The Midway Miner

Mariana Titus' sixth book The Midway Miner is published posthumously. A sweeping tale about the life of her father and his first wife in Northern Wisconsin and the Southwest from the turn of the century until the end of World War II.

Elmer Harvey Titus was a soldier, adventurer, and pioneer of a young nation in a new century. This is a love story too. Sylvia Collison met and married Elmer when he served with the Iowa National Guard following the Pancho Villa Raid on Columbus, New Mexico. A skilled horseman, he soon became a Stable Sergeant and continued his service through the end of World War I.

Sylvia recorded their life together through photographs and notes from their early beginnings until 1946, forming the foundation for the author's book. In 1920, Sylvia used a pinhole camera to document the construction of a log cabin on a homestead available to veterans of the Great War. They built their home two weeks before the first winter snow. Hardy folks indeed.

To earn a living, Elmer began servicing the early automobile. Elmer and Sylvia built and operated several service garages in Northern Wisconsin. Sylvia continued to chronicle their lives and improved her photography with a modern camera.

A smart businessman, Elmer located his garage enterprise along America's emerging highways of the 1920s. His "Midway Garage" was midway between Tomahawk and Minocqua, Wisconsin at the intersection of what became Highways 8 and 51.

In Oneida County, Elmer was a Deputy Sheriff, Game Warden, and provided services as a hunting and fishing guide. He gained a reputation as a storyteller on sports outings in the Northwoods. One of his tales was the attempted roundup of John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson. Led by Melvin Purvis, the FBI flew into Rhinelander and then took cars to ambush the gangsters at the Little Bohemia Lodge. They stopped at Midway for fuel.

Mr. Purvis challenged Deputy Titus to a pistol draw contest. To his chagrin, Titus proved to be quicker on the draw than the number two man at the FBI. Impressed, Purvis recruited Deputy Titus and other Oneida lawmen to join their party. Although they failed to capture the bad guys, the story lived on around Elmer's campfires.

Starting in 1924, Elmer built snowplanes from automotive parts. Sylvia coined the contraptions "snowmobiles." Her innovative husband also built tractors providing local farmers an alternative to Henry Ford's pricier factory models.

Elmer built the last Midway Garage in 1936 when the intersection of improved Highways 8 and 51 moved a mile west. The year before, he was smitten by the gold bug. Elmer and Sylvia traveled south during the winter months to New Mexico to try their hand at prospecting. A new winter routine for him, he headed south alone to explore the southwest for gold mining opportunities.

In 1938, Elmer joined others from Wisconsin to lease the Little King Mine in Hillsboro, New Mexico. The Midway Miner closes with a series of thirty-one letters to Sylvia from the mine. It is a unique record of the challenging hardships endured by hard rock miners in the wilds of New Mexico during the Great Depression.

Elmer could not resist a post-war world of opportunity beyond the forests and lakes of Oneida County. Elmer and Sylvia would divorce in 1946 when he took an engineering job in the oil fields of Venezuela. There he would marry the author's mother Ana Teresa Allen de Perez. Elmer and Ana returned to the United States with Mariana and her older brother, later becoming a family of six children. He established a practice in Franklin, Louisiana as a Doctor of Chiropractic until his passing in 1971.

Even though divorced, Elmer and Sylvia continued to write letters. The Titus family periodically visited "Aunt Sylvia" in the 1950s. Elmer and Sylvia began as a love story which became a lifelong friendship of two brave champions of the 20th century American spirit.