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]