Mervin's Secrets

My name is Russell Claymore Taylor. I present this first sentence to you, not purely for the factual content, but also to allow you to form a mental picture of a guy named Russell growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s. For me, the name, Russell, conjures up an image of a guy with a thin frame bordering on the slightly frail side. A guy with reddish brown hair, a guy who was constantly being picked on by what I would call intimidators. Although I carried the name Russell, I did not possess any of the characteristics that my own mental image had formed of most guys named Russell. This Russell was born with a strong personality, as well as an unusually strong body type. While introducing myself at this time is totally irrelevant to the following story, I am of the opinion if a person is going to share stories from their childhood and beyond, the least they can do is introduce themselves in a proper manner. Parents give their children a certain name at birth for various reasons. I was given this name at birth and someday my headstone will read, “Russell Claymore Taylor R.I.P.”

Growing up in a small town in central Florida from the late 50’s through the 60’s life was sometimes interesting, sometimes boring and seldom exciting. Looking back on that era of my life, I would say that the most interesting things were the people living in this small town. While I suspect that all towns have interesting and sometimes strange people, I think that my small town had its’ share of interesting and strange people. In fact, I am quite certain that my town had somehow managed to attract more than the normal allotment (for a town its size) of interesting, strange and, yes, some would say weird personalities.

The strangest person award surely goes to a name named Mervin Knost. Before I can tell the story of Merin Knost, I must set the stage a little for what life was like in the small town of Dawson, Florida.

Dawson was an old town which had seen its better days. It was situated on a two-lane highway with a railroad track running parallel to the highway. The entire town was less than 300 yards long. One caution light hung at the intersection of the two-lane highway and a small gravel road. The caution light was considered the center of town. The only commerce in town was a gas station, an old fruit and vegetable packing house and a small grocery store. The grocery store was situated on the east end of a small group of concrete block buildings. At the western end of these buildings was the post office. In between the grocery store and the post office was an empty building which once housed a coin laundry mat. The washers and dryers once housed here had long been removed. In those days the entrance to the abandoned laundry mat was always unlocked. So, if anyone had a thing for visiting vacant buildings, they could walk right in. These three building shared a common parking lot which was in constant need of repair.

In the confines of the town, the post office always seemed to have an unusual amount of activity. Of course, these were the days before computers, the internet, fax machines, or cell phones. So, the post office provided the best option for keeping in touch with family and friends. Plus, outside of Church, the post office provided the best place to chat for a few minutes with a neighbor who happened to be at the post office the same time as you.

The grocery was small by today’s standards. The store did provide the everyday food necessities…milk, bread, canned goods and a limited choice of fruits and vegetables. I would classify the grocery store as a cross between a supermarket and today’s convenience store.

The old gas station sat on the highway just east of the caution light and did not offer any type of auto repair. If you needed gas between the hours of 6:00 am and 6:00 pm, this was the place to go. You could pull up to one of the pumps and the owner, whose name was Jimmy Boyd, would appear at the driver’s window and ask all drivers the same questions. “Filler up? Do you want me to check the oil?” The answer to the first question varied between $1 and $5. The price of a gallon of gas in 1957 was around .18 cents. The answer was almost always “No, the oil is fine.” If a female was driving, the answer was almost always, “Sure.” Jimmy never minded checking under the hood for the female drivers. Checking the oil provided Jimmy the opportunity to chat with the driver and Jimmy did love to talk. Plus, I think Jimmy envisioned himself a bit of a ladies’ man. If the female driver was the least bit attractive, Jimmy would launch into his best James Dean impersonation. Whether this ever impressed any of the ladies, I’m not sure. Everyone in the area knew Jimmy was married with two kids. I think the best Jimmy could hope for was that a few of the ladies found his antics amusing. So, if you wanted gas, a poor James Dean impersonation, a cold soda or candy bar, Jimmy Boyd’s service station was waiting in Dawson.

I mentioned the other place of commerce was an old fruit and vegetable packing house. The packing house sat directly across the highway and the railroad track from the grocery store. The packing house, like the town itself, had seen its glory days pass by. The packing house was owned by Mr. Johnson, who was by all accounts, the wealthiest man in this part of the county. Although they still processed some fruits and vegetables, a larger and more modern facility in a neighboring town had taken away most of Mr. Johnson’s customers.

The other remaining feature of this small town was a group of two-story wooden buildings which had once housed three businesses back in the 1920’s. This group of dilapidated wooden buildings had storefront windows, now boarded up, on the lower floor and what had been living quarters on the second floor. The entire group of buildings sat not more than ten feet from the two-land highway. The one building that remained usable was a small two room apartment on the second floor on the east end. The only entrance to the apartment was via a set of steep stairs in the back of the building. To gain entry to these stairs it was necessary to cross through the parking lot of the post office. This tiny apartment, and, in fact, the entire group of dilapidated buildings was owned by one, Mervin Knost.

No one knew at the time how Mervin came about owning these buildings. Rumor had it, that, and I do want to emphasize it was just a rumor at the time, Mervin’s mother had died and left the buildings to Mervin. Research many years later would validate that Mervin’s mother, did in fact leave this group of buildings to Mervin.

Mervin was fully entrenched as a town legend when my family moved to Dawson in 1957. We were told Mervin had moved to Dawson sometime around 1952 or 1953. No one ever knew where Mervin had moved from, his age or for that matter, anything at all about Mervin’s personal life.

An important part in telling the story of Mervin Knost is what I will call his unique personality, as well as his physical appearance. I’m finding it much easier to describe his physical appearance than describing his personality traits. Mervin had the body type some would describe as pear shaped. He was not a small man, standing about six feet tall and weighing maybe close to 240 lbs. His chest was what I would call average and his buttocks and thighs were oversized to the extreme. Another feature of Mervin’s was his out of proportion head size. These two body features combined with his unique personality certainly allowed Mervin to stand out in a crowd, not that he would ever be in a crowd.

This brings me to Mervin’s unique personality and his very unusual lifestyle. When I was first introduced to the legend of Mervin, everyone just called him “Crazy Mervin.” Shortly after I moved to Dawson, I met two boys about my age, named Bobby and Joey. They were the ones that first told me about crazy Mervin and would describe him in some detail his actions on any given day. Shortly after meeting Bobby and Joey, my eyes and ears would get the chance to confirm what they had described about the daily routine of Mervin Knost.

Besides crazy, the people around the town of Dawson used other words and phrases to describe Mervin Knost. Some used the phrase, touched in the head. Others described him as having one brick short of a load. Others just pronounced him as retarded. As the people of Dawson would find out later, Marvin might have been some of those things, but he was much more. I am going to describe, in as much detail as I can recall, the very troubling daily life of one, Mervin Knost.

The town of Dawson was located about 30 miles from a thriving city that is today a major city in Florida. In the 50’s and 60’s thirty miles away might as well have been 150 miles away for a young boy. The only benefit Dawson received from being fairly close to a thriving city was for the sake of employment. The city was close enough to Dawson to allow the people of Dawson to commute to a job in the city. This fact certainly saved Dawson from becoming a total ghost town. The county provided a daily commuter bus through many of the small towns in the country. Dawson was one of those small towns that was on the bus schedule. The bus came through Dawson Monday through Friday at 7 am give or take a few minutes. The bus delivered commuters to the city each morning and reversed the route in the late afternoon, returning commuters to their county towns. The bus was a blessing for a few people, who either lacked their own transportation or were otherwise too terrified to drive in the city. The only person to ever catch the bus on a regular basis in Dawson was Mervin Knost.

The morning traffic through Dawson increased dramatically between the hours of 6:00 am through 8:00 am Monday through Friday. The heavy traffic every morning was due to the fact that the highway through Dawson took commuters to the city on a direct path.

My first witnessing of Mervin’s daily morning routing was as bizarre as anything I ever encountered in my lifetime. I remember the day Joey and Bobby convinced me that I should wake up early before school and walk to downtown Dawson and observe for myself how a day in the life of crazy Mervin begins. Joey and Bobby’s parents, like most parents around Dawson, had warned them to stay away from Mervin Knost. Being of the age of eleven and twelve and living in a small town they saw no harm in a little entertainment for themselves, and they were more than willing to share that entertainment with their new friend, Russell Claymore Taylor. So, we agreed on a plan to meet the very next morning at my house at 6:10 sharp, make the ten-minute trip and arrive in front of Mervin’s apartment at 6:20. Bobby said that would give us time to settle down before the entertainment began at 6:30 sharp.

I was feeling a bit apprehensive since that night mostly due to not knowing exactly what to expect but also I knew my mother would not approve of my little trip. Joey and Bobby had filled me in on many of the things to expect, but I felt they were holding back a certain amount of information purely for the shock value.

Joey and Bobby arrived promptly at 6:10 the next morning and we made the ten-minute journey to where Mervin caught the commuter bus every Monday through Friday. So, the three of us positioned ourselves on the railroad track about twenty-five yards down the street from Mervin’s tiny two room apartment and waited for Mervin to make his appearance.

At precisely 6:30 am Bobby announced the arrival of Mervin Knost, with the words, “Here he comes.” Having never seen Mervin, I was a little taken aback by the man who appeared from the side of the last delipidated store front to the east. I was not sure what to totally expect that morning but what I saw unfold in Dawson that morning was so bizarre that I knew it would take weeks, if not months, for my mind to settle down.

Like I mentioned before, Mervin’s body shape was like that of a pear. His hair, which appeared to be full without a sign of baldness, was cut to about ¼” over his entire head. His head appeared larger than what should be normal, and we could only imagine how much larger it would have looked if he had allowed his hear to grow full length. That morning, and as I was to find out later, every morning, Mervin had on a pair of gray cotton pants pulled up two inches too high around his waist. With Mervin’s pants being pulled up too high, a good portion of his socks were exposed and caused his brown shoes to look like a pair of diving flippers. His shirt was short sleeved, mostly white, but did have stripes running both vertical and horizontally.

At the first sight of Mervin, the two things I noticed, besides his general physical appearance, was that Mervin was carrying a large paper bag. It was the type of bag that your mother brought her groceries home in. The bag was rolled down a few inches from the top, to provide a handle for carrying whatever was in the bag. I got that answer immediately when Joey whispered, “It’s his lunch.” The other feature I noticed was the agitate look on Mervin’s face. He seemed upset about something. I got a clarification on this through another whisper, this time from Bobby. “He’s always angry in the morning.”

Mervin came around the building, stepped to the highway and stuck out his thumb. This surprised me because my understanding was that Mervin was here to catch the bus. As the first car approached, Mervin’s outstretched thumb went into action. Mervin stepped a couple of feet onto the highway and his thumb went into rapid motion indicating that he needed a ride and the direction in which he needed said ride. The car passed without slowing, swerving only slightly to avoid the possibility of hitting Mervin. As the car passed by at full speed Mervin launched into a profane verbal barrage, the like of which an eleven-year-old boy could not imagine, and certainly should not be listening to. Satan himself had to be smiling and swelling up with pride if he was listening to the profanity spewing from the lips of Mervin Knost.

I looked at Joey and Bobby, with what I am sure was a shocked face. They were both embraced with uncontrollable laughter. Let me interrupt here to say that boys our age did engage in what we called cussing. But cussing coming from eleven- and twelve-year-old boys consisted of a limited profane vocabulary and never could we form a complete profane sentence. What we heard coming from the lips of Mervin Knost that morning was not merely a few “cuss” words but a stream of profanity unlike anything I have heard in my entire existence on planet Earth.

I watched in amazement time after time, as each car passed without stopping, Mervin would launch into his profanity laced tirade. His face would turn a bright crimson, the veins on his forehead would pop out and he would start to sweat profusely.

This particular morning turned out to be a bonus morning. We got to watch what happened when an unsuspecting driver took the bait and stopped to give Mervin a ride. Most people in the area were well aware of Mervin’s game that he played every morning, Monday through Friday, from 6:30 am until the bus arrived around 7:00. But this particular morning, someone new to the area or maybe someone who just didn’t travel this highway often, stopped to offer Mervin a ride. The unsuspecting driver rolled down the passenger side window and Mervin began his profanity laced verbal assault imploring the driver to get on down the road and leave his alone. The driver looked utterly stunned and pressed the accelerator hard and his rear tires threw gravel in Mervin’s direction. I can only imagine the thoughts going through the unsuspecting driver’s head. The main thought probably being, “What the hell just happened?” I know for a fact, that was exactly the thought rattling around in my eleven-year-old brain. All the time we were sitting on the railroad track watching Mervin’s antics, he seemed to never be aware that we even existed even though we were in clear view. Midway through Mervin’s morning show, Bobby said, “Hey, watch this.” Bobby stood up and pointed down the highway to the east and shouted, “Hey Mervin, here comes your bus.” Mervin stared intently down the highway, saw no bus and realized the three boys on the track were apparently teasing him. Mervin turned his attention to Joey, Bobby and me and started to hurl his entire profane vocabulary in our direction. We all started to laugh because, well, we were eleven- and twelve-year-old boys. Mervin next bent down and picked up a couple of railroad stones from a small cache near the highway. He aimed a stone in our direction and let it fly. Mervin’s throwing motion was so bad, the stone barely cleared the highway. Joey yells out, “Hey Mervin, the Yankees called, and they want you to pitch in the World Series.” We were now laughing so hard that our stomachs hurt. The second stone, while flung with more anger, achieved the same results as the first stone. Mervin turned his attention back to the passing cars, his thumb waving vigorously.

Watching things unfold that morning seemed like maybe 10-15 minutes but was, in fact, a full 32 minutes. The bus arrived at 7:02 and Mervin calmly stepped aboard and took a seat near the front.

I observed through the years that this ritual never varied. The only exceptions were Saturday’s, Sunday’s and the holidays. On Sunday’s and holidays, Mervin never left his small two room apartment. Saturday’s must have been the best day of the week for Mervin. Saturday was the one day of the week when Mervin projected the outward appearance of normality. On Saturday mornings a taxi would arrive promptly at 9:00 am. Mervin was always calmly on the side of his dilapidated building complex. Everyone around Dawson guessed that Mervin had a pre-arranged agreement with the taxi company. Every Saturday morning Mervin would calmly take a seat in the back. Mervin’s Saturday routing saw him returning in the same taxi at around 2:00 pm. Mervin would then unload multiple bags of groceries onto the parking lot of the post office and one by one carry the grocery bags up the flight of stairs to his apartment. After his excursion on Saturday, no one would see Mervin again until 6:30 Monday morning when his week began anew with his bizarre ritual.

The people around Dawson never knew what went on inside Mervin’s tiny apartment and most people considered it a blessing that they didn’t know. The only people to ever set foot inside Mervin’s apartment, besides Mervin, were a couple of local thugs named Billy Ray Lowds and Jack Lariscy. Billy Ray and Jack had heard the rumors that Mervin was hiding a large stash of cash inside his apartment. The rumors started like most rumors, with someone saying that Mervin must be hiding something, otherwise why would he spend so much time holed up alone in his tiny apartment. So, Billy Ray and Jack decided to act on these rumors and see for themselves if the rumors were true.

One rainy day Billy Ray and Jack decided to take advantage of Mervin’s absence and break into Mervin’s apartment, hoping to strike it rich. One of the things that helped propel the rumor that Mervin was storing a treasure inside his apartment was the fact that Mervin always secured his apartment with an oversized padlock on the outside of his door before leaving. However, the padlock presented no problem for Billy Ray and Jack. They had on the previous day climbed up the steep stairs and noted the heavy padlock on the door. On the day of the robbery, they came prepared with a large set of bolt cutters and easily snapped the padlock. I suspect the bolt cutters were just one tool in their arsenal of tools, necessary for their chosen profession.

What Billy Ray and Jack found inside the apartment was expressed in their statement to the arresting officer. “There’s not a damn thing in there worth stealing.”

What Billy Ray and Jack did not realize was that Mildred Oates checking her mail at the post office had a clear view of the entryway to Mervin’s apartment. Mildred watched as Jack snapped the padlock and he and Billy Ray entered. Mildred hurried to the pay phone mounted on the wall outside of the grocery store and called the county sheriff’s office. Luckily, a county patrol officer was only a couple of miles away and arrived on scene just in time to catch Billy Ray and Jack hurriedly headed down the stairs with bolt cutters in hand and disappointment etched on their faces. They both received six months in the county jail for breaking and entering, but they did avoid any theft charges.

When Mervin arrived home that afternoon the county patrol officer was waiting for him in the post office parking lot. He got out of his car and intercepted Mervin before he could make it to the stairs. The officer tried to explain to an agitated Mervin the days’ event. The officer soon realized his words were falling on deaf ears and decided to give Mervin the briefest synopsis. Officer Jones knew that Mervin’s attention span was short due to the many times, while on patrol, he had stopped to warn Mervin to back off of the highway before some distracted driver accidently hit him.

Word spread around Dawson about the incident at Mervin’s place and the people of Dawson, while visiting the post office or the grocery store, always glanced up at the door to Mervin’s apartment just to check to see if the new padlock was secure. You see, in those days, people looked after their neighbors, crazy or not.

People around Dawson always had some level of curiosity relating to the daily bus trip taken by Mervin Knost. Then one day, a few years after the break-in, Mevin’s daily commute destination was revealed by a local man names James Ackman. James had recently been hired as a janitor in the county courthouse, which was located in the city. A few days after starting his job, James was waiting at the employee entrance to the courthouse. James was waiting for the door to be unlocked at 8:00 am when he noticed a strangely dressed man exit a county commuter bus and head for the employee entrance to the courthouse. James recognized the man immediately as Mervin Knost. James was familiar with the Mervin Knost that stood by the highway raving like a lunatic, but this man was different. Although this man was clearly Mervin Knost, there could not be two of them, but he exhibited none of the bizarre behavior familiar to James. Mervin, carrying his trademark folded grocery bag, calmly took a seat on a bench. James put forth the obligatory good morning but received no reply from Mervin.

The employee door opened promptly at 8:00 am and the two men entered along with about a dozen other employees. All of the people who entered the building took a hard right and proceeded up a large flight of stone steps, all except Mervin. James, who was keeping a close eye on Mervin, stopped to watch as Mervin took a hard left and disappeared behind a large door at the end of the hallway. Marvin’s secret destination had been revealed.

James had only worked at the courthouse a few days and had never been in the room entered by Mervin. In fact, James had been informed that only a very limited number of employees were allowed to enter this room. Subsequently, James found out that the room entered by Mervin, was where the county records on all court cases were kept, and that Mervin was in charge of maintaining all court case files. The court cases ranged from traffic citations to the rare murder trial. It was Mervin’s job to organize and file away all the records pertaining to completed court cases. Each case was assigned a sequential number which was the method used for filing.

James learned through other courthouse employees that in all the years Mervin had worked at the courthouse not a single case had ever been found to be out of order. This was a remarkable achievement considering the tens of thousands of cases processed during Mervin’s employment period.

Remember I said earlier that there was more to Mervin than the people around Dawson could imagine. Well, Mervin’s secrets were about to be revealed.

When the people around Dawson found out where Mervin was employed, it was the talk around Dawson for months. How could a man, considered by most to be so low on the IQ chart that he did not even register, hold a responsible job at the county courthouse.

One of Mervin’s secrets was his remarkable ability to remember as well as organize numbers. While the average person would struggle with what seemed like a very tedious task day after day. Mervin thrived locked away in the records room with his beloved numbers and no one to interrupt. He considered the record room his own private sanctuary.

Another secret of Mervin’s was his penmanship. Penmanship in itself has become a lost art, but Mervin possessed penmanship that would have filled John Hancock with jealousy.

One of Mervin’s jobs at the courthouse was to keep a ledger by case number and defendant name. Anyone viewing one of the ledgers, without exception, would stare in disbelief and utter astonishment that anyone could create letters and numbers with such fluidity and grace as seen on the ledgers.

Even considering Mervin’s hidden talents, how could it come about that Mervin could get a job working for the county. James Ackman would once again provide a glimpse into the personal history of Mervin Knost. James was informed by an old black gentleman who had worked as a janitor at the courthouse for more than forty years that Mervin’s mother once held the same position as Mervin. Mervin’s mother’s name was Janet Jameson, and she had worked as the record clerk for twenty-three years. When she fell ill and could no longer do what she called a proper job, she decided to retire. Before retiring, Janet called in a favor from a prominent judge who agreed to help Mervin get a trial period as record clerk. She also talked to her supervisor and convinced him, that with a little tutelage Mervin would do an outstanding job. The old black man relayed that during Mervin’s training period he never had any interaction with anyone other than his mother. Janet Jameson was well liked by her supervisor and, in fact, by all the other courthouse employees. Why Janet Jameson and Mervin Knost did not have the same last name remains a mystery. A few people had asked Janet, but were dismissed with, “It’s a long story…I will tell it to you some day.”

Things went well under his mother’s guidance and Mervin’s sixty-day trial period came to an end on the last day of his mother’s employment. This did not mean that the position fell automatically to Mervin. Mervin must now enter a sixty-day probation period without direct supervision. At the end of Mervin’s probation period his supervisor could find no reason for not hiring Mervin. Mervin had performed at an exceptional level, so he was offered the position permanently.

The pay scale for a record’s clerk in the 50’s & 60’s was low, but never seemed to matter to Mervin. He went about performing his daily duties in a manner that could only be described as robotic but professional. In all the years that Mervin worked in the record’s room he never missed a day’s work; he never took a day’s vacation, and he never had a meaningful conversation with another employee. When spoken to, Mervin would likely answer with a single word if at all possible. If he was pressed for more information, he would hesitate for a period of time, and then answer in as few words as he deemed necessary to satisfy the person asking the question.

One of the jobs assigned to Mervin, as the record clerk, was to record all court fines collected each day. At the end of each day, the court clerks from each court room would bring all completed case files to Mervin to be filed away. If a case required a find to be collected, the court clerk collected payment and put the payment inside the case folder and stamped the outside of the jacket, indicating it contained payment for a fine. It was Mervin’s responsibility to extract the payment from each stamped case folder and record the case number, defendant’s name, and payment amount in an accounting ledger. The only forms of payment allowed by the court in those days was cash, money orders or cashier’s check. With the 50’s and 60’s being the days when cash was king, about 95% of all fines collected were satisfied with cash. Mervin’s most important job after recording the day’s proceeds was to store the day’s proceeds in a large safe hidden away in the recesses of the records’ room. Sometime around 9:00 am the following morning two things happened, a clerk from accounting came down to the record’s room and retrieved the accounting ledger prepared by Mervin the previous day. The second thing was an armored car arrived and picked up the previous days proceeds and delivered it to the bank.

This simple system of collecting court fines had served the county well for as long as anyone could remember. The county would be forced to change the system after one more of Mervin’s secrets was revealed.

Over the years, Mervin’s daily, weekly, or yearly routine never varied. He yelled and cursed at cars every morning, Monday through Friday. He boarded the commuter bus, carrying his trademark grocery bag lunch, Monday through Friday. He took a taxi on Saturday to his unknown destination and returned to his apartment in the afternoon. He never ventured out on Sundays as far as anyone knew. Then promptly at 6:30 am Monday morning, Mervin’s life would repeat itself again and again. The people around Dawson had a front row seat to view, at least a small portion, of the life of Mervin Knost.

What makes a man like Mervin Knost carry on with such a meager and boring existence is anyone’s guess. What, in Mervin’s background, could have caused him to act in such a bizarre and profane manner. Maybe it was as simple as an undiagnosed mental illness. Year after year Mervin’s life went along unchanged, like a slow-moving river. Then one day when Mervin was on the backside of middle age something happened that changed Mervin’s life.

It all began one day at the county courthouse. A court clerk named Sally Meadows had made a decision to help her brother-in-law in more than a slightly illegal way. Sally’s brother-in-law had been arrested and convicted of driving while intoxicated. This was his second conviction for the same offence. The judge had suspended his license for a year and find him $200 which was paid by Sally in cash. Sally paying his fine presented him from going to jail and losing his job. After all he had a wife and four kids at home to feed.

So, what Sally decided to do was to remove and destroy her brother-in-law’s case files, effectively wiping out his criminal record. While this act was totally illegal, Sally reasoned no one would ever discover the files were missing among the tens of thousands of other case files. While this act did not help her brother-in-law currently, it certainly could help him in the future.

Being a court clerk, Sally possessed her own key to the record’s room. So, one afternoon she stayed after 4:00 and walked down the stairs and entered the records’ room. She easily found her brother-in-law’s case files and stuck the under her sweater, returned to the main entrance of the courthouse and exited the building. Sally took the case files home and decided to glance over the most recent case before destroying the case files. Sally immediately noticed that in the line which read, fines levied, was the amount of one hundred and seventy-five dollars. The $175.00 amount shocked Sally because she knew the amount should read $200.00. Sally remembered the amount because she had paid the damn fine.

This small act, perpetrated by the illegal taking of some court records, was about to destroy the world that Mervin Knost knew.

What Sally decided to do was return the case files to the record room. Sally did this in order to avoid any suspicions if she decided to report her discovery to the accounting supervisor. After returning her brother-in-law’s case files the following day, she then decided to monitor the case files she delivered to the record’s room which contained money from collected fines. Sally would wait until after 4:00 pm when the record room closed and see if the amount written in the accounting ledger matched the amount, she had written down on a note pad. The first day, Sally found a discrepancy of $10.00 on one of her cases. The second day, she found no discrepancies. On the third day, she found that one case file showed a collected fine of $50.00 while her note pad showed the defendant actually paid $75.00. For Sally, this was proof that something was amiss in the record’s room.

Sally’s last day of investigative work was on a Friday, so this allows her a couple of days to come up with a plausible story as to how she had stumbled upon the discrepancies. After all, Sally could not just walk into the accounting supervisor’s office and say, “I stumbled upon this information while stealing court records.”

Monday morning Sally took the information she had gathered to the office of John L Baskins, head of accounting. John L. Baskins was a man of few words with a no-nonsense personality. John listened intently as Sally presented her evidence. At the end of her presentation, John thanked Sally for coming forward and stated, “I will handle this.” Sally was dismissed, and to her relief, there were no further questions.

John’s personality was never to act without thinking. He spent most of Monday formulating his plan. Starting Tuesday afternoon, he sent two people from accounting to monitor the entire process of collecting fines, from the moment the judge set the fine until the armored car picked up the fines.

Each day, as the court clerks arrived with the case files, so did the two guys from accounting. Each day, after watching the entire process, including watching the money being put into the safe, they would report back to John L. Baskins.

One thing these two men did notice was distinct change in Mervin when they arrived. Mervin would become very agitated and start to sweat profusely. He did manage to perform his job efficiently, but at 4:00 Mervin would hastily exit the building through the employee entrance. On Friday afternoon, John L. Baskins came down to the records’ room and announced that, starting Monday, an auditing firm would start a full-scale audit of case files going back five years. This announcement seemed to throw Mervin off his game. For the first time anyone could remember, Mervin was ten minutes late completing his afternoon tasks.

The last sighting of Mervin by courthouse employees was, Mervin red faced and looking agitated hustling to catch the commuter bus to Dawson. Monday morning came around and everyone was shocked when the county commuter bus arrived at the courthouse without Mervin Knost.

In the early stages of the audit, the auditors found no evidence that a crime had been perpetrated on county funds. The fine amount on each case file matched the fine amount entered into the accounting ledger. The only real evidence had come from Sally Meadows.

The auditing firm decided the only effective method in determining the truth was to contact each defendant, who had paid a fine with cash and ask them to verify the amount paid. Throughout the week the auditors called as many people as they could locate. The auditors discovered that in about 8% of the verified cases there was a discrepancy between the amount paid and the amount now showing on the case files. The difference in the amounts was never a large amount of money, varying between five and fifty dollars. Although the amounts were small and the percentage of cases tampered with was small, the amount of money absconded was enormous, considering the buying power of a dollar in the 50’s and 60’s.

At the end of the week, there was enough evidence to arrest Mervin for embezzlement. Two county detectives were dispatched to Dawson to execute the arrest warrant on Mervin Knost. When the detectives arrived at Mervin’s apartment, they found an empty apartment, no Mervin anywhere. The door to Mervin’s apartment was unlocked so they entered and found it sparsely furnished but immaculate.

Upon searching the apartment, they found nothing that would aid them in their search for Mervin. There was food in the fridge and in the small pantry. There were a few sets of identical clothing hanging in the closet, all cleaned and pressed. When searching the tiny bedroom, they found the bed had been pulled away from the wall and a normally hidden stairway was revealed. The stairway led to a small room on the first floor, directly under Mervin’s bed.

The room had no windows or doors…the only access was the stairway in Mervin’s bedroom. The only object in the hidden room was a large open steel chest and what appeared to be some type of special padlock laying on the floor.

In the coming weeks, I think everyone around Dawson was interviewed and asked to reveal what they knew about Mervin Knost. Most of the fine residents of Dawson had to answer that question in the same manner. Mervin was the crazy guy that stood beside the busy highway and yelled and cursed at every car that passed from 6:30 am until 7:00 am Monday through Friday.

Many man hours and many dollars were spent in an effort to locate Mervin. All their efforts lead down the same road; the road to nowhere. Mervin, of course, had a social security, but when detectives tried that avenue, they found his birth certificate that was used to obtain the social security number was a forgery. The explored Janet Jameson’s background but could find no living relatives. Janet’s obituary listed one relative, a son, Mervin Knost.

Just as mysteriously as Mervin Knost had arrived in Dawson many years ago, he would disappear, surrounded by just as much mystery.

There were various people around Dawson who claimed, they witnessed Mervin’s Knost’s departure from Dawson. Some said they saw him depart in a taxi in the early mornings on Saturday. Others said they saw a long black Cadillac drive up in the middle of the night and that they saw Mervin get into the back seat and the Cadillac drove away. A couple of people swore they saw Mervin walking down the railroad track carrying a large backpack. The truth is no one knows. Mervin came to Dawson and many years later Mervin left Dawson. I would suspect that at the time Mervin left Dawson, Mr. Johnson was no longer the richest man in this part of the county.

As for me, Russell Claymore Taylor, I observed Mervin’s roadside antics for years, and all I can say for sure is that Mervin Knost had secrets.