Gus McDonald

Although I could only have been about six when Gus McDonald left for the Army in the months after Pearl Harbor, I seem to recall his coming to our house perhaps the morning he left.  He would later lose one of his legs as a result of injuries received in that great war.  As kids we talked about his "wooden leg," another first phenomenon in our list of new youthful discoveries.

Here he is in his earlier more reckless youth hanging from the framing of the Prange water tower, so long the distant symbol of the Bluff that could be seen from miles around above the tree line across  the prairie.  It is taken from David Prange's Crockett's Bluff as I Remember It from which excerpts can be found in other posts on this site.  In one of my last conversations with David before he died last year he told me to use on my site any of his memories in any way I saw fit.  He admitted he didn't take to "computers and such," so  I doubt he ever saw the excerpts I've posted on this site.  His work, however, is filled with interesting -- even if not always absolutely accurate -- information about the Bluff in those years when the Adolf Prange Store was a major institution there.  He emphasized, he insisted, the "as I Remember It" part of its title.

Crockett's Bluff School Buses 1930s

Google's maps makes the route clear.**

From Schwab's Store in Crockett's Bluff to St. Charles High School was about 10.5 miles.  Straight south for about five miles on Route 153 and then east on Route 1.  This was the basic bus route to the school from at least the 1930s until the school was closed.  It was the route taken by the driver of a Model T Ford version whom David Prange identifies as "Miss Bessie? Dallas" -- shown below along with passengers Edgar and Bobby Turner.

It was likewise the same route I took when during my senior year 1952-3 I was hired to drive a relatively modern version compared with the Ford T.  It had not only relatively conventional glass windows that could be lowered during the hot days of spring and fall but also a fairly decent heater during the winter months when most of my riders willingly sat toward the front to relish its advantages.

Our Principal Charles Downs thought it made sense, since I lived essentially at the end of the route, to save a clear fifty-percent of expenses by my simply keeping the bus under the old oak tree at our house overnight.  I do recall I doubled back a mile or so west of the Bluff in order to pick up Roger McCallie; otherwise, students who lived close to the Woodiel house caught the bus there.   Along the ten mile route students walked out from the homes to the bus route to be picked up.

Though it might appear little short of astonishing today that I, a barely 18 year old senior, was placed  in charge of perhaps twenty or so students -- first grade through twelfth -- there was, to my knowledge not a single complaint. My word was law, and any student (and there were two or three) who presented me with a problem was treated to a free ride straight up to his door.  In those days, believe it or not, he knew he was in serious trouble if I had to speak to his mother about his behavior. 

Though I suspect somewhere there is a picture of the bus I drove -- one only slightly more modern than the late 1930s model shown below with "Miss Cora" Prange and her children August and Ida Carolyn -- but I've so far been unable to find one.

Obviously, there's much more to be said about this experience -- particularly in the contrasts of values it reflects and the confidence and responsibility of high school students -- but let this be it for the moment.  [Again, I'm grateful to Jean Prange for this picture.]

  **[The Rt. 1 extension around St. Charles was completed when the bridge replaced the ferry across the White River in 1982.]

Memories of Jack

Rare pic: Under the Old Pecan Tree at the Bluff

Neil, Bill, Maureen, Dale, Jack and Shelby

Memories of Jack

Since I was probably less than six years old in 1941 when my oldest brother Jack (actually Allie Loftin, named for his father and his mother's brother) left for the Navy, I remember little before that of him except for certain vague recollections of his driving the Arkansas A&M sports bus around the US before he left college to join the Navy.  I was too young to have memories of his being at home during my early years before he left for college.  He was actually not known to me as Jack but as "Bubber," my derivative of Bubba, apparently.

There are, however, foggy images -- probably more fantasies than memories, perhaps products of my imagination in response to overheard conversations of my parents, such as his high school days at St. Charles High School provoked by a school photo of him in a neat sleeveless striped sweater.  One mental image, however, of him standing in the kitchen next to the old cast-iron wood stove -- from my view the single light bulb hangs from a single twisted wire next to his face -- on the morning he left for the service remains clear and probably valid.

During the war years our family spent in the Highland Park Housing Project in Little Rock, Jack was represented by a single service star flag that was hung in the front window.  When my brother Bill entered the Navy after high school, another flag with two stars was substituted.

Jack was eventually to be stationed at Pearl Harbor, another marvelously provocative name that I was introduced to abruptly on the morning of December 7, 1941, when Daddy and I returned with a load of wood to our house just outside of DeWitt, when Mother rushed out of the house to tell us that "the Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor."  Though at that age "harbor" was a little vague, I did know what a pearl was, but the combined image produced by the sound of the two words was puzzling.

And then there is in my memory a clear picture of Jack walking down from the river road at the top of the lane and then up the hill to our house in his white sailor uniform.  I seem to have heard the car stop there to let him off, perhaps, and I watched as he walked up, perhaps even calling to Mother as he did so.

It might have been during this return visit, or perhaps a bit later when I was a bit older, that he related to me the story of his failed marriage as we were driving  back from DeWitt to the Bluff on one of his visits.  Since I was much too young -- ten or eleven -- to understand the significance of his unfortunate state, I have often wondered why he chose or bothered to relate it to me.  Perhaps he just wanted to vent his feelings one more time.  He didn't appear angry; he didn't shout or curse; he didn't even raise his voice much; but he made it clear to me that his wife Margarite Moon (I thought the name quite exotic, since I had never heard of anyone named Moon before) had not only been involved with another man while he was in the service but had also spent the money he had been sending home to establish their post-war future.

Although he appeared to have resigned himself to these realities, he had also concluded that it "was now time for him to have a little fun for a change," or words to that effect.  Perhaps this was his way of saying that his having apparently been faithful to her during his war years away had cost him something that needed to be compensated.

I'll never know, but looking back now with a bit of life experience of my own, my best guess is his feelings must have been more complicated than even he understood.  Nevertheless, I understood on that afternoon in the car he had been hurt and deceived and wronged, even though the degree of these grievances was unclear, at least to me at that age.

After this visit, he became in future years more the subject of letters received and sent than a presence in the family.  But there were the occasional brief visits, among which the most memorable was the one on which he brought along Alta Arnold.  After that, I cannot recall seeing him alone again; they would be a pair to his dying day. [Enlistment mug shots courtesy of Loftin Woodiel and the National Archives. DPW March 28, 2006.

Crockett's Bluff Easter Egg Hunt: circa 1930?

This image provides an excellent example of the merit of old photographs, regardless of their condition.  Unfortunately this one suffers from a flaw in the development process, quite sharp and clear in its lower half and yellowing and losing its sharpness in the faces of the figures in the back row.  It appears to be an Easter egg hunt at the great Prange yard at the Bluff directly across from the Prange water tower, for so long the landmark of the Bluff.

Not great quality but clear enough to preserve images of people, two of my brothers and others I would know well in my youth -- though it was probably taken before I was born.  Youthful ghosts from the past -- found in one of "Miss Cora's" albums -- thanks to Jean Prange.

The second from the left (standing) is my brother Bill.  My brother Shelby is standing slightly to his left and front with his hands folded.  I think next to Shelby is Betty Anderson with her brother Bud sitting on the ground (dark jacket) near August Prange (with his head tilted)..  Ida Carolyn Prange is in the center obviously, holding an Easter basket.  I think Neva Graves' sister Willine? is directly behind her, second from right..

I don't recognize anyone else, but there must be folks alive who do.  There are no doubt stories behind such a picture.  An annual affair?  Who might these other children be? 

DPW