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1674-2 C.W. (Pete) Chase11VLYL lit\ VVLI/liO j JUNIOR LEAQUE OF MIAMI • 5-1-69 INTERVIEW WITH C. W. "PETE" CHASE 5-1-69 MASTER TAPE 18 Today we are going to talk to Mr. C. W. Chase, better known to his long time friends and most more recent friends in the greater Miami area as just "Pete". Mr. Chase came to Miami and Miami Beach many, many years ago. We won't say just how many -- we'll let him tell you how many years ago that was. He is a Director of Chase Federal Savings & Loan Association and has been an active civic leader in Miami Beach and Dade County for many, many years. INTERVIEWER: Pete -- or Mr. Chase, how many years was it that you did come to Miami? or to Dade County? MR. CHASE: On a visit I came here with Mrs. Chase in 1914. That was just on a summer visit. There was very little here at that time, just Smith's Casino and they had a wooden swimming pool down there where the Dog Track is now. INTERVIEWER: That's the Miami Beach Kennel Club. MR. CHASE: That's the dog track and the only means they had of filling that swimming tank was from a wind mill -- they had a wind mill there and a pipe running out in the ocean. When the breeze was good, why they could pump water into the pool. INTERVIEWER: Mr. Chase, I know that you chronicled quite a story of Miami Beach really from its inception up to about the time that I think you arrived in the Miami Beach area and some years after that. I have heard the story before, and I think it would be very interesting if you told the people that are listening to this interview -- let's make that our interview -- for you to us that story of how Miami Beach got its start. Let's take it in the chronological order that I've heard you tell it so many times before. ary vuLuiLa C.W.CHASE MR. CHASE: About the early beginning? INTERVIEWER: The early beginning -- right from the start. MR. CHASE: Well, so very few people know of the early beginnings, and really the c, vt very earliest beginnings of Miami Beach were about 100 years ago. There were a few people who used to come down to this area back then -- a hundred years ago -- but they stayed over on the Miami side because over here there was nothing but swamp land and a little beach. But back in the year 1870, there was a New Jersey visitor down here by the name of Henry Lum and his 15 year old son, Charles. Well, Charles was an inquisitive kind of a boy and stating over on the bank on the other side -- the mainland side -- he used to look over here and see that there were trees and things over here and he influenced his father one day to take a rowboat and row over just to see what was on this side of the Bay. Well, eh, when they took the rowboat and there was no place to get out, because it was all swamp mangrove, until they found a little opening down just about where Government Cut is now, and then they rowed around on the ocean side. And they found there that there was a small beach where the waves and the wind had washed up sand. And that beach ran from the edge of the ocean back to just about where Washington Avenue is now. From there on over towards Miami it was nothing but swamp. The swamp got deeper and deeper and deeper till you got to the edge of these trees and then the swamp was about 5 feet deep and all mangrove trees with their great big huge branches that go down into the water. INTERVIEWER: Actually this swamp was all what part of what is now -- ah, what then was Biscayne Bay and has since that time been filled. MR. CHASE: Ah, yes. INTERVIEW: Right. MR. CHASE: Huh, huh. MR. CHASE: Well, when they got over here they found that a few coconuts had C.W. Chase washed ashore and they had grown into trees. And there was an old time belief back in those days -- that's an erroneous belief -- that a coconut tree produced a coconut every day in the year. And for years Lum and his son, Charles, kept thinking about the growing of coconuts here and then shipping them north. Now by 1882 -- that was 12 years later -- this man Lum had purchased from the Government at 35c an acre the land from where the present Dog Track is on up end of the to where 14th Street is now and from the ocean over to the/mangrove swamp, which was the Bay. At 35c an acre, that means they bought that land at about, uh, 7c a lot -- what is a lot here today. Now also in that same year, 1882, Lum had interested a fellow New Jersey man -- Lum had come from New Jersey -- by the name of Nate Field, and this Nate Field proved to be quite a character. But he had interested Field by telling him that a coconut tree produced a coconut every day in the year, and that a 1,000 trees a thousand trees would produce a thousand coconuts a day. Wow, wow: Well, this Nate Field, he was an operator who did things in a big way. And he wasn't going to stop at just 1,000 coconuts a day or even 100,000 coconuts a day, he was going to grow a quarter of a million coconuts a day. And Field could see where he was gonna be not top dog, not the top banana, but the top coconut of America. So getting about 60 investors up there in New Jersey together, Field bought at from 75c an acre to $1.25 an acre the ocean frontage to the Bay and running on -- and going on up from Cape Florida where Key Biscayne is now, going on there clean on up to Ft. Lauderdale -- a distance of about 80 miles, except that for the land/Lum had bought from the Dog Track to 14th Street. So sailing from New York in 1883 on a Mallory Steamship Line, Field and his company, they transferred their mules, tents and sort of a portable house and everything to a chartered schooner in Key West and then they sailed on up to where is now Miami Beach. And they anchored nff just approximately off where Lincoln Road is now and they pushed the mules overboard to swim ashore. Then • C.W. CHASE they floated their equipment into shore and he sent the schooner to Trinidad for a load of 100,000 coconuts which they planted here. Now the next year, the schooner brought 117,000 coconuts from Nicaragua and they were planted on Key Biscayne. You know Key Biscayne now has a great number of coconut trees. And the third year, the schooner brought in 117,000 from Cuba and these were planted up around Boca Raton. kea Then, Field hide (?) himself and his equipment and his men and everything back to New Jersey and they waited a few years for the coconuts to grow and to produce the great harvest. INTERVIEWER: Mr. Chase, let me interrupt you and ask you a question about the coconuts on Key Biscayne. The coconuts that eventually grew on Key Biscayne, was this later the coconut plantation that the Mathesons -- the Hardie Mathesons became interested in? MR. CHASE: Correct, only they enlarged the amount of coconuts that, uh -- from the original that had been planted there. INTERVIEWER: But that was many years later? • MR. CHASE: Oh many years later. Yes, that was way back, oh in the 70's or 80's I imagine. INTERVIEWER: Hm, hm. Go on, I'm sorry. MR. CHASE: Well -- But Nate Field didn't become the great Nut -- the great Coconut King he thought he was gonna be, but he did become the "great nut" for he had overlooked on little thing in planting all these coconuts and that was the wild rabbit. The wild rabbit just loved the tender shoots of those newly sprouted coconuts and his glorious get -rich -quicker was a failure. And Nate Field became r1unt.nr, Vu1L1J C.W.CHASE known as the Nut of Nuts. Well, however, out of the wreckage, out of all that wreckage, Nate Field managed to save a few properties for himself, one of which was this section of Miami Beach from 14th Street on up to 70th Street, just about where the Deauville Hotel now stands. Well, 10 years go by. It's 1896. Young Lum, you remember the young inquisitive boy -- well by now he had married and they had a home up where Lummus Park is now the only people who lived on Miami Beach. He and his wife, they were the only inhabitants here. By 1896, Flagler, he'd pushed his railroad on down the east coast into Miami. And Miami was having a celebration. Young Lum took his bride and sailed over to the festivities, staying at a Mrs. Chase's rooming house. This Mrs. Chase, by the way, was no relative of mine. Now after Lum had run up a bill there of about $80, Mrs. Chase asked him to pay up. Well Lum didn't have any money, so he asked Mrs. Chase would she take 10 acres of his Miami Beach oceanfront land in place of the $80 that he owed her. And her answer was "No indeed. You couldn't give me any part of that swamp land." So that's why I want to say right here and now, that Mrs. Chase wasn't any part of my family. Well, so where it was the wild rabbit that stopped the first round venture on Miami Beach, if the name of the little love bug -- the little love bug -- to start the second venture and this time a successful one. Shortly after the turn of the century, our old friend, Nate Field, had become a sparking widower and in looking around for a second Mrs. Field, Nate's glamorous old eyes -- those birdy eyes, they're the kind that old widowers have when they look at an attractive young lady with those eyes that jump from limb to limb. And his birdy eyes alighted upon a fair young damsel, the daughter of one of his coconut investors, a New Jersey farmer, by the name of John S. Collins. The love bug had sure bit old Nate, and wanting to court the young lady in style, Old Nate rIUNJlR VOICES C.W. CHASE Field invited Collins and family, of course, to make a trip down here to inspect his holdings from 14th street on up to 70th Street and particularly that only part suitable for the growing of fruit and vegetables, from 28th to 46th and 7th Street and from Indian Creek over to what's now Prairie Avenue for some unknown reason over the centuries trees and shrubs and everything had grown and died and it became good land and that was the only good land on Miami Beach. How it happened to get there, why ? Nobody seemed to know. So, Old Collins, after whom Collins Avenue is named, he and Field they fell out because Field still wanted to go into growing coconuts and Collins, no, he wanted to grow vegetables and fruit and things of that kind. So Old Collins, he bought Nate Field out and the love bug never did bite Collin's daughter. That became an absolute failure again. Now by 1907, John Collins had started what was known as The Farm where this good soil was 28th to 47th Street, Indian Creek over to Prairie, and it was locally known as The Farm. He planted mangoes and avacados, potatoes and bananas. But in order to ship his products north, he had to load his launch with the products at 41st and Indian Creek and then he had to sail all the way up, clear up, way around La Gorce Island and then down the Bay and over onto the Bay front of Miami at 6th Street because that's where the railroad ended back in those days. It didn't end where it ended later on. Now, Biscayne Bay hadn't been deepened then by pumping up the soft Bay bottom and filling in Miami Beach and many a trip, many a, many a trip old man Collins' boat would get stuck between starting out and before he'd get over to Miami -- get stuck on a sandbar in the Bay. And there it would have to stay and wait till the tide came up to float it. Now this old John Collins, he was a wise and impatient little old Quaker and he spoke with the Quaker language of "thee" and "thou" and if Thee didn't move r iunLr.K VOICES C.W. Chase fast enough when he wanted things done, then thou got what thee didn't like. Well, Collins didn't like the idea of sailing all the way up and around La Gorce Island, back down. He didn't like that idea. Indian Creek at that time stopped right over where the Rony Plaza is now. There was no way you could get from there/ts the Bay unless you went up all around. So what did old man Collins do. Well, with no engineering experience and with only a little dipper dredge, he dug a canal from the Rony right on down to the Bay and that canal is still there -- Collins Canal. Here it is just above where we are sitting. So he had a direct connection then to the Bay and he could get his produce over, and he had solved one of his problems. Now, along about 1911 old man Collins begin to see that in addition to his farm land, he had some other land that had value, and except for the farm it was inhabitable land along the Miami Beach ocean front, from the ocean front back to Washington Avenue. So he got the idea that he wanted to improve that land with homes and sell it off and make some money. So, there was an "if" there. He had the land, but how could the people get from Miami over here to live on that land. That was his big "if". So, there was no causeway back in those days -- no cause- way here at all. So, old man Collins conceived the idea that he wanted to build a bridge, the first connection from Miami over here to Miami Beach. Now old man Collins, then in his 70's, he applied to Dade County, the Commissioners, for a franchise to build a wooden toll bridge, where the present Venetian Causeway now stands. Of course there were no islands like the Venetian Causeway has now, but one straight stretch of water right across. And do you know that the County Commissioners refused to give him a concession or a franchise. Well, you see, a franchise had previously been given to the owners of a couple of little boats that carried picnickers and freight from the foot of Flagler Street down to the south end of Miami Beach. These boat owners didn't want any competition. They didn't want any bridge. They had political pull. And the answer to old man Collins from the County Commissioners was no toll bridge. r1V1VLil Vui.,L'J C.W. CHASE Now this little wiry Quaker didn't take defeat sittin' down. So, what did he do? Well, he built a small piece of the road on the south end of Miami Beach where the picnickers would land -- just a little piece of road about a block long. Then he went over to Miami and hired an automobile. He drove the automobile down to the foot of Flagler Street where those boats would leave from and he demanded that his automobile be transported on those boats to Miami Beach. Well, the owners said, "Impossible. You can't carry a big automobile on these little boats. Impossible." So old man Collins, with his white whiskers brissling, He said, "Thou has the franchise and that franchise calls for thy carrying freight. And this automobile is freight. And I demand that thou shalt carry it." Well, the local newspapers, they jumped on this story with both feet. And so much pressure was put on the County Commission, that old man Collins got his franchise. And so began the conception of what is now Miami Beach. But building that wooden bridge almost never materialized. Collins -- old man Collins, he borrowed from every local bank in Miami Beach that would lend him money. He practically drained dry his New Jersey holdings, being then operated then by his son. Only to find that that was the end of his resources and the bridge was only 2/3rds finished. And with utter failure staring him in the face, he made one last effort, and this one last effort brought glittering success and millions to him and his family. That was in 1912. And to Miami had come Carl (?) G. Fisher, a young, energetic, forceful and far-seeing millionaire. So Collins and %,, his son-in-law, Thomas J. Paintoast (?), they borrowed the needed $50,000 from Fisher, and that was the turning point where Fisher put his millions, his energy, his foresight into making Miami Beach a great and beautiful resort city. Now, there are two little items of possible interest and then I'm going to say I'm through. Have you ever noticed alum in driving up Pine Tree Drive from 28th to 47th Street two rows of big, huge Australian pine trees? Well, when Collins started growing mangoes and avacados, the strong winds from off the ocean carried salt C.W. CHASE spray and this salt spray would damage the blossoms on his crops and practically ruined them. Well, not even nature was going to beat old man Collins, so he planted those rows of trees as a wind break and they did the work. Those trees are now a living Miami Beach monument to old John S. Collins. INTERVIEWER: And that's where Pine Tree Drive got it's name? MR. CHASE: That's where it got its name. Right. Now you remember those County Commissioners who couldn't see it was to the advantage of Dade County to have an auto connection to Miami Beach? Well, just picture this -- just picture this now. Many years ago, long before old man Collins dug the canal, Indian Creek was not a dead-end creek -- this was 100's of years ago -- it didn't stop at the Rony Plaza, but it kept right on flowing down a block or two further when it made a turn and went out into the ocean. That's where Collins Park now is. That's where the library is and the Dant Museum is. Well, old man Collins, he didn't have the money to fill in that low land after the ocean had stopped the Indian Creek from flowing into the ocean. The ocean had built up the beach and sand and everything and stopped it. So old man Collins didn't like the looks of this little piece of low land and he offered it to the County -- Dade County -- if they would fill it in a little bit and dress it up. Well, those same County Commissioners. Nope they didn't want it. Nothin' doin'. So then later on, Collins did give it to the City of Miami and they promised that they would do that. But they never did. And finally the City of Miami Beach got after the City of Miami, and the City of Miami gave that piece of land to the City of Miami Beach. That piece of land, old man Collins lived to see worth over one million dollars and today that land is worth over five million dollars. But the County wouldn't take -- they didn't want any place on the ocean front for the County and so said no (?). INTERVIEWER: They had about as much foresight in those days as they do today, don't they? riUNEEK vutc ES •C.W. CHASE MR. CHASE: You're right. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Well -- Oh, now -- What about old Nate Field, our old friend Nate Field, the widower with the birdy eyes, who had gotten bitten by the "love bug", remember him? Well, it is said that when he got back to New Jersey, his birdy eyes alighted on the limbs that belonged to a fair and fairly fast young damsel named Hortense. But old Nate Field, he told everybody marriage for him was over. Never again said old Nate, foot loose and fancy free. That was to be his motto. But he and Hortense kept running around with each other. And then all of a sudden without anybody knowing anything about it, Nate and Hortense get married. And then after a few weeks of married life, Nate asked the Court for an annulment. Well, came the day for the hearing and there in the Courtroom was Nate and his lawyer and Hortense and her lawyer, the Judge, and most of the town's inhabitants. They all wanted to hear what it was all about. So, in order to save the Court's time, said the Judge, addressing himself to Nate's lawyer, "Let's start off by having your client, here Nate, state his grievance against Hortense here." "Well, Your Honor," said Nate's lawyer. "You'll have to ask Nate himself, because I even haven't been able/to get him to tell me." The Judge said, "All right, Nate, come out. Let's have it." Well, it is said that old Nate got up and he cleared his throat and he hemmed and he hawed a bit and finally he said, "Well, Your Honor. You see it's like this. That night that Hortense and I got married. Well, Your Honor, I didn't know then that Hortense's Pa had not taken out a license to carry that shotgun." Finished. INTERVIEWER: Pete, let me ask you this? Now this brings us up to the year of about 1913, I think you said. MR. CHASE: That's right. INTERVIEWER: And this was about the time you came here, so that you have done a lot of research on this to put this all in chronological order and bring the story up to that time. 1913 -- ah, let's see, that's 56 years ago. C.W. CHASE MR. CHASE: But I didn't come here to live until '21. INTERVIEWER: 1921? MR. CHASE: Yah. INTERVIEWER: Had Carl Fisher started the development of Miami Beach prior to that time or after that time. When did Carl Fisher start his development over here? MR. CHASE: Carl Fisher never saw Miami Beach until that time that old man Collins wanted to make the loan in 1912. INTERVIEWER: Right. MR. CHASE: And before Fisher made the loan he wanted to come over here and see what the heck he was buildin' this bridge for old man Collins. Well, canal -- Collins Canal -- was in existence at that time. Old man Collins had previously built it you know. So Pancose (?) Fisher came over in his boat, and I've heard, oh, Tom Pantose (?) talk about it many a time, because there was no bulkhead to the canal then. It was just a bank of dirt. QGttilcoQS�- INTERVIEWER: Now is this Tom Pancose (9) you speak of, is this the father of Russell Pancose, the architect? MR. CHASE: Right. He's the old man Collins that Collins Avenue is named after. INTERVIEWER: Right. {'icy' Co(.Z MR. CHASE: So I have heard Pancose, the son-in-law say how they went over and they got a hold of Mr. Fisher and Mr. Fisher said, "Well, I want to go over there and see what it looks like." So Fisher was a speedboat demon. Boy, he loved speedboats -- he loved auto.... INTERVIEWER: Well, he started the Indianapolis Speedway, didn't he? MR. CHASE: He built the Indianapolis Speedway. He was a bicycle racer in his young days, he was an automobile racer in his middle years. And he loved speed. 1 1VL�L LL\ V \JLVLJ C.W.Chase i�a.ncoa� So, Pancose has told me how they came over here and came up this canal. And, of course, when you're going on a narrow body of water in a boat that is just churning up the water, it just washes the dirt off of the banks on each side in its wake, you know. And Pancose said, "Oh my god. Here we dug this canal and this guy with his fast boat, he is washing all the dirt back in the canal again." But anyhow they landed right where the Rony is and Fisher got out and walked over and looked up and down the ocean. There was nothing there at all. Nothing. Nothing: But Fisher fell in love with it. So in order to make the deal, old man Collins, in borrowing the $50,000, gave Fisher a bonus of a deed to a piece of land from 21st Street to 15th Street here on Miami Beach. Then all swamp land, except, as I say, enough of the ocean front to have a sand beach back of it to Washington Avenue. Well, Fisher fell in love with it. And that is when he decided he was gonna build a place here. INTERVIEWER: Well, he was a promoter, wasn't he? MR. CHASE: Oh yes, a big promoter. Although he had practically retired at this time. As a young man worth about six or eight million dollars. He had sold out his great patent he had made his big money on. He made his big money in the early days of automobiles. The very early days, the only headlights were kerosene. And you can imagine what kind of a light they made. Well Fisher promoted and he and Allison were the ones who built the old gas headlights, where there was a gas tank on the running board of the car, but the gas headlights gave a beautiful light. And for many years, those were the only lights which automobiles carried. The electric headlight hadn't come in yet. And Fisher and Allison, they made millions out of this in about 5 or 10 years. And then they sold out. Then they sold out for, I think it was eight million dollars. So Fisher, he was foot loose and fancy free and he didn't know what he wanted to do. He still owned the Speedway, but that was only a once a year project. C.W. CHASE • INTERVIEWER: That was a hobby basically. MR. CHASE: Basically a hobby, yes. He was crazy about automobiles. Well, he started the Lincoln Highway, that was the road that came from the north down here to the south. He was the man who promoted that. He put all kinds of money behind it. Made the first trip -- the first through trip from Indianapolis down here to Miami. Then he promoted the Lincoln Highway, that went on out to the west coast. He was a promoter. He couldn't sit still. Well, they found that he had no more project up there in the (Gaspin?). That's when he decided that he wanted to build a town here. So he got this piece of land from 21st down here to 15th Street and then he built his home on the ocean front at the foot of Lincoln, where that big tall high-rise is now. And, then the Lummus brothers, they started to do some filling in down at south beach. But they went broke. They didn't have the money and everything, so Fisher and Allison and friend of theirs, they bought out the Lummuses and they started filling in where the Lummuses had left off. The Lummuses only filled in up as far as 50th. So Fisher got the idea, as I say, he came over and saw that ocean front and he says, "This is it." INTERVIEW: Carl Fisher was the one who really started the major development on Miami Beach, wasn't he. MR. CHASE: Oh yes, yes. He spent over five million dollars in pumping in, filling in, making roads and electric light plants, streets, sidewalks, and all that stuff. He spent over five million dollars before he sold -- before he offered to sell the first lot. INTERVIEWER: Then, is it true, did he set up in a fashion to sell those lots similar to same of the development companies do nowadays, in these later days of roping it off with flags and everything and making a big hoopla? l;.W.UHAS1 MR. CHASE: Nope, that was ahead of his time. INTERVIEWER: That was ahead of Carl Fisher's time? MR. CHASE: That was ahead of Carl Fisher's selling. You see Fisher, he started pumping in here along about 1914 or 15, but he didn't start selling any property here until about 1919. He didn't offer his stuff for sale. Well, in the mean- time the Lummus people, they were the ones that had old Doc Dammers(?) and his hoopla and everything giving away china and all that stuff. Fisher never went into that at all. Fisher sold his property on one business basis only and that was -- there is the price, don't you make an offer. He never accepted anything else. That's the price. The terms, we'll give you 107. off for cash. Or I'll let you pay it one, two, three, or four years. -- one-fifth down, the balance over four years. So he didn't do any of that hoopla at all. Now he did do promoting in having great polo players come here, He had a polo field, you know, and he interested a lot of big named people to come down and play polo. He footed the bill. He built one, two, three, four golf courses here on Miami Beach -- all himself, see. The present day Bay Shore Golf Course, that was a Fisher -- Fisher developed and put on that. The La Gorce Golf Course was a swamp -- nothing but a water swamp, even in my day, when I first came here. And Fisher sent over to England for, what was known then, as the greatest golf Tippet(?) architect, a man named Capt. Kipp. And Fisher sent for him to come over here and showed him -- he said, "Now here's the swamp land. This is all swamp. We are gonna fill it in." he says to Tippet (?) "Now I want you to fill it in like you want it." Well, every mound and every hollow and everything was just like you had designed a suit of clothes or anything. Every mound was pumped in according to specification and it had to be just so high and then it had to be something else and something else. It was all laid out ahead of time as to the landscaping of that. How it was to be. C.W. CHASE INTERVIEWER: At the time he was bringing his polo players and these other things, was this also the time he sent for the elephants? MR. CHASE: Oh, yes, ha, ha, ha. He didn't send for the elephant. Fisher, he was a great friend of some of the big circus people and one day he got a telegram from one of his circus friends, and it said, "Am shipping you a gift. Please pick it up at the railway express office." So Fisher sent a man over there thinking it was a box or something, and when he got over there it was an elephant. A baby baby elephant, see? Well, Fisher made a great thing out of that/elephant because it became one of the great attractions here on Miami Beach. Because after it grew up, he had a colored man train it. INTERVIEWER: Yarnell? MR. CHASE: Yarnell, yes. Now when he got the elephant, somebody said what can we do with the elephant. Nobody knew anything about an elephant, and everything. So this fella, Yarnell -- this colored man, Yarnell -- he had worked for a d.ctor, a horse -- dog doctor, you know, up in Georgia somewhere. So he got the job of taking care of Rosie -- Rosie the elephant. And he treated this elephant just like you treat a little cat or a little dog, you know. He slept with him and talked to him and everything, and he got him so that he could harness him up and had a great big cart, one of these great big carts like they had over in Cuba to carry the sugar cane in, you know, with great big wheels about this high. And Yarnell would dress in these fancy costumes with a big straw hat and boots and everything. And every day he would start out with Rosie. They had a barn up where the school is on 41st Street is now. And every day he would start out down Alton Road all the way, and any children that wanted a ride, they could stop Yarnell and he would put them in this cart and ride them around Miami Beach. INTERVIEWER: Somebody told me, now I may be mistaken, you can correct me, that the barn Rosie was kept in is now the old Forge Restaurant or part of it. That's C.W. CHASE not true? MR. CHASE: No, that's not true. No, Rosie was kept in a barn right near that inland waterway that goes up along Chase Avenue, you know, and he used to let her go in the water there. I'll tell you a story about Rosie. Any child -- anybody who had any children on Miami Beach if they wanted to have a birthday party, all they had to do was call Fisher and Fisher would send Rosie over there, you know, for the kids to get up on her back and take a ride and everything. Well, one day they wanted to pull a stunt -- By the way, Rosie used to caddy too. She's caddied for President Harding and everything and carried his bag and all. But one day they thought they'd get up quite a stunt and the First National Bank was fairly new here then, so the idea was they would give Rosie a passbook to hold in her trunk, see, and then she would go in the front door there of the bank and walk over to the teller and put the passbook down like she'd made a deposit, see? So Yarnell had her all trained and everything -- what to do and everything. So they gave her the passbook and got her inside. And before she got to the teller -- the teller's cage -- Rosie got a fright. And boy she did a job all over the floor. Great big hunks that big, you know. And it was known as the biggest deposit the First National Bank had ever had. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.