Dick Wick Hall and His Town Salome

BY: Gladys Thompson Niehuis

Salome, in central western Arizona, was founded in 1904, population, 1. That sole citizen was Richard Wick Hall, young eastern newspaperman who had followed the call of the West.. . . Today Salome is a busy travel center on U. S. Highways 60 and 70, over which pass a heavy load of east-west transcontinental travel through Arizona. I'VE EAR, ALL YOU modern, motorized arabs who enjoy Arizona's highways so constantly especially when you travel in Maricopa and Yuma Counties and spare a "thank you" for Dick Wick Hall and his town, Salome.

Salome, in central western Arizona was founded in 1904, population, 1. That sole citizen was Richard Wick Hall, young eastern newspaperman, who had followed the call of the West. He had left a promising future, but he hadn't left behind his ambition and his delightful sense of humor, for over a period of twenty years he was, and successfully, gas station owner, mining man, and editor, and today his memory is revered by his adopted state as a writer, philosopher, and as a citizen whose name will always be cherished among her most illustrious sons.

It was his newspaper work as editor, staff and publisher of the Salome Sun, however, that put his town and Arizona itself, in the national eye. The paper, one little (812x11) mimeographed sheet, illustrated with pen and ink drawings, was so full of real humor and color and kindly philosophy that it was "reprinted" regularly over a period of three years by the Saturday Evening Post.

The town of Salome was named by Hall for Grace Salome Pratt, the wife of his mining partner. In his paper the town was always referred to as "Salome (Where She Danced!)," and he explains mock-guerulously in one of his issues, "Everybody seems to think I am the man that made her dance, but it wasn't my fault. I told her to keep her shoes on or the sand would burn her feet!" This mythical Salome was always depicted as a sinuous line-drawing creaTrue, in the evident throes of terpsichore. Probably the best-known of Dick Hall's cerebral children, however, was the famed "frog that never learned to swim," who had, in fact, tocarry his own drinking water in a little canteen slung on his back!

Much of the space in the little paper was given to risibility-tickling gossip about the fewinhabitants of the town, most of them miners, such as a good-natured jibe about the burros that got away and beat some old prospector back to town, or So-and-So's new store teeth and how he wore them mostly in his pocket.

DICK WICK HALL'S Famous Salome Frog

inhabitants of the town, most of them miners, such as a good-natured jibe about the burros that got away and beat some old prospector back to town, or So-and-So's new store teeth and how he wore them mostly in his pocket.

Some of his humor was of the kind that made the West famous for its tall tales. There is, for example, the one about the Yale sprinter, Mac, who asked for a job herding sheep, a few weeks before lambing season. He was hired. At the end of the first day out, his employer waited for his return, and was beginning to be a little worried when neither he nor his flock appeared. Finally, at dusk, the new herder hove into sight, shooed his flock into the pen and staggered over to his boss. Mac was covered with streaks of dirt and perspiration, and wiping his forehead, he gasped out his resignation. His employer, puzzled, wanted to know why. "I had an awful time keeping the lambs with the herd, simply terrible! I just can't keep this up every day!" The owner, knowing there were no lambs yet, went over to the corral, and there he found huddled in one corner, away from the sheep a bunch of terrified jackrabbits.

The service Hall did the motorist, however, was the fun he poked so consistently at the "socalled county highways." In time these hecklings produced action. Here is a sample: "Yes, this is the right route, but if you can find any-thing that looks like a county road up here, take a photograph of it and send it to the supervisors and highway commission of Maricopa and Yuma Counties; they don't know there are any county roads up here!" and later: "We under-stand that a lot of people are waiting for the paved road to be built to Yuma so they can get out." He was fond of saying that one of the drunken, mesquite-dodging roads near Sal-ome had been started by an old prospector as he fled from some Indians who were after his scalp! It is easy to see why the Salome Sun contributed materially to the improvement of roads in Arizona.

Dick Hall's "Laughin' Gas Servis Station and Garage" bore this advertising slogan: "Tickle Lizzie's carburetor with Laughin' Gas." An other of the admonitions with which the outside of the building was plastered: "Smile, you don't have to stay, but we do." This building is still standing, where the old highway used to cross the tracks. Hall was fond of boasting that the population of his town increased 100 per cent every year "19 people in 19 years," he said with an editorial grin, in 1923.

So, in spite of the fact that (as Hall himself put it) the Salome Sun was "for fun," it accomplished several serious purposes: gave its originator a share of fame and fortune, improved roads in that section of the country (Highway 70 that now bisects Salome is one of Arizona's finest!) and made a town.

Of Salome, Hall said then, "It don't take two looks to see it all." This is still more or less true, but travelers usually want to make those looks longer than Mere glances. Salome now has an approved bus stop, and there is more to see in those two looks. The town now takes pride in a population of 100, a swimming pool, some green grass whereon is a statue of the famous Frog, airconditioned tourist cabins, and most unbelievable of all, a remarkable aviary of tropical birds. This last is part of the priceless collection of Bill Sheffler, a Los Angeles business man, who with his brother owns the bus stop, in the dining room of which you may read some of the original copies of the Salome Sun.

Of the paper, "Made with a Laff on a mimeograph," its editor said: "I get the Salome Sun out just for fun, to keep from talking to myself and disturbing the jack rabbits when I get too lonesome because there ain't no one much else to talk to here except tourists, and all they want to talk about is, 'How much is gass?' 'Which is the best road?' 'My God, ain't it awful?' and 'How do you get out of here?' They all ask that. And so I get the Sun out." He also insisted that his publication was "a first-class newspaper becuz it has to be sent out in an envelope with a 2-cent stamp on it." (That

was when 2 cents was the price of a 3-cent stamp. Remember?) In response to a request for some copies of the Sun, Hall sent a number of them with a letter to the editor of the Arizona Republican in Phoenix. He explained that no remuneration was expected from the "subscribers", although intimating that contributions would not actually be refused. He concluded: "Sometimes folks send old 5 bills, Bull Durham tobacco and Camel cigarettes. It don't matter. You don't need to send me anything, there ain't no place here to spend it and I have got a life sentence and if I get too much money I might get foolish and try to get away.

Adios, Dick."

In keeping with the grin-tipped barbs he aimed at the Highway Commission was his name for Highway 60, that bumped along through Salome the "Yumaresque Highway."

Where Salome was concerned he was a vigilant one-man Chamber of Commerce, but he did love a good-natured jibe at the other thriving little railroad stops along the road. He even took an occasional poke at Los Angeles, with its habit of annexing all neighboring towns in its "suburbs." once slyly informing the world that pretty soon Salome was going to include some of the nearby (about 35 miles distant) settlements in its city limits.

Here is a story of his with the typical home town booster slant: "A tourist coming through the other day said: 'What are all those big black birds flying around in the air up over that little sidetrack station a few miles up the road? I don't see any of them flying around Salome.' Some of those tourists may not be up on Natural History but you can't fool a Buzzard. They know they always can tell!'"

As to Hall's humor: Some people, the Saturday Evening Post included, not only liked it but were willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of reprinting it. Still, there are others, and discriminating people too, who can't abide it, think there is nothing at all amusing in the exaggerations that played a big part in Hall's fun.

Edwin Corle, for instance, in his book "Desert Country", admits that while everyone has a right to his own opinion as to the funnybonetickling qualities of a humorist, Hall's type of humor leaves him absolutely sober, and tags it "The Liars Club Brand of American Humor."

Now lots of fine people belong to the Liars Club and lots don't, so this is no reflection on either Hall or his critics. But if Dick didn't have, he should have had an honorary membership in the Club, in fact he might well have held a high office, for he was a master of this kind of humor. Witness his long story and intricate diagram of the "Greasewood Golf Course," which covered hundreds of miles of the desert around Salome and the rugged Harquahala Mountains, and where players rode horseback, carried canteens, considered everything that didn't move as a hazard (rattlesnakes excluded), and were cautioned that "all horses lost must be paid for." Then, there is this story about the melons-one that any C. of C. could be proud of: "Melons don't do very well here becuz the vines grow so fast they wear the melons out dragging them around the ground." He went on to add another horticultural note: "And in dry years we sometimes have to plant onions in between the rows of potatoes, then scratch the onions, in order to make the potatoes' eyes water enough to irrigate the rest of the garden."

In addition to the Frog and Salome, the chief actors in most of his stories were: the Chuckawalla Kid, Chloride Kate, Sheep Dip Jim, and a character I haven't seen identified as other than Bill. The Frog, of course, was Hall's favorite stooge. It is said that once when the humorist went to Hollywood and in course Of his inspection tour had his picture taken with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., he remarked, "The old Frog is getting into the swim, even if he can't." Especially short and to the point is this little quip from one of the copies of the Sun: "Put the Frog out, Bill, I think it is going to rain."

There was a depth in Hall's nature, seldom of his serio-comic poems must express something of his own deep-rooted love of the desert country: "When Omar Khayyam said he could dine On a loaf of bread and a jug of wine, With her beside him and be satisfiedOut in the wilderness with his brideOmar wasn't worrying about high rents Or of honeymooning at small expense; He meant that he liked the greasewood smell And the long hot days that feel like hell, The red sunsets and the cool moonlight And the soft sweet air of the desert night, And the dim sand trail that leads out to The Queen of the Desert and his rendezvous."

The bronze relief tablet on the monument over his grave is a photolithographic likeness of Hall that was presented to the Arizona Museum by J. Herman Aagaard, who felt that Arizona should do more honor to the man who with his pen and his kindly, sun-dried wit gave the world a smile, when smiles are so hard to get. Aagaard also expressed the opinion that had Hall lived he would have achieved to such renown as that enjoyed by Mark Twain or Irvin S. Cobb, and many people are agreed.

The aviary deserves a few words, since it attracts over 200 visitors daily and is unique in Arizona. It houses over 800 birds, must of them from tropical and semi-tropical countries. There are specimens from Africa, South America, Australia, India, China, Mexico, Canada, Arabia, Malaya, and of course, many from our own Southwest. Both Mr. Sheffler and the caretaker, Mrs. Helen Dennis, are proud of and attached to the birds, and glad to tell visitors about them.

One of the prides of its owner's heart is a rare Black Palm Cockatoo, given to the collection by Dillon Ripley of the Philadelphia Academy of Science. This is a king of a bird, huge and shiny black, with a proud ebony crest and a wise, featherless red face. The real showpieces, however, are some little birds called White-Rumped Lories, delicate things, feathered in brilliant brown, black, orange and yellow. Sheffler has succeeded in raising some young of this species, and feels that this is a real break, since no one has before persuaded them to breed in captivity.

Mrs. Dennis was feeding the baby parakeets the day we stopped; these youngsters had to be kept in a small-mesh cage within the large cage because they were so tiny they squeezed through the larger wiring (Continued on Page Forty) Bill Sheffler, who operates the service station and cafe at Salome, has gone to considerable expense to build an aviary which today is one of the most interesting roadside exhibits in the west. Here Mr. Sheffler is seen with some of his young lories, which have never before been bred in captivity. (Photos by Chas. Niehuis.)