Myrtle Cahow was 5”10” and always wore high heels, dressed to the nines, had waist length curls of raven black hair, and as a teenager in the 1910s cracking mules across the 37 miles from Wheatland to Ha Ha Tonka as part of Cahow Cartage Company must have caused quite a stir, among the imported stone masons from Europe, and potential employees of her father Milo.
In the seventies it was my greatest privilege to drive to Hermatige and take her anyplace she wanted to go. As a gray haired man I’m still honored to be announced as her grandson when I’m in Hickory County, where she still has quite a few living fans, who ask me to authenticate her book (I’m astonished anyone made counterfeit copies, but they did) and sometimes I try and find old places she mentioned in her fifty year comedy series in The Index (the basis and inspiration for the television shows Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres, although she nor her publisher ever were paid a cent of royalties). Yes, there is a place called Bug Tussle, and I could see it every morning as a child, a half mile north of our farm.
Myrtle “Ma” Cahow Agee was a literary genius, and a master of subtle, dead pan humor.
Her grandfather Joshua Cahow was an astoundingly tough, adept, womanizing, scoundrel that she remembered meeting as a child. She later claimed her brother John was so infatuated by Joshua he tried to emulate him.
Father: Basil Cahow Obituary: Marshall (MI) Daily Chronicle Monday, March 21, 1904 Joshua Cahow died at the county house Saturday at the age of 107 years. Marshall (MI) Expounder Friday, March 25, 1904 Joshua Cahow died at the county house Saturday at the age of 107 years. Married: Joshua...
www.findagrave.com
Myrtle claimed Joshua was 113 when he died in 1904, slipping while walking to church with his last wife (or perhaps girlfriend) who was younger than her father Milo, who was 51 in 1904. Milo was convinced she had somehow murdered him, but resigned himself to the fact he might well have needed killing, given his habits of infidelity. His death certificate says he died at the county home, which might be where his last wife (or girlfriend) stuck him, after she took his considerable estate, or so it was argued.
The story I’ve always heard was that Joshua was over age to enlist in the Yankee army in 1863 to get away from a jealous woman, so he lied and said he was 60. He took 10 year old Milo with him, and said he was 13.
I suppose the need for drovers in the Yankee army was so great, they didn’t check very hard about ages.
But if you must skip town when you’re 73 with your 10 year old son because your mistress gouged your second wife’s eyes out, and made her blind, then it shouldn’t be a shock your grandson died when a jealous woman rammed a broomstick up his rear about 90 years later.
Myrtle said her brother John was a good boy, always popular with the girls, but he came back from World War One a changed man, which she blamed on him being exposed to the wrong companions while in the service.
She told me she should have shot him in 1920 when he robbed her father, but she was married and worried she might have to do some jail time, and somebody had to look after Milo, anyway, since their mother had died.
SWEETER THAN THE FLOWERS
Milo had several girlfriends, but never married until he died in 1931.
