End of Old Pitch

As it must to all men, Death came last week to Wilford B. Smith, editor and publisher of the once-famed Pitchfork and a mighty man in North Texas.

Prodigiously built (he was six feet four), prodigiously dressed (in black suit, broad black hat and flowing black Windsor tie), a prodigious writer, talker, fighter and drinker, Pitchfork Smith worshipped at the shrine of one man and one man only: William Cowper Brann (the Iconoclast). Once, on Brann's birthday, his disciple got drunk, visited his grave at Waco, and sat there all night communing with the soul of his friend, for every drink he took himself pouring an equal amount of whiskey on the sod.

Son of a parttime minister and farmer of the Black Lands, Wilford Smith went to Dallas as a boy, attended a Moler barber college, graduated (so he said) cum laude. Back in his home county of Delta, he worked in a store, cut hair on the side, studied at night, became a country schoolteacher. Said he: "The only weak moment I ever had was when I played croquet with some old-maid schoolteachers, one of whom I married."

Three years of teaching school netted him $90, with which he started a weekly newspaper. When it folded, he sold books on the road for three more years, went to Kansas City, studied law, was admitted lo the bar. He quit the law because all the lawyers he saw were drunk and a newspaperman told him that if he wrote he would starve to death but, meantime, would always have a lot of fun. He founded a magazine called Plain Talk, which was suppressed for inciting race troubles. So he changed its name to The Pitchfork "because the pitchfork is the poor man's implement; you can fight with it or work with it." When he was ordered never again to publish a political paper in Missouri he moved The Pitchfork to Dallas. Its first office was over a saloon, so that the editor never had to go far for his news.

Famed throughout Texas grew Pitchfork Smith's thunderous writings, his private battles, his oratorical eloquence. Old timers still quote from his street-corner oration on the death of John Barleycorn, the night before Prohibition took effect. One of his speeches ("When You Die, Will You Live Again?") was so highly esteemed by one P. S. Harris, president of Lucky Tiger Remedy Co., that Mr. Harris gave The Pitchfork a lifetime advertising contract, reprinted the speech and sent copies to every barbershop in the U. S.

Excerpts:

"Is death a door or a wall? ... I hear the Pagan maiden sing her wild love song until its wailing notes sweep the stars into one tear of pity for her breaking heart. But no answer comes. ... If this natural impulse to live after physical death cannot be relied upon, then life itself is a myth and the starry blazonry of the midnight sky is a flaunting lie. .. . Nature is not a cheat and Life is not a flirtation. Our hope for immortality cannot be a colossal joke!"

The Pitchfork supported Pa Ferguson, and its editor once sued a newspaper for the 5-c- he had paid for a copy only to find nothing about Ferguson in it. Ten years ago Pitchfork Smith 'walked into a church where Fort Worth's Rev. J. Frank Norris (who had just been acquitted of murder) was preaching, shook his finger in the preacher's face, boomed: "Dr. Norris, you murdered D. E. Chipps." Threatened by the congregation, he shouted: "Come on, I'm not afraid of a mob! I can lick a mob with a switch!" He was charged with disturbing public religious worship, but conducted his own defense, examined himself and Dr. Norris (who was not present), won instant acquittal on the ground that the services did not constitute religious worship.

Even after his paper began to fade, "Old Pitch" remained a character. His greying hair fell over his collar and his jutting jaw was fringed by old-fashioned sideburns. In his breast pocket he kept a six-inch ruler, with which he settled all arguments concerning distance, and a small pair of scissors, with which he trimmed the ends of the cigars he was forever chewing. He could argue any subject to victory or the exhaustion of his opponent. He settled his bills by stamping them PAID and mailing them back to his creditors.

As Wilford Smith grew older, his friends died off. As he grew poorer, he made friends with stray dogs. He kept them on mattresses in a spare room, bought them tags and food. Said he: "They make grand boarders. They are always on time for meals." But his oldest friend was liquor, and this friend did him in. His funeral was conducted by the Elks ("my church") and the Bill of Rights read over his grave.

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