Monday, October 1, 2018



Duck Hunting: Arkansas 1950

For Russell Marrs


Beyond Voss Lake whose waters seep into a grove
of pin oaks, we crouch knee deep in the invading
darkness as they land in flocks, giddily gliding
to watery earth, silhouettes in the afterglow of
the Arkansas sky.

"Wait," he whispers, as I clutch the old 12
gauge at the ready, "till they've all landed."

I feel the chatter of my teeth as I wait
for his word in the fading November light.

On signal, the charge against my shoulder
the faint tickling inside my ears, the strange
sweet smell of gunpowder tell me I have acted.
The blasts from our weapons have shattered the world.

As the smoke clears I am numbed by the hazy carnage.

"Move," he urges, "let's get 'em"!

I scramble forward, groping for both cripples
     and fallen.

Half expcting once gallant iridescent necks,
now limber and distorted, not to hold the weight
of their extended connections, I shudder as I
feel the grit in their craws.

More than we can bear, like giant clusters
of warm grapes, we shoulder them on the run.

Downy flecks as from childish pillow fights
drift about like winter fire flies and settle
upon my hands as I chase the nacreous bulk
of his hunting jacket through diverse thickets
along unfamiliar paths avoiding game wardens.

Saturday, June 23, 2018

Reunion of Class of 1953 at St. Charles High School


Identified by their names in 1953!

Elizabeth Dupslaff and Jo Ann Browning

Jane Dupslaff, her daughter Cindy Dee, Harley Brown, and Eunice Ward

Husband of Lottie Mae Vernor and Mora Faye Duty

Back: Jo Ann, May Crablin, Lottie, Mora Faye and Jane

Front Row: Dale Woodiel, Elizabeth Dupslaff, Peter Van Huizen

Crockett's Bluff School 1938 or 9?


Crockett's Bluff School in late 1930s


Top row: Teacher Duke Price, Blank, Lewis Rush, Willene Graves, Blank, Harold Rush, Blank, Shelby Woodiel
Front row: Blank, ?Prange, Ida Carolyn Prange, Blank, Blank, Blank, Blank.
(Identifications would be appreciated)

Birds in the Bluff




     When I was a boy in in the old house on the hill overlooking the White River in Crockett's Bluff in the late 1930s and 40s, we took birds for granted  - domestic as well as wild.  There were birds aplenty flittering about thoughout the days and nights in every season  in a genuine "free range' environment.  Though many folks had "chicken pens," chickens have a way of freeing themselves to wander, a freedom that many households allowed, only to gather them into the pens at the end of the day to sleep in their nests in a "chicken house", away from the various four legged vermits that wandered about the country side at night, sheds at least with a roof and stalls for egg providers.

In the 1930s in places like the Bluff  almost any animal, wild or domestic, was considered edible.  There was not, to say the least, a lot of money at hand.  There were fruit trees, pears and apples in the remnants of the old orchards established by the Prange family, the previous owners of  the land. We raised chickens, of course, and there were always fish from the lakes and the White River, but most larger migratory fowl - mallards and Canada Geese, as well as doves and quail - were eaten, and I can recall having racoon with sweet potatoes (quite tasty, actually).

So-called bird watching was unknown, and I cannot recall anyone who had a bird house.  Their sounds were routine background noise, especially  the Whip Poor Wills and Mourning Doves   that seemed to have, along with the Bull Frogs over the hill in the Prange pod,  a general audience to themselves from the ancient oak trees at the back of the garden during that lovely half hour or so on a summer night when the sun had set before night fell.


During my most recent visit to the Bluff a few weeks ago on the occasion of the funeral of my brother Shelby, I fought the swarms of gnats to at least drive through the old home place, now owned and neatly maintained by my nephew Gary Woodiel.  The old house and all the outbuildings are long gone,  but the remnants of the oldest trees still stood, the pecan near where the old house stood and the old oak on the edge of the hill where I used to park the school bus which I drove during my senior year at St. Charles High School.

As we drove down the short drive past the metal "Woodiel Lane" sign it was obvious that Spring had arrived in all its richness, leaving every local botanical species glowing in  lush greenness.  But as we reached the top of the rise to which in my childhood was our front yard, everything changed.

Suddenly, it was apparent that in almost any direction one looked, among every dozen trees or so, there was a birdhouse of some style in a variety of bright colors!




The Bluffs Themselves





A 1980s? shot made from the plane of a friend of Ken Shireman who flew us over one fine afternoon while I was visiting the Shiremans in Stuttgart.  Fairly good shot of the bluffs themselves and touches of the non wooded areas from the area around the Crockett's Bluff canal in the Schwab Store area at the upper right down to the area of the old Woodiel home spot and on down to the bottom of the road landing to the river at the base of the hill where the hunting lodge is still located.



This original Henry Prange family barn rests solidly still - half its roof visible on the Google Earth image - a few yards west between Schwab's Store and the Prange residence.  It was the scribbled inscriptions within it on its walls and rafters that caught Darrell's eye, particularly the 1916 dates and autographs posted there with brushes in apparently the black stove-polish-like  that was used to mark the Prange logo on the rice sacks stored there in the early decades of the 1900s.  If it was a functioning barn at that date, it had to have been built somewhat earlier, and there's no other structure of any kind in the area known to date back before 1900.


Sunday, May 27, 2018

Helen Spence, Dayton Bowers, and a Mysterious Quilt



       When I think of the evolution of photography in America, I tend to think of Matthew Brady whose striking images of young frequently illiterate young men, such as my great grandfather, who enlisted in the Confederate Army in Alabama at about 18, and though badly wounded near the war's end, nevertheless survived.  The Civil War was there to be captured, and Brady ventured southward from New York with this relatively new device, to capture it in images.

       As Fortune would have it, Dayton Bowers was about six when my greatfather enlisted, and the War Between the States would be history before he would discover the artistic possibilities of a camera.  In stark contrast to the horrors of battlefields, Bowers ventured southward from Indiana  to Arkansas in the post war years to capture the lives and fortunes of folks in the vast Grand Prairie in Stuttgart and DeWitt and the smaller towns along the White River like Crockett's Bluff and St. Charles.

       Thanks to the efforts of Denise Parkinson, the significance of his images, as evidence of the richness of  life in this part of Arkansas, particularly that along the White River, in the first decades of the twentieth century, has been "rediscovered."  DPW  5.27.18

       [The fascinating conversation below has been lifted, with Denise's permission, from a Facebook exchange between Denise and Jeanie Marrs Vasseur, and Billy Rabeneck.  Both Jeanie and I were born in Crockett's Bluff, though neither of us actually lived on or in a White River houseboat, as did Denise.]




This photo of Helen Spence (standing) and her sister Edie Spence was taken around 1915 by Dayton Bowers. It's a detail of a photo of several people and appeared in my book, Daughter of the White River. The quilt in the background was used as a backdrop in several photos I have seen by Bowers, who traveled to St. Charles throughout his career.

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Jeanie Marrs Vasseur My mother's old photos. She told me that it was of Cesiro Spence and my grandfather, taken @ 1917Manage
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Jeanie Marrs Vasseur . The older gentleman is my great grandfather, John Peter Townsend 1854-1922Manage
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Denise Parkinson Wonderful! Did they live in St Charles too?! That's the same quilt!i have seen the top photo before! Thank you 😍
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Jeanie Marrs Vasseur They were woodsmen and lived on the river. This photo was taken (I think) at a timber camp on White River.
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Jeanie Marrs Vasseur Denise, I would not be surprised if all three pictures here were taken at the same time, Compare the pattern at my grt grd father's elbo with the pattern of the seated girl's picture (probably same chair!)
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Billy Rabeneck I wonder if the picture of Helen and Edie was taken from a larger picture? I can see another person's shoulder to the right, like maybe this was a school class picture? A Sunday school class picture or something larger.
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Billy Rabeneck It also occurs to me that this could be Eva, and Wesley Spence (Helen and Edie's half-sister, and half-brother) to the right as well. Edie and Helen's mother was Ellen Woods, and Eva and Wesley's mother was Jeannie Ealum. I think Ellen died at some point, and then Cicero Spence married Jeannie. Jeannie and Cicero evidently divorced because Jeannie, Eva, and Wesley moved to Missouri, and Jeannie remarried.
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