Each week we’ll take a step back into the history of Great Bend through the eyes of reporters past. We’ll reacquaint you with what went into creating the Great Bend of today, and do our best to update you on what “the rest of the story” turned out to be.

 Today in 1934, Americans heard for the first time, “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town,” a new song by the songwriters J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie that other well-known artists had rejected as being “silly” and “childish,” according to the website RadioEchoes.com.  Eddie Cantor, a radio performer known for his comedy, songs and illustrated singing, was so popular in the early 30s, he was a household name.     
The song immediately had orders for 100,000 copies of sheet music the next day. It sold 400,000 copies by Christmas of that year, and it’s been an American classic ever since.

Old Rose Cabins booze bust
On the west edge of town there used to be a place called the Old Rose Cabins tourist camp.  Dave Griffith and his stepson, Harold Sullivan, ran it as well as a filling station.  But rooms and gas weren’t the only things the two were selling.  According to the Monday, Nov. 19, 1934 edition of the Great bend Tribune, Vance Houdyshell, chief of police, executed a liquor raid along with city officers on that Saturday night.  They confiscated 10 gallons of alcohol, nine gallons of whiskey, and three gallons of gin.  Griffith and Sullivan, of course, were arrested.  They didn’t put up much of a fight.  
“When they arrived, both Griffith and Sullivan were attending customers at the filling station.  Houdyshell said he approached Griffith, telling him he had a search warrant for the camp, to which Griffith replied, “Well, I guess you’ve got me this time.”  Houdyshell said it was the fourth or fifth time he and other city officers had raided the place but the first time they had found any illegal liquors.”
After searching the camp, only one person was found intoxicated, and that (unnamed) person was hiding in a clothes closet in one of the cabins.  Everything had been in pint containers.  The chief was of the opinion it had been brought in from Denver.  Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who knew about it, because during the raid, several customers came to the filling station, looking for Griffith and Sullivan.  
A few days later, the follow up story indicated that not only were there city charges, the state filed charges too, and the two would not be granted parole.  
According to the 1940 census, Mr. Griffith, his wife Ida and stepson Harold still lived in the same place and Mr. Griffith still managed the tourist camp.  By this time the camp had become “Old Rose Cabin Court,” which provided homes for residents, not camps.  Several people in 1940 census records list the court as their homes.  
In September, 1957, Mrs. Dave Griffith sold the Old Rose Cabins property to the Great Bend Elks Club, according to the Tribune of that day.  
 
Horse thief?
Bill Wallace, a man who once worked for a local farmer, Harve Fletcher, was caught in possession of a stolen horse owned by farmer John Veach of Ellis.  There was some question of whether Wallace knew it was a stolen horse.   The man had hitched the horse to his team and had made his way from Ellis to Great Bend via several country roads, stopping in to visit with Fletcher on his way to Oklahoma.  
When Veach realized his horse was missing, he scouted the district and learned from an unnamed person that a man with a team had passed through the earlier.  Veach and his son hopped in their car and soon found the trail of a wagon and three horses, which they were able to follow for the entire distance because it had rained earlier, and the tracks left behind were visible.  They followed them all the way to the Fletcher farm.
“They called on the pretex of getting some water, saw their horse was there, and then set out for the sheriff.”  Wallace was arrested, taken to jail, and the next day taken back to Hays to stand trial while Veach and his son took back their mare.
“Wallace denied that he had stolen the horse, officers here reported, but said that he bought it from someone near Hays.  He has been traveling over the country with his team and wagon and when arrested said he was on his way to either Oklahoma or Arkansas.”  
Harve Fletcher was a popular man around Great Bend, and his wife was a great hostess.  We know this because throughout the early half of the century, his name comes up several times, always in conjunction with parties and hunts hosted at his farm.  It’s hard to believe a man would assume he would get away with the theft of a horse so casually as to assume he could just lead it down the road and keep it out in the open at a friend’s house while he casually visited.  Sadly, we could not discover what happened to Wallace.  But, Fletcher lived a good life, dying in Nov. 1966, and had a good sized family, and his wife, Josie Fletcher, followed him in death on July 1, 1970.  And that is where their story ends.   

Slots nixed
Tribune readers were likely interested to learn, after U.S. district court Judge John C. Pollock outlawed slot machines in Wyandotte County, many of the offending machines in that county were confiscated at the order of Kansas City Mayor Don C. McCombs. They were likely interested, not because any of the private clubs in Barton County had such machines, ahem, but because their suspicions about the wickedness of Kansas City were confirmed.  Why McCombs had to wait for this order when gambling was outlawed in the state since 1903 is because there was a temporary injunction prohibiting city, county and state officials from seizing them.  
That’s because a Chicago company had devised a new “vending” machine, and claimed it was not gambling.  The machine, which looked and acted like a slot machine, vended packages of mints each time they were operated, and “jack-pots” were paid in the form of tokens, not coins.  The tokens could be used to operate the machine again.  The attorney for the company said the machines and tokens were used only for amusement.  (Of course.)
This feeble attempt to skirt around the law didn’t work.  
“In refusing the motion, Judge Pollock said:
“I sometimes think it would be better if we had a constitutional provision that human beings have a right to be humbugged.  It is no longer the business of life to make girl babies and boy babies into men and women.  The business now is to make men and women into boy babies and girl babies and take care of them by law.”  
Throughout the next 40 years, gambling would remain illegal in the state, though private clubs would from time to time bring in slot machines in hopes of “amusing” members while law enforcement either turned a blind eye or had the wool pulled over those eyes, as the case may be.  Still, all it would take is a changing of the guard to shake the foundation of these gambling establishments.  In 1971, Attorney General Vern Miller executed a raid on private clubs in Great Bend, confiscating a number of slot machines and cash.  In the Nov. 11, 1972 Iola Register, he is quoted as having said he would be pleased to see the cash and proceeds from the sale of the machines go to the Barton County school fund, which it did.  In 1986, the Kansas State Lottery and pari-mutuel betting was allowed.  Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to outlaw casinos on Indian reservations.  In May,1996, the first Indian gaming establishment in Kansas, the Golden Eagle Casino near Horton, opened.  Private individuals are allowed to own slot machines, provided they were made before 1950.