And there he would be, a brown figure standing six inches short of six-foot tall, propped right in front of you with wooden wedges on his eyes. His mustache was still bushy after nearly half a century of a stoppage of all shaving. His left hand was permanently raised a bit more than his right and his suit was cheap but gave him a strained dignity.
The ritual called for you to scream when that light went on. And what with what you saw, you wanted to. How had this situation arisen? Could there be anything weirder?
In Prescott in the years from about 1908 to 1911, if you ran an office, a bank, a store, you might get a visit from a short guy with thinning hair, probably between 50 and 60 years old, walking with two canes. After the ringing from the door had ceased, he’d offer you the wares he had left, a comb, maybe a needle and thread kit, pencils, whatever else he could fit into a leather pack he somehow carried, probably slung over his shoulders from a strap and contending with the two canes.
They said he rode down on the train, emerging from depots, probably calling out what he had and the prices, likely not more than a nickel, in an accent few in those days before radio and movie attendance was common could recognize, but those who thought they could said may have been Italian.
As the story goes, he made the last stop of his life Thursday, August 20, 1911 (some sources say it was in April of that year), stretched out underneath an oak tree in City Park and watched a revival sermon. The next morning, he was found still there, perhaps having found out for himself whether the sermon’s basis was true, but in any case no longer to hear another speech as a living creature.
His clothes were examined in search of anything identifying him. Somehow in all those visits to sell what he had, no one had gotten his name, or if they had, they’d forgotten it. The only thing found was an envelope containing a small amount of money, certainly not enough to pay for a funeral and a burial. Dr. John D. Cornish of Cornish Mortuary, then located just a couple blocks west in Prescott’s downtown, decided to give the late salesman an embalming treatment that would, as it turned out, preserve the slightly over five-foot-five 120-pound figure with oblong head, formidable handlebar mustache and what Hope Star writer Billy Burton would call in 1975 “a remarkable head of hair,” despite all photos of him showing only a light thatch.
Indeed, when you see the pictures, you can’t help but think he looks familiar. For me he very much resembles the actor who played Mindy’s prying music-store owning father on Mork and Mindy, Conrad Janis. But he also looks something like the Munich-born composer of Also Sprach Zarathrustra, which contributed the opening music to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, photos of Richard Strauss in his middle and later years could almost be mistaken for a much paler Old Mike. That’s the name the salesman eventually got when the employees at Cornish Mortuary realized he might be around a while.
At first, he was set up in what was called a box, where visitors could lift up a lid and look in. The hope of Dr. Cornish was that eventually family members or friends looking for someone missing would recognize him and he would be returned to be buried where he belonged. But only the slightest of clues emerged. A witness at the coroner’s jury meeting said he’d been in a Little Rock police courtroom when two men had been brought out to face charges of drunken misbehavior. One was named Pat McFarland, charged with disturbing the peace. Corroborating this report was a court docket printed in the August 12, 1911 Arkansas Gazette. McFarland appears there, but the only other name listed as committing public drunkenness was that of J.M. Estes. We know that much thanks to the work of Mike Nichols who mentioned it in his 1996 article in the Old Time Chronicle. Could J.M. Estes have been Old Mike’s name?
A half-hour podcast episode of The Coroner’s Report concluded this was unlikely, its researchers finding no evidence any of the Arkansas J.M. Esteses found in census records passed away in 1911.
No Estes came forward to claim Mike, though, and the mystery persists to this day. Anyone who knew Mike would have had nearly 63 years to claim him, since that’s how much time it took before finally the call came from Attorney General Jim Guy Tucker in 1975, informing Cornish employee Wayne Johnson it was time to put Mike underground. A law had been passed by the Arkansas legislature making the retention and display of corpses illegal and it would go into effect in 1976.
So it was on May 12th, 1975 that Pastor Jerry Westmoreland of the First Christian Church of Prescott could finally preside over Mike’s funeral. Only about six attendees saw him buried at DeAnn Cemetery. He would get a small stone marking the site with his name and death date. More recently, an anonymous donor would buy the stone that has his name, death date and a stubby etching of a pencil.
Today, Prescott citizens have a variety of reactions when you announce an intent to retell the Old Mike story. Some will tell you not to raise the subject, that it’s improper to again exploit the story of a man very obviously down on his luck whose anonymity would lead to his public display and his later use as an object of amusement. This is a laudable impulse, as it protects the dignity of a man who was working hard before he died and even seeking out eternal answers as he passed away. Others are eager to tell their own stories of visiting his remains, seeming to embrace what made what many would dismiss as a sleepy rural town historically unique.
For me, Old Mike is one more proof of the non-existence of ghosts. If ever a circumstance invited a man’s wronged, angry essence to roam about the city, especially the old location of the mortuary at 102 and 106 East Elm, and its park where he died, showing itself in a blue mist, tossing rocks and gravel at shop windows, growling from no mouth but very much needing to speak--this would be that case, but at least it is reassuring that when you mention the Mike phenomenon on social media, the stories are of remembering seeing his corpse, never his ghost.
All photos courtesy of the Nevada County Depot Museum, where there is an exhibit devoted to Old Mike and his history in Prescott.