Part III
Chapter Five
“Where will we go?”Elias wondered to himself. It was obvious that the morality of America’s cities had gone downhill over the sixteen years they had lived in Chicago, with the increase of organised crime, prostitution, gambling, and alcoholism. This was not the environment that he had intended for raising four sons and a daughter.
The family patriarch thought back to his own youth working on the farms in Canada and Kansas. It was here that he learned the importance of determination, hard work, honesty and community. In an era of economic difficulty in the wake of the recent recession, it was these characteristics he sought to instil in his young family.
Together, Elias and Flora began to scour rural America, contacting landowners, real estate companies, and their expansive network of family and friends, looking for opportunities to purchase land on which they could farm. While Steamboat Springs, Colorado and Citronella, Alabama were high on their list, it was the advice given to him by his younger brother, Robert, that he decided to follow.
For years, businessman Robert Disney had been interested in real estate speculation. After leaving the family homestead in Kansas, Robert had been lured by the prospects of wealth in Chicago, which was vying to be the location for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Recognising that hundreds of thousands would be visiting the Great White City to experience all the fair had to offer, in March 1892 he placed an ad in The Chicago Tribune offering to pay between $80 and $120 per square foot of land on Chicago’s South Side for the purpose of building a hotel.
Foreseeing that the hotel business in Chicago would dwindle after the conclusion of the fair, Robert began to look elsewhere for a business opportunity that would enrich him. His attention settled on an opportunity for land development along the shores of Lake Michigan, receiving a deed of land in exchange for services performed in lieu of financial payment from land ‘developer’, Captain George Wellington Streeter. Unfortunately for Robert, the land he received from Streeter, as well as adjacent tracts, quickly became the subject of one of Chicago’s biggest controversies in the last years of the nineteenth century.
In 1886, George Wellington Streeter, captain of the small yacht, Rutan, plied the waters between Chicago and Milwaukee transporting passengers. He stumbled across a 1755 map that identified land owned by the British and later the United States government under the terms of the organisation of the Northwest Territory as part of the conditions of the Treaty of Paris. Streeter realised that the land beneath the surface of Lake Michigan was unclaimed territory. Leaving the Rutan anchored offshore in a stretch of the lake used to dump garbage and ashes near Superior Street in northern Chicago, the captain awaited a storm that would wreck the ship and put his plan into action. Luckily for the con-artist, a storm soon came along, the large waves of Lake Michigan in fact grounding the small craft on a sandbar.
Over the next few weeks, as debris from the storm began to be cleared from the shores of Lake Michigan, Streeter strategically placed logs and tree branches from the storm between his grounded boat and the shore. This dammed sand, as well as the floating garbage and dumped ashes, as the currents flowed parallel to the beach, creating a dry path. Claiming squatters’ rights, Streeter established ownership of his makeshift island and the growing land around it, converting the Rutan into a small house and moving into it with his wife.
As the land claimed by Captain Streeter began to grow to an area of 156 acres, he had the area surveyed and platted into 1,900 prime lots for sale to those interested in owning property along the lakeshore, while earning $150 per month from those who instead decided to rent shanties rather than purchase land outright. The captain was able to sell 300 lots, including some to Robert and Margaret Disney, making more than $200,000 from land sales before those who had original claims to the shoreline, such as N.K. Fairbank, went to local law enforcement to argue against Streeter’s claims to the land and selling it off.
To legitimise his claims, Streeter petitioned the United States government to annex the land, which he had set up as a new state called the District of Lake Michigan. He offered the United States four options: either the land could be annexed as part of the state of Illinois; added to the territory of Alaska; established as a completely new state; or rejected by the United States and instead become an independent territory similar to Puerto Rico. In an effort to make his offer even more appealing, the captain created his own government, establishing posts including treasurers and judges, and wrote his own constitution. One aspect of this founding document was particularly appealing, as it offered citizenship and voting rights to all women aged 18 and older, something not approved for American women until the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed more than twenty years later.
Both the United States and the state of Illinois rejected Streeter’s offer, and police officers were sent to the District of Lake Michigan in 1893, arresting the captain and tearing down the shanties that had been erected along the shore. The arrested man, even while sitting in jail, insisted that the Chicago police were corrupt and had been paid to arrest him, even though he hadn’t committed any crime. The Streeter debacle eventually ended when the city of Chicago filled in the lake surrounding the District of Lake Michigan to build Lincoln Park and Lake Shore Drive along the coast, ultimately erasing Streeter’s claim to the land.
With Robert’s newest land development opportunity literally buried by the city of Chicago, the investor instead turned to Marceline, Missouri, a small town along the Santa Fe Railroad, which was slowly becoming an important farming community. While the area was originally known as Bucksnort and had been a rural collection of privately owned farms, the town of Marceline became established as a division point along the railroad in 1888, named for the wife of one of the directors of the Santa Fe Route. During the 1800s, railroads established waypoints every 160 kilometres for trains to refuel and resupply; because of the prevalence of creeks flowing in the area, as well as the discovery of coal nearby, Marceline was established as a prime location for the waypoint of the railroad which stretched between Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri. Recognising it was essential to create buy-in from the families owning farms in the Bucksnort area, the railroad company began to build an infrastructure to support the traffic that a waypoint along the Santa Fe would bring. A wooden two-storey station was constructed along the tracks, featuring a dining hall and overnight accommodations for railroad workers. After coal was discovered, the Marceline Coal and Mining Company was established and Mine No. 1 was opened, creating a number of jobs for men in the area. The main roads through town were graded and paved, a downtown began to be erected, and within a few years, a power plant was built a few hundred metres from the train station, bringing electricity to the town.
However, in order for Marceline to grow, it was essential that it attracted families and not just men to work on the rail line or in the coal mine. E.P. Ripley, president of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, decided that outdoor leisure space was needed and donated a few acres of land to the town for the establishment of a park. Named in his honour, Ripley Park featured a large pond, green space, and a gazebo for community concerts and events. The downtown area that developed along Kansas Avenue, the town’s main street, soon opened an opera house, department store, banks, a school, boarding houses, and a hotel, all of which not only provided services for those passing through town by way of the train, but also for those who lived near the mines or on nearby farms.
When Robert Disney heard through his network of investors in Chicago that the Santa Fe line would be built through northern Missouri, he purchased 400 acres of land and sold some of it to the Santa Fe Railroad, increasing its premium to make a profit for himself. The remaining acreage, located northwest of downtown Marceline, he kept for himself, establishing a row crop farm which primarily grew corn to be loaded onto the train at the local depot and sent around the country. The enterprising capitalist wasn’t a country boy, however: Robert and his wife Margaret lived in Kansas City, approximately 200 kilometres to the southwest, while employing local help to manage the farm in his absence.
Robert and Margaret weren’t distant investors who were solely interested in making a buck off the labour of the local population, however. The couple often visited town, taking the Santa Fe before transferring to a horse-drawn buggy that took them to their land a few kilometres away. It was obvious to the citizens of Marceline that Robert and Margaret were wealthy out-of-towners; Robert often wandered downtown in fancy suits lined with accessories such as golden pocket napkins and watch chains, an expensive cigar hanging from his lips, earning him the nickname ‘Gold Bug Disney’. His attitude towards locals was not one of derision, however; recognising the importance of the people of Marceline for his farm’s success, as well as remembering his own small-town agricultural roots in Goderich and Ellis, Robert was kind to those in town, helping its inhabitants when he could.
Thus, when Elias mentioned to Robert that he and Flora were looking for somewhere to move their family that would align with their values of community and hard work, Robert heartily recommended the small town of Marceline. When Elias agreed that Marceline would be perfect for his family, Robert purchased the farm of the recently deceased William Crane from Crane’s wife, who had moved to New York to live with family after her husband’s death. Crane had received his farmland in northern Missouri as payment for serving in New York’s 94th Infantry during the American Civil War and had been living on the land for twenty-seven years before his death. Robert Disney, in turn, sold it to Elias for $125 per acre to make the transition into town easier for his brother’s family. The property measured approximately 45 acres and featured a two-storey white clapboard farmhouse, a small red barn, animal pens and pastures, and fields full of crops including sorghum, corn, and two orchards growing Wolf River apple trees.
Elias was eager to move his family out of Chicago. He purchased four train tickets for Flora, Roy, Walter and Ruth and sent them with a few of the family’s belongings to Marceline to get settled on the farm. He, Herbert and Raymond stayed to settle their affairs in Chicago before bringing the rest of the family’s possessions by rail freight later.
As the train pulled into Marceline, plumes of steam issued from the locomotive causing dust that had settled on the bricked train platform to jump into the air in spinning clouds. Roy helped his mother with the family’s bags, which were loaded onto a handcart on the platform. He and Flora each took the hand of one of the younger children and stepped from the train into the shadow of the two-storey wooden station Marceline had erected for trains and passengers passing through town.
As they walked around to the front of the station, Flora explained to her children that Mr James Coffman, a local resident, would be picking them up and taking them to their new farm. Flora maintained a brave face for her children – she was secretly worried about her role as a mother raising a small family on the farm and hoped she could adequately prepare things before Elias’s arrival with her two older sons.
The sun hovered in the sky; while it was an early spring day with moderate temperatures, the sun’s rays beat down on the family accustomed to wearing heavy and layered clothing necessary for living in the north. Flora motioned her children to an area across the street from the station, shaded by a towering grain elevator. Walter and Ruth held hands as they followed their mother, while Roy, pushing the handcart stacked with trunks, followed close behind.
The family didn’t have to wait long, as a few minutes later, an old horse was seen as it clip-clopped down the bricked lane pulling a cart driven by a grizzled man about Elias’s age. The man brought the animal to a stop in front of the family. The two adults exchanged pleasantries while Roy began to load the trunks and bags onto the back of the cart. Mr Coffman helped Flora onto the cart, then lifted Walter and Ruth to their mother, who got the two settled for the ride to their new home. Over the next few minutes, as the horse-drawn buggy slowly made its way north to the family’s new home, young Walter was enraptured by the rural landscape, a marked contrast from urban Chicago: Missouri’s rolling green hills were crowned by bright blue skies, alternating lots featuring houses, cattle pastures, and row crops on either side of the road.
The small farmhouse was perfect for the Disney family. On the first floor, a kitchen and parlour served as the area in which the family entertained. A small bedroom off the parlour was used by Herbert and Raymond, who at the ages of 17 and 15, were often employed labouring on the family farm as well as other farms in the area, and needed an easy exit from the house at all hours of the day due to the nature of their work. The top floor featured three bedrooms, including a small room for Elias and Flora, and two equally-sized rooms at the front of the house: one which Roy and Walter shared and another across the hall for Ruth alone, which she enjoyed as the benefit of being the only girl in the family. While the house didn’t have electricity or running water when the Disneys moved in – Flora had to get water from a handpump in the kitchen – one luxury Elias insisted on having was a telephone. Life in Chicago had shown him the benefits of emerging technologies and he was always looking for new opportunities, wanting to stay ahead of the curve to potentially open financial doors for him. Recognising the benefit of closets in the Tripp house in Chicago, Elias was pleased that his new home featured the storage space in each of the bedrooms. He was willing to spend a little bit more on the mortgage for a house with closets (the extra rooms led to increased taxes on a house than those without). However, one thing that the family particularly missed, especially in the winter months, was a bathroom. While they’d had a small water closet beneath the stairs in their Chicago house, the Marceline farmhouse instead had an outhouse set a distance away from the home to protect the water supply from contamination.
While Flora got things settled at the farmhouse over the next few weeks, Elias wrapped things up in Chicago. The sale of the family home that he and his wife had built on Tripp was finalised, and the deed was transferred to a young family of German immigrants that had recently moved to Hermosa. Raymond and Herbert helped their father pack up the last of the family’s belongings and pick out a team of draught horses at the city’s stockyards before loading everything onto a boxcar and taking the Santa Fe to Marceline.
Life in a small, rural town was quite different for the Disneys. The five children, who were between the ages of 3 and 17, certainly learned the ethics their father sought to instil in them through life in an agricultural community, rather than those gleaned in the big city. With a population of only 5,000, Marceline had a sense of community, which was exemplified by the interdependence that existed between its citizens.
Remembering the importance of neighbours to one’s existence from his time in Ellis, Elias quickly invested his family in the life of the town. Many of the citizens, who had emigrated from Europe to work in the coal mines, passed the time playing instruments as this was a low-cost leisure time activity. These musical coal miners organised themselves into bands, such the Marceline Town Band, to perform at the weekends in the gazebo at Ripley Park. Over time, the band incorporated men who worked on area farms and for the Santa Fe Railroad, and Elias soon contributed his talent as a fiddler to these performances. Neighbours also often helped each other out in annual agricultural activities, such as barn raising and harvests. Fathers who either owned their own farms or worked in the region’s other major industries often hired out their children to the town’s farmers to help with work; for example, both Herbert and Raymond worked on a number of farms as part of threshing crews, including the Disney farm and the Taylor farm, located just down the road.
Even young Walter, at the age of 6, was expected to help with agricultural labour: when he wasn’t leading a horse around the millstone to crush sorghum on his father’s farm, he was partnered up with neighbour boy, Patrick Shermuly, to take water to those working on the threshing crews. Young Walter wasn’t very interested in work, however. Like one of his literary heroes, Tom Sawyer, the boy often convinced others to take on more jobs so he could hang back or relax. Another of Walter’s chores was herding pigs on the Disney farm. One day, when he realised that the animals were stubborn and wouldn’t move in the direction he desired, he mounted the back of one of the largest sows, called Porker, and rode it like a horse to influence the rest of the hogs to move towards the pen. This didn’t quite go the way the boy intended: the sow instead moved towards the farm’s pond, thick with mud, and reared, throwing Walt into the mud. While his intentions of herding the pigs had failed, the boy had discovered a new pastime, deciding to play with the livestock rather than fulfil the duties assigned by his father.
Walter’s chores taking care of the farm’s animals led to him developing endearing relationships with the livestock. While Porker always threw the boy off her back and into the mud when he tried to ride her, she recognised him as one of her regular playmates. On one occasion, when Walter and Ruth developed chickenpox, Porker came up onto the farmhouse’s porch and began oinking and pawing at the front door. Flora, who had been keeping an eye on Ruth as she sat against the flue of the stove where the heat could help break her fever, went upstairs to Walter and Roy’s room where the sick little boy was resting in bed. When Walter learned that his hefty friend was waiting to play on the porch, the boy smiled.
Walter also fell in love with a small piglet, whom he called Skinny. The piglet was the runt and unable to make it through the pack of his brothers and sisters to feed at his mother, so Walter, feeling sympathy for the creature, began to feed it with a bottle. A bond was forged between the boy and piglet, who began to follow Walter around the farm like a puppy.
Living in a small farming community also meant that one quickly got to know the neighbours. Across the street from the Disney farm lived Erastus Taylor, whom everyone in town called ‘Grandpa Taylor’, and his wife, Elizabeth. The Taylors were one of the founding families of Marceline, purchasing land from the Burlington Railroad in 1867, more than twenty years before the town’s incorporation. Taylor was also integral to the town’s development, donating land for the area’s first cemetery and building the town’s first school, which he taught at in addition to farming his 80 acres of land.
The proximity of the Taylor property to the farm that had previously belonged to William Crane exemplified the nature of small-town life: Crane’s niece, Bertha Phillips, had married Erastus’s son, Manly Howe Taylor. Erastus Taylor was also childhood friends with Crane’s brother-in-law, Josiah Phillips, Bertha’s father. As a result, while Erastus and William Crane weren’t directly related, the link between their respective families created a bond upon which they learned to rely on each other. Thus, when Elias and his family moved onto the old Crane farm, the Disneys became an adopted part of the Crane/Taylor microcosm north of Marceline.
Over the next few years, young Walter spent some time across the street at Grandpa Taylor’s home. The old man loved to tell stories of his exploits serving as a private in Company H of the 6th Regiment of the Minnesota volunteers during the American Civil War. Crane had enlisted in February 1864, where he joined his company at Fort Ridgely in southwest Minnesota. Union troops were stationed there to hold back Native Americans, who, a few years earlier, had attacked the fort. In June, the regiment moved south to Helena, Arkansas, where they occupied the previously held Confederate state. The warmer weather in Arkansas led to a wave of smallpox infection throughout Minnesota’s 6th Regiment, claiming the lives of 165 officers and troops. Erastus caught the illness and was transported to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri, where he convalesced until May 1865, missing the Confederate surrender and the end of the war. After being released from the hospital, his service was used to secure Union occupation of the south, before being released from U.S. military service a few months later on 19 August 1865.
While Grandpa Taylor told magnificent stories of ‘his experiences’ in the Civil War that enraptured the imagination of young Walter, the boy soon realised that it was impossible for the old man to have fought in every battle or to have met every general that he described. However, the art of storytelling wasn’t lost on Walter, who recognised the importance of Taylor including vivid details and colourful characters.
Erastus’s son, Manly Howe Taylor, lived approximately one kilometre west of the Disney farm with his wife and five children, on the farm that Josiah Phillips had established upon his arrival in Bucksnort more than twenty years earlier. Manly Howe’s children were about the same age as the Disneys’, creating instant playmates for Walter and Ruth, as well as new peers for Raymond, Herbert, and Roy. The Disneys also became close friends with the Flickingers and Rensimers, whose young sons, Clem and Will respectively, became close friends of Walter and Roy.
But having peers wasn’t all that was important to the older Disney boys. Living in a small midwestern agricultural community gave them the opportunity to court country girls and farmers’ daughters. Roy, in particular, had fallen for Fleta Rogers who, as a teacher in one of the local schools, was discouraged to marry. As a result, her interest in a relationship with Roy was casual, rather than serious. While Rogers enjoyed spending time with Roy because he was a ‘nice boy’, she had an undeniable attraction for his older brother Raymond and made every effort possible to be noticed by him. Because Fleta’s family lived on the main road downtown, she and her friends, who had selected their best dresses and had perfectly coiffed their hair, would often sit on the front porch on Saturday nights waiting for Herbert and Raymond, who often attended social events in town. As the two brothers walked by in their dapper suitcoats, white flannel trousers, and tall straw hats, the girls would rush to the balcony of the porch and call to the boys. The two eldest Disneys would stop and lean against the gate leading into the Rogers’ yard, making small talk and occasionally a courteous but flirtatious comment to the girls. After a few minutes, they would politely tip their hats at the young women, bid them a good evening, and continue on their way. Regardless of the evening’s temperature, Miss Fleta Rogers would always collapse onto the porch swing, flushed and breathless that Raymond Disney had noticed and spoken to her.
Fleta Rogers wasn’t the only girl in town who was interested in gaining his attention: 17-year-old Raymond was quite the ladies’ man and often used his suave charm to get dates with the local girls. Ray often took them dancing or to enjoy time on the shores of the pond at Ripley Park. However, his casual nature with the girls only interested them for a little while before they realised he wasn’t interested in commitment and found more steady guys instead.
Physical distance and limitations on transportation weren’t hindrances to the Disney’s extended family during their time in Marceline. The fact that the town was a division point along the Santa Fe Railroad actually made it easier for members of the Disney kin to drop by on occasion.
As the youngest boy, Walter was often spoiled by his visiting family. One example is when Grandma Mary Richardson Disney, Elias’s mother, came to town to visit. Walter and Grandma Mary were kindred spirits, as both enjoyed causing mischief and Mary took advantage of that. During one of her numerous trips to Marceline, Mary took the boy into town, walking along the country roads during the fair weather. As they were passing a small house with a garden in the front yard, Mary spotted some turnips that looked especially tasty.
“Walter, crawl under that fence and fetch me some turnips,” she prodded. Eager to please his favourite grandmother, the boy quickly climbed into the garden, unearthing the turnips the woman pointed to. Scrambling back under the fence, he handed the dirt-covered vegetables to Mary, who promptly wrapped them in her apron, not only to aid in carrying them home but also to hide them from suspicious eyes.
Upon arriving home, Walter and Mary found Elias in the kitchen. Walter proudly boasted to his father about his feat of retrieving the turnips for his grandmother. For a moment, Elias didn’t say anything. A frown creased his face, which became increasingly redder. Looking down at his young son, Elias began to teach the boy that theft was morally and religiously wrong.
“Thou shalt not steal,” the father finished.
“Oh, Elias, stop,” his mother said sharply. Her son’s eyes snapped from the boy to the old woman. “You’re making such a fuss over a few turnips. They had plenty more. There’s no need to get so heated.” Taking the boy’s hand, Mary turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving her son even angrier.
Leading the boy into the front parlour, Mary took out a small tin pillbox and removed a round, red pellet. Walter loved these pellets as they were sweet and melted in his mouth. The boy made sure to go out of his way to do things for Grandma Mary so she would reward him with these tasty sweets.
One day, when Mary was rewarding her grandson with one of the pellets, Flora happened to be in the room and, horrified, chastised her mother-in-law for giving the boy the tablet. While Walter had thought he was being rewarded with sweets, it turned out that his grandmother was giving him Cascarettes, a popular patent laxative covered in sugar to make the medicine easier to stomach. Grandma Mary defended herself, explaining that giving her grandson laxatives not only reinforced the boy’s good behaviour, but they might also benefit his digestion.
Grandma Disney didn’t always enlist her grandchildren in making light-hearted trouble. She was also an incredibly affectionate and nurturing woman. Every evening during her stay, while Flora was cleaning up after dinner and Elias went out to finish the evening farm chores, Mary would take a volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales or the stories of Hans Christian Andersen down from the fireplace mantle, while Roy, Walter and Ruth would gather around her on the floor. Over the next few minutes, she would enthusiastically spin tales, occasionally using voices and acting out bits of the stories, holding her grandchildren spellbound. Walter, Roy and Ruth loved this evening tradition so much that Flora continued the practice after Grandma Disney returned home, albeit not as dynamically as her mother-in-law.
While some Disney relatives rode the train into town, others drove the train into Marceline. Young Walt’s Uncle Mike Martin, married to Flora’s older sister Alice, worked as a locomotive engineer for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, particularly the stretch between Fort Madison, Iowa and Kansas City, Missouri. As Martin approached Marceline on his way to Kansas City, he would blow a distinct pattern on the locomotive’s whistle to signal to his sister- and brother-in-law and their kids that he was in town. As a young boy growing up in a town centred on the railroad, Walter was fascinated by trains and raced about 1.5 kilometres east where the Santa Fe crossed a railroad trestle. The little boy scrambled up the rocky hill where the train driven by his uncle waited, and the sooty engineer would scoop up his nephew into the cab of the train. To his delight, young Walter Disney would sit on his uncle’s lap, tooting the train’s whistle the last few kilometres into town before it stopped at the Marceline station to be restocked before continuing on its way south to Kansas City.
It took time for passengers and cargo to be unloaded from Uncle Mike’s train and for its stores of coal, sand and water to be refilled for the next leg of its journey. Rather than hanging out in the train yard or having a meal at the train station’s restaurant, Martin would hitch a ride to the Disney farm, where Flora and Elias were waiting for him with a cool drink. The adults would sit on the porch swing, while Walter and Roy sat on the porch steps with a paper bag of hard candies their uncle had brought them and listen to Uncle Mike and Elias take turns spinning tales of their time driving for and building the railroad, respectively. Elias related to his sons how, during his time building the Union Pacific, Buffalo Bill Cody, who would later become famous for creating a Western-themed circus, would shoot buffalo for the purpose of providing meat for Elias’s work crew. Uncle Mike also liked to tell the boys stories about important battles of the Civil War, as well as the American tall tale of Casey Jones, based on a real-life railroad engineer named Jonathan Luther Jones, who had died a few years before when the passenger train he was driving had collided with the rear of a freight train in Mississippi. Jones had been well-known for his heroic yet failed attempt at stopping his train prior to the fatal crash, making his way into American legend for slowing the train from 121 kilometres per hour to 51, sparing the lives of everyone else onboard.
If one can attribute Mike Martin’s stories and work along the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad to Walter’s love of trains throughout his life, another close family member is responsible for instilling an interest in art in the boy. Uncle Robert and his wife, Aunt Margaret, often visited Marceline, not only to see his brother, but to check on his land 4 kilometres west of Elias’s farm. On one occasion, Margaret brought her nephew a Big Chief tablet of paper and a box of crayons. Throughout her stay, she would often find the boy on his stomach in the parlour, drawing pictures of people and animals. While she doted on the boy to build his self-esteem, many of her compliments regarding his drawing were genuine; while many children Walter’s age were drawing stick figures, the young artist was instead concentrating on a more realistic and natural form.
The high praise from Aunt Margaret inspired the boy to continue drawing when he wasn’t expected to help on Elias’s farm. As he was part of a large family, this gave Walter an opportunity to draw and improve his depiction of people. But like an avid reader, the budding artist began to look for other things to inspire him, such as advertisements and newspapers. Elias read a weekly newspaper, The Appeal to Reason, a socialist publication from Girard, Kansas. Flipping through the paper, the boy discovered that it featured political cartoons and regular comic strips, which served as new models to draw.
Walter also used his experience living on his father’s farm to sketch his favourite animals, such as Skinny, Porker, and Martha (a hen). Elias made sure it was understood that the pursuit of drawing did not interfere with farm chores, and was a hobby that would only take place in the boy’s spare time. Walter obeyed his father, but that didn’t stop him from getting in trouble. One day, while Elias, Flora and Roy had taken the buggy into town with a load of apples to sell and Herbert and Raymond were off working in the fields, Walter and Ruth were wandering around the property when they came across a barrel sitting against the north side of the house. The curious siblings lifted the top off the barrel to find it full of black pitch.
Walter picked a stick up off the ground and stuck it in the barrel, examining the pitch that had been left on the tip.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “This would be great to paint with!” The boy looked around for a surface to paint on, but nothing presented itself. Deflated, the boy looked longingly back at the barrel and noticed the broad exterior wall of the farmhouse covered in white clapboard siding. “Ruth, let’s paint on the house.”
“Will it come off?” Ruth asked. “I don’t think father will be very happy.”
“Sure, it will come off,” her older brother said derisively. “Get a stick.”
As the little girl picked up a stick from beneath a nearby tree, the aspiring artist dipped his makeshift paintbrush into the tar and began to draw pictures onto the side of the house. For the next few minutes, he created an imaginary world on the blank wooden canvas full of houses with smoke erupting from the chimneys and small, smiling people standing nearby. Two years younger than her brother, Ruth drew zigzags below and beside the boy’s town. After a while, the siblings stepped back from their works of art, sticks in hand, and admired their handiwork in the warm sunlight.
“We should probably start cleaning up before Mother and Father get back,” Walter suggested. Ruth ran inside to get a rag to scrub off their work, but the pair quickly realised that the tar had begun to dry and harden and wasn’t coming off the clapboard siding. The pair was still trying to scrub the tar off the house when they heard the sound of hooves coming up the road. Peeking around the corner of the house, Walter felt a sense of panic rise as he saw his father, mother and brother riding in the buggy past the front of the farmhouse. The boy would be unable to hide his work from his father; the barn in which the family stabled the horses and parked the buggy was on the north end of the property.
Sure enough, when Elias discovered what his two youngest children had been up to, he wasn’t happy. Snatching his own stick off the ground, he disciplined both of his children before marching into the house. Over the course of the next few days, Walter’s father became angrier as he realised he was unable to scrub nor chip the tar drawings off the side of the house. Eventually he gave up, hoping that others in the town wouldn’t see his children’s handiwork due to its placement on the north side of the house.
To prevent a similar event from taking place, Elias encouraged his son to take his Big Chief drawing pad into the farmyard if he wanted to draw outdoors. When he got tired of drawing his father’s livestock, Walter would carry his art supplies to nearby farms to sketch the neighbours’ animals. The boy would stretch in the grass on his belly or perch himself on a fencepost. At one farm in particular, the young artist enjoyed sketching a chestnut-coloured Morgan stallion who gracefully grazed in the pasture.
One day, while sketching the strong horse, a shadow fell over Walter and the boy started as he felt a strong hand on his shoulder. He turned around to find the owner of the farm, Leighton Sherwood, standing behind him. While Sherwood was now a farmer north of Marceline, the elderly man had spent his career as a physician throughout the American Midwest, earning him the nickname ‘Doc’ around town.
“Not bad, Walter,” the old man said, looking over the drawing, a smile spreading across his bare, ruddy-complexed face.
“Do you really like it?” the boy asked.
“I sure do,” Sherwood stated. The smile disappeared as a thoughtful look crossed his face. “Say, you wouldn’t be interested in selling that picture, would you? Ole Rupert there is my favourite horse and I sure would like to have it.”
Young Walter was amazed. “Sell it? You can have it!”
But Doc simply shook his head, pulling the boy’s hand toward him and placing a shiny quarter into the palm. After a short talk with the farmer, Walter climbed down off the fence and, tucking his drawing pad under his arm, ran home clutching the quarter in his hand. He could feel a small bulge in his pocket that he’d forgotten about: a buckeye that he carried everywhere he went because his friends told him it would bring good luck. Maybe his friends had been right.
It was the first time Walter Disney was paid for creating art, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.