| Description |
: |
-1- The middle child of a Prussian father, and a German mother who had met and married in San Francisco, he was born in Tombstone where his father was a miner, an explosives technician, and a rancher, and his mother operated restaurants, bakerys and boarding houses during Tombstone's heyday, and declining years. The Langpaap's lived in at least 6 different places in Cochise Co., AZ territory, for a time on a ranch in the Sulfur Springs Valley about 20 miles east of Tombstone, and in 5 different houses in Tombstone itself. Max was born in a house owned by his...
Read More
|
-1- The middle child of a Prussian father, and a German mother who had met and married in San Francisco, he was born in Tombstone where his father was a miner, an explosives technician, and a rancher, and his mother operated restaurants, bakerys and boarding houses during Tombstone's heyday, and declining years. The Langpaap's lived in at least 6 different places in Cochise Co., AZ territory, for a time on a ranch in the Sulfur Springs Valley about 20 miles east of Tombstone, and in 5 different houses in Tombstone itself. Max was born in a house owned by his parents on the corner of Bruce and 8th streets in Tombstone. It is said that he did not start to walk until he was three years old, but once started, he never stopped. Even as an old man, he would walk for miles regularly.
-2- The Langpaap family was "run like a small Prussian Army" according to Max, with everyone having jobs, and everyone knowing how to do them very efficiently. Max and Charlie were taught to use pistols and rifles, and given the "chore" of supplying the family with meat. So essentially daily, as teens, they went hunting, usually bringing doves or rabbit or squirrel home for dinner. They made their own shot. Max's other job was to help his mother cook, both at home and in the restaurant (bakery). He became a very good cook, and continued to cook some dishes he loved to make for the family into his old age. What we call "Grandpa's stew", really his mother's version of a beef Hungarian goulash-like dish, was famous, as was his fig jam. Max's mother was an excellent cook. Her "dried" apple and pear pies were eagerly sought in Tombstone, and brought a dollar apiece. They were made of re hydrated dried apples and pears imported from California, and baked in the Langpaap bakery located at 515 Fremont Street in Tombstone, and probably at their restaurant locations as well. After their restaurants and bakery's closed, Marie continued to make pies for sale at home. Max was assigned to be her assistant baker. He became a very good cook under his mother's tutelage.
-3- Two of the Langpaap boys worked for the Tombstone newspapers, Max for the Epitaph, Tombstone's famous frontier weekly newspaper, still being printed. Hugo worked for the Prospector, Tombstone's daily paper, learning to do all kinds of jobs involved in newspaper production, including typesetting, etc, and remained in that profession the rest of his life, later becoming the a printer in San Francisco for a company which printed the Richmond Times which was sold across the bay. Two sisters, Alma and Anna worked for a time as "Compositors" for the Tombstone Prospector. Max was a newspaper delivery boy for the Tombstone Epitaph for several years. This posed problems in this rough town, where saloons and brothels subscribed to the newspaper, but children were not allowed to enter, even to deliver the paper. Max would approach a bar's swinging doors, push them open, and throw the paper inside without going in. He had to be careful to avoid being trampled or worse by drunks leaving the saloons sometimes. He witnessed a gun fight at the Chinese restaurant on Toughnut Street. He was delivering the newspapers early in the morning and as he walked on to the porch, he heard someone inside say, "that god-damned coffee is cold!", followed by two shots. A moment later, a Chinese man staggered out of the restaurant and crossed the street to his house. It seems the coffee was not hot enough to please the customer, who proved to be Deputy Marshall Steve Ruff, so Ruff shot the server in the abdomen, whereupon the Chinese waiter shot deputy Ruff though the head. David Langpaap wrote, "Daddy said 'the china man lived, but that he was not worth much any more after that". The "law" came to the Langpaap house and took a statement from Max as a witness, but that no charges filed against Mr. Chung since the incident was ruled "self defense", so Max didn't have to go to court, for which he was very glad.
-4- The Langpaap family left Tombstone after more than 20 years residence there, and returned to San Francisco in 1903-1904. Hugo went to work for a newspaper as a write, typesetter, printer, etc., Charlie as a "press feeder", Papa Charles, a night watchman for a time, later became a carpenter, and Max got work as a delivery boy for a pharmacy. The family owned a large house on 11th Ave, between California and Clement, near the Presidio. They experienced the April 1906 Earthquake and fire, and lived in the park for about 3 months after the quake. They set up their kitchen stove on the street in front of their house, and cooked meals there. The boys would take turns dashing into the shakey house for things mama needed to cook with.
-5- Max had several stories to tell about the earthquake and fire, but these come to mind easily. On the morning of the earthquake, he was thrown out of bed and was most of the family. After they all gathered and were reassured that everyone was OK, and, in fact, the house seemed pretty intact, the men with jobs decided to go to their place of business to see if they could help with the disaster. But while dressing more than one large aftershock occurred, and they concluded that it would be unsafe to stay in the house, but they would have to live in the open. They soon joined thousands of other San Franciscans in tent camps in parks around the city.
Max left to go downtown to the Pharmacy where he worked, walking-running down California street. As he approached the devastated downtown area, he noted fires had started to the South. He passed the door of a collapsed building as a disheveled elderly man carrying an appently heavy leather satchel exited the building rapidly, and called out to him. Max stopped. The man, a stranger to Max, asked him urgently, to take the satchel to an address which was not far from Max's destination, and he agreed to do it. With no names or addresses exchanged, the man, apparently a banker, gave the heavy satchel to Max who lugged to on down the street lined with buildings under increasing degrees of collapse, until he found the address he was seeking, a bank which was relatively intact. He went in the open door, found a man who seemed responsible amid the widespread debris, and told him his assignment, and delivered the satchel. He was thanked but given no receipt or reward, nor was his identity asked. He told the story many times and always ended by saying "I knew the satchel was full of money, and know I could have started out a wealthy man if I had not been honest."
A second frequently told story was about the horrendous fire that swept the city for several days after the earthquake. Max would wald over to a cemetery on Geary Street at that street's highest point, just above where the Kaiser Hospital stands now [2005]. He had a view of the entire north and eastern parts of the city from this vantage point. He would sit on a tall gravestone and watch the fire for hours. Many explosions occurred during the early hours of the fire. Max returned to this vantage point several times to watch the city burn. He remained fascinated by fires for the rest of his life, and during his long retirement in Porterville, learned that the siren pattern he could hear at his house told the sector of the city where a new fire had been called in. He would take off at a fast walk, and ofter arrived at fires before many of the volunteer fireman who made up part of the firefighting force would arrive. He never participated in firefighting, though. His dad, Charles, was a member of Tombstone's volunteer firefighting force, as were many of Tombstone's residents.
-6- Though raised and Episcopalian, Max was influenced in San Francisco to leave that church and to be baptized into the Church of Christ. As a senior teen, he taught bible classes. A professor of classical Greek and Latin at UC Berkeley, and a personal friend of mine, William Green, Ph D., was in Max's bible classes as a youth and remembered him as being a very smart, capable and effective teacher, who was really liked by his students. Max went to Potter Bible College in Bowling Green, Kentucky, probably about 1907 and was a student there for four years after which, he was ordained a minister in the Churches of Christ. During that time, he supported himself by being the personal secretary to the President on the school , Mr. Harding. Mr. Harding was a very influential, effective minister and church leader in that area, and Harding University which thrives today in Searcy, Arkansas is named after President Harding. So is Max's son, Daniel Harding Langpaap.
-7- After his training, Max was an itinerant minister in Kentucky and surrounding areas for a time, but returned to California, setting up a rural ministry in Modoc County, California and Klamath County, Oregon, traveling from town to town by horse, stage and primitive car, as he best he could. He had small congregations in many town there. He was in a stagecoach accident in about 1915, I believe.
-8- Max met Orah Traeger in Lathrop, Ca, where he was holding a revival meeting. He was a popular minister, and said "to have the tongue of Demosthenes", so eloquent and persuasive his messages were. Orah was living in Stockton at the time with her sisters Lilly and Anna, while Lilly and Anna attended "Normal School" to obtain a teaching credential. (They each later were schoolteachers as well as housewives). After a period of courtship which included visiting the Traeger home in Success, Tulare Co., CA, Max and Orah were engaged. Marriage had to be postponed for seven long years due to propriety and poverty. They were finally married in Santa Rosa, CA, in 1917, after Max gave up his itinerant preaching and was employed as a full time minister of the Church of Christ in Santa Rosa, CA. During this period, he was also involved with the Church of Christ school in Graton, CA, and was editor of the Pacific Christian, a Church of Christ newspaper.
-9- In 1920, Max and Orah arranged support and obtained passports to go to Bullawayo, Rhodesia, Africa to do mission work, but the U. S. State department later cancelled their passports. The reason allegedly was that Max was too closely related to Germans in Germany, both temporally and physically, to be allowed to go to Africa where Kaiser's Germany had just had so much influence and control during WW I. Max's mother was from Schleswig/Holstein and his father from Mecklinburg, and his mother had maintained contact by mail with her family in Germany until the war began. In fact, grandpa Max remembered that she helped raise money to send to the troops in Germany before the US became involved in the war, and her allegiance to America had, perhaps, not been entirely evident. Because they were prohibited from leaving the US or it's territories, the Langpaaps arranged to transfer their plans to Honolulu in the Hawaiian Territory, and their supporting congregations agreed to this change of plans. In July 1921, with David aged 2 1/2 years, and Dorothy, aged 3 months, the family moved to Honolulu, and began a nearly nine year continuous stint of missionary service. Max and the children loved it, but Orah was very homesick, and missed her family, with which she had been very close, very much. They travelled to Honolulu on the Matson Liner's steamship, "Wilhelmina", which Max called, "an old tub".
-10- The Langpaap's returned to Porterville in early 1930 under duress. They owned their Honolulu home, and had every intention of returning to their work in Hawaii. Orah's mother had a stroke and died in the last few days of 1929, and the family returned home to be with family, though they were unable to get back until many weeks after Emma Jane had been buried. Many months after he had returned, Max discovered that all of his supporting churches were on the verge of cancelling their support of the work in Honolulu, simply because contributions had disappeared following the stock market collapse of October 1929, and the onslaught of the depression. Max learned this while traveling across the country by train from California to Kentucky, to Tennessee, to Alabama and to Texas, giving his missionary report on the work he had accomplished, but receiving the discouraging word in each locale that further support would be impossible under the circumstances. The Langpaap's had no savings, and no place to borrow money with which to return to Hawaii, and no support even if they had gotten back. Max always wished they had not returned for the visit following Emma Jane Traeger's death, because he knew he could have gotten work and supported the family and continued the church work without sponsorship had the family remained in Honolulu during the depression. Following his acceptance of the fact that there would be no return to Honolulu, he planted his asparagus acreage on Orah's inherited 20 acres of property west of Porterville, and in 1934, returned alone to the unoccupied Honolulu house, and sold it, and came back to Porterville to a much different life, converting from a white collared, widely known, missionary minister's life, to a blue collared, primarily self employed, and perpetually very poor, farmer's life.
-11- Some of David Laddie Langpaap's memories of Max's missionary days in Honolulu.
"George Pepperdine, the founder of the west coast hardware chain, [and Pepperdine University], used to correspond with my Dad, and I remember, one time, he sent a sizeable contribution for the church work."
"When missionaries would come and go from their stations to the mainland, my Dad would meet the boat and bring them out to the house. Travel was by street car to Kaimuki. I remember one family from India, named Dashay, who had several children, who Dad met on their way to the mainland and again when they were returning to their station in India."
"Richard Haliburton, the author, came out to Kaimuki to see my Dad and left him a contribution for the work. They seemed to have known each other before. Haliburton was planning on sailing a junk from the far East [Hong Kong] to the U. S. mainland, but something went wrong, and they were never seen again."
"One of my Dad's friends in Honolulu was the Sheriff who's name was Trask. Dad took me with him one time and he and Trask were talking about old Tombstone days." Sent May 7, 2003
Concerning the lot Max bought on the Lanikai side of Oahu: the family would take a steetcar which ran around the southeast shore of the island to Lanikai and remove brush from the property. David states "Dad wanted to build a mission house there, so he could mininister to 'the natives' who lived on that side of Oahu. If the stock market crash had not come along, I think he might have done it."
David could not remember, when I asked, where the Langpaap family lived when they first arrived on Oahu in 1921, before their Kaimuki house was built. His first memory in Hawaii was of "the Great Kona Storm. I remember the wind moaning and hearing branches htting the side of the house. Dorothy was being held by Mama and would cry when a big gust of wind would shake the walls." David still dislikes high winds, Hurricanes and Typhoons as a consequence. A German man named Mr. Dolvers built the Kaimuki house. It was either not built, or still under construction when the Langpaap's arrived in the Island's. Max asked that the Living room and Dining room be large enough and constructed in such a fashion that they could be used together for their church services. The house was so designed and used. Max built a baptistry behind the house in the backyard, using lava rock from the yard. Mr. Dolvers later developed Leprosy, and David remembers when authorities came and removed him from the neighboring house and took him to Molokai to be quaranteened. He subsequently died of the disease in the Leper Colony there.
The Kaimuki lot on which the Langpaap house was built was three lots deep, and permitted Max to have an orchard and a garden. A Japanese gardener helped Max with his work. He had a mango tree, a breadfruit tree, a date palm, several banana trees, 16 avocado trees of different types, guavas, a macadamia tree, and a large fig tree. He kept a vegetable garden, chickens and rabbits. David reports he hated avocados then, but his father would not take "no" for an answer. So, to make the avocados palatable, he would fill the seed hollow with tomato catsup so he could get it down. David now loves avocados.
Max also built a "doll house" for Dorothy in the back yard. It was so roomy, however, and comfortable, that single missionary quests would sometimes use it as their bedroom. Lillie Cypert, a missionary to Japan, did so. Lillie's sister lived in Porterville, and was married to a Brother Fuller, who ran a small grocery store on Olive Street, just a long block away from the Langpaap's Kessing Avenue house in later years. The Fuller's, though not close family friends in the 1930's, 40's and 50's, being wealthier and disapproving of my grandfather's too strict church of Christ beliefs, sustained the Langpaap family through many bleak financial periods, by keeping a line of credit for the family, which my grandmother would gradually and faithfully pay off when their incomes permitted.
=======================================================
Contributor: Ronald C. Brewer (48104028) |
