Greeting Tailor for 133 Days Wins Boy Easter Suit
Striking Bargain Becomes Reality and Friends Donate Accessories
All Seventh street, the mailman, the policeman, the tailor, the real estate agent joked about it. Now it has come to pass. Edward Erkman is going to receive a suit of Easter clothes for nothing Saturday.
Edward is a busy lad who works at the Postal Telegraph office on Tenth street, near Market, but for the last 133 working days, he has managed to take off one minute and rap on the window of the tailor shop of Carl A. Trumbull. on North Seventh street, and hold up a certain number of fingers showing how many days he has reported.
This was the way it all started. One day last fall, Trumbull was alone in his shop drating a pattern when he noticed Edward peering in at him. So "Hello, bud," Trumbull called out in his friendly voice, "how do you like my goods?"
"Fine," answered Edward.
"Come on in," the tailor invited, "How would you like a suit of clothes?"
"Well, I'd like a suit if it didn't cost me anything," he said.
"I can fix it so it won't cost you a cent," replied Trumbull, half jokingly just to see what the boy would do. "If you call on me often enough and long enough, I might make you a suit."
"All right," was all edward said, but the next day he passed by the shop and held up one finger.
Button by Button
Then E. Habermass, the designer, began keeping an account on the parts of the suit as Edward earned it. The first day, Habermass marked him down for a set of buttonholes for the coat, and the third day he had earned a button for the coat. However, this list was soon given up.
One day Edward popped his head in the shop and called "One hundred." Long since the raised right finger had come to mean ten and the finger on the other hand the units.
"I'm afraid you'll have to make it another hundred, lad," Trumbull told him. At this the boy's face lengthened a bit, but he said nothing and left the store. The next morning he cheerfully called in, "One hundred and one."
"That day I started the suit," declared the tailor, "but, do you know, that boy kept at his work so steadily that it was over a week before he even came in to be measured. Why I would not have disappointed him for a world of tailor shops.
Fred Foam, a representative of John B. Ellison and Company, made good his promise that if Trumbull would make the suit he would donate the goods. That is how this fabled suit came to be made of natty brown-striped English worsted, worth $90.
Complete Outfit
It is made in the latest style, double-breasted, with a vest and Oxford bag trousers.
Not to be out of the fun, Habermass, O.W. Kenton, president of the Master Builders' Association; T.C. Turner, who has a real estate office nearby; W.H. Eiler, the mailman; Frank Matkins, the traffic policeman at Pine and Seventh streets, and W.D. Tulley of the Tulley Equipment Company, completed the outfit by giving Edward a cap, a pair of shoes, socks, shirt and tie.
Asked why he stuck to the tedious reporting with only a promise, qualified by the words, "I might," to look forward to, Edward replied: "I wasn't losing anything, and I thought something might happen."
Saturday night Edward will throw back his shoulders, stand his full five feet, and surprise his family, who live at 800 Piggott avenue, East St. Louis, two blocks west of the Free Bridge, for he has not as yet been able to convince his mother that it is not all a joke.
Edward will be 16 Wednesday and this is his first suit. Hithertofore he has worn just a sweater and pants.
[clipping in family papers from unidentified St. Louis newspaper]
Generation I. Jacob Erkman Sr. & Catherine Warner
Generation II. Jacob Erkman Jr. & Fredericka Probst
Generation III. John Erkman & Emma Dora (--?--), children:
Edna b. 4/10/1910 d. 12/1993 md. Edward Buddeke ca. 1931
- Dorothy
- Maryellen
- Edward
- Thomas
- Edward
- Dorothy
Mildred b. 1914, d. 8/19/1978 md. Edward Chrisman
- Mary
- Rose
- Penelope
- Dot
- Irene
- John
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