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32 YOUTH
sprang up— ours was called the Ledgerwood Bicycle Club, with its usual gathering place Mart Farley's shop. It was the ambition of every healthy male to do his first "century"— ride a hundred miles in a day— as soon as he could, and run up a good score of them, just as a novice golfer today tries to "break a hundred."
One of my Sullivan chums, Dirrelle Chaney, whose father had a place in Washington in the nineties, rode there from Sullivan in a week over ordinary dirt and gravel roads— a distance of seven hundred miles— making two hundred miles on one of those days! I had no such physical stamina as that, but I enjoyed the freedom my Columbia gave me to get around the country and learn more about people and farming.
The bicycle didn't displace the horse as the automobile has succeeded in doing. The sharp aroma of the livery stable, the clanging anvil of the blacksmith shop, and the good leathery smell of the harness shop still spelled excitement to a youngster. In our own barn we had Frank, the bay horse, and later Doc; either one was well able to pull our two-seated carriage and, later, the "surrey with the fringe on top" that has latterly become famous in song.
I seem to have been fascinated by railroads always, and there was an unusual amount of interesting history connected with railroading in our part of the state. Many of these things were real to me because my father was at various times counsel for most of the lines; he talked to me about lawsuits and claims, always had passes, and took me on many of his trips.
The old Indiana & Illinois Southern, which ran east and west through Sullivan, was significant even in my youth. Backed by important Chicago interests, it was tied up in some mysterious way with financial powers that political speakers loved to assail but that were beyond the understanding of any of us boys at Sullivan. It was during this period that there was some conflict between E. H. Harriman and Stuyvesant Fish, and I know that Father was the attorney for, and had the confidence of, both of them. In fact, the property in question was put in his name while the road was changing hands.
The picturesque and primitive about these early railroads appealed to me. The old "narrow gauge" passing east and west through our town was built only four years before I was born. According to the stories, it was a "jerk-water" road if there ever was one! Our local newspaper later dug up some amazing reminiscences. One old-timer wrote, "Those who had the misfortune to be passengers on one of its trains never forgot the occasion." Among its nicknames the road was dubbed The Tri-Weekly (or, perhaps, "weakly") and The Streak of Rust.
A further quotation from the Sullivan Union reminiscences may well show how far we have come since those days:
One story about the narrow gauge is to the effect that a damage suit was filed against the old company. The plaintiff claimed damages on account of a