Moose County Legends

Probably not, but pleasant people have beenliving in Carpenter Gothic houses on this verypleasant street for a century. Burgess Campbell, descendant of the original builder, tells thestory behind the short cul-de-sac in Pickax.

—JMQ

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In the nineteenth century my ancestors were ship-builders in Scotland—in the famous river Clyde at Glasgow. When opportunity beckoned from the New World, my great-grandfather, Angus, came here with a team of ships’ carpenters considered the best anywhere.

They started a shipyard at Purple Point, where they built four-masted wooden schooners, using Moose County’s hundred-and-twenty-foot pine trees as masts. These were the “tall ships” that brought goods and supplies to the settlers and shipped out cargoes of coal, lumber, and stone.

Then came the New Technology! The wireless telegraph was in; the Pony Express was out. Railroads and steamboats were in; four-masted schooners were out. In his diary Angus said it was like a knife in the heart to see a tall ship stripped down to make a barge for towing coal. There was no work for his carpenters to do, and their fine skills were wasted.

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Lilian Jackson Braun Then a “still small voice” told him to build houses! It was the voice of his wife, Anne, a canny Scotswoman. She said, “John, build houses as romantic as the tall ships—and as fine!”

She was right! The New Technology had produced a class of young upwardly mobile achievers who wanted the good life. Not for them the stodgy stone mansions built by conspicuously rich mining tycoons and lumber barons! They wanted something romantic!

So Angus bought acreage at the south edge of Pickax and built ten fine houses, each on one-acre plots. Although no two were alike, their massing followed the elongated vertical architecture called Gothic Revival, and the abun-dance of scroll trim was the last word in Carpenter Gothic.

And here is something not generally known: The vertical board-and-batten siding was painted in the colors that delighted young Victorians: honey, cocoa, rust, jade, or periwinkle; against this background, the white scroll trim had a lacy look.

Today we paint them all white, giving rise to the “wedding cake” sobriquet.

When the time came to put up signboards, Angus was at a loss for a street name. He said, “I don’t want anything personal like Campbell or Glasgow . . . or anything sober-sided or high-sounding . . . just something pleasant.”

And Great-Grandma Anne said with sweet feminine logic, “Call it Pleasant Street.”

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쒀

26.

The Noble Sons

of the Noose

Secret Society Goes Public

After a Hundred Years

Every year at midnight on May 13, a line ofthirty-two shrouded figures—wearing miners’

helmets with tiny lights above the visors—windsacross the slag heaps of the abandoned Goodwinter mine—in memoriam.

—JMQ

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On May 13, 1904, thirty-two miners were killed in an underground explosion that could have been pre-vented if the new safety measures had been employed; but they cost money, and the mine owner, Ephraim Goodwinter, was the original bottom-liner. Production was what counted. His mine was the most productive in the county, and he was the wealthiest owner.

Then, because there were no longer any males to work underground, their families were evicted from the poor cottages in the mining village. A murderous rage against Ephraim consumed the entire county, and the mine owner disappeared. Rumors abounded:

He had been lynched . . . Or he had taken his own life, leaving a suicide note . . . Or he had fled to Europe . . . Or he had been buried under the floor of his own house, to thwart vandals . . . Or he had escaped via a preplanned 쑽쑽쑽

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Lilian Jackson Braun scheme arranged with the handyman, whom he then shot for security reasons.

One fact went on record: Ephraim’s funeral procession was the longest ever—in a community fond of counting the carriages, buggies, wagons, and bicycles going to the cemetery (the undertaker later confessed, on his deathbed, that Ephraim’s coffin was empty). The “mourners” said they wanted to be sure the “old devil” didn’t come back.