin with, of course, but this later effort would have cast aside all connection with Cal Stewart’s actual experiences on the road in particular places and at particular times.
In May 2004, an eBay seller who goes by the ID gemie put up for auction a lot of miscellaneous papers that had once belonged to Fred Hager, including documentation of a transfer to him of copyrights held by Cal Stewart’s widow, Rossini Waugh Vrionides. My notes show that the number of the auction was 4212492443, and that it closed on May 24th with no bids—if memory serves, the opening price was set at $1000. I have no idea what ultimately became of these papers, which definitely looked interesting, if not necessarily $1000 interesting. However, the seller sent me a few representative scans at the time, and since a couple of them represent documents filed with the Copyright Office which are properly a matter of public record, I feel free to reproduce them here.
First, here’s the front page of the assignment of copyright, dated November 2, 1934:
I don’t have a scan of “Exhibit #1,” but here’s the part of “Exhibit #2” that lists the contents of “the eighteen manuscript Uncle Josh stories from ‘Uncle Josh’s letter files'”:
The list of eighteen letters is introduced as follows:
When starring out in the sticks Uncle Josh, under the professional name of Junius Brutus-Booth Smith, wrote his manager Mr. Post Rostie Kellogg eighteen (18) letters. These letters are identified by name of the town and date thereon, as follows:
Mr. Post Rostie Kellogg
Dear “Heap Talk”:-
Signed–Junius Brutus-Booth Smith
I didn’t yet know about Cal’s published letters to Palmer Kellogg back in 2004, but now that I do, this looks very much like an attempt to construct an alternative fictional context for them. For a start, “Post Rostie Kellogg” is an obvious parody on his agent’s name: “Kellogg” was by then widely associated with breakfast cereal, and the Post Toastie—twisted here into “Post Rostie”—was a well-known competing product that began with the same letter as “Palmer”: ha ha, very funny. The nickname “Heap Talk” has been carried over unaltered. Meanwhile, the author of the letters is now identified as Cal’s fictional persona “Uncle Josh,” who is said in turn to be using the stage name Junius Brutus-Booth Smith. With the letters reframed in this way, the writer of the copyright assignment is able to characterize them as “eighteen manuscript Uncle Josh stories,” which I suppose would have made them more attractive as a commercial property.
The letters themselves are associated here with locations in Montana, with dates in 1921 (Cal had died in 1919); but a comparison of the specific place names suggests these are nevertheless the same letters that had been published in the Opera House Reporter, with their identifying details only superficially disguised.
- Sugar Creek, Montana, En Route, Sept. 1, 1921. This surely corresponds to the Cal’s Letter #1 from Sugar Creek, Iowa (published January 26).
- Silent City, Montana, En Route, Sept. 6, 1921. If I’m right about the existence of a hypothetical Letter #2 (published February 2), it probably corresponds to this item. The name “Silent City” is now—and was already then—associated with a cemetery in Alden Township, Hardin County, Iowa.
- Coon Hollow, Montana, En Route, Sept. 8, 1921. Cal’s Letter #3 (published February 9) was written from Nora Springs, Iowa, but it mentions a place called Coon Hollow.
- Lick Skillit, Montana, En Route, Sept. 15, 1921. Cal’s Letter #4 (published February 16) was written from Hampton, Iowa, but it mentions a place called Lick Skillit (as does Letter #1, but it’s spelled “Lick Skillet” there).
- Thunderbolt, Montana, En Route, Sept. 22, 1921. Cal’s Letter #5 (published February 23) was written from Odebolt, Iowa, which sounds suspiciously like “Thunderbolt.”
- West Side, Montana, En Route, Sept. 29, 1921. Cal’s Letter #6 (published March 2) was written from West Side, Iowa.
With item 7—McGregor, Montana, En Route, Oct. 13, 1921—the correspondence between the items listed in the copyright assignment and the letters published in the Opera House Reporter becomes less apparent. Cal’s Letter #9 mentions North McGregor, Iowa, as a railroad hub he and his troupe had just passed through repeatedly, so I’m sure that’s the source of the place name “McGregor,” but it doesn’t come up explicitly in Cal’s Letter #7 (published March 9), written from Cedar Rapids, which is the one we’d expect to occupy this position in the list. Even so, I’d say that the correlations among the first several pairs of items leaves no room for doubt that the contents of “Exhibit #2” were based on the same series of letters that had appeared in the Opera House Reporter., while the fact that there are eighteen letters listed suggests that the series probably did continue well past April 13, 1917.
It’s unclear to me why the dates of the items in the copyright assignment had been altered not just as to year, but also as to month, starting with a reassignment of the first item from January 21, 1917 to September 1, 1921. However, this change seems to have had an interesting consequence. As we’ve seen, many of the letters originally dated from January through March 1917 include references to stoves or radiators giving insufficient heat during cold weather, and these anecdotes would have remained credible when transposed to the months September through December 1921. But if Cal’s published letter series had continued into May 1917, I assume the weather he described then wouldn’t have been a plausible fit for Montana in January, which likely explains the jump in the new series of dates from December 1921 (letter #14) to May 1921 (letter #15). Except of course that May 1921 came before December 1921. I get the impression that someone didn’t fully think things through here.
It’s a shame I don’t know what became of that lot of papers offered on eBay back in 2004. The seller seemed to think the most significant item in the group was an official copy of the 1903 copyright record for Cal’s book Uncle Josh Weathersby’s “Punkin Centre” Stories drawn up in 1930, but the auction description, which I copied at the time, hints that there may have been some other items there of far greater interest from a research standpoint.
Now folks, we have a bunch more of UNCLE JOSH’S stuff. We could not take pictures of all this stuff, but it is a pretty thick pile. We are going to just name some stuff off and hope it helps ya out. We have a manuscript of Uncle Josh Pumpkin Center Postmaster and General Store Proprietor Adapted from the original Uncle Josh Stories by Cal Stewart by Fannie Mae Baldridge Butterfield…. There is also a manuscript of a famous Train Story “The Wreck of Old 97″…. Also there is a television commercial song manuscript opening with Television, COCO Cola Commercial “UNCLE JOSH PLAYS GOLF”. There is to[o] much stuff numerous to talk about and mention.
Fanny May Baldridge, a.k.a. Mrs. Beth Butterfield, was a decently well-known radio voice actress, sketch writer, and musical lyricist. I imagine she must have been brought on board to update Cal Stewart’s “Uncle Josh” to fit the tastes and media of the early 1930s. This would have been consistent with Fred Hager’s ambitions for the franchise, as expressed in another document for which I have a scan:
Uncle Josh is known as one of the great American rural characters and is eternally interesting to each new American Generation, and thus would be of considerable value for use in talking pictures, radio, and television, when dramatized or made into musicals, as well as used in monologues or comedy skits.
Maybe Baldridge was the one who tweaked Cal’s letters to Palmer Kellogg as well—changing the setting to Montana and the year to 1921—and perhaps a manuscript of those adaptations was part of the same lot of papers. But in the end, despite Hager’s efforts, the stories in Cal’s letters never made it onto radio or TV, as far as I’m aware.
At least not yet.
Griffonage-Dot-Com 
