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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (April 5, 1936)
'Onion King' Learns About Success From His Financial Failure Balance Important To Pup in Lost Doll Trick Clyde Melton Was Rated In Half'Million Class; 7oif Runs Salvage Shop By Herbert Arthur "I HAD the world at my feet it seemed. I "Then that world.went crashing all of a sudden. I went to the bottom. But I learned plenty about what we call success, fame, friends, and failure, in these years down below. "Now I am making ready for a comeback but never again on the dizzy old scale!" Clyde H. Melton speaking, the man who used to be known as the World's Bermuda Onion King, when he operated his huge farm near San An tonio, Texas. The same man, yet not the same man at all. Tall, gray-haired, keen-eyed with kindly lines creased for ready laughter aquiline features still a fine figure of a man, he sits before you in the bargain basement of a little salvage shop in Pasa dena, Calif. This is his king dom now and for the months until he can riake ready his try to recapture something of the fortune once his. "But I don't want to come up in a big way, this time. I am willing to stay within limits, to grow slowly, safely. If I hadn't been such a plunger; if I hadn't put everything back in my Clyde H. Melton business and expended it to double size every year but even then I might have been caught," he catches himself, recollecting men he knew, big business men, who saw him go down with a fierce rush in the 1927-28 season, and who themselves went down in the 1929 crisis. MELTON'S i I fortune came before the depres sion. First it was the weather. A sixty days' rain spoiled, the young onion crop growing on his 4,600 acres of irrigated land. Then, to top that blow and make it a knockout, came money trouble. Two of the institutions he banked with fell into difficulties that fatal season And Melton lost out. ' That was the end of C. H. Melton, World's Larg est Bermuda Onion Plant Grower (Trade Mark Registered), with 15 growing stations, 15 shipping stations; sidelines of cabbage, tomato, pepper, sweet potato plants; pecan tree and rose bush nur series., That was the end of the whole $3,500,000 institution, with its own printing equipment, its system of "orders shipped the same day received," its seemingly unlimited possibilities. But that was not the end of Melton. IT was the beginning of a long, tough trail for him. He settled for every dollar he owed, then went to California. In Pasadena, city of millionaires, sits Melton, man whose name alone meant many millions. In a. basement he sells reconditioned furniture, uten sils, furnishings and gadgets, a piece or two at a time. From his busy establishment in Devine, Texas, he used to sell and ship as many as 100 freight cars a season, as many as one hundred mil lion onion plants in a single day . . . and day after day during a 100-day harvest season. His customers were the leading jobbers and brokers of the North American continent. His customers now are the forgotten men and women, who have to buy cheaply when they can buy. Mel ton knows how to serve them and fill their orders, too. He has been made manager of the store. Before this, though, he made himself manager of himself. He sees it that way. That process was, he admits, difficult. Still think ing in millions, he spurned propositions he would welcome now. He found that old "friends" some- Nfited Movie Dog Trainer Explains How Terrier Rags Was Taught To Perform This Unusual Movie Stunt Here l another article telling how Carl Spitz, noted trainer of dogt for motion picture worki, teaches tricks. These articles will appear regularly in this magazine. Editor. . RAGS, a light gray terrier with a keen, alert mind, was hired to do the "doll trick" in the picture, "Mrs. Wiggs in the Cabbage Patch." An other terrier had attempted the trick, but had shaken the stuffings out of the doll, instead. Terriers like-to investigate things, it seems, and Rags is no different from his brothers. Rags, how ever, went to school and was educated so thor oughly he seldom resorts to his primitive emotions, although he would no doubt enjoy tearing a nice rag doll to pieces. In his doll trick, the dog was required to "find" a "lost" doll and return it to its owner, little Vir ginia Weidler, juvenile screen player. Here again balance was of primary importance. To achieve balance Rags was taught to sit down, balance himself with his front paws up and ex tended while he held the doll in his teeth. The trick was not so complicated as some but it required patience on the part of the trainer, Carl Spitz, who went over the routine again and again until Rags had it memorized. When the cameras started grinding and the stunt how failed to heed his plight. Only one stood by him. But he was the first man to prove that onions could be most successfully grown from young green plants already started from imported seed in his nursery. That, with extensive advertising and merchandising, put him in a position where his credit rating hit the half -million mark. And because of this, men who recall his pioneer ing have been in touch with him. Next autumn he believes he'll be on the way up again. He is not giving up, nor giving in. finished on the screen, few could tell but that Rags had been finding dolls and returning them to their owners all his doggoned life. I wmm - I U fill 4 Mm -Ws' I- -ft ti (Tfk v If; Here is Rags demonstrating his ability to find "lost" dolls for Virginia Weidler, juvenile motion picture player. Don be enjoyment DOUBLY PROTECTED 2 Jackets of Cellophane) seal-in that prize tobacco double-mellow good ness and doubly Insure fresh cigarettes. lf?K ?& j y 'j Dear Smoker: I mean business! You may have a "heavy crush" on a rival of mine, but that doesn't soare me! My proposition is this: Smoke half a pack of me. If you don't say I'm the finest cigarette you ever tasted, mail back the remaining ten oigarettes, with my wrapper, to my boss (P. Lorillard Co. , 119 W. 40th St. , New York City) and he ' 11 send you double the price you paid for the full package, plus postage . This offer good for 30 days from date . ' I'm not swelled-headed. But the plain truth is I am made of PRIZE CROP TOBACCOS. And it's a rare smoker who doesn't find me a pleasanter companion. Sincerely, 9. LrnOm C . ta.
