A Chautauqua desk from the Lewis E. Myers Company in the PoCo Muse Collection. Image credit to Albert Photographic.
This article was originally published as part of Rollie Bernhart’s Special Weekly Feature in The Vidette-Messenger of Porter County on December 22, 1971.
Memories grow dim and oft times fade completely away from people reaching their 90th milestone. But not so the mind of James O. Cox, well-known resident of Valparaiso who came here from Ohio in 1916 to take a district managership with the old Lewis E. Myers Co., manufacturers of the Chautauqua educational desk.
Cox observed his 90th birthday Sept. 30 at the family home at 302 Madison where he had been under the care of his daughter, Mrs. Miriam Carter.
He celebrated the occasion by vividly recalling an incident which concerned delivery of 300 desks to Winnipeg, Canada, in time to make 300 kids happy for Christmas. Cox refers to these memories as “reliving the Chautauquas.”
Cox said that the event occurred during Christmas week of 1918. World War I had not only taken most of his salesmen, but also a major portion of his production personnel from the factory which was located in buildings now occupied by Valparaiso Technical Institute.
It wasn’t unusual during this period to find the boss, L.E. Myers himself, and his district manager pitching in on the production line in order to get the desks ready for Christmas deliveries. Cox had met his boss in college, and it was inevitable that Cox would rise to an executive position with the company where he had worked during summer vacations starting in 1906.
He recalled that about 5 o’clock on Christmas Eve of 1918 that the boss called him into the office and handed him a telegram from a distributor at Winnipeg requesting a rush order of 300 desks for Christmas delivery. It remained for Cox to be Santa Claus… to figure out how to get the desks to their destination and prevent a void in the lives of 300 Canadian children on Christmas Day.
Armed with $20 given him by the boss as tips for any help he could get, plus the telegram, he ran to the railroad depot only to discover the only train due was eastbound at midnight.
Cox recalled he was able to influence the stationmaster for part of the boss’ $20, to flag down the eastbound train which he rode to Plymouth. There he was fortunate to board a train westbound for Chicago, which was not scheduled to stop at Valparaiso. In the baggage car, where he had gone because no passenger seats were available, a five-dollar bill convinced the man in charge of the baggage car to make a hurried unscheduled stop at Valparaiso. He was instructed to jump off and begin loading as soon as the train neared the station. He also had to assure the baggageman that he would ride into Chicago and get the desks transferred to a Canada-bound rail line.
At Valparaiso, the boss was waiting at the station with the desks, which were loaded into the unlighted baggage car almost before the train had been brought to a halt. “In those days,” said Cox, “I could handle 10 or 11 of them at a time.”
Needless to say, Cox was able to get the help necessary to get the desks off the train in Chicago and onto another headed for Winnipeg. “I waved the telegram and acted like a big boss,” he recalled in getting men to help get the desks started on the last leg of their journey, and thus assure 300 children they would have a happy Christmas. And of course, he still had some of the boss’ money left. Twenty bucks went a long way in those days, he noted.
This was but one of many such incidents. “It was all a part of my life,” Cox said wistfully, “my Chautauqua life.”