Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (6 page)

Once the body was found and finally identified, newspapers and politicians unleashed enough righteous indignation to fill the Chicago River and then some. McSwiggin was a very public official with a very public father, and there were very public demands that something be done. The sweep came down hard. Several of Capone’s joints were raided; so was his South Side home. But when McSwiggin was laid to rest Capone still remained at large. (Ironically, McSwiggin’s final resting place, Mount Carmel Cemetery in the western suburbs of Chicago, was also the last stop for some of Chicago’s most notorious gangsters, including Capone himself.)
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Meanwhile, Capone secretly fled to Michigan to hide out with old
paisan
cum fruit peddler. In an unexpected turn of events, Scarface fell in love with the area. He spent several summers in Lansing where he openly (if not brazenly) walked about town. Eventually he bought a cottage on a glorified pond dubbed “Round Lake,” a small resort area about five miles from Bath. Not one to take anything for granted, Capone also brought his top triggermen and bodyguards, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn and Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti whenever he hung out at Round Lake in case their services were required.
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Capone’s presence amounted to little more than a rumor in the area since
nobody
discussed Scarface openly. One family living about eight miles from the Capone property thought he was nothing more than a “pretty nice neighbor.”
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Other than the “pretty nice neighbor,” Bath generally steered clear of the notorious bootlegging economy. One old-timer claimed he occasionally heard someone noisily clanking bottles late at night;
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another 1920s Bath resident retorted that this was just so much nonsense.
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The truth is probably somewhere between the two stories.

People looking for a night out headed to some of the dance halls outside of town (including one near Capone’s Round Lake hideaway), though most Bath residents preferred Loving’s Dance Hall for a carefree night of jazz and dancing. The establishment had a generator to light the dance floor. The combination of music, dancing, and electricity was a powerful weekend draw to Bath’s otherwise straightlaced townsfolk.
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But rural bootleggers and electrified dance halls aside, Bath was largely immune to the spirit of the day, a true bastion from the loose behavior that was swallowing Detroit to the east and Chicago to the west. The Roaring Twenties roared well outside of Bath. The little hamlet was a throwback to a more idyllic portrait of small-town America where everyone knew their neighbors and doors were left unlocked at night. Bath’s growth in the early twentieth century was practically a boom by 1920. Proximity to the Michigan Central Railroad made the town a good way station between Lansing and all points beyond. Farmers shipped produce via the freight services with six trains passing through town every day. About three hundred people called themselves residents, utilizing the bank, local dry goods stores, a pharmacy, and not one, but two garages for automobile repair.

Several folks in town owned Ford cars or trucks. Locals referred to their automotive vehicles with the handy catchall word
machine,
as in
“There goes Albert Detluff in his machine!” Detluff, a blacksmith by trade, kept up with the times, dividing his business between auto repair and shoeing horses. Despite the growth of the automobile culture, Bath’s equine culture wasn’t completely outmoded.

For more sedate entertainment and gatherings, people relied on the Community Hall. Offering an alternative to the sinful delights of the roadhouses, the hall was a place for dances and get-togethers where young and old could meet in a socially respectable clime. The three-story structure housed meeting rooms and a ballroom outfitted with a stage, the perfect spot for small-town events. Local chapters of the international fraternal organization the Odd Fellows, along with their women’s auxiliary the Rebekahs, also met in the Community Hall.
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From September through June Bath’s Friday Afternoon Club met twice a month at the Community Hall for socializing and games. The group, as the lyrics of the official club song emphasized, stood for purity, sharing, and the “aim to do our best.”
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What Bath still needed was electricity on demand. A gas-powered generator was necessary for electric power—and even then the contraptions couldn’t provide twenty-four-hour, nonstop power unless the owner kept a close eye on the fuel tanks. A few homeowners, farmers, and businessmen did use generators. But the lack of instant power didn’t impede village life. Indeed, Bath was a thriving model of self-efficiency in the wake of the Great War.

For those looking for electrically powered entertainment beyond dancing, there was always a moving picture show in Lansing. Douglas Fairbanks ruled the silver screen for drama and adventure, while his real-life spouse Mary Pickford provided a sense of innocent romance. For a good laugh Charlie Chaplin was all the rage. Then there were the slapstick movies of Mack Sennett and his stable of comedians. A staple of the Sennett films was dynamite. Watching the flickering images, one learned that dynamite could be smuggled into cigars or birthday candles to blow up mustachioed villains or hapless heroes. Dynamite certainly was the bane of Sennett’s crazed Keystone Kops. The powerful explosive, as portrayed in these comedies, would blacken a victim’s face, send his hair into crazy configurations, and throw him into a daze.

What dynamite couldn’t do, according to the movies, was really harm anyone.

They seemed like good neighbors.

A few old-timers remembered Nellie when she was a little girl living on her uncle’s property, and later as a loving surrogate mom to her siblings after their mother died. Although years had passed, Nellie was a welcome face in familiar climes.

Her husband was, to say the least, an interesting character who had a touch of class about him coupled with more than a few eccentricities. The man could be a real dichotomy at times.

While Nellie stayed in Lansing with her sisters, Kehoe moved their belongings to the three-story house. A rented truck brought furniture, shipped via the Michigan Central Railroad, from the depot downtown. Kehoe had three horses and what one person remembered as “some very fine thoroughbred hogs.”
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More impressive was his two loads of farm equipment. Unlike many farmers in the region, Kehoe’s machinery was modern and well beyond the means of the average person in Bath. Clearly Nellie had married a man of some measure.

David Harte, whose farm lay across the road from Kehoe’s, helped his new neighbor unload his furniture and move it into the house. Although
Kehoe tried to contact Nellie by telephone, he could not get in touch with his wife. Where was Mrs. Kehoe, asked Harte. Kehoe wouldn’t give a direct answer. She was, he implied, at church.
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Harte gave it no thought. It seemed a reasonable enough answer.

Despite the modern farm equipment, which Kehoe clearly relished, the couple lacked automotive transportation of their own. Other than his tractor, Kehoe owned no machine, neither truck nor car. When it was time to shop for groceries or farm supplies, the Kehoes relied on the kindness of their neighbors. Lulu Harte regularly drove Nellie Kehoe into Lansing for shopping.
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As the new man in town Kehoe exhibited a polite, friendly demeanor. In fact, he always was ready and willing to lend his hand to any proceedings. When later asked if Kehoe had ever caused trouble or problems, one man replied, “not a particle.”
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Job Sleight, like many farmers in the region, still worked his land using old-fashioned methods: the ox and the plow. He was fascinated by his new neighbor’s gas-powered tractor.

At times Sleight stood alongside of the road watching Kehoe work. Eventually he introduced himself, explaining his interest in modern techniques. Kehoe extended his hand to Sleight, exchanged a few jovial words, then invited his neighbor to try the tractor himself.
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Beyond his modern equipment, Kehoe clearly was not a standard issue farmer. Almost immediately he set himself apart from his neighbors in both person and practice.

Farming is dirty work. It requires digging deep into the soil and getting dirt under fingernails and into ears, streaking the face, sticking to clothing, and clodding deep into the soles of work boots. Equipment maintenance adds to the mess. Gasoline and grease combine for a smell unlike anything else, a cluster of aromas tangy with oily fumes. Petroleum has a way of permeating skin, hair, and clothing. A good farmer literally wears his work proudly.

Coveralls, a standard for any farmer, were not in Kehoe’s wardrobe. He approached his work like a businessman suiting up for the office. He always wore clean suits, a vest, and shiny shoes. There was never a hair out of place as he worked the land, riding his tractor like an emperor parading through his domain. It was a marvel to watch this clean-cut, well-dressed man plowing and planting under the hot sun, rarely breaking a sweat. Should he stain his shirt with perspiration or soil, Kehoe
went inside the house for a replacement. Tools were always stacked neatly in his shed, never a hoe or rake out of place. Anyone who visited the farm marveled that the Kehoe farm was a model of order and his barn was cleaner than many houses in Bath.
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His land was neat as well. Stumps and boulders inevitably pockmark farm fields like raisins in a cinnamon roll, sticking out halfway in odd places or buried haphazardly just beneath the surface. As he had demonstrated in Tecumseh, Kehoe was a master at removing the protrusions using dynamite and pyrotol. Explosions were often heard on the property, although the sound was certainly not out of place on any farmer’s land. Dynamite and pyrotol were efficient and fast, albeit loud and a little dangerous. Easy to get and easy to store, these two powerful agents were as natural as a plow in breaking up the land.

Farmers understood that real explosives weren’t something out of a Mack Sennett comedy: dynamite and pyrotol could cause severe damage, sending debris high into the air and possibly killing operators or bystanders. It took experienced hands to set up and detonate the potentially deadly substances.

In no time at all, other farmers in Bath considered Kehoe their goto man in the proper care and use of dynamite.

In a town largely populated by families with children, the Kehoes were something of an oddity. Most residents could trace their lineages back a couple of generations to the town’s founders and first residents. Cushman, Barnard, Peacock, Hart, and Harte (two branches of the same family) were names as deeply important to Bath as its farm-based economy. Not that the town was hostile to strangers. The Perrones, an Italian immigrant family, was a much-loved presence throughout Bath.
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The Kehoes were different in that they were older and childless. Sure, there were townsfolk the same age as the couple, but they were—for the most part—either parents or grandparents. Not that anyone would ever hold this against Andrew and Nellie. Everyone liked them; they were good people. Lulu Harte, in the course of their shopping trips to Lansing, developed an amiable though not terribly close friendship with Nellie.

The Kehoes were active in social events in town as well, becoming stalwart members of the Friday Afternoon Club. They particularly enjoyed playing euchre, a regionally popular card game. Euchre pitted four people in two partnerships. Kehoe was particularly adept at the complicated game, although he often annoyed opponents by pointing out particularly bungling errors or violations of the rules. The couple was also good at puzzles, and Kehoe created complicated metal devices that others had to untangle. Some club members noticed that other than his outbursts during euchre, Kehoe seemed to think over every word before speaking and never talked much of his personal life.
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