The "Salome Sun" Still Shines

BY: JOHN C. MCPHEE,Dick Wick Hall

The Salome Sun Still Shines Dick Wick Hall, Famed Good Roads Booster, Left Indelible Mark on Highway 60, and Memories That Linger On

EDITOR'S NOTE: Arizona Highways is indebted to the Saturday Evening Post for permission to reprint Dick Wick Hall's famous Greasewood Golf Course story. All other quotations are from original manuscript owned by the editor.

By JOHN C. MCPHEE DICK WICK HALL has been dead now almost a decade, but his indelible humor still amuses motorists at Salome, "Where she danced," and where Dick Wick Hall was discovered and his name rightfully filed for posterity among great American humorists.

Hall might be characterized among other things as Arizona's best known good roads booster. His Salome Sun, which was "made with a laugh on a mimeograph," once helped shape road building policies in Yuma county. Suffering from an incurable disease, death took Dick Wick Hall at the peak of his success. His widow passed away not long ago but the handful of residents at Salome point with pride to Hall's photograph and framed copies of his famed Salome Sun.

When sketches from the Sun appeared in the Saturday Evening Post they created a great deal of comment. Many thought them not genuine, but Arizonans who had heard of Dick Wick Hall long before he was found by the Post had been enjoying his penned capers for many years.

Sharing fame with the Sun's dancer, dry-land frog and mania for better roads was the Salome golf course which Hall described as follows: "Salome always has kept up its Average Annual Growth of 100 per cent a year-19 people now in 19 years, but after going through the panic of 1907, the World War and 3 Democratic State Asphyxiations without a Slump, it looks as if this here Greasewood Golf Course was going to depopulate the Town. We felt all swelled up at 1st when Eastern Tourists going through all said they never saw nothing like it nowhere before a golf club where everybody in Town had their own Hole, but we've either got to close up the Town or the Golf Course or get somebody in here to work.

"How come it all Happened was this way. The Chuckawalla Kid had been out prospecting and coming in for grub, down in Granite Wash where the Main highway is, he found a sack of clubs some Tourist had lost off his car, jolting over the rocks on his way to Pasadena. Nobody knew what they was until Another Tourist saw them hanging up at the station and told us and said this was just the place for a Golf Course and that every live town had one. He was in a Big Hurry to get to California, like all tourists, but he stopped long enough to make a Map of a Golf Course for us, with how the holes ought to be and the Distance between holes, more or less, which he said didn't matter so much as long as they was enough.

"We talked it over and decided that would be a good way to get the Laugh on Buzzard's Roost, the little Side Track a few miles up the line which has been labouring for Fifteen years under the Delusion that it was a Rival of Salome and that a Post Office printed on a Map always means a Town.

"Buzzard's Roost might be able to fool some of Uncle Sam's clerks back in Washington but all of us out here know that the only way they have been able to keep the Cancellation of Stamps up to $2.50 a month required by the government to keep the Post Office on the Map is by all of them writing letters to themselves. We figured if we got a Golf Course started at Salome Folks up at Buzzard's Roost would all be so busy talking about it some of them might forget to write and then they would lose the Post Office and that would mean 9 or 10 more people coming to Salome for their mail.

"It looked like a Good Plan and I said they could use my Dry Ranch, or as many Townships as they needed, and Shorty, Burroughs and the Chuckawalla Kid agreed to boss the job for Nothing and their Grub if the rest of us would Pay the Mexicans to cut the Sage Brush and Greasewood along the Far a Ways between the Holes. The man that made the map for us was in a Hurry and not a Good Writer and Shorty had carried the old envelope around in his pocket so long it was blurred and we couldn't make out where the distances was yds or rds., but finally decided it must be rds. for rods.

"So we made the first Hole 614 rds. up the other side of Centennial Arroya. Some of the Holes we made shorter. The Longest Hole is the 14th, 847 rods, not quite three miles, running from the old Adobe Cabin across the Ghietta Flats to Mesquite Wells and all told the whole Greaswood Golf Course is 6,429 rds. longjust a little over Twenty miles.

"It took us over 3 months to get all the Brush cut along the Far a Ways and the tin cans fixed in all the Holes, but it was Well Worth it and Salome now has the only Natural Nineteen Hole Greaswood Golf Course in the Whole World.

"They say some Folks play Golf just for Fun and Exercise. It's Exercise, all right all right, but I wish I could get somebody who thinks it's Fun to come and do a Few Days Real Work for me, if Playing Golf is their idea of having Fun. Starting out to play a Round on Our Course is an Event that requires Time and previous planning, and we Generally hire an extra man to work in our place while we are gone or put a notice on the Door that we will be back Next Week sometime. The only time I ever did get clear around, it took me three days and a half and I used 31 balls.

"We keep a Commissary and a Supply Wagon for the convenience of Mem-bers. I got a letter the other day from Red Katem, who owns the Bermuda Ranch and is just learning. He was out at the 11th hole and wrote in asking me to send him out a Barrel of Water, a slab of bacon, some beans and 3 dozen More Balls. Red never has got all the way around yet, but he keeps on trying.

"He generally gets Bill Jackson to caddy for him. Bill is a good rider and carries a couple of canteens of water along and can pick up a golf ball without getting out of the saddle. The Commissary Wagon hauls water around to the different Holes where there isn't any wells handy so Folks can camp overnight wherever they get to. One Facsimile of Volume 3, No. 3, of the Salome Sun, published by Dick Wick Hall in April, 1922. Salome, a diminutive community located on Highway 60 about 80 miles east of the Colorado river, was made world-famous by this soldier of fortune, miner, humorist and gasoline station agent. Copies of the Mimeographed Salome Sun are rare and those owned by old friends of the desert sage are held as priceless possessions.

SALOME SUN

MADE WITH A LAUGH ON A OGRAPH

Advertising Rates $1 A Word

VOL. 3, NO. 3 APRIL, 1922.

Ben Franklin said that all cats are gray at night, but Ben Franklin never saw Salome "Where She Danced.

Mickey Sullivan lost his almanac out at the Nob Hill mine last week and had to come to town to find out what time it was.

A tenderfoot from Iowa came along last week in an old Lizzie and Squint Eye Johnson traded him 160 acres of land for it. I hear Squint Eye said that the durn fool couldn't read and he made the deed out for 640 acres.

Tourists stopping at the Salome Service Station always get their TANKS full of gas; at some of these sage brush and side trap stations they get their EAR full.

Laying all jokes aside Parker included Parker is not a bad little town. It will come in handy as a suburb for Salome when we need those sand hills to build our Court House here at Salome.

Ed Earll has a nice green spot on his ranch between Bob Keast's and Mrs. Peck's but he picked out a poor place to raise calves Bob started a few years ago with a sow horse and Mrs. Peck with a saddle horse and it has been a race ever since to see which could raise the most calves. Both have done well but Ed Earll will have to get a flying machine if he expects to get any now.

This Is a wonderful country.

DICK WICK HALL EDITOR & MINER

No Charge For Personal Mention

"JUST FOR FUN & HARD BOILED"

HERE SHE IS!

TO MAKE YOU SMILE FOR HALF A MILE SALOME, ARIZONA "WHERE SHE DANCED"

Times haven't changed much since Adam and Eve raised Cain and a lot of people are doing it yet.

A tourist coming through the other day said: "What are all those big black birds flying around in the air up over that little side track station a few miles up the road? I don't see any of them flying around Salome. Some of these tourists maynnot be up on Natural History, but you can't fool a Buzzard. They know they ALWAYS can tell.

According to the papers, Yuma County has just sold $950,000.00 of OUR road bonds. I say. "our" because we will have to pay for a lot of them but the southern end of the county will probably get the first 6 figures and we will get the last two as usual. The poople of the northern end of the county ought to organize a "Roed Bond Vigilance Committee" and watch the expenditure of all this money and see that we get our share. Anyone in Yuma County with that much money to spend WILL BEAR WATCHING.

The sand must be hot, Salome, the my you pick up that left hind foot of yours. Anyone would think you were raised in Yume, where all the girls learn to pick their fest up young & carly.

No, No, NO! This IS NOT a picture of anyone living in Salome now. I mention this so no one can sue me for libel or shoot me for it.

ALL THE DELEGATES TO THE NATIONAL ROAD HEETING AT PHOENIX THE LAST WEEK IN APRIL ARE INVITED TO COME TO SALONE AND SEL HER DANCE AND TO SEE HOW PHOENIX, MARICOPA COUNTY, YUMA AND YUIA COUNTY DO NOT BUILD'OR REPAIR THE BEST AND SHORTEST ROUTE TO LOS ANGELES & THE COAST, DY WAY OF BUCKEYE AND BLYTHE TE HAIN TRAVE