| Summary: | his elevator, he used a carpenter spirit level to convince himself that the water in the McHugh slough could be brought by gravity to the town and used for the railroad steam locomotives. He got quite enthusiastic about that. I believe there were two "livery barns." One was just west of the elevator house (Earl Hellers) lived there while he managed the Peavey Elevator. Before the railroad came through McVille and that area, a large number of farmers delivered grain to Mapes and of course some were so far away that a trip could not be made in a day, so horses must be stabled and the driver spend the night at the Hotel. 20 Rounds of Boxing Mapes Community Hall Wednesday, July 17 l-"hfhl Card Starts at H.M Sharp JAMES lam" SLATTERY vs. WALTER PAUL t«. 179 lbs. SfMlMl Mt pounds, versus Tollaf Larson of Brocket, 179 pounds 4 HOUNDS «T Lakata. 125 la*, vs. I rankle Smith of Bast Grand Fork*, 123 lbs, s round curtain raiser Wart at Lake**, 19 pound*, versas Johnk Fransen of Mapes, 78 pounds Nans, of Minot, Will Referee All The Bouts a nee After Card Bill Dvorak's Orchestra Adult* 39c (fits Id) Children 15c (fta tit) A "bill" advertising twenty rounds of boxing in the Mapes Hall in the thirties. The price of admission 39 cents, this included a lunch and a chance to dance to Bill Dvorak's orchestra. Names such as Leikas, Paul, Larson, Megland, Wert, all willing to defend themselves. Another thing of interest is the "Day Book" my father kept while operating the store. The prices he paid and the prices he charged are far different from today. Those were the days when you could get a box of snuff for a nickel and a pair of overalls for 80 cents. It is nice to know that quite a number of people still claim Mapes as home. Don't suppose it has much chance of becoming County Seat but the man who put Cream of Wheat on the world market left a namesake that he has had no reason to apologize for. (These are the reminiscences of George McHugh who was born in Rubin Township before the turn of the century. November 28, 1975) Mapes built a snowboat to pursue fleeting antelope over the frozen drifts around the territory of Mapes. N.C. Wyeth and Cream of Wheat by Patricia Johnston During the first years of this century, the Cream of Wheat Company launched one of the most successful campaigns in the history of American advertising. The cereal had come into being much by accident. A small flour mill in Grand Forks, N.D. (owned and operated by a group of men including one Emery Mapes), was floundering following the panic of 1893. As the business faced ruin, one of the millers volunteered that he had been taking the middlings of the wheat berry home to his wife who made a pleasing breakfast porridge from them. Perhaps the product could be marketed. The millers prepared ten cases of cereal in handmade cardboard boxes with paper labels stenciled "Cream of Wheat," and shipped them without advance notice with a regular car of flour to the mill's brokers in New York. The brokers telegraphed back: "Forget the flour. Send us a car of Cream of Wheat." Flour production was halted and the entire plant turned over to the making of the cereal. In 1897, with Cream of Wheat fast becoming an American staple, the firm built bigger and better facilities in the mill city. Minneapolis, where it remains to this day. The man behind the ads was Emery Mapes. Mapes first began advertising out of North Dakota in 1896, using mostly photographs of sports and country life or poster-like designs in art nouveau style. In 1902 the healthful benefits of eating Cream of Wheat were touted by deftly painted characters from Mother Goose rhymes. But now Mapes was on his way to New York where he could commission the services of celebrated eastern artists. James Montgomery Flagg painted for Cream of Wheat. So did Jess Willcox Smith and Philip R. Goodwin. But the best of them all, the artist whose Cream of Wheat paintings became classics, was N.C. Wyeth. Wyeth was fresh out of Howard Pyle art school and newly returned from an exciting western trip which colored many of his later illustrations. In November 1906 he wrote with obvious delight of his mother: "Mr. Mapes of the Cream of Wheat Co. telegraphed for me to run up and see him at the Waldorf-Astoria. He is the owner of that famous cereal co., and is a man of immense wealth. I have just completed two pictures for him, $250 each, which he is immensely pleased with." These were Where the Mail Goes Cream of Wheat Goes, and The Bronco Buster, both boldly drawn and magnificently painted cowboy scenes that rank among the masterpieces of western art. Shortly after Christmas Wyeth wrote that he had "started a whopper of a Cream of Wheat picture. . . 'An Esquimaux Half-Breed' on top of his dog sledge of freight, protecting himself from a pack of wolves, late afternoon on a great frozen late. Incidentally, there is a case of Cream of Wheat amongst the canned goods and flour." Titled The Yukon Freighter, the painting measured a whopping five feet high and three feet wide. The three paintings, which appeared shortly in all the leading magazines, Ladies' Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Leslie's, Modern Priscilla, and a host of others, did much to establish young Wyeth's reputation as an illustrator. A decade later, when the artist was riding a well-deserved crest of popularity, the company revived the advertisements, publishing them nationwide a second time. Mapes's splashy and enormously successful, full-page ads for Cream of Wheat continued through 1926. In all he contracted for more than four hundred original paintings, most of them by nationally known and exceptionally talented painters. But the cream of the Cream of Wheat paintings were the Wyeths. When the Cream of Wheat company was purchased by Nabisco in the early 1960s, the Wyeth paintings were 230 Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited in Multi-page TIFF Editor.
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