Shared by Joseph and Ruby’s daughter, Laurel, 2026, as her father told it.
In the early part of the Twentieth Century, Reedley, California was a town full of German immigrants. That might well be why Aunt Larry and Uncle Myron settled there, because Myron had family there.
Your grandfather was a student at Reedley High School, and even though the US was approaching war with Germany, the high school had a large and glorious painting of the German Kaiser at its entrance.
However, your grandfather and some of his schoolmates were feeling more affinity to America than to Germany.
So, in the middle of the night, your grandfather and the other boys broke into the school and relieved the Kaiser of his place on the wall. It was obvious to anyone coming into the school what had happened, because there was now a big unfaded spot on the wall.
The next morning the residents of Reedley were angrier than a swarm of hornets, and a posse of men gathered together to find the culprits. There was talk of a public hanging. And lots of men were talking about that trouble maker, Joe Sharmer.
A sympathetic neighbor of Uncle Myron helped your grandfather find a hiding place in his hayloft, and that’s where he hid … until the next morning … when the newspaper arrived.
There on the front page of the Fresno Bee was the banner headline: “Young Men in Reedley Show Their True Patriotism!”
The boys crept out of hiding, returned to their classes, and no one ever spoke a word of it again. The Kaiser’s painting may have ended up in the junk heap.
My father had a tendency to embellish his stories, but one thing is true: my brothers and I loved every word of them.
Notes
When. The story does not give a year. The United States entered the First World War in April 1917; Joe, born in November 1897, was in his teens in the years leading up to it. He was living in Denver with his sister Laura and Myron Sager in 1910 and grew up in Reedley (his page).
The newspaper. The Fresno Bee did not begin publishing until October 1922, so if a paper did praise the boys, it was more likely the Fresno Morning Republican, the Fresno Herald or a Reedley paper. A search of the digitized Reedley Exponent and Fresno papers for 1914–1919 has not turned it up yet, though the Exponent does record Joe at Reedley High, where he graduated in 1917 (Growing up in Reedley). Finding the article is still on the list. If you know more, please share a memory.
