QUAINT TALES OF OLD CHILLICOTHE

By E. S. Wenis

OLD ERIN'S sons come to Chillicothe in rather large numbers following the disastrous famine in Ireland back in the late forties. The new land across the sea brought letters of the more adventurous back to the "ould sod" and the young men and women were eager to get away from the hardships and the tyranny of the British over lords, who owned the land which they cultivated with most meager returns, and to come to America.

Among those adventurous spirits was one Thomas Madden. He was a true son of Erin. He had red, curly hair, a pair of scintillating blue eyes and he never knew anything but hard work. Somehow he landed in New York and made his way out to Chillicothe, and finally by saving and scraping he managed to get a hill farm out beyond Mt. Logan on the Marietta Pike.

Madden was a bibulous gentleman when he visited the city. He reared a rather large family and was a little king out on the hill farm. He usually made his visits to the city riding on the running gears of a farm wagon and driving a team of wiry sorrel horses, while his entrance to the city was always made quietly, his departure was always something to wonder at. When one heard something like a whirlwind coming east on Second Street, over the bridge at the canal, one could always make certain it was Madden, homeward bound. These horses were tearing and Madden was slashing them, giving vent to rousing cheers as he rode like the wind.

Madden continued his farming career until he was a man perhaps of 50 or more, when he decided that his family had grown up and his wife had died and he wanted to go back to visit Ireland. So, he sold the farm, had a big farewell party and told everyone he was going to spend his day over on the soil of Erin.

Trimming New York

He went to New York, where he was to board his vessel and he liked New York so well that he put on another party, and as a result, he was skinned of all his money and when he came to sober consciousness, he found he had just about enough money to get back to Chillicothe by "bumming" his way on the trains partly.

At any rate, he landed here a crestfallen man, but with undampened ardor as to his ability to make a living.

The Jardine Plumbing Co. was then only recently organized by the late Graham Jardine and Robert G. Tomlinson, and Madden got a job with the firm digging ditches in which lay water and sewer pipes. Of course with his reduced monetary resources his resorts to bacchlo entertainment were rare, but he certainly relished them.

On occasion, when his spirit did rise as a result of over stimulation, he was wont to give expression to a true Maddenism. He would jump up from the floor and twirl his feet like a youngster and shout, "Kick a hole in the flure." Asked about the cause of the celebration, he would answer; "I'm workin' for Jardine & Co." Jardine incidentally, was a very abstemious and temperate man, who did not countenance drinking at all. Tomlinson was more liberal in his views. So Madden would explain about those two in this wise. "Jardine, he buys me the soda water and Bobby buys me the beer. Hooray for Bobby."

The local Hennesay Club, a subsidiary band within the local Elks' Lodge, adopted Madden's slogan of "Kick a hole in the flure" as theirs, to put on a green silk ribbon headed with a champagne cork and tailed with a buckeye on the occasion of the Elks Grand Lodge meeting in Cincinnati back in 1904. They sold for as high as $3.50 apiece as novelties, for the club not only adopted Madden's slogan, but many of his other qualifications, and that made the badge a desirable quantity.

Madden is dead now these many years, but if one has true Celtic blood in his veins, he can still hear Tommy shout and driving his team down Second Street on nights when the moon is gibbous and everything is eerie.