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COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL | THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2019 | 9A Offbeat Oregon How Abe Tichner hustled rubes at 1870s fairs By Finn J.D. John for The Sentinel W hen Abe Tichner died, on April 29 of 1935, he was one of Portland’s most respect- ed citizens. He was also one of its ear- liest, and if the editor of the Portland Morning Oregonian had been on the ball, his obit- uary would have run on the front page, alongside a sum- mary of the changes Ore-gon’s largest city had seen since his arrival, exactly 65 years before, on a sidewheel steamship out of San Francisco. “Portland had less than 6,000 inhabitants at that time,” he remarked on May 1, 1920, on the 50-year anniversary of his arrival in Portland. “All the dead were counted when the city tried to get an extra clerk in the post office. The east side was one long swamp as far as Union Avenue, which was high land, except for a stretch oppo- site Stark Street where there was a roadway and two houses. A ferry on which the fare was 5 cents paddled across.” Abe Tichner was born in New York on Dec. 10, 1852; but, when he was 11 months old, his parents packed up and set out on a steamer for Cali- fornia, crossing over the isth- mus of Panama and arriving in San Francisco in 1853. He grew up, through age 18, in that city. If one was asked to describe Abe Tichner in a single word, it would probably be “enter- prising.” There does not ap- pear to have been any point in Abe’s life in which he was not wide awake, on his feet, and hustling like a pro. He seems to have had a real knack for nosing out potentially lucra- tive enterprises and working his way into them. He started out as a very young boy by taking on a pa- per route for the San Francisco Chronicle, and he handled it so well that he soon was be- ing entrusted with other cir- culation-department duties, including delivering each day’s papers to the post office for mail subscribers. When he was 18, his family moved to Portland, arriving via sidewheel steamer. In his new hometown, he continued in the newspaper business, delivering papers and later set- ting up a news stand at which he also sold cigars. For a few years he pursued the sort of ordinary career that most of us do, parlaying his active membership in the Republican Party into a nice job as a customs inspector for the Port of Portland in the 1880s and, when that sinecure ended five years later with the election of a Democratic pres- ident, taking a job as an officer in the Portland Police Depart- ment. He was with the PPD for six years, during which time he rose rapidly to the rank of Captain. But during the time when Abe was working these regular jobs, he was also working dil- igently on side hustles — and his first one was quite literal- ly a hustle. Starting in 1873, and for most of the rest of the 1870s, Abe Tichner was one of the most successful vendors on the county-fair circuit. He sold cigars and cheap jewelry out of a booth there — and came home from each fair with more money than his salary would have brought him in decades. I n the mid-1870s, county fairs were, of course, some- what different from the happy, wholesome funnel-cake-and- prize-roosters institutions they have since become. For one thing, they were a lot less kid-friendly. “On the [fair]grounds drinks and cigars sold for 25 cents; gambling ran wide open,” writes former governor Oswald West, recounting one of many conversations he had with Tichner in his golden years. “The games of chance were many and varied in char- acter.” Each one of those games of chance, West added, was run by a different member of a cadre of itinerant Portland swindlers who would set up shop at the fair, eager to sep- arate all the pastoral “rubes” from any cash money that they might have managed to accumulate over the course of a year’s hard labor in the fields and orchards. Not a single one of them was honest. There was a roulette wheel, equipped with a “snake” — a concealed button on a cord that activated some sort of ball control. There was some- thing called a “Red and Black,” which was basically a Bin- go-ball cage, only with a hid- den compartment, so that the ball that dropped down from the cage was not the same as the ball that fell out of the chute. And there was a very popular “wheel of for-tune” — “where the boys were told they could win 20 to 1 on the eagle bird — but they never did,” ac- cording to West. “When (Washington Coun- ty) fair time approached, the gamblers and horse players of Portland booked passage on the Monitor, a six-horse stage- coach operated by ‘Little Sam’ Bernheim, who boasted that he was always ‘drunk and dressed up,’” West writes. “When the hour of departure arrived, the roulette wheel, the wheel of fortune, and the red-and-black outfit were lashed securely behind and their owners took their seats within the coach. Little Sam, properly ‘likkered,’ mounted the box, took the reins, released the brake and headed for Hillsboro.” Abe was not one of these characters. He wasn’t that kind of hustler. But he proba- bly made more money at the fair than any of them did. He later told West that he usu- ally cleared $2,500 — that’s the equivalent of $57,000 in modern currency — on each fair. His profit margin hovered around 92 percent. How did he do it? By selling cheap cigars — wrapped in an expensive story. Apparently working from memory, West para- phrase-quotes an Oregonian article from the 1870s that de- scribes his hustle: “Heedless of the rain, Abe mounts his showcase on a goods box in the center of the grounds and doesn’t allow bashfulness to trouble him. He sells five ‘pure Havana’ ci- gars for one dollar, and as an inducement to purchasers, throws in a ‘gold’ watch and a set of ‘diamond’ shirt studs. On this generous plan he manages to do a brisk business.” That wasn’t exactly right, West added. Each cigar pur- chaser got to take an envelope containing a number, which corresponded to a piece of jewelry. Not every cigar buy- er got a free watch … in fact, most likely none of them ever did. “In my innocence, I asked Mr. Tichner just what chance Public Notices The Lowest Rates in Lane County PUBLIC MEETINGS, TRUSTEE NOTICES, PROBATE, AUCTION & FORECLOSURE NOTICES, AND MORE. Just an old-fashioned greeting to wish our valued friends and customers good cheer, along with a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! We thank you for choosing us. Published weekly in the Cottage Grove Sentinel and online at cgsentinel.com S entinel mfringer@cgsentinel.com MACHINE SHOP SERVICES Huddle/Drummond Automotive Is now off ering a full line of automotive machine shop services. From resurfacing a head, to fl ywheels, rebuilding that worn out engine or even a specialized racing application, Huddle Automotive can help you. With over 40 years of experience, we will get the job done right the fi rst time. Call or drop by and say “Hi”. Located at 80408 Delight Valley School Rd. Phone: 541-942-2521 A be Tichner’s county fair years were one of his most treasured memories lat- er in his life, which is why he spent so much time reminisc- ing on them with his friend Os West. The money he made usually didn’t last long after he got back to Portland – the crooked dealers at the faro ta- bles in Port-land would get it from him over the course of a few weeks of playing high-roll- er. Abe was, after all, a very young man. Abe Tichner went on to a very successful and respect- able career in Portland, mak- ing the most of his money as a financier and warrant broker; he frequently appeared in the newspaper as the successful bidder for various city bond offerings. And his early, profligate years at the faro tables seem to have been a phase he was go- ing through. 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