Crockett's Bluff: Image From the Past

Yet another marvelous image from Crockett's Bluff from the Prange Family archives.

Standing L-R: Dorothy Poole, Gus McDonald (behind her), Edison Keithley, Hallie Gosnell, unknown woman behind her,       Richard Prange (with ball glove), Edith Bowermaster, Addie Poole, Thelma Keithley, Russell Marrs, Grace Roberts.  Seated L-R: unknown boy with headlamp cap, Edward Bowermaster (in front of Hallie), unknown boy in dark coat, unknown boy with light shoes, Eugene Bowermaster, unknown boy in helmet, O.V. Gosnell in helmet, and Joe Prange.

What an amazing life-filled image from perhaps the early 1930's -- or earlier?

From the bats on display and Richard's mitt, one can assume there had been a ball game, followed by a the assembly for a picture of all the participants.

Thanks to the efforts of James Prange and Hallie Keithley (Hallie Gosnell above) we've identified most of these folks.  With luck, we will identify the "unknowns," here as well as the background of this scene and its approximate date.  I find particularly interesting the mysterious female figure in the back, part of whose face can be seen between Hallie and Richard, appearing to be making a "finger-thumb lens" with her right hand.

Those who view this picture and are able to identify (or are willing to hazard a guess) the individuals assembled, simply post your information as a "Comment" at the end of this post.  I'll then be please to list the identities of those pictured.

Friends of My Childhood

This image was forwarded to me by my St. Charles classmate Eunice Ward Brown (front row second from left -- embraced on her right by May Krablin and on her left by Bob Knowlton).  I cannot recall haven't seen it.  Yet there I am (fourth from the left middle row) next to Liz Dupslaff, one of my earliest childhood friends  and apparently my guide.  We're in fifth grade [1945 or 46] and I've just returned from being away during the war years at Little Rock, and I suspect, though don't remember, she was assigned to watch over me because she knew who I was.

I was astonished by this picture. I was, I think, the only person from Crockett's Bluff.  So many of these (those of us in fifth grade) friends and classmates reflect histories that startle me still.  And here we are in fifth grade, not yet in those days, even in the midst of puberty.  Unlike perhaps some of the sixth graders pictured with us.  I say this because the lovely figure just behind me is Irene Hudson, one of the most beautiful females I could envision in those days is still, even in the most distant of memories, the subject of one of the most erotic encounters of my recollected youth.

1st Row: Mae Krablin, Eunice Ward, Bobby Jerrel Knowlton, Richard McKinley, Arthur Krablin, Jr., Jo Ann Browning, Mary Dawson, Mora Faye Duty, Robert Almond, Frank Caple, Charles Donald Crabtree, Millard Carver, Weson Adams, George Dobson.

2nd Row: Frieda Shumate, Louise Thornsbury, Helen Smith, Dale Woodiel, Elizabeth Ann Dupslaff, Kay Terry, Mae Dale Dillon, Gladys Bowermaster, Nellie Ann Crabtree, Bobby J. Bullock, Joyce Jones, Cora Mae Dewease, Joe Currie, Garland Long, Billy Dawson, Issac Prater, Mrs. Cora May Burrell, Teacher.

3rd Row: Deliah LeHue, Norma Jean Smith, Mary Helen Eason, Irene Hudson, Georgia Lee Simpson, Audrey B. Dunn, Sarah Dawson, Bette Lou Maddox, Edna Mae Shadwich, Henry Lee, Edward Early Jones, Troy Wages, Mack Smith.

Here we are a few years later in eighth grade in 1949.  We've lost some classmates, their having moved away, but we've acquired one noteworthy member, Peter Van Huesen, who would become a good friend and who brought to the class some other-world style and "folkways" somewhat strange to the community of St. Charles, not to mention Crockett's Bluff, Ethel, and all that prairie space in between.

I should note with the image below the greater part of our group in New Orleans all dressed up for dinner at The Court of Two Sisters, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Downs, our Principal, and Mrs. Malcolm Browning, whose daughter Jo Ann was a member of our class.  This was, to my knowledge, the first "class trip" in the history of St. Charles High School, thanks, in part, to the creative imagination of Maurice Dunn who taught us science, among many other things (whose car was one of those that transported us to NOLA that lovely spring week of 1953).

L/R: Top Row: Elizabeth Ann Dupslaff, Bob Knowlton, JoAnn Browning, Richard "Rocky" Mc Kinley, [unknown woman in hat] Mae Krablin, Roger Carver, Dale Woodiel, Kay Terry. L/R Lower Row: Mildred Downs, Charles Downs, Lottie Mae Vernor, Nellie Ann Crabtree, Darlene Smith [lady in hat] Mora Faye Duty, Eunice Ward, Joyce Jones, Maurice Dunn, Mrs. Amelia Browning, the unofficial "class mother who drove one of the cars for our trip.

These adults, and especially Charles Downs, played a noteworthy role in our "growing up."  Years later, after I was out of college and the Army and was married with children, I made during a trip to Arkansas a special trip to Conway where Mildred and Charles Downs were living at the time just to thank him for what he had done for me.  I tried to express it to him as best I could.  He was baffled; he had no idea what I was talking about.  He had, he said, done nothing particularly special.  So it goes.

Crockett's Bluff in the 1920s: Memories and Images

I'm indebted, once again, to James Prange, the son of one of the elder sons of Adolph and Edna Prange -- and, from his testimony, the unofficial Prange family historian -- for the following images and information.  In addition to a youthful image of his father, the elder James, he has "unearthed" an obviously priceless photograph of the rice chute and the Prange-Tindell warehouse above the Bluff itself, along with a delightful item of Crockett's Bluff news from the August 7, 1924 edition of the DeWitt Era Enterprise.

The River Boat "Lillian H" receiving bags of rice down the warehouse chute.

The Woodiel house where I and my younger siblings Neil and Maureen were born was located north along the river from what one would have called the center of The Bluff.  At the end of our lane stood the Lutheran Church and behind and beside it the Adolph Prange residence and the Prange Store that overlooked the White River. By the time I was old enough in the late nineteen thirties and early forties to venture alone as far afield from our house southward to where Rt. 153 made its turn toward DeWitt and St. Charles, scenes such as the one above were long gone.  But the warehouse remained, and I remember it vividly.

After the war years the landmark Prange Bros. Enterprises water tower remained and was visible from five or more miles away across the prairie.  The largely inactive August Prange company store remained during the post war decades along side Schwab's Store, that by the end of World War II had become the sole center of activity.  The Adolph Prange family had closed their store in 1944 and moved to California.  

By 1945, across the road but in the shadows of the water tower, "Doodle and Eddie"Schwab had developed a general store with a capital G --  the center of The Bluff.   To the east a few hundred yards resting in the oak trees beyond the "Ida Carolyn Park" picnic area lay the largely vacant warehouse.  To reach it one had to cross the bridge of the Prange Farm canal whose water was pumped from the river below the bluffs to drift southward along its banks to the vast rice fields that spread across the prairie beyond.

 I remember the warehouse as large and open and quiet, save for the constantly fluttering sparrows, and although it was rarely filled with grain of any sort, unlike the Prange Farm's smaller barns a mile or so away, it maintained a distinctive aroma that must have been retained from  years like the one pictured above when tons of rice and perhaps other grains, dried not yet from "dryers" but from having been left in shocks in the fields to dry in the sun, before being sacked and slid down the chute to be neatly stacked on a barge of the likes of The Lillian H.

Both the Adolph Prange store and the family residence were dismantled by the late 1950s; the water tower a decade or so later.  After the war when the Lutheran Church had lain vacant for years, its primary seating area, minus the bell tower, was moved westward down Rt. 153 six miles or so where it remains today the meeting house of the Poplar Creek Baptist congregation..

This image of the chute from the warehouse might well be the only remaining visual record of this activity.

James Prange early 1920s

Early 1900s?

"I recognize several faces in this photo as Crockett's Bluff people.  If my suspicion is correct that the young boy in the front kneeling down is my grandfather, then this photo was taken in the early 1900s." JP

Houseboat on the White River, perhaps John Johnson's

DEWITT ERA ENTERPRISE, August 7, 1924

     Judges for election in Crockett Township are Shelton Herring, Will Mason and Cecil Inman.  Clerks named were Adolph Prange, U.A. Rowe, Harmon Turner.

    

     Peaches are drying in the trees; corn is ruined; rice needs more water; pasturage is getting scarce, but still we wait for rain.

     Prange Bros will soon be able to increase pumping capacity of their plant to about 4,000 gallons per minute.  A third pump, driven by a large Fairbanks Engine, will be be put to work this week.

     While visiting with her daughter, Mrs. Adolph Prange, Mrs. Burroughs came very near being seriously injured.  A stray yearling attacked Mrs.  Burroughs, and before anyone could come to her rescue, it succeeded in knocking Mrs. Burroughs to the ground and butting her severely.

October 2, 1924:

     The thief who recently carried away two loads of bird shot from the Prange Mercantile Company, will be presented with buck shot at his next appearance.

     Crockett's Bluff School opened on September 15, with an enrollment of 30.