Four Dollars and a Pair of Garters

Alvah Bodamer and his brother Vernon were enterprising young farmers. While they farmed rented land, sometimes in Lake County, sometimes over the line in Porter County, they supplemented their income by threshing for their neighbors. That aspect of their business was going well enough that in 1912 they bought a new Port Huron separator and Rumely engine "to take care of their patrons in an up-to-date manner."

One of their patrons was Henry Nolte. During the week of July 12, 1914, they were threshing on his land when an itinerant laborer known only as Joe came by. He was flat broke, he said, and needed work. The Bodamers hired him on the spot.

The next day threshing continued on the Nolte farm. There was no hint of a problem until Henry happened to retrieve his vest from the barn, where he'd hung it up, and noticed something was missing from it — his wallet, containing about four dollars in cash, and a box that held a new pair of garters.

(For anyone not familiar with early-20th-century menswear, I should mention that men of that era commonly wore garters, on their sleeves to adjust the length, and on their socks to hold them up. We should not leap to the conclusion that the garters in question were ladies', and thence infer that Henry must have been keeping company with some woman who was no better than she should be, obviously, since a respectable lady would never accept such a gift from any man not her husband — no; we must rein in our galloping imaginations.)

Henry told the Bodamer brothers about the theft. They all suspected Joe. He'd definitely been in the barn that morning, looking after the Bodamers' horses. But no one had seen him take anything, and apparently they didn't feel justified in tackling him and searching his person.

The next morning, Joe accompanied Alvah on a trip up to Hobart, and when Joe paid cash for some tobacco — he who had professed to be penniless and hadn't yet been paid for his threshing work — Alvah figured it was time to go see Marshal Fred Rose. On hearing the story, the Marshal arrested Joe, searched him, and turned up Henry's wallet with all his money but 20 cents. The garters, alas, were nowhere to be found.

Joe admitted to taking everything. However, according to the Gazette, "as Mr. Nolte didn't care to prosecute all the Marshal could do was to give [Joe] a 'stick of advice' and allow him to go his way."

(Would you believe I'd never heard the phrase "a stick of advice" before? At first I thought the Marshal had so far departed from my notion of his character as to commit an act of violence against a perpetrator who was about to get off scot-free. But a little Googling shows me the phrase serving the role of the more familiar "a piece of advice.")

Well, this would be an innocuous little story, except that no story involving a crime against Henry Nolte can really seem innocuous in light of what we already know.


Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Additional Local." Hobart News 15 Aug. 1912.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 22 Feb. 1907; 19 Feb. 1909; 9 Feb. 1912.
♦ "Took Money From Nolte." Hobart Gazette 24 July 1914.