Charles W. Clabaugh Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Q: As committeeman did you meet much with them?
A: Oh, when we'd have meetings, county meetings, I attended most of the county meetings
around over the county. And these candidates would be there, except Roger Little. He
never attended a meeting, he didn't have to.
Q: Oh?
A: But the first time there was a close one, he lost it because he hadn't cultivated . . ,
Q: Been attending. (laughter)
A: Did no campaigning at all. He was a fine gentleman. Superintendent for the Methodist
Sunday school in Urbana for many years. Upstanding man in every way. And in 1934 some
of his friends said, "Now, Roger, you're a 'dry,' and everybody knows you're a 'dry,' but you
oughten to make so mud of it. A good many 'wet' people anymore." "Well," Roger said,
"I'm a 'dry.' I don't intend to annoy people with it, but if the people don't want a 'dry' in
the legislature, then they don't want me."
Q: Well. (laughter)
A: He was just that straightforward. And his son now is one of the circuit judges in this
county. Poor fellow. Unfortunately, he has a brain tumor and he's not effective now at
all. (pause)
Q: All right, sir. Well do you think that will do it for today, then, sir?
L
A: Well it's whatever you say,
Q: Okay.
A: I want to tell you that there are - I've had a many-faceted life.
Q: Oh?
A: This picture, and that one over there, and hundreds of others that I have . . .
Q: Of Eskimos? (laughs)
A: This is Mrs. Clabaugh and that's me, that's I, fishing through the ice in 40-below zero
up in Manitoba. I told you about my trapping career.
Q: Yes.
A: And of course as a boy I - we're off the air now?
Q: No, we're still on the air.
A: I was a great reader of Bret Hart and Robert Service, Jack London. And since I did
some trapping, I knew where I wanted to set a trap. But I always wondered, in a million
acres, or a million square miles even, of wilderness, how would you know where to set a
trap? And in October of 1953, I mooned around about wanting to go up north and wanting
to go up north and my wife said one night, "For goodness sakes, go!"
Q: Well. (laughs)
A: Bought a ticket the next morning. I went to Churchill, up on Hudson's Bay, in
October. And 1 wrote twelve or fourteen letters back to the travel man at the News
Charles W. Clabaugh Memoir, vol. 1 - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS