Postmaster Murphy remembered the ‘good old days’

For The Madera Tribune

Ed Murphy, Madera’s postmaster, hands over the town’s first outgoing airmail to pilot Pete Schmidt while Madera Tribune reporter Winifred Peck stands by to board. The date was May 19, 1938.

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“Ed can beat up Clay Daulton anytime,” said Jack Brammer, but Ed Murphy looked at Clay Daulton and was scared. All day long he shivered, thinking of the fight that must inevitably come, because when Brammer talked that way, it meant business. Along toward dusk, Ed Murphy and H. Clay Daulton II (Grandfather of Clay Daulton, owner of the Daulton Ranch) mixed it up in an abandoned building nearby; they pummeled, kicked, and battered each other until they were both too tired to move. 

“I don’t know who won,” said Edmund V. Murphy, who later became Madera’s postmaster, “but that fight was certainly an incident I’ll never forget. We weren’t fighting about anything in particular; I belonged to Jack Brammer’s gang and Daulton had his gang. Brammer said I could beat Daulton, so we had to fight to settle it.” 

Thus did Edmund V. Murphy, Madera’s postmaster, take readers of The Madera Tribune back 50 years in time to tell them what life was like for young lads when our town was just a village. The fisticuffs described by Murphy took place when Murphy, Brammer, and Daulton attended class at Madera’s Eastside School, the only one in town at the time. It was located near the corner of Yosemite Avenue and Flume Street.