interests, our own link forged by a letter that surfaced a lifetime later.
But the grandchildren too would find their way in the world. A granddaughter, Martha, got a master’s degree in education and married Herbert J. Lanese, who would become president of McDonnell Douglas Aerospace.
The huge wooden chest of tools that George Monnot used, first to repair bicycles and later to assemble Ford Model Ts, is now with another grandson, Jeffrey Earl Haas. This grandson too had a modest childhood, having grown up in a third-floor apartment above a drugstore. But the real inheritance, Jeffrey says, was not the tool chest but the lessons his mother, Barbara, handed down to him from the Depression, lessons in how to manage one’s affairs. Barbara Monnot was something of a miser and her sons too were raised to believe in the value of saving, the dangers of excessive debt, and the importance of hard work. Today, at sixty-five, George Monnot’s grandson Jeffrey enjoys many of the material comforts that his grandfather had also once known. He divides his time between a home in America and one in England that is on the famous Wentworth golf course and near both Windsor Castle and Ascot Racecourse. A collector of ancient Greek coins and an avid scuba diver, the retired Procter & Gamble vice president owns a Mercedes and a Porsche. No Fords.
Seventy-five years after George Monnot wrote his appeal to Mr. B. Virdot, he would still be able to recognize much of Canton, though not even his favorite restaurant, Bender’s (originally, Bender’s Hofbrau Haus), was immune to the Depression. In 1932 it closed its doors, but it reopened six months later under new ownership. In some ways, the Depression literally gave Bender’s a new lease on life. When the American Exchange Bank failed, its executives, John Raymond Jacob and his son, Wilbur Henry Jacob, decided to try the restaurant business and leased Bender’s from the founder’s widow. John Raymond Jacob was a formidable figure weighing some three hundred pounds. He’d made much of his money in the travel business helping to bring German immigrants to Canton. (My grandmother Minna Adolph’s first meal in Canton, getting off the train in 1912 as a five-year-old, was at Bender’s.) Its German murals, of which Jacob was so proud, were covered over in World War I when the United States was at war with that nation, but were restored after the armistice.
Today, a dark round oak table indistinguishable from that at which Monnot and my grandfather, Sam Stone, lunched with other business leaders in the good days before the Depression is there still. But now it is the grandsons’ and granddaughters’ turn to gather around it beneath the old tin ceiling and talk of Canton’s future. The women are no longer required to use the “Ladies’ Entrance,” though what was their dining room is still referred to as the “LDR,” or “Ladies’ Dining Room,” a carryover from the days when the main dining room was largely off-limits to them, as was the bar that featured a row of brass spittoons.
In 2002, Bender’s observed its one hundredth anniversary, still serving its famed turtle soup, Camp Cagle pickerel, and Bender’s fries. That the tavern still stands is a miracle. On January 1, 1988, it was engulfed in flames and nearly consumed, but the arsonist (never brought to justice) failed to bring the venerable restaurant down. Its sandstone façade is lit by antique gaslights and blackened by the fire and years of exposure to wind and soot. It has catered to the likes of Guy Lombardo, Eddie Cantor, Roy Rogers, Tiger Woods, the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, evangelist Billy Graham, baseball’s Early Wynn and Cy Young, überathlete Jim Thorpe, and, it is whispered, the mobster Baby Face Nelson. But it is generations of Canton’s own families—the Monnots, the Stones, and thousands of others—who, coming out of the cold, have placed their feet upon its sandstone lintel until it has been worn down
But the grandchildren too would find their way in the world. A granddaughter, Martha, got a master’s degree in education and married Herbert J. Lanese, who would become president of McDonnell Douglas Aerospace.
The huge wooden chest of tools that George Monnot used, first to repair bicycles and later to assemble Ford Model Ts, is now with another grandson, Jeffrey Earl Haas. This grandson too had a modest childhood, having grown up in a third-floor apartment above a drugstore. But the real inheritance, Jeffrey says, was not the tool chest but the lessons his mother, Barbara, handed down to him from the Depression, lessons in how to manage one’s affairs. Barbara Monnot was something of a miser and her sons too were raised to believe in the value of saving, the dangers of excessive debt, and the importance of hard work. Today, at sixty-five, George Monnot’s grandson Jeffrey enjoys many of the material comforts that his grandfather had also once known. He divides his time between a home in America and one in England that is on the famous Wentworth golf course and near both Windsor Castle and Ascot Racecourse. A collector of ancient Greek coins and an avid scuba diver, the retired Procter & Gamble vice president owns a Mercedes and a Porsche. No Fords.
Seventy-five years after George Monnot wrote his appeal to Mr. B. Virdot, he would still be able to recognize much of Canton, though not even his favorite restaurant, Bender’s (originally, Bender’s Hofbrau Haus), was immune to the Depression. In 1932 it closed its doors, but it reopened six months later under new ownership. In some ways, the Depression literally gave Bender’s a new lease on life. When the American Exchange Bank failed, its executives, John Raymond Jacob and his son, Wilbur Henry Jacob, decided to try the restaurant business and leased Bender’s from the founder’s widow. John Raymond Jacob was a formidable figure weighing some three hundred pounds. He’d made much of his money in the travel business helping to bring German immigrants to Canton. (My grandmother Minna Adolph’s first meal in Canton, getting off the train in 1912 as a five-year-old, was at Bender’s.) Its German murals, of which Jacob was so proud, were covered over in World War I when the United States was at war with that nation, but were restored after the armistice.
Today, a dark round oak table indistinguishable from that at which Monnot and my grandfather, Sam Stone, lunched with other business leaders in the good days before the Depression is there still. But now it is the grandsons’ and granddaughters’ turn to gather around it beneath the old tin ceiling and talk of Canton’s future. The women are no longer required to use the “Ladies’ Entrance,” though what was their dining room is still referred to as the “LDR,” or “Ladies’ Dining Room,” a carryover from the days when the main dining room was largely off-limits to them, as was the bar that featured a row of brass spittoons.
In 2002, Bender’s observed its one hundredth anniversary, still serving its famed turtle soup, Camp Cagle pickerel, and Bender’s fries. That the tavern still stands is a miracle. On January 1, 1988, it was engulfed in flames and nearly consumed, but the arsonist (never brought to justice) failed to bring the venerable restaurant down. Its sandstone façade is lit by antique gaslights and blackened by the fire and years of exposure to wind and soot. It has catered to the likes of Guy Lombardo, Eddie Cantor, Roy Rogers, Tiger Woods, the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, evangelist Billy Graham, baseball’s Early Wynn and Cy Young, überathlete Jim Thorpe, and, it is whispered, the mobster Baby Face Nelson. But it is generations of Canton’s own families—the Monnots, the Stones, and thousands of others—who, coming out of the cold, have placed their feet upon its sandstone lintel until it has been worn down
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