The Stranger from Pike
An eccentric traveler’s awkward recovery of a lost hat becomes a temporary spectacle on Main Street in Walla Walla.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
One of the most attractive—because of his general devil-may-care and go-to-thunder appearance—individuals that ever appeared in Walla Walla last week passed eastward on Main street, solitary and alone, in a squatty, covered, creaking, spindle-shanked wagon, drawn by the shaggiest, uncouthiest, shaitailedest, wall-eyed plugs that ever struck the town. The individual had red hair, a long nose, peaked chin and freckled face, and with jaws a-waiving, he sat at the front end of his vehicle, bent over until his breast nearly touched his knees, peering constantly around the cover of his wagon from right to left with a rhythmic swing. When near the Main street bridge, the man, as if seized with a startling idea, suddenly arose and thrust his hand into his butternut jeans trousers pocket. In the effort, his head struck the front hoop of the wagon cover, knocking the remnant of his straw hat off, which, after caroming on a wheel, fell into the mud. The man halted his plugs. Deliberately pulling up one side of the cover, he tied it with a string, sighed, and gazed reproachfully at the hat. For full five minutes he seemed lost in profound contemplation. Finally, he reached down into a convenient iron kettle and triumphantly drew forth a fishing hook and line. Patiently but firmly he cast the hook at the hat, but the hat was coy and would not bite. For seven minutes this firm yet patient man cast the hook, until the hook took hold and the game was his'n. The man grinned, and the large crowd, which by this time had assembled to watch the show, yelled. The man stuck his hat on his head, kicked each of his noble steeds, and moved off with an air of triumphal satisfaction. To a question, he answered that he came from old Missouri and was all the way from Pike.
“For full five minutes he seemed lost in profound contemplation, and passers-by who wonderingly stopped, observed that the man was the subject of seemingly sorrowful and intensely active thought.”
Travelers and transients often became the focal point of local amusement in the 19th century as communities grappled with the influx of settlers. This humorous sketch captures the specific cultural archetype of the 'Pike'—a common term for rural migrants from the Ozarks—whose presence was at once familiar and performatively strange to the townspeople.
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