Hog Roundup 1931

According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, folks in Arkansas have the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto to thank for bringing swine to Arkansas in 1541.  Their offspring remain throughout the state today.  While in the 1930s they served, in both their wild and domesticated varieties, as a welcomed source of protein for folks in Crockett's Bluff, today they have in their feral form become a statewide nuisance and enemy of the general natural environment.

Among several rare photographs passed along to me some time ago by Hallie Keithley - still to this date the oldest current resident of the Bluff -  reflect life in the 1930s generally and more specifically life on the River. 

The image below is especially rare and historically interesting for both the subjects in the fore and background.  Thanks to the notes neatly inscribed on the back of the picture by Flavelia (Bela) Kline, both the husband of one of the figures in what appears to be a make-shift barge and for most of the years of my youth the post mistress from a room in the Kline house.  

George and John Kline are returning from the final day of the wild hog roundup in 1931:   "Geo and John Kline leaving Monroe Co. on the last day of the hog round up, Jan. 15, 1931.  The Steamer Robert H. Romander(?) coming up the river with 2 barges of logs 200,000 ft.  It took her 15 min to make Crockett's Bluff Bend in White River."

The Kline Brothers

Charlie McDonald's House Boat

Excellent image of what appears to be two houseboats abutting each other.  Although Charlie McDonald was not someone I remember, his name was frequently mentioned in the Woodiel household.  Could the boy in what appears to be "cowboy" attire be his son Gus, pictured elsewhere on this site hanging from the water tower as a young boy who would later loose one of his legs in World War II.  "Im sure this picture was taken down at Mattox Bay because that's where the McDonalds tied up all the time."- Hallie Keithley

CC:Riley Pool, Geo. Kline, Emmet Yokem, Chas. McDonald and ?

Then names in the caption are from Hallie's notes.  Only George Kline (all white in center background) I can positively identify because he gave me my first job working with him in his cotton field west of the Bluff near Voss Lake.  The scene is a shady spot down on the nearest bank to the water on the White River.  Why do I assume it's Sunday or a holiday.  The white shirts and Mr. Pool's necktie, I guess.  Must be early spring, because the water's "up" with little bank showing.

Preston Ferry Housebook from 1920s or '30s

The following image was forwarded  to Denise Parkinson, author of the recently published Daughter of the White River, by Patricia Gunn  in response to a note she had written related to the legendary story of Helen Spence, the subject of her work.  Gunn's great-great aunt Vickie "Vicie" Russell is pictured on porch of their house boat at Preston Ferry near Casscoe, Arkansas, just a few miles upstream from Crockett's Bluff.  The family of Helen Spence, who shot her father's killer in a DeWitt, AR courtroom in 1931, sprang directly from the  river culture of the communities of White River inhabitants of houseboats such as the one pictured here in the 1920s and '30s

Vickie (Vicie) Russell, great-great aunt of Patricia Gunn , Preston Ferry, Casscot, AR

From the back of the above image.

Much can be learned from images of such houseboats. Would that the above image, a scan of a photograph apparently, was an original clear copy.  At first glance, however, it strikes the eye as a very well maintained structure, not on logs, it would appear, but on a constructed wooden hull; and the somewhat larger than usual boat moored along side, complete with a chair and curtains of a sort, fairly fancy, I'd say.  And a harsh and thick mostly willow grove along the bank.

We would welcome images of other houseboats and the stories that accompany them that are lying unacknowledged in who knows how many personal memories and albums across the country. Just forward them as email attachments from scans.  Photos will be unharmed and gladly returned.

Patricia Gunn riverentpg@gmail.com

Dale Woodiel dpwoodiel@gmail.com

Diving For Shells: Watching for Steamboats

Among the most engaging scenes of the newly released film Mud are several brief episodes in which the character Galen (Michael Shannon) dons an elaborate diving helmet to gather shells or mollusk from the bottom of the White River.  His assistant, a young boy in his early teens named Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) remains alert on the small barge  watching over the air pump and remaining ready to respond to any emergencies or to Galen's signals via a rope to which he is attached.

Because Michael Shannon is known for his portrayal of various crazed characters, any viewer familiar with his roles immediately assumes in him more than a touch of evil.  However, like a number of other false leads in Mud, this is not Galen's role.  In fact, he turns out to be more of a friendly adviser and coach for both the young boys featured in the film, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone.  

Instead, the diving scenes are not the source of terrible danger and potential tragedy, as one naturally expects, but rather in the darkness of the depths could well serve as a metaphor or otherwise enhance the tone of the emerging journey of the boys through their encounters with Mud (Matthew McConaughey)  from the darkness or innocence of childhood into the clear though often harsh realities of the adult world.

DPW Eighth Grade

These scenes, however, were especially engaging for me because on this same White River -- perhaps not far from where much of this film was shot -- during the summer of 1948 or '49 when I was about his age I played Neckbone's role for real while employed by a courageous young Navy veteran newly returned from World War II named O.V. Gosnell. 

 I was that boy who sat on the anchored barge and waited, watching for steamboats and trying to stay alert for any emergency.  If the engine stalled that pumped air down the garden hose to O.V.'s cleverly jerry-rigged helmet, I was prepared to turn the fly wheel of our jerry-rigged engine until he had time to surface so I could hook the top of his helmet to a ring on the back of the barge.  If the occasional steamboat did appear, its whistle could be heard far down beyond the next bend of the river, my signal to pass along to O.V. via a prescribed number of tugs on the rope, the under end of which was around his waist on the bottom of the river.

O.V. Gosnell Eighth Grade

The barge and engine and diving gear of the film, in contrast to ours, are, of course, "hollywood" in every detail, the helmet complete with glass viewing area and even lights, the engine air pump painted and efficient, unlike ours.  Those pictured below in a National Geographic stock image of a diver on the Mississippi River are closer to ours in most details -- the weighted helmet made from a galvanized can and the the net used to collect the shells gathered; only here a hand operated air pump.

Summer jobs around the Bluff that were to be had in the late 1940s and '50s were almost exclusively associated with the farms that extended in vast flat prairies to the south and west of the wooded hamlet that extended along the bend of the River that was home to the post office located in the home of Bealah and George Kline, the Baptist Church that lay at the entrance to the cemetery, and Schwab's Store, the clear center of all important activity, save perhaps on Sunday morning.  So, a job of any kind on the river was unique.

My only previous paying job, before O.V. lured me away with a  promise of the hefty salary of fifty-cents per hour, had been one plowing cotton middles behind a hefty buck skinned horse from sun-up to sun down for $2.50 per day for Mr. George Kline in his lone cotton field some two miles westward out the Hill Road.  We road his horses Lightning and Buck back and forth from our work.

Because O.V. was only able to work beneath the surface of the White River for only a few hours each morning and afternoon, my salary was probably about the same as the one ridding the cotton field middles of their grass and weeds, but it allowed me more time to wander about during the rest of the summer and to hang out at Schwab's Store, where the action was, listening to the stories of travelling salesmen and a random collection of bored and non-working farmers.  The human interaction was what I relished.  For shear isolation, following a horse behind a plow all day, or for that matter riding a tractor all day in two mile laps is to be rated right up there with the legendary lonesome cowboy and his horse riding the range endlessly. 

 The sweltering heat on a barge on a river in summer ( for some reason, an umbrella or even a make-shift were never considered) is hardly an ideal working environment, but it was a welcomed change from work in the fields.

I spent most of my earnings that summer on the purchase of a used bicycle from the Western Auto Store in DeWitt.  It had been newly painted red.  I rode the gravel roads for miles around, and I recall one spill on loose gravel at the bottom of the hill toward the river landing near the Herman Marrs house.  Both knees skinned for a week. 

I remember O.V. as being very supportive of me as a boy, perhaps because he didn't treat me as a boy.   I admired him and was amazed by his abilities and ambitions.  He realized if he could condition himself to descend to the depths of the river he could gather more shells in an hour that those using the conventional "crows feet" method of dragging the bottom from the surface of the water could gather in a long day, or longer.  So, that summer remains a great memory for me.

For some time, as I recall, I begged him to let me give diving a try until one day he consented. At the end of the day, we ventured up around the bend above the Bluff to a sand bar and I gave it a try. I donned the helmet and waded outward.  I doubt I got down more than about ten or twelve feet or so before I sensed my head was about to blow off, and I had to abandoned the venture.  Characteristically, there was not the least hint at teasing me as I rose and removed the helmet. He just said: "Well, you just have go down far enough for your ears to pop; it's easy from that point on.

Footnotes

During the depression years, the button industry thrived on the Arkansas Rivers including the Mississippi.  More on this topic later.

Crockett's Bluff: May Day '96

I've come 0n one of those rare Arkansas spring mornings that graces the landscape and the hearts of the farms and river here before the onset of an inevitable span of long mosquito-infested days -- devoted in my memory to serious toil -- before the arrival of a seemingly brief but welcomed autumn with its gradually brisker mornings and the inevitable first frost that will bring to their knees all those sources of sustenance that have flourished since the previous April or May.

I have returned once again to this spot to confront or perhaps embrace the spirits that inhabit this otherwise naturally pleasant spot above the White River and and into the woods surrounding the place where, for the record I suppose, my family begins.

Not far fron this spot rests the remains of the house, long abandoned, in which I was born one September afternoon sixty years ago and where my father died with all, except for me, of his family around him.

His wife, my mother, survives today in a nearby town in the care of those who are not her family.

The breeze is fresh and cool across the new grass and fledgling foliage near this spot where I first saw a pig butchered, its belly opened and its guts removed after having its hair scraped clean, fresh from the scalding water. Even now, the images of that scene, as well as the taste of the fresh sausage that it produced, remain etched, fresh in my memory.

The barns are gone, the grassy hills now trees, the out buildings vanished -- the sheds, the two-hole outhouse, the chicken coops. It is memory that is required now that change has worked its will, removing the clues to the past and altering the landscape with growth.

We are left to memory and the local spirits to transmit their meaning. Anxious and reluctant to let go of our pasts, we are left to their mercies.

Yet time and age and death's accounting dare not extinguish the life that persists in the cool currents of nature's cycle this morning on this rise above the White River where on one shining morning past I watched in awe the house boats along its banks bounce like buoys beneath the waves of the heroic paddle-wheeler Mary Woods No.2, the steam from its twin stacks streaming along its back downstream as it forged upriver its massive barge of freshly cut timber.

The Approach from the West

The following is an excerpt from a memoir (or as he prefers to call it, a "remembrance") written by David B. Prange who was born in Crocketts Bluff in 1926 and lived there until his family moved to California in 1944. For copies of his Crocketts Bluff As I Remember It contact David B. Prange, 16471 E. 196th St., Noblesville, IN 46060.

"Crocketts Bluff is the northern gateway to the White River Prairie. This prairie that is a vast plain of fertile soil was then, and still is, comprised of thousands of acres of cultivated farmland, mostly dedicated to growing rice.

There were then, and still are, only two roads into the Bluff. One from the south and the other from the west. As it was, in my earliest memories, the road from the south was graveled and was maintained by the county. The road from the west, referred to by the natives as the Hill Road, was dirt and was not maintained.

The Hill Road designation was not due to having been named for the Hill family, which was in residence there, but because within the first one-half mile, upon leaving the Bluff, three hills were encountered which were uniformally situated and almost equal in the height of about fifty feet. To navigate the Hill Road during and immediately after a rain was a very real challenge because it was comprised of red clay. At a later time, during the Great Depression, the WPA graded the road to be more level, after which they surfaced it with loose gravel.

Before the Hill Road improvement, Crocketts Bluff was considered to be at the end of the road, and it truly was, considering the fact that the Hill Road was extremely primitive." [Further excerpts re the Prange water tank, the Crocketts Bluff School, the Prange, Schwab, and Inman stores, and the excitement of White River steamboats will follow.]