Major Spill -- When Walter Comes Marching Home

The life of Walter Spill had elements of the ordinary and the extraordinary. He was a military man, a family man, and a big wheel in the community. He wheeled and dealed himself into a dizzying life as an entrepreneur, making a lot of money and friends along the way. Then, like anyone who lives long enough, he died, with his bones gathered up and laid to rest with honors in Memorial Cemetery.

Was he summa cum laude or magnum cum laude in school? No, he was just an average guy, with, as it turned out, a potential far exceeding average. His nation called and he answered, working his way up, about as far as a man can go, to the office of Major. Major Spill was a leader of men and a friend to all. He was the kind of guy you could count on to not desert you when the going got rough ... as it always does.

I spoke with one of the old-timers of town about Walter Spill, Dr. James Molar. One day they had a newspaper article about Walter in the Daily News, otherwise I probably would have never heard about him. (For copyright purposes, I will not quote from the newspaper account, but will simply do my best to paraphrase the key points of his life story as they come to mind, as well as my poor memory allows.)

The old-timer was a man who served with Major Spill, going back to his war service. The old veterans hate to talk about their military service, like pulling teeth, but if you pry diligently enough, going for all the angles, getting leverage, etc., finally you can loosen up the toughest molar. Anyway, this old boy, now frail and walking with a cane, bent with age, granted me a sit-down. We were at a particular cafe, a neutral site.

"So you served with Major Spill?" "Yes, that's right," his old friend, Dr. Molar, struggled to say, rasping, with each word a struggle. "You were together those years?" "Yes," he said with slight impatience, "That would appear to be what I carefully delineated a moment ago, with no excess verbiage added to the mix that might confuse you." I thought, "OK, I've got it..."

"What kind of leader was Walter Spill?" "A good leader," Dr. Molar managed to say, simply. But I dug deeper. "He was good, you say?" "Yes, good. By that I mean he excelled as a leader of men, prompted by some powerful inner source of fortitude and determination that is rare by any measure. The odds were against us, and as these things go, of course you have no guarantee of tomorrow. But the Major was fearless, prompting all of us to call forth our own bravery, till then an unknown presence."

"The newspaper said there was one battle where next-to-no one came out alive." "Yes, it was bad." "On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad was it?" With that, Dr. Molar struggled to his feet and left the room, and that's the last I saw of him. Leaving me to surmise that Major Spill and the others went together into battle with heavy odds against them, no doubt attributable to a larger or stronger contingency arrayed against them, with only one man of this side's force able to reemerge, that man being Major Spill himself.

The newspaper, just summarizing here, also told of Walter's poker-playing skills, Dr. Molar being their likely source. Just briefly, he had one hell of a poker face. Beyond that, quoting, "Of course all the other aspects of poker as a game, and the Major's keen gamesmanship at it, had to factor in, including his ability to read other players, his ability to compute the odds at any particular moment, along with that intangible thing we simply have to call luck."

After the war, Major Spill -- Walter -- came home and settled right here, back in his hometown. It was the post-war years, when new neighborhoods had to be developed. Walter settled into a career combination of city-planning, real estate, and cheap architecture. By now, of course, he was simply Mr. Walter Spill. There was a large profit to be made, with men coming home throughout those boom years.

Again, from the newspaper: "Socially, we were going from a more centralized arrangement of tight traditional neighborhoods toward the city's outskirts and beyond. It wasn't exactly sprawl, with the negative connotations of that word, but a natural widening of the local parameters, a thing of pride at the time. You annex, you pave, you make winding roads through the neighborhoods, you plant the same tree. At first the cheapness of the houses was a virtue, but naturally they quickly go to pot, after many years of hard use." As above, I take it Dr. Molar was the source of this quote as well.

Ralph R. Ferguson, Mayor Of Anderson, Indiana

I found this cool graphic of some guy's head while browsing some old newspaper microfilms. Of course I thought, What a great generic guy's head! But then -- and this is the hidden archivist/preservationist in me -- I immediately thought, This was an actual guy, with a history, a family, etc., I better find out more about him.

Since he was featured prominently in a newspaper's full page ad, the caption was easy to spot. He was identified as the mayor Anderson, Indiana, Ralph R. Ferguson. This was in 1960, of course in the Anderson, Indiana, newspaper, the Anderson Herald Bulletin. I love the severed head, the graphic's Wizard of Oz vibe.

Now, here's a better picture, that I found with a Google search. Resourceful, aren't I? I like this picture, too, which you can get at virtually any size. They have a fairly prominent copyright notice on it, so I hope they'll allow me this "fair use" of his picture, as I'm republishing it as a historical feature with educational commentary. That's a great picture, isn't it? It's pretty easy to imagine him as a major, which he was from 1956-1964 (the newspaper's dates). Wikipedia says his term ended in '63, as does the Indiana Memory Digital Collections, the source for the above photo.

Then you have to figure, he was middle-aged in the late '50s, he's probably passed on by now. And, sure enough, he did die, in 1975 as it turns out.

Ralph R. Ferguson was born December 28, 1898. Prior to being Anderson's mayor, he was a state senator and Madison County Clerk. Before politics, he was sales manager of the Central Indiana Gas Company. In the 1920s, he was a licensed real estate broker. In the '30s, he owned and operated the Independent Wholesale Corporation. And in the '40s he owned and operated the Jo Ral Nash Auto Sales firm. So he was terrifically successful, as far as I'm concerned. He definitely did more than I'll ever do, since what have I ever done? I sold used records in the '80s, that's about it. And a few books on eBay. And this blog.

Mr. Ferguson was a good guy in another respect: He was a Democrat. In fact, he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention on numerous occasions. And if that wasn't enough, he once was president of the Anderson Country Club. Again, speaking of my own personal lack of success, I watch the convention on TV and a few times I drove by a country club.

Mr. Ferguson died on April 1, 1975, if I'm reading this correctly. The paper's a little less than explicit. The publication date was April 2, a Wednesday, and they said he died on Tuesday.

He was successful in numerous other ventures, political successes, etc. Speaking for myself, I do vote and I used to have the stickers to prove it, so I'm a success, too.

Mr. Ferguson's son-in-law*, Robert L. Rock, was also in politics, being the lieutenant governor of Indiana, then he also was mayor of Anderson. So success was passed down, making me wonder about my own forebears, "What happened?" If I were somehow miraculously elected lieutenant governor, I'd show up at the office and go, "What am I supposed to do now?"

UPDATE: The irony of this post, thinking of my own lack of success and the fact that I never heard of Mr. Ferguson until an hour ago, is that before the day is through I'll be one of the primary sources on Google for information about him.

*I changed this from "son" in response to a comment. Thanks.

The Stick Figure Artist

He sits alone in his artistic citadel. (Hallelujah, that's a great sentence!)

You might call him an alone kind of guy. Something of a social clod. Perplexed by the madding crowds, the jostle and bustle of too many foreign bodies. (Wow, I'm really fleshing this bastard out!)

(Sorry for the parentheses, I know everyone hates them. I'll try to keep my own delight down to a minimum. On the other hand, who am I trying to spare? You, certainly, who are my lovely guest. Let's get back to the stick figure dude...)

There he is, and that's a self portrait you see, alone in his artistic citadel. He's sort of like me in several ways, thinking he is artistic without there necessarily being any evidence to prove it.

By citadel, I mean he's not sitting on the floor. He's up at the kitchen table or at his desk, sketching out his pathetic little sketches in a sketchbook, a regulation sketchbook that he got at the stationer's store. It's run by an English chap, well known for his accent. He, our artist, spends too much on sketchbooks, more than his sketches probably deserve, but the English chap's accent is seductive.

So there he is, once again, hunched over the sketchbook, using his imagination, digging deeply into his thoughts to come up with yet another stick figure sketch. There's a lot -- a hell of a lot -- of straight-on views like that, since profiles don't come easily. Mostly straight-on views, that in my opinion aren't going to appeal to anyone.

(Pardon me while I pause to think. I'm thinking, Who am I to judge such an one? Nobody, really, except maybe ... I could be the stick figure artist. His sketches and mine are straight-on. And too much for anyone to bear. He likes to think maybe the madding crowds will see his sketches. That's a natural inclination, perhaps, although it has a social component, too. End of my thoughts. He needs to think, Why do I even care?)

One of the stick figure artist's great projects, great to him, was to fill a tablet with little drawings at the edge, so he could flip them and see his work in motion. It took a week of meticulous drawing, and what he finally came up with was a stick figure picking his nose. The piece he entitled, "Everyone Does It."

Let's say someday, like when he's on his last stick, he might become famous. Suddenly his tablets and sketchbooks are in big demand. A museum somewhere heard the buzz and decided to jump on them. Now, as his life's breath is on the wane, suddenly his figures are going for big money. Like one figure for four figures or five.