Off the Record April 6, 1948

4-6-48
One of the episodes with which I was connected and saw that caused a great deal of amusement about the office, was known as the Bennett Incident. A good many Wooster citizens recollect Dr. W.Z. Bennett as one of the fathers of the present Wooster water supply. Dr. Bennett headed the department of chemistry at College of Wooster. He had a wireless apparatus at the college long before wireless were in general use and one night he had the Wooster Century Club at the college where he gave an illustrated talk on Wireless. Being a member of the Century Club in good standing at the time, I was there and the good Dr. Bennett was up to date on his subject as many wireless experts are right today. As I recollect it, the late Minor Scovel, the son of Dr. Sylvester F Scovel, long president of College of Wooster, was possibly the first real engineer to absolutely insist that the present source of Wooster water was and is the only place where the supply is sufficient. Dr. Bennett was a close second to Minor Scovel, if indeed he actually was second. But Dr. Bennett preached pure water far and wide. The sources of supply in those days were the Bloomington Reservoir and the old Reddick Dam. We need to operate our one typewriting machine with the aid of a water motor and many were the times we would have to shut down while we opened the inlot to the motor and took out a small fish. Long after Minor Scovel had said his piece and departed , Dr. Bennett plugged steady and hard for pure water to Wooster. He used to drive the city and country roads with his wife, a sister of the late J.E. Poretor and his sister using a phaeton and a horse which, while considerably younger than himself had seen many much better days. And in and out of Century Club in city council before women’s clubs. In fact, before anybody he could get to listen, he preached the doctrine of pure water. And Wooster desperately needed pure water. While others finally brought the water question to successful fruition, Dr. Bennett was the man who kept it alive and somehow, at least a plaque or something ought to be installed somewhere to keep alive his memory. Older residents will recollect that one of Dr. Bennett’s weaknesses was of all things spirit water. In those days the last of the old century and the beginning of the new, the Zimmerman Drugstore and Laubach & Boyd, the later where the Boyd's Drug Store is now, had flourishing fountains. Dr. Bennett, on a warm day, used to ply between these fountains and other fountains if there were such. His favorite flavor was coffee and he consumed large quantities and it seems somewhat to the continued amusement of the younger generation. As time went on, the more than liberal consumption of soda water and other conceptions which were taken aboard from time to time, did certain things to the Bennett stomach and the good doctor was forced to consult a physician. There was of course, nothing unusual in this for others in copious numbers have been forced to do the same thing and doctors have to live too. Dr. Bennett, older residents will remember, was a rather thin gentleman and the learned men of the medical profession thought the thing to do was to give him something to fatten him up. It remained for the late Dr. J.M. Todd to suggest a remedy that in those days was almost unthinkable for a College of Wooster professor. That something was say it gently--beer. Dr. Todd, who was not entirely adverse to use by his patients or something containing a bit of alcohol on certain occasions, he was one of the really great diagnosticians of his generation and after thinking it all over, he concluded a little beer now and then was just what his patient needed and so it became doctor’s orders. And as they say in the movies, “This is where I came In.”

Back in those days, there was a conflict between the wets and dries. There was also a trolley league baseball team. Wooster had a fine team made up of Charley Follis, L.W. St John and a host of fine players. The team was at the top of the league. Our paper carried generous accounts of the games, much of which I wrote myself. Someone else generally kept the box score at which precision instrument I have never been to adept. At the same time, there were the dry vs. wet battles being waged numerous prosecutions and arrests and Dr. Bennett in his capacity as a chemist was frequently called upon to give expert testimony as to alcoholic content. Aside from being a baseball reporter, it quite often fell to my lot to report these wet and dry trials which never failed to produce news of considerable local interest. So on a certain lazy summer after noon, I was torn ,so it were, between love and duty. I probably should have remained at the court house where the wet and dry trial was going on. This time it so happened that it was before Probate Judge Orr. But I selected the more pleasant duty of attending the ball game. In court, the trial dragged on and on. Dr. Bennett was on the witness stand and he was called upon by the prosecution to identify the liquid contents of certain bottles which had been seized in a raid as just plain every day beer. This he did unfalteringly and Miss Ella Landers, for many years the official court stenographer, recorded his testimony as she recorded all testimony in her little stenographers book. When it came to cross examination, Dr. Bennett was taken in hand by attorney A.D. Metz. The many who recollect Mr. Metz, will remember that as a cross examiner, he was tops. And something like this the testimony proceeded. “You say this is beer?” “Yes sir.” “You examined the contents of the bottle, did you?” “Yes, sir.” “Chemically?” “Yes.” “You could tell it was beer if you didn’t examine it chemically, couldn’t you?” Here Dr. Bennett appealed to the court by Judge Orr stated the question was to test his credibility as a witness. The question was sort of lost amid a lot of wrangling. Finally Mr. Metz began again. “You drink beer, don’t you?” More wrangling and more appeals to the court and more decision by Judge Orr that the question should be answered to question the credibility of a witness. Finally it came out, a feeble “Yes, sir.” “You buy it by the barrel, don’t you?” Much more argument followed by persuasion by the court and another feeble “Yes, sir.” “How many barrels did you buy?“ This is where I came in again for by this time, I had returned from the trolley league baseball game and finding the trial over for the day, had hunted up Miss Ella Landers, who read her notes off to me while I carefully put everything down. Carefully did I say? Well, not carefully enough for while Dr. Bennett stated on the witness stand that he had bought two barrels of beer, my notes when I got back to the office and rewrote them, made him say three. It was a week afterward that Dr. Bennett appeared at the office and told me I had done him a grievous wrong. It was then that I offered to make the correction in veen bolder type. And it was then that he said in tones I can hear to this day, “Oh no, that would only make it worse.” We did at his urgent request, publish a letter from Dr. J.H. Todd establishing and substantiating the statement that he had a certain stomach aliment and that was what he was taking the beer for, but it was a long time before my personal relations with Dr. Bennett were what they once had been. In fact, even the one following month of May at the banquet of the Century Club held in the old Presbyterian Church when I had almost entirely forgotten the long ago episode. I extended my hand in friendship when I met him before we were to sit down to eat and he kept his back and looked at me much to the amusement of my wife as if I did not exist. To tell the truth, I always have regretted the mistake in the matter of numbers of the barrels. I regretted also the fact the general public was not given to understand that they were not really barrels but just little beer kegs. Also than an unclean mind in the stress of wet and dry argument would not understand that he might be an excellent prescription for a goodly gentleman with a weak stomach. In later years, Dr. Bennett and I patched our little differences and long before he moved to California, we were both fighting on the same side for good water for Wooster. But, it was a longer time before Ella Landers forgot the incident or even allowed it to die down for the very last time I saw her, she smiled a knowing smile and said “Hello, professor.”