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Trip to Nebraska
I was playing baseball with the Philadelphia National League team in 1926.
my roommate that year was a man named Clarence Mitchell, one of the best
fellows I ever knew. He was born in Nebraska and was part Indian, he kept
telling me about the hunting trip in Nebraska and wanted to come out and
visit him after the baseball season was over. Mitch had a cousin
named Ross Hager, he had the homesteaded near the famous town of Hyanis, a
small place but the richest town per capita in the world, there was a
widow and daughter named Devers who owned a five thousand acre ranch near
where Ross had settled and they asked him to help out on roundups, finnaly
they made him foreman of their ranch. Ross fell in love with Miss Devers but
couldnt ask to marry her because he had nothing and she was wealthy. on
one day after an all day ride together and as they approached the last gate
before reaching home neither one would get out and open the gate and they
sat there and argured about who was going to give them in first Miss Hager said,
Ross, if we are going to argue the rest of our lives we might as well get
married and so the were wed.
I drove out to Nebraska in October, the country got more and more sparsley
settled and I stopped and called Mitch when I was about a hundred miles
from his home in Franklyn, sure enough within an hour there he was waiting
for me in the road and I was glad to see him too. We got into Franklyn and
they had gotten up a dinner to welcome me to their town, they had a very
special dish for me, catfish, it was a treat to them as they were far from
any water to get fish from. There were thirty men there and the dinner was
great.

Mrs. Mitchell made me feel right at home and we spent a couple of days with
her and started up into sand hill country, on our way to North Platte
we passed through a thousand acres of alfalfa fields and thousands
of stacks, spending the night in North Platte we turned off into a field
anf from then on we traveled most of the day along cattle trails and I
hadnt seen a town or a house until noon and then a store and resurant with
with one or two other buildings came in sight, we stopped for lunch, nothing
but steak and two girls to wait on tables with short dresses on and two
cowboys were the only people we saw while there.
We arrived at Hyannis about four oclock and and Ross Hager was waiting there
for us and we drove out to to his home ranch, we stopped at the coral and
side bawling for thir oftspring, such a noise you never heard, they were
giving the calves shots and other treatments. The foreman walked up to
the car and when we were introduced he greeted Mitch who he knew of course
and favored me with a nod, then he said Ross one of the damned calves got
caught in the fence and I had to kill him, as he walked away, Ross said, he
just watned to have some fresh veal. The foreman was handsome and he wore
a cow hide coat with the hair still on the outside, well cut too and black