Kind Neighbors Tell Mother Her Son Had Been Killed By Train

Mother Answers Phone Patiently, Knowing Her Boy Was Playing in the Yard All the Time.—Others Worry Over Tragedy.

Yesterday afternoon Mrs Frank McCormick, 209 Tenth street, was called to the telephone and a friend sympathetically and gently advised her that her little son, Emmet, had been run over by the train near Apple Creek.

During the afternoon the phone rang many times, and numerous people asked, in soft and mournful tones, about the poor boy and condoled her in the moment of great grief. Tears flowed freely from the reciever of the telephone.

The friends had the little boy dead, mashed up, and the remains on the way to Bismarck. The undertakers got a whisper of it and beaming rubbed their hands together in that way they have and ordered the hearse oiled up for use.

At the court house, where all the gossip of the county settles, the chief topic of the day was the death of the boy.

The mother meanwhile was quite happy, except it bothered her quite a little to have to keep answering the telephone.

Her son was in the back yard, happily playing, and hadn't been away from home all day, to say nothing of being at Apple Creek.

Investigation shows that some person claiming to have seen a boy run over at Apple Creek thought he resembled the McCormick boy and spread the word around town. Up until this noon no definite information could be obtained as to whether any one was really hurt at Apple Creek or not. At any rate it was not Emmet McCormick.

The Bismarck Tribune, 8/5/1920