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temporal-parieldox · 5 years

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You’re only a genius on Earth, pal.

Bonus:

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A Cincinnati Waiter Dreamt Of An Empire In Oklahoma

Roy Van Tress rose quickly from rags to riches. It is too bad that his rise was a fabric of scam and sham, lies and outright larceny. He wanted to build an empire out west, centered on a city named for himself. It was not to be.

Van Tress was a country boy. He was born in 1874 near Waynesville, Ohio, and itched to get out of town as soon as he could manage. He wasn’t yet 20 when he met and married a young lady from Louisville named Sallie Goldberg, with whom he had a son and a daughter.

Roy found work in a Cincinnati hotel but moonlighted as a bicycle thief. He was arrested, escaped from a transport train, hauled back in, only to escape from the Ohio Penitentiary. In January 1899, he was on the lam, Sallie was destitute and the children were wards of the state. The next year, based on U.S. Census records, the reunited family had moved to East 52nd Street in New York City, where Roy was employed as a clerk.

Soon, the Van Tress family moved back to Cincinnati. Roy waited tables and enrolled in the YMCA Law School. He was promoted to headwaiter at the Hotel Gibson, passed the bar and took on some moderately sketchy clients. Sometime around 1907, having transplanted his wife and children to Los Angeles, Roy took up with 21-year-old Eleanor Kuhlman. According to the 1910 Census, Roy and Eleanor were living as husband and wife, even though they were not officially wed until 1913.

By the time Roy divorced Sallie and married Eleanor, he had a good legal reason to do so. As his wife, Eleanor could not be compelled to testify against him in court. In 1913, Roy was visiting a lot of courtrooms, as a defendant, all because of his plans to create an empire in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma became a state in 1907 through the forced merger of the Oklahoma Territory on the west side of the new state and the “Indian Lands” forming the east side. Once admitted to the Union, the federal government began selling off the Indian Lands at bargain prices. Through these sales, Roy Van Tress found his mission in life – he was going to build an empire on these Indian Lands. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [13 Feb 1919]:

“ … Van Tress had intended to make a ‘great inland empire’ with the lands of his customers. It was claimed that he had started the town of Van Tress and had made arrangements to develop the lands for the benefit of the customers, but was stopped in his plans by the Government prosecution.”

To establish his empire, Van Tress incorporated the McAlester Real Estate Exchange, with offices in downtown Cincinnati at the Union Central Life Building. From there and a satellite office in Oklahoma, Van Tress enticed customers with the promise to buy, on their behalf, options to purchase some of the Indian Lands. Potential Sooners flocked to his rolling sales offices, customized railroad passenger cars decked out in bunting and huge signboards. Van Tress made unbelievable promises offering oil rights, timber reserves and lush farmlands for a few dollars an acre, with no requirement to live on or homestead the property.

United States officials, prompted by complaints of a few curious buyers, soon discovered two deficiencies in the operations of the so-called McAlester Real Estate Exchange. First, Van Tress sold options to buy twice as much land as he had authority to purchase. Second, most of the land he did have the rights to purchase were barren, already timbered, and thoroughly devoid of any oil reserves. Some were essentially vertical plots on the side of steep bluffs. Almost all were worthless.

The capital of his inland empire was going to be a metropolis named “Van Tress City.” In reality, the town exemplified the hollow claims of its namesake. According to the Cincinnati Post [7 January 1919]:

“The town of Van Tress [U.S. Attorney Stuart] Bolin said, has no post office and one slow train stops there daily. The attorney charged Van Tress’ company had sent out literature stating Van Tress was an up-to-date market city, with lumber mills, shops, a store and was to have a modern hotel. The hotel, he said, had not been completed in December, and when it is finished will be a frame building of not more than 20 rooms.”

Somehow – there are hints that bribery may have been involved – Van Tress dodged the charges made against him in 1913, but was arrested again in 1919. This time, he was sentenced to a year and a day in Atlanta’s federal penitentiary. Somehow, his conviction got overturned on appeal, but the long case – described by some sources as the most expensive in federal court history – took its toll. Van Tress died from pneumonia, complicated by anemia, on 18 July 1924, less than a year after he was finally exonerated.

It appears that, for a few brief years, the whistle-stop burg of Van Tress, Oklahoma, actually earned a post office, but all remnants of the erstwhile metropolis have disappeared from the scenic mountains of Latimer County.

As a footnote, it may be recorded that Van Tress’ son, Benjamin, followed in his father’s footsteps – but entirely on the up-and-up. He became a lawyer and respected judge in California and apparently made a good living in real estate investments, all legal and above-board.

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Dick appointment: you want to meet around 10pm?

Me: wow…that’s like my bedtime

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i hate when memes become outdated and i have to deprogram myself from referencing them anymore. whenever my mouth says “this is so sad” my brain immediately follows it up with “alexa play despacito” but i’m not ALLOWED to say that anymore

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Me: I can’t sleep

Every source ever: don’t get on your phone

Me:

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Some retail complaints from twitter this morning. I don’t think anyone can fully comprehend how stupid humans are until they work a retail or hospitality job.

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