This “family fiction,” won the 2019 Black Sheep Award of the Colorado Genealogical Society
In those days I’d take the train from Union Station in Denver, my home town, to Union Station in Washington, D.C., where the reporting work was. It took a couple of days, but it gave me time to do some writing in the dining car that had a quiet bartender, and to watch the country roll by. There were hobo camps along the rails--you could tell by the smoke. I could take a close up look at them and then roll on by, settle back, open a book or pick up a pen.
I was working on a piece about one of Washington’s local characters—a kind of tramp himself, a tortured soul, but one that somebody must have loved. His name was Joseph Ratto, an old Italian who was known around D.C as “Cough Drop Joe.” He got his name from one of his many trades—selling those smelly Lewis’ cough drops to politicians returning to the Capitol from their martini lunches at the Old Ebbitt Grill or the Occidental. He picked up a few cents that way and got to rub elbows with the high and mighty. Everybody in D.C. knew Joe as the man who had held the horse of John Wilkes Booth outside the Ford Theatre on April 14, 1865. . . Or did he?
It was seventy years after the assassination, Joe Ratto was in his eighties, and I was determined to get the story before he passed from this earth. Joe had a back room above a second-hand furniture store. He was friends with the padre at Holy Rosary and I’d heard he went to late Mass on Sunday mornings, so that’s where I caught up with him.
It was a warm autumn day, the kind that holds the sharp scent of boxwood in the air. Joe was blessing himself with holy water when he came through the church door and he leaned his body against it, holding it for a few old women who followed. Joe was only about five feet tall and was wearing the double-breasted winter coat I’d seen him in for many years. The coat almost reached the ground. He had a brimmed felt hat in his hand. That hat had seen better days. He pulled it down to his ears and buttoned his vest. His leather shoes were filthy and all his clothes were wrinkled. As I approached, Joe looked up at me with his murky eyes, and he took my hand when I extended mine. He didn’t quite smile, but his long white moustache curled a little around his mouth.
“Buongiorno,” I said, hoping my accent would please him.
“I speak English, young man” he said with a thick accent. “Do you?” Then he laughed and I laughed and I knew we were off to a great start despite my misstep. I offered to take him to lunch—“wherever you want to go,” I promised him. We were standing in the alley behind the church, “The Willard,” he said right away. “My niece married a cook at the Willard, you know—although the Casassas always called him a chef. They were a bit high and mighty, you know, pearl necklaces and tinted photographs for all the daughters, stuff like that.” We started out of the alley and he turned his head in my direction. “You want to know what they all want to know… did I hold that getaway horse or didn’t I?” He gave me an opening so I took it.
“Well, Mr. Ratto, did you?” He burst out laughing
“Didja hold the horse, Old Joe? Didja make some money on it, Joe? Didja hold it long? Did you hold it tight? Didja? Didja? Didja?” His voice was low as he shook his head and upper body. I said nothing. He was getting mad. “Just like all those loafers and newspaper boys—the ones selling the Post in the morning, the Star in the evening. They were a scary lot when I was younger, the way they’d follow me down the street with their newspaper sacks slung over their shoulders. On each corner another one would join in. “Didja hold Booth’s horse? The man killed Lincoln! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” All my life they’ve been circling me, pointing their inky fingers in my face, spitting out their ugly words. ‘They can’t prove it!’ I’d yell back at them. ‘A man’s innocent until they can prove it!’”
“That’s the American way,” I agreed. I’d heard that old Joe would chase his tormentors with a cue stick he carried for protection. Lots of people saw him coming and poked fun at him because the John Wilkes Booth horse rumor had become part of Washington lore and an immigrant like Joe was an easy target.
We walked down F Street in silence. He was strong and solid for an old man, but his steps were short. At 11th Street I took his elbow at the curb and he jerked it away, giving me a look that told me he was insulted. Then we walked slowly side by side. I wondered why he was giving me this interview and just how much he would admit. “Where are your people from?” I asked.
“Northern Italy,” he grumbled, then paused and looked up at me. “Not southern. . . get that part right,” he insisted, gesturing with his fingers in the air. “I was just a kid, but I remember a big sailing ship and all of us piled in together--parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, everybody starving from those freezing winters and the killing frost that ruined the early crops. They were all peasants. Everybody was—contadino—so there was no shame. We grew God’s good food. Grazie Dio!” He looked into the blue sky. His eyes had a milky look; he probably was half blind. I hailed a Diamond cab and it dropped us on Pennsylvania Avenue at the Willard Hotel catty corner from the White House.
The uniformed doorman opened the cab door, appearing shocked to see a man in Joe’s dirty condition. I rushed around to take Joe’s arm and we walked down the carpet under the arched awning together. I knew the maître d’ who gave us a corner table in the back of the dining room. He took Joe’s coat and hat, holding them with one extended finger. Joe’s hair was oily and raggedy but still fairly thick. He held onto the table as I put the chair behind him and then he plopped down. He was tired from the walk. His fingers soiled the white tablecloth.
“Cocktail?” I asked.
“Vino,” he said, not looking up at the waiter. “Vino rosso. Italiano.” Joe scanned the room—the delicate murals on the thick columns and ceiling, the wooden paneling, the tile floor. A little smile appeared. “And olives,” he added looking up at me with a wish on his face. I ordered the olives and a Campari and I waited for Joe to open up. I’d heard that over beer Joe had told one confidante that he never held Booth’s horse, but that he had confessed to another that he actually did. Probably Father DeCarlo at Holy Rosary was the only one who really knew the truth.
“You have family here?” I asked.
“Oh, the Rattos have pushed fruit carts and vegetable carts of all kinds on every side of every marble building in this town. Probably some paisano pushed these olives right into this restaurant.” He sipped wine from the crystal glass like a gentleman. I downed my Compari and called for another.
“And you? Did you have a pushcart too?”
“I was a ragpicker for years,” he said with no shame. “Trash cans, gum wrappers, tin foil, anything on the street. Peddling old newspapers was my specialty. Thank God for your monkey business or I’d have starved years ago.” He jabbed his elbow in my direction. “I had my own cart once. I’d collect yesterday’s newspapers and take them to all the vendors, to wrap up the apples and oranges, the lettuce and tomatoes. Then I knew all the vendors and had the muscles to push that cart.” Soon he was slicing his filet into tiny pieces and taking bites of the buttered potatoes with fresh parsley. He had ordered the best beef on the menu, so I was feeling entitled to ask what I wanted to know.
“So tell me about the Ford Theatre that night that in ’65. Were you there?” He chewed as he considered my question.
“You’re gonna tell it straight for once?” he asked, pointing his fork in my direction.
“Just like you tell it to me, Joe. Just like you tell it to me.” He buttered his Parker roll.
“Yes, I was there.”
“Ok. You were there. Tell me more.”
“Hold your horses, young man. I’d like another vino, per favore.” I signaled the waiter while Joe ate. I wondered what would come next. There were those who said he never told the truth about his role in the assassination, but that he traded on it—maybe like he was doing with me—for a hot meal or a little fame.
“I was an eleven years old twerp,” he began. “Slogging for my uncle--my father died on the boat and my mother died in childbirth soon after the ship landed in Philadelphia. Riposare in pace. My uncle took me in and we moved to D.C. when I was so young I don’t even recall when. But my job in the family was to pick up money wherever I could and put it in the biscotti jar by the stove where we all put money for food. I did odd jobs, and sometimes I did hold horses for people at the theatre. It was hard work. Those were very big horses and I was a very small boy. But it was one of the best ways to earn a nickel—those who came late didn’t have time to find a stable, so us boys would hang around outside hoping to get one. They let us do it. It was a service.” Joe held his fork in abeyance and kept his eyes on his plate as he spoke.
“It was honest work,” I said.
“It was,” he agreed, and his voice choked up and a tear rolled down his cheek. The waiter took away his empty plate. Joe did not look up as he spoke. “Booth was a famous actor. Everybody knew him, they said, but I didn’t. I was just a kid. What did I know? He needed somebody to hold his horse and I was there. So yes, I did hold it. Did I know about his getaway plan? No. Were we for the Union? We were. Did I love Old Abe. Yes, I did. We all did.” He looked up at me. His eyes were wet. His cheeks. His moustache. “And you see the penance I have had to pay for the past seventy years?” He swallowed hard and then he spoke: “Isn’t it enough, mister? Isn’t it enough?”
There before me was a broken man with the soul of a boy who did wrong by trying to do right. He was an eccentric, haunted by a memory that may or may not even have been truly his own. Joe believed the story, but I had to wonder. Was his memory the result of his tormentors? The rumor mongers? The newsmen like me who wanted a story?
Suddenly he smiled.
“They’ll never prove it,” he said, returning to his gelato. “They’ll never prove it.”
***
Reports on “Cough Drop Joe,” published after his death, indicate he was buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Washington, D.C. by a “distant relative,” who I know, because my mother told me and the cemetery records confirm, was our kind grandmother, Blanche Casassa Sheaffer. She bought a casket and had a headstone carved for Joseph Ratto (1854-1946) where she is now buried along with our grandfather, our parents, aunt, and of course, Uncle Joe. Our grandmother’s own mother’s birth name was Ratto, and although I’ve not yet been able to determine exactly how we are related to Cough Drop Joe, I believe we must be. I’ve visited the small town in Italy where the Casassas came from and noticed plenty of Rattos buried in the cemetery there.
My primary source for this fictional account is an interview conducted in the 1930s by Denver writer, Donald Bloch, who eventually wrote Joe’s story.Bloch returned to Denver and became proprietor of Collectors’ Center, 1640 Arapahoe Street, specializing in rare books and collections.In 1969 the story was published and filed in Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection.As recently as 2007, a Lincoln historian, in his book, Lincoln Legends: Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated with Our Greatest President, identifies “Peanut” John Burroughs, Nathan Simms, and “Coughdrop” Joey Ratto, all of whom allegedly held Booth's getaway horse outside Ford's Theatre the night of the assassination.
