Forney Institution
by Kenneth Foree
Dallas Morning News
Thursday, 19 September 1946, Page II-2
It could only happen in a small town like Forney where everyone not only knows everyone else, but also their virtues and their frailties.
That is perhaps the chief reason why, when Walter D. Adams, widely known Forney druggist, laid down his broom momentarily thirty years ago, a chain of events started that has lasted to this day.
When Adams dropped that broom he gained an employee for a nickel a day, a nickel and other valuable considerations.
When Adams halted his sweeping to wait on a customer, he had no idea that slight Dent Daniel, 30, standing by, was awaiting just such an opportunity. Dent grabbed that broom and he did a good job of sweeping.
After Adams finished with the customer he thanked Dent an gave him a nickel. He thought it a bit odd when Dent remained in the store the rest of the day, but next morning he found out why. Dent was at the door when Adams arrived. He grabbed that broom and swept out, Adams smiled, gave him another nickel. Dent stayed in the store all day again. He has done so ever since.
Dent is one of those characters that are in every town. But he knew what he was doing that morning he watched Adams sweep. He had previously started his working life with excellent reasoning. As long as there were people they would want to eat, he reasoned, and a job in a meat market should last as long as people did. So he helped make bologna sausage, that is until one day when he was a split second slow and lost part of a finger. Dent reasoned it out and quit. Next time, he mumbled, it might cut his whole durn arm off.
Dent was born in Forney. At the adolescent age his parents decided he should have some schooling. So Dent promptly went the next morning. The teacher worked long with him on the reading of the line, “I see the cat.” Dent repeated the line faithfully, but said, “I know what you say, but I don’t see no durn cat.” There simply was no cat there. Dent decided he had more sense than that, so he quit school on his first day and thereafter majored in fishing.
Dent’s early connection with Adams caused a bit of difficulty. He could not bear the idea of being late to work. Sweeping came right after the door was opened. So Dent got his relatives up before day, was at the store by daybreak – that is until the nightwatchman, appealed to, led Dent one daybreak toward the calaboose since anyone on the streets before day was suspicious. Dent got the hint.
Once, in the years with Adams, Dent lost his temper, cussed everybody out. So Adams fired him. Dent contended that, since no one had hired him, no one could fire him. But Adams instructed other employees to keep the broom away from him, to tell him he no longer worked there, to get out. It was a bitter blow to Dent. He stayed on the outside and looked in – just like a lost dog. Not one day, but day after day and until kindly, humorous Adams could stand it no longer and rehired him. “But,” he said, “Dent, you’ve lost your seniority.”
A couple of days later Dent asked if his services had been satisfactory. Assured they were, he apologized deeply; he had looked everywhere and not found that durn seniority.
Dent laughingly tells about a dumb traveler who came through Forney in the days the highway twisted through the business district. At the first corner the motorist asked a man, the town dummy, “Is this the way to Terrell?” The dummy gesticulated, grimaced. The motorist drove on. At the second turn he encountered another town character whom no one can understand. Irritated, the motorist drove on. Then he encountered Dent, and again asked the way. Dent did his best trying to tell him. The dumb motorist threw up his hands, laughed Dent, and said, “Now I know I’m already in Terrell.”
Once Adams, via telephone, was asked how zoological pupils could preserve snakes. Adams repeated, “Preserve snakes?” Dent overhearing, asked what durn fool wanted to eat snake preserves anyhow?
On another occasion Adams hired a stenographer. After she had gone one day Dent looked at her shorthand book and allowed he couldn’t understand the big boos hiring her. “She can’t write no better than I can.”
When Dent completed his twenty-fifth year with humorous, kindly Adams the latter made Dent an honorary vice-president, gave him a desk as befitting an honorary vice-president and raised his pay to a quarter a day. Dent wants that quarter and if given a nickel and two dimes he swaps it quickly for a quarter. And if Adams forgets the daily quarter Dent calls him at home. He wants that quarter and he gets it.
Dent, all smiles, greets the great and near great that come to Adams’ drugstore. And usually first. There have been several Governors, including Coke Stevenson. The honorary vice-president was the first in the town to meet Beauford Jester in his recent campaign and when Ken McClure, radio broadcaster with Jester, mentioned Dent on his broadcast Dent guessed he was about the only Forney man prominent enough to get on the air.
Back to those quarters. They, as well as the dimes Adams gives him for each delivery and the other quarters and dimes he gets for delivering groceries, laundry and express packages go for a purpose into a bank account that is over $100, for a tombstone that will bear the names of his parents and himself when he is gathered to them.
More filial than most, he goes in his nice, clean clothes, his white hair always well trimmed, weekly to his parents’ graves. And when Dent, now 61, is gathered to them Forney will lose an institution, the town deliveryman who foots it ten or twelve miles a day, who comes through rain or shine, hot or cold for everyone for a dime, who, for thirty years, has never been late to work.
It could only happen in a little town, a little town that could teach Dallas much about tolerance and use of manpower of such men as Dent, whose life has been made highly useful and happy.
