The Klickitat County Agriculturist, Goldendale, WA., April 29, 1911, page 3
"Klickitat Intelligence"

     George D. Howard, who is well-known in Goldendale, is a real estate men in the Spalding building in Portland and tells of an experience he had recently at Lyle in Klickitat county, says the Oregonian. He owns a tract of land up in that growing and pushing country and had occasion a few days ago to ship a box of trees over the railway to Lyle. The nurseryman was unable to find anything more convenient just at the moment of packing than a coffin box to put the trees in. It had all the trademarks of a shipment of the body to its burial place and when the box arrived at Lyle, Mr. Howard, who had gone up on the train to see that the trees arrived all right and were taken at once to the land to be planted, stepped off the platform and began hunting for his box. He finally found it but noticed two young men looking at the box quite intensely. One of them remarked to the other, evidently recognizing the coffin box: "Going to be a funeral in town." "Looks like it, said the other. Mr. Howard in the meantime had gone into the depot and obtained a bucket of water. Taking the water to the box containing the trees, he slid over the box covering the head part and doused the entire contents of the bucket with one swing of his arms upon the trees. The young man stood amazed, grew indignant and approached Howard with clenched fists. One glance into the box turned their anger at apparent desecration of the dead into sheepishness, and they slipped away in silence.

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©  Jeffrey L. Elmer