Harvest Scenes: Before the Arrival of the Combined Harvester

This series of images were found by Sharon (Bullock) Rush in a collection of family photographs.  Although they obviously depict various parts of the threshing process associated with harvesting rice and oats before "combines," or self-propelled combined harvesting machines, replaced binders and threshing "separators.  Although the individuals pictures are unknown, Sharon assumes they are various workers of the Rush family farm. [Double click to enlarge.]

Pictured above is a rare recording of the gathering by horse-drawn wagon of the sheaths of grain left to dry in carefully collected "shocks" before being deposited in the great McCormick Deering separator -- long before the coming of the grain "dryer" that cut short the process.  [Collecting the "shocks" left by the binder was a skilled process carefully explained to me by Darrell Gardner during my recent visit to the Bluff.]

Albin Anderson on wagon; Howard Bullock on truck

The separated grain was re-lifted directly into a waiting truck.

And the whole operation relied on the power of a single tractor that powered  a very long belt to the threshing machine by its flywheel.

A marvelous portrait of an unknown harvester atop a mound of collected grain set against a clear sky

The machine pictured above as it is today long retired and on display at the Rush farm on Rush Lane near Crockett's Bluff.

Colored pictures by Ken Shireman

Footnotes 2: Easter 1951?

Top row: Dale Woodiel, Elnora (Bullock) Graves, Sharon (Bullock) Rush, Cread Rush and Shelby Woodiel. Middle row: Bud Anderson, Harold Rush, and Neva (Graves) West. Front row: Unknown boy,  ? Gossom?, Carol Keithley, Ruth Dobson, Unknown boy, and Bobby Lloyd DeBerry

An Easter picture at the entrance to the Baptist Church in 1951.  Although the hats of the ladies reflect the special day, the date is not as certain.  However, since Harold Rush is there in uniform, it is assumed it was when he was home on furlough from the U.S. Army before being sent to Korea where he served in the Army Signal Corp.

Although "Mr. Cread" Rush was our Sunday School teacher and is pictured here, this is obviously not meant necessarily to be a picture of our class.  It appears to be just a casual group shot of those in attendance that Sunday.  The picture below, however, seems to be a picture of just the males of the former group, minus two of the younger boys but including Bobby DeBerry.

L to R: Bud Anderson, Dale Woodiel, Shelby Woodiel, and Harold Rush with Bobby DeBerry in front.

Haunted Musings

I've noted earlier on this site that although the Prange Store that was located a good stone's throw from the Woodiel house, it was the Schwab Store located in what had to be considered the most central site of the activities of Bluff dwellers during the decades immediately following World War II.  While my earliest childhood memories of the Prange establishment are vague, those of the Schwab Store remain vivid.  

Though it has been officially closed since the mid-eighties, it has been remodeled and preserved and continually utilized by Vicki (Schwab) and Darrell Gardner. During my visit there in early March I found it haunted with memories.

As we sat around a long table near a centrally-located authentic pot-belly stove working our way through photo albums filled with historical images of the early days of the store and its proprietors Thelma and Eddie Schwab that included an extensive collection of the picnic gathering commemorating the closing of the store.

Homer Starks and Eddie Schwab

Grace Marrs, Thelma Schwab and ?

DPW Darrell Gardner and Maureen Woodiel Shireman

The well-worn anvil of Sebastian Schwab

Darell Gardner and DPW

Eddie and Thelma in courting days?

DPW and Vickie Schwab Gardner

Vickie Schwab Gardner and her father in the store's peak years.

Picture of the Mary Woods No. 2 in Schwab's Store.

Front Door of Schwab's Store

Footnotes for Bullock-Rush Family Stories

Whether it was, as has often been asserted, an ancient Chinese parable that first suggested "a picture is worth a thousand words" or it was one or another of dozens of other writers of note over the ages that coined the phrase, it matters little.  That the observation is so obviously true is all that matters.  Furthermore, the obvious extension of this statement is, as well: that "every picture tells a story" -- or perhaps stories.


The stories inherent in the following images of members of the Bullock and Rush families are, to some degree, incomplete.  In addition to being fellow farm families and long-time members of the Crockett's Bluff community for most of the twentieth century, there is much we no longer know about their lives and time - that is, those of us putting together this website.  It is our hope the obvious stories that lurk behind these images will emerge from the knowledge and stories of others who might in the future see them. [Note: a double click on a picture will enlarge it.]

What we know about this first picture is it is a harvest (rice?) scene somewhere in the Bluff area about 1913, and we know the young man astride the lead horse pulling this now antique binder is Cread Rush and the seemingly slightly older young man on the binder is his father Ed.  (The dark cloud in the background and the torn white area in the foreground add a certain drama to the scene for me.)  Are the adults in the foreground elders in the Rush family? 

Pictured at the left is Howard Bullock and his perhaps soon bride-to-be wife Jenny V (later Geneva) Purdy who would eventually be the parents of Kathleen, Clyde, Boone, Elnora, and Sharon (who would eventually marry Harold Rush, son of Cread pictured above).


Yes, that is a pistol in Howard's belt!  Clearly this image does not reveal any sign of the fact that, according to his daughter Sharon, one of his greatest loves was dancing.


The picture below, with another Bullock family harvest scene in the background, records the apparent presentation of Roger McCallie to his grandfather by his grandmother and her daughter Elnora.  First grandchild?  First grandson?


Just one more of those threshing scenes of which I'd love more pictures for this site, since the harvest season  -- apart, of course, from early spring -- was the nearest to a truly happy season in the Grand Prairie region of Arkansas in my memory.

From L: Elenora Bullock, with her parents Geneva and Howard and infant grandchild Roger? McCallie

Music has forever been a significant part of any culture, even one as relatively isolated as the Crockett's Bluff of my youth.  In addition to the music of church services of the Baptist and Lutheran churches, and the traditional hits that drifted constantly from early radio, so new to Americans in the early nineteen thirties, there was other music.  After all, electricity was required for the radio, and I can remember the oil lamps at night before the day when the first light bulb, hanging from a twisted cord in the kitchen, was introduced to the Woodiel household.


There was, however, other much more secular and more fundamentally American music of the folk and Grand Ole Opry sort featured at rural and small town dance "halls" over Arkansas during my youth.  Despite the disapproval of the local Baptist churches, they survived.    


The image below is of Clyde Bullock playing the guitar along with an unidentified fiddler about which we'd like to know more.

The final image is of Geneva Bullock feeding her chickens on one of those rare days in winter when it snowed.  Also in the picture is Charlie, pictured pulling Boone Bullock's cart in Hal Prange's memoir published earlier.


I love this image for several reasons, apart from the fat healthy chickens pictured.  It's unusual.  It has snowed enough the leave  measurable amounts, and Geneva (Mrs. Bullock to me) looks happy, as does Charlie.


I love her outfit: rubber boots and apron,  scarf, and warm jacket -- all that was required for such  a wife and mother in her position on a rare day in Crockett's Bluff in the late 1930s or early forties.  And that appears to be a jeep in the background.  Another jeep?  

No doubt, there's much more to say about these pictures and the stories that lie behind them,or the stories they will bring to the mind of viewers.  When those stories become known, we'll add them.  After all, no story ends until the last teller has had his or her say!

I'm indebted to Sharon Bullock Rush for these pictures, some of many she shared with me during a March visit, as well as for much of the information re these pictures. [photo by Ken Shireman]

Crockett's Bluff Historical Note

While ever on the alert for references or connections  to Crockett's Bluff on the Internet -- thanks to Google -- I recently came across the following historical note published in the midst of the Civil War in "The Military Situation" section of the April 30, 1864 edition of Harper's Weekly:

"Captain Phelps, of the gun-boat No. 26, captured a rebel mail-carrier near Crockett's Bluff, Arkansas on the 4th, with five hundred letters from Richmond and other points, and sixty thousand percussion caps for General Price's army.  The letters contained critical communications for Shreveport, and a considerable sum of Federal money."

Hal Prange's Nostalgic Look at Leaving Crockett's Bluff

"Leaving Eden"

from Memoir Mentor

                                

Hal "Len"  Prange at about age four as a passenger in his neighbor Boone Bullock's dogcart pulled by his dog Charley.  Both he and Boone can be seen in Crockett's Bluff Schools: 1940s.

Schwab's Store: Crockett's Bluff's Center

According to my mother, when I was a small child in Crockett's Bluff in the late 1930s and somehow had the good fortune to find or to be given a much-valued Lincoln-faced penny, I would immediately ask if I could go "give it to Pete," the name everyone in the community used to refer to Adolph Prange, the proprietor of the Prange Store that sat adjacent to the Lutheran Church at the end of our lane.  For me, it was the only store I knew until our family moved to DeWitt and then to Little Rock  at the beginning of World War II.

When we returned to the Bluff in late 1945 the Prange family had moved to California, leaving their store closed and abandoned.  The sole center of mercantile activity had shifted southward to Schwab's Store where it would remain for the next forty years until the retirement of Eddie and Thelma Schwab.  Henceforth, I or anyone else in the Bluff with a penny to spend would have to give it to "Eddie or Doodle," as they were familiarly and affectionately addressed.

This picture was made in the summer of 1930 by Eddie Schwab with a Kodak box camera from the top of the Prange Farm water tower.  The August Prange Farm Store (with it's gasoline pump) is the dominant structure at the lower right.  A large section of the Schwab Store with its blacksmith shop at the rear can be seen at the center with the extensive gardens behind.  The family house is among the trees.  

The two trees between the two stores were persimmon. According to the notes made in her photo album by Thelma Schwab, the structures behind and to the left are the "Cellar" where potatoes, onions, canned vegetables and fruits, and even eggs were stored winter and summer.  The last small building that can been seen is the chicken house.  The Schwab family house cannot be seen for the trees. In clearer versions of this picture apparently Sebastian Schwab, the father of Eddie, has been noted as "the little guy going through the gate" when it was made. [Photo courtesy of Vicki and Derrall Gardner]

Crockett's Bluff School Days: 1940s

Crockett's Bluff Elementary: 1942?

Front Row L/R: Bud (Albin) Anderson, Donald Inman, Charles Dupslaff, Len Prange, August Prange, and Henry Gammon. Second Row: John Kemp, Connor Kemp, W.C. Inman, Neva (Graves) West, Sharon (Bullock) Rush, Louise Hill, Margaret Dallas, and Beulah Ward. Third Row: Joy Simpson, Joan Dobson, Evelyn (Rush) Meins, Lorene (Hill) Harris, Bettye (Anderson) Widener, Elnora (Bullock) Graves, Mary Helen Newman, John Knight.  Top: Mrs. Harry Barnard, teacher.

Eighth Grade: Crockett's Bluff School, 1942

Front Row L/R:  Charles Prange, Bill Woodiel, Erlene Inman, Leroy Knight, and O.V. Gosnell.  Top Row: Duke Trice (teacher), Boone Bullock, Wilmer Hill, and Dallas Dobson 

Crockett's Bluff 4-H Club Members  1942-43

Front Row L/R: Betty (Anderson) Widener, Lorene (Hill) Harris, Betty Ann Prange, Frances Inman, Virginia Kemp, Irene (Hill) Schorstein, Twila May Dallas and Ida Carolyn (Prange) Williams.  Second Row: Charles Prange, Pete Dobson, Mary Helen Newman, Elnora (Bullock ) Graves, Erlene Inman, Willene Graves West, Juanita (Dallas) Mitchel, Shelby Woodiel, Harold Rush, and Mrs. Cora Prange Swindler, School Board Representative.  Back Row: Duke Trice, Principal and Teacher, George Sorrels, County Extension Agent, O.V. Gosnell, Dallas Dobson, Leroy Knight, Boone Bullock, Wilmer Hill, Billy Woodiel, Christine Naughter, Home Demonstration Agent, Lewis Rush, and Mrs. Bertha Barnard, teacher.

[For an enlarged view, just click on a picture.  I have Sharon (Bullock) Rush to thank for these three pictures.  Those of the elementary class and the 4-H Club  Nere previously provided by the late Elnora (Bullock) Graves for publication in the DeWitt Era Enterprise.  DPW]


[These three pictures appear to have been taken on the same day or at the same setting.  My brother Bill (pictured above) confirms my sense that they could not have been taken in 1942, as noted by the DeWitt Era Enterprise, but at least  as early as 1940 or the spring of 1941, because we both recall living in DeWitt and attending schools there on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941. DPW 3.17.10]

The Night of Passage

Samuel Allie Woodiel
March 6, 1902 - June 14, 1988

Except for four years during World War II when he worked in a defense plant near Little Rock, S.A. Woodiel lived and worked in Crockett's Bluff from the early 1930s until his death in 1988.  This is an account of his death at the Bluff, June 14, 1988 by his son-in-law Ken Shireman who, along with his wife Maureen (Woodiel) Shireman and her brothers Shelby and Billy and their mother Lucille, were present.

We arrived at Crockett's Bluff at 12:45 and S.A. was asleep, breathing very shallow with brief periods of gasping.  The night was clear and warm.  I walked back outside after we sat with him for a while.  The big dipper was at about the 10:00 position.  I walked Billy back to the trailer and we lit the pilot light on the water heater.  Whiskers, the new family dog, was my constant campaion.  Later, as Shelby and I sat at the kitchen table we talked about the good times we had all shared, particularly those of John and Gary with Papaw.  I asked Shelby if he expected S.A. to wake up and he said, "No" . . . which confirmed my observations.  I felt death to be no more than a few hours away.  I went to Maureen where she sat on the bed and said, "You do realize that he isn't going to wake up don't you?"  She then began to talk to S.A. and said, "It's me, it's Maureen, I'm with you."  He turned his head toward her and opened his eyes in narrow slits and uttered a word which sounded like "I". I felt he wanted to speak but the strength was no longer there.  She then began to say  "Mother is alright, Shelby and Ken are here . . . Billy is here . . . you have been strong for so long but you do not have to be now.  It's OK to relax, to let go."  I seemed to sense a release at that point . . .I went back outside.  
 
A fox was barking and a lone owl was hooting.  The big dipper had progressed to about the 8:00 position in its counter-clockwise rotation.  Shelby came out and we stood and watched as the cup on the dipper began to descend into the tree line.  We talked some about the stars and the universe, then went back inside.  

I sat in a side chair against the west wall of the bedroom with my feet very near the bed.  Maureen's mother Lucille sat very close to S.A. on the bed watching his face intently.  Maureen put her arm around her and moved closer, searching for the weak signs that life was still there . . . I was awe struck by what I saw . . . The small night light near the floor cast a half light on their faces and projected their larger than life-size shadows in the corner of the room.  It was as if the shadows were watching, overseeing the event unfolding before us.  I moved closer and watched as the breaths became weaker . . . death was near.

Here on a high bluff on the west bank of the White River . . . daylight seems to arrive a bit earlier, and as it was just barely beginning to get light I left the house for a walk.    Three foxes were in a social disagreement about something and their playful barks and snarls were waking the day.  Whiskers bolted at the sound to break it up.  I walked past the end of the drive and turned toward Schwab's store . . . long since closed.  The nightwatcher cast its mercury glow on the emptiness of the road.  I remembered what S.A. had said on a tape that we made Thanksgiving and sent to my son John in Colorado . . . "You don't have to worry about us out here . . . it's just about as dead as it can be."  I turned and looked west down the road, past the post office.  No car lights, and you could see for miles.  I started back to the house expecting to find that it would be all over for S.A.  Birds were beginning to awaken . . . and I heard one very persistent whipporwhill.  The foxes were still yippig and Whiskers walked beside me.  I looked again at the big dipper.  It had slowly continued it's north star orbit as it has done since this planet has existed.  The only part visible as it slowly set behind the trees was the last three stars of the handle.  As I walked to the bed, Shelby, Lucille and Maureen were huddled closely to S.A.  Lucille said "He hasn't moved his hands . . . he's been moving his hands."  Maureen said "Look Mother, he's still breathing."  I sat beside Shelby on the bed and placed my hand on S.A.'s abdomen.  I counted for 15 seonds before I felt a breath.  Shelby had his fingers of his left hand tucked under the rib cage near the heart and Maureen had her hand on his neck.  Lucille was holding his hand.  I counted for 32 seconds before I felt another feeble breath.  We were silently awaiting the end.  After another lapse of 35 seconds I felt a breath accompanied by a weak gasp and I knew it was the last.  His energy, his life force was gone.  I leaned to Shelby and said "I'm going to get Billy" who was asleep in Jack's trailer.  Shelby said "His heart just stopped."  I pushed the call button near the phone which rang the bell in the trailer four times and started my walk.  Billy was just starting to open the door when I arrived.  "He's gone," I said.  We walked back to the house . . . I don't remember what we said except that as Billy opened the screen door he said, "I'll never be the man that he was."  It reminded me of a comment by Shelby's.  "Even if somebody put the screws to him, he always found something good to say about them."  We walked into the bedroom, everybody embraced everybody.  It was over.  We began to perform our different tasks of consolation.  The already prepared list of phone numbers sat by the phone and coffee pot.  Billy and Shelby began calling and Maureen sat with her mother.  Billy and Shelby walked back into the bedroom. . . they both in turn lifted S.A.'s jaw which held his mouth open wide.  Maureen had already closed his eyes, but his jaw would not remain.  After they left the room, I lifted his head and rearranged the pillows, tilting his head forward.  I then rolled the blanket and tucked it under his chin.  It then held his mouth almost closed. 

I thought of the days when the family would prepare and dress the body for burial.  I thought, "I could do that.  It wouldn't be so bad, maybe even pleasant, a sort of last act of service to the loved one."  I watched as the color was quickly fading from S.A.'s face.  It reminded me of how when you catch a trout, when they die, how quickly the color fades.  Shelby had called John Hestir, the family doctor and the Essex funeral home, to send an ambulance.  I walked outside to wait.  The sun was not yet up but it was good light.  He had died at about 5:05 A.M. 

Shelby and Billy walked outside with the portable phone and did some more calling.  It wasn't long before Hestir arrived and they went inside.  We had seen one fox near the end of the drive.  I called Jason and told him, and Maureen called John.  When the ambulance arrived we took the stretcher inside.  Hestir and I got on S.A.'s right side with Cooper and Billy on the other and Shelby at his feet.  We gently lifted him to the dolly.  Cooper covered him with a blue terry cloth robe and we all helped put him in the ambulance, as if we were all needed.  He probably didn't weigh 115 pounds but everybody wanted to feel like we had a hand in it.  It was our last act we would ever perform for him.  The grandsons would be the pallbearers . . . it was over . . . Cooper drove away.  Spencer and Sevella Parker came over and all of the men stood outside and talked as the women sat in the kitchen. . . It reminded me of our childhood school days and that S.A. was a school teacher.  How the boys and girls gather in their respective circles.  The sun was just peeking through the trees.  We talked of good times . . . most of the mourning had been done . . I thought . . .how can anybody leave this world any better . . . A beautiful summer day . . .owls and birds calling . . . foxes alive with their playfulness and the hands of loved ones on you as you begin to sleep the big sleep.  It just doesn't get any better.

The funeral was two days later.  As the family waited near the front of the church to enter the sanctuary the center of our attention was Mary Catherine, the youngest great grandchild.  She was the symbol or perhaps the actual rebirth or resurrection of the spirit.  I do not know where the life force comes from or to what great reservoir it returns, but maybe through a transformation process that transcends our understanding, part of it flows to the young who carry it into the future generations.  I know that when I look at Mary Catherine and the other young members of the family I will always see a part of the spirit and energy of S.A. Woodiel.  His passage has been completed.

S.A. Woodiel died June 14, 1988 at 5:05 A.M.

 Ken Shireman, June 15, 1988

In and Around the Prange Store

The following is a third excerpt of Crockett's Bluff As I Remember It,  David Prange's memoir of his childhood in the Bluff from his birth in 1926 until his family moved to California in 1944. See "I: Approach From the West" and "II: School Days." Pictured above in Schwab's Grocery as it was about 2000, the last surviving store in the Bluff, to which he refers in this recollection.

"Our dad's store was the most popular place of business in town, but for one.  That one, which was by some considered the Honky-Tonk, was the Schwab's store.  There were actually only two stores in town that were actively serving the public.  The August Prange store was also active but served, mainly, the employees of his vast plantation.  To say the least, it bordered on being a company store.  The Schwab Mercantile was considered the Honky-Tonk because beer could be purchased there and a pool room was a part of the establishment.  An interesting difference was our dad ran a credit business while the Schwab store, to my knowledge, did not.  Generally, as to be expected, when  folks had money they patronized the competition.  The availability of beer and the pool tables were a great attraction.  When they were short on money they often came to dad's store.  Our dad, with his gentle heart, was an easy touch, and most knew it and some took advantage of it.

"The Schwab, the August Prange and dad's stores were active within my earliest memories.  The August Prange store closed to business during the mid to late 1930s.  Our dad's store remained open . . . until the remainder of our family moved to California in 1944.  The Schwab store closed in or about 1985.

"I have wonderful memories that surround our store.  Sunday mornings, after church and if the weather was accommodating, some of the adult men gathered for the game of pitching silver dollars.  This was always played next to the store, on the north side.  This game, as I remember it, has very nearly the same rules, as did pitching horseshoes.  Rather than ringing a stake, the silver dollars were pitched into a small hole in the ground.  This was during the early 1930's and as the Great Depression progressed through the decade the game continued, but the silver dollars were gradually replaced with common steel washers.

"A very dear family friend I associate with the store was John Johnson who had migrated from Nebraska with the Prange clan.  He is a very much a part of my memories of the store.  He was rarely seen without his bolt action, single shot, twenty-two-caliber rifle.  He enjoyed shotting blue jays out of the trees, and much of this was done while sitting on dad's front store porch.  I remember him once having his eyes tested for glasses by a traveling optometrist, if I dare call him that, on the front porch of the store.   At some point during those years there had apparently been a break-in a bit before my time, so I suppose there was a reason for vigilance; therefore, for several years John actually slept in the side room of the store as the night watchman.  I do not recall a problem with burglars developing during my days, however.

"The front store porch was the gathering place for many residents.  My brother Charles and I spent hours listening to tall tales being recounted.  It took bedtime or school homework to pry us away, and always with regret.

"During the summer months, the mosquitoes provided a real challenge.  During those tall tale sessions most were stripped to the waist because of the hot and humid weather.  It was a continual swing and alap.  No one seemed to give that circumstance a second thought.  I suppose we thought that the mosquitoes were just a part of living.  You live, you slap mosquitoes." 

[Many of David's recollections -- the men playing washers, certainly John Johnson who was a friend of my fathers who was at our house often, and definitely the pool table (and eventually the pinball machine) at Schwab's Grocery during my high school years -- are vaguely familiar.  I recall the pool table set in the middle of a back room surrounded on all sides by sacks of feed, fertilizer, and other commodities. DPW]

Vandals Thought to Have Sunk the Mary Woods II

The historic steamboat pictured on the title page of this site now lies on its side in about twenty feet of water at its Jacksonport, AR  mooring.  Two local barbarians are apparently in custody, waiting to be charged with the crime.  http://www.todaysthv.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=98790

Update on the Mary Woods II   May 18, 2011

Houseboats on the White River

Although black and white box cameras were common in the 1930s even in a relatively isolated Arkansas community like Crockett's Bluff, it would have hardly occurred to someone to make a picture of the perhaps five or six houseboats moored (or tied up) along the mile or so bank of the river between the bluffs themselves and its next bend to the north just past what I recall as a favorite sand bar for swimming in the late 1940s.

I can recall clearly a very early childhood houseboat visit to Mr. and Mrs. Gosnell during which Mr. Gosnell allowed me to my great delight to choose an apple from a large container.  Years later, the Gosnells would move to a house on land a few hundred yards northward up the bank across from the Marrs families.  

On one occasion I accompanied my father on an afternoon visit during which he and Mr. Gosnell smoked pipes filled with raw tobacco roughly ground from complete tobacco leaves that I believe he ordered by mail from Kentucky.  The fumes from their pipes brought tears to my  youthful eyes.  The stories they exchanged, however, made it worth the discomfort.  [There's much more to be said about these kind and generous folks.]

While I continue to seek to acquire such pictures, I have the 1930s watercolor given to me  by "Miss Cora" (Cora Deane Prange Swindler) in the early 1970s on a visit to her home.  I had admired it on a previous visit, because it is to my memory an accurate depiction.

According to her notation, the artist is Laura Flint who was the wife of the commanding officer of the C.C.C. Camp in St. Charles in the 1930s.

School Days in Crockett's Bluff: Early 1930s

[A second selection of excerpts from David B. Prange's  Crockett's Bluff As I Remember It.]

"There also was a two-room school that taught grades one through eight.  Kindergarten was unheard of in those days, at least in and around Crockett's Bluff.  There was a large wood framed grain storage building which was owned by the Prange brothers, a small wood framed church building which served the Lutheran Denomination, a blacksmith shop owned and operated by Mr. Schwab, a cemetery, and a large steam powered relift which was owned by August Prange Sr.  This relift lifted water from the [White] river to irrigate the rice fields of the White River Prairie.  There were approximately forty permanent dwellings.  Estimating the number of homes is made difficult because of the looseness of the village boundaries.  There were an additional four or five homes floating on the river.  An elevated water storage tank was prominent within the village.

I have fond memories of that tank.  It was supported by a steel framework about one hundred feet above grade.  It served only for water storage but was a major landmark for travelers because it could be seen for miles around, projecting above the surrounding trees.

 . . . . As I mentioned earlier, the schoolhouse was comprised of two rooms.  The one room, which was referred to as the "lower room" housed grade one through four  The other room, referred to as the "upper room" housed grades five through eight.  A school day was from nine o'clock until four.  We were given fifteen-minuted recesses, one during the morning hours and one during the afternoon.  Our lunch period was for one hour.

During the winter months, our school was heated, utilizing a wood burning stove, one in each room.  The stove wood was from a huge pile located near and west of the building.  I thought then that this wood must have appeared by magic.  I never once witnessed anyone hauling it there.  Even now, I wonder who cut and delivered it.  It had to have been no small task.  Our drinking water was from a hand-powered pump.

. . . . I enjoyed my school days.  I looked forward with joyful anticipation to the ending of summer break --  well, more or less.

The advantage we had over the way teaching is accomplished today was that all of us students, in a literal sense, attended all of the classes of all the grades within the room.  How this occurred was that each class was conducted in the open room in the presence of all the other grades.  A long bench was situated in front of the teacher's desk.  When it came time for a specific class, the teacher would call forth the children of that class to sit on the bench.  The rest of the grades could watch and hear as the lesson proceeded thereby, we actually attended all the classes.  I do believe that this phenomenon was the cause for the children of Crockett's Bluff being known for their brilliance.  I think that is what they were known for.

. . . . As I look back, way back, to my days at St. Charles High, it was primitive in relation to other contemporary high schools.  Our school may have been small and backwoods, but, make no mistake, I would have have had it any other way.  Yes, we had no running water, necessitating an outdoor privy, and our only heat was from a wood-burning stove.  We may have been short on funding, but as I learned later, we matched other schools in academics.   In fact, upon entering Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, California to finish the last half of my senior year, in 1944,  I was so far ahead of my fellow students, academically, that the authorities found it difficult to place me.  In my homeroom, I was referred to as the brainchild.  Not because I was so brilliant, but that I had already had it all. Thanks to St. Charles High.

The school building . . . is gone forever, but my memories of those wonderful days will live until I am no longer here.

Bird's Eye View of the Bluffs

Not exactly Google Earth but a clear view from the air of an approach to the Woodiel place and the bluffs themselves -- thanks to a Stuttgart friend of Ken Shireman who flew us out in his small plane -- made, I believe, sometime in the late 1970s or early eighties. [A double click should produce a fairly clear view.]

Two Tales of a Noble Family

Fanny and Charles Dodson at their home near Crocketts Bluff
Summer 1968

Crocketts Bluff during my early years was in every traditional respect a segregated southern society from the mid-nineteen thirties until the decade immediately following the aftermath of the Brown vs Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court in 1954, and there certainly were over those years incidents of overt and violent, as well as covert and indirect, acts of racial oppression of its Black members. Acts of this sort to which I was witness remain etched in my memory today, sixty or more years later. One would like to believe, however, the Bluff was throughout those years a more open and just and generous community than many of those that populated the states of the deepest South.

In fact, among its most noble and respected families -- names like Allen, Phillips, and Dodson come immediately to mind -- were families we would label today as African-American, but who were distinguished in those days from their white neighbors not simply by their skin color but their reputation and example as responsible workers, individuals of integrity, faithful neighbors, and devoted parents.

"Charlie" and Fanny Dodson, pictured above, are noteworthy to me, not only for the qualities I've noted, but also for the fact that somehow they sent their four children to college even before the Woodiel family began to make it a tradition.

One has to meditate on that fact for a while to fully appreciate its significance.

Two Dodson Stories

One From "Miss" Fanny

During one of the summers between my college years at Arkansas Tech I managed to get a job once held by my father S.A. with the AAA. My task was to go from farm to farm and determine by means of large aerial photographs whether individual farmers had exceeded their allotted acreage.

It was during one of these visits that I found myself chatting with "Miss" Fanny [same old tradition: I called her "Miss" Fanny and she called me "Mr." Dale] while waiting for Charlie to come up to the house from the cotton field below the hill on which it sat. I can't recall what brought it on, but I believe it was one of those very large cast iron cauldrons used for a variety of tasks including washing clothes before the advent of washing machines.

I can hear her voice in my memory, but I'll not attempt the dialect, though the story is better with it. So I suppose that will remain special just to me. Nevertheless, she told me a story about the day just before "my last baby was born."

She had "been choppin cotton all mawnin" and had decided just before noon to come up to the house to make some lunch, or "denna," and had decided, while the lunch was cooking, to go down and "start a bit of wash" by building a fire under the large cauldron. At this point in the story, pausing while turning to look back down the hill, she slowly reflected:

"And, you know, Mista Dale,"when I cum back up that hill, I wus a carrin that baby in my arms!"


One About Mr. Charlie

Some time later that same summer I was in DeWitt on one of those sweltering Saturdays of July when lots of folks have come to town. Like many other predominantly white folks -- I had made my way to Coker-Hampton's Drug Store since it was the only -- or certainly one of the very few -- establishments with what amounted to an air conditioned atmosphere.

Am I'm sitting at the soda fountain counter, I'm suddenly aware of a disruption behind me just inside the entrance, and I turn to find the black man lying apparently unconscious on the floor is Charlie. I rush to where he's lying just as one of the Hampton crew has arrived from somewhere in the back. (There is general muttering from customers and other observers as the spectacle proceeds. The phrase "drunk nigger" sticks in my mind.)

"Do you know this man"? blurts the Hampton pharmacist.

"Yes, I do, his name is Charlie Dodson."

"Well, could you help get him out of here? Dr. Rascoe's office is just around the corner."

By this time Charlie is awake and totally startled. Perhaps he realizes he's just fainted, but he's glad to see my face, I can tell. I help him to his feet and out the door. I put his arm around my neck and my arm around his waist, but after a few strides he's able to manage on his own.

We make our way around the corner and up the long flight of stairs to the doctor's office. The receptionist is startled, and she immediately interrupts Dr. Roscoe who is with another patient. He comes forth and with an immediate smile:

"Charlie, what on earth's the matter?"

For me, it was one of those rare moments of complete satisfaction.

Charlie Dodson is all right, and so am I. He's not a young man and he has just suffered the shock of coming from a sweltering temperature into an unreal rush of cold air. And what a relief for us both to learn even the county doctor knows and respects Charlie Dodson.

Of course.

A Canal "Baptising": A Summer Ritual

 

In his memoir Crocketts Bluff As I Remember It David Prange recalls his experiences as a youthful witness of Negro baptisms that usually took place at Voss Lake, about a mile or so west of the Bluff. Unlike the baptisms he recalls at his family's Bethlehem Lutheran Church located slightly north of his family's store at the entrance to the lane leading up to the Woodiel home site, the ceremonies at the lake were carried out not ritualistically within a church itself but outdoors in natural water deep enough for total submersion -- just like that of Jesus by John the Baptist, according to their reading of the scriptures. And so it was with the local -- all white -- Baptists in the Bluff whose church was attended by my family.

Like most pictures, the one above captures a moment in time. A moment shortly before a group of people, here crudely encircled in the Prange irrigation canal in Crocketts Bluff, are to be baptised -- that is, dunked backward beneath the surface of the water by the country preacher to emerge as new members of the local Baptist Church. The ceremony marks the end of a summer "revival," a series of nightly meetings whose purpose was, along with renewing the spiritual intensity of the faithful, to bring the "lost" to salvation.

How strange are all of these terms to me today -- revival, baptism, salvation. So commonplace in my youth, but today strangely absurd. I am one of the people captured in this picture. I appear to be about fourteen. The dark-haired figure in the right foreground is "Brother" (we didn't call the minister Reverend, as I recall) Monroe Davis, and I, not quite like Athena from Zeus, appear to be rising out of his head. My memory of this occasion remains vague and faint, but I clearly recognize in addition to Brother Davis several personalities significant to me at the time: Russell Marrs, Earl Gammon, and (I believe) Glenn Widener -- all people whom I admired and respected and for whom I worked either with or for over those years. I think I learned more from Russell Marrs than from any adult in my youth other than perhaps Charles Downs, the Principal of St. Charles High School during my years there.

In his "remembrance" David includes his recollection of joining others in attempting to disrupt the ceremony of the Negro baptism as a belated confession, confident that God has forgiven him for his youthful indiscretions.

All the witnesses along the bank of the canal pictured here, apparently almost directly across the road from Schwab's Store, appear to be most orderly and respectful, even curious. When I look at them I try to recall not just what I might have been feeling and thinking at the time but what it all might have meant to me. What I glean, however, is more imagination and fantasy than recollection.

It occurs to me, however, that it was not far down the canal near a noteworthy sycamore tree from whose limbs local swimmers loved to dive, that some years earlier I had learned to swim after having been tossed into the canal by my older brothers. When I arose frantically to the surface that afternoon I did what I had to do -- frantically "dog-paddle" to the shallow water.

Rites of passage. Essential and unavoidable and valued to one's last day, regardless. Perhaps in ritual captured on this Sunday afternoon I was once again doing what I felt I had to do.