Schwab's Store: The Center of Activity for Decades

[Note: this post is -- like many others on this site -- "under construction" -- expanding as new stories and pictures come to the surface.  Clearly, Schwab's Store was the center of all activities in Crockett's Bluff for half a century until it was finally closed in the late 1980s. ]

Vicki Schwab Gardner and her father Eddie at the center of activities near the entrance to the store (in the mid 1950s?)  The best image I've seen of the store as I remember it in my youth.  One of the most general of general stores of those times -- complete with a pool room in the back and an unforgettable pinball machine up front.

I've been told this shot was actually made by Eddie Schwab from atop the Prange water tower with a primary view of the Prange Farm store and an excellent view of the gardens behind the Schwab Store.  Late 1930s or '40s

Through an Old Man's Eyes

The following memoir by Jim Spencer was forwarded to me by Jeanie Marrs Vasseur who lived much of her childhood a stone's throw from the White River in Crockett's Bluff across the river road from Mr. George Gosnell, the subject of this recollection.  It was originally published in the Lightnin' Ridge Journal in June 2004. 

Through an Old Man’s Eyes

By Jim Spencer

            When you leave the pavement and take the winding gravel road that eventually leads you down to the river, it’s not long before you pass a brush-choked old home place on the right. Nothing is left to show of it now, but a friend of mine once lived there.

            In the early 1950s, when my family came almost weekly to our cabin on the river, my first order of business upon arrival was to run down the hill to visit Mr. Gosnell. We’d sit on his front step and talk, and after a while Mrs. Gosnell would bring us fresh oatmeal cookies and cold well water. We were great pals despite our slight age difference. I was six at the time. Mr. Gosnell was 101.

            He was the only person I ever knew who actually remembered the Civil War. “I was born too late to get to fight in it,” he said regretfully. “I was only 13 when it ended. I did throw a rock at that S.O.B. Sherman one time, though.”

            Until Mr. Gosnell was 98, he fished trotlines and limblines in the river. He say ramrod straight in a cane-bottomed chair, paddling up and down the swift river in a one-man cypress boat. They say he was one of the best fishermen on the river, even at 98.

            Mr. Gosnell remembered the river and its surrounding forest the way I’d like to be able to remember them, all virgin timber and lousy with deer and bears and panthers and turkeys. He found in me an appreciative audience, and I listened spellbound to many a tale of adventure in the wilderness. I suspect now that a lot of those tales were invented on the spot to thrill a six-year-old boy, but I guess they could have been true. Some of them, anyway.

            But their truth was unimportant then, and it still is today. If Mr. Gosnell told a whopper now and then, I figure he earned the right. Anyone tough enough to last for more than a century in an environment as harsh and unforgiving as those untamed bottoms can stretch the truth with every breath if that’s what he wants to do.

            But oh, what stories he told: Of Indians traveling up and down the river. Most of whom were friendly but some of whom were not. Of the time they hunt the Union soldiers from the limbs of the gnarled red oak that still stands on a red clay hill above the river. Of the wolves and panthers and bears that came into the very yard in which we sat, killing and carrying off chickens and shoats until they, too, were killed for their trespasses. (The popular version of the soldier-hanging incident says there were nine men hung that day, but Mr. Gosnell maintained it was only five. “Damned if I’ll tell a lie,” he said, “for four miserable Bluecoats.”)

            He told me of other things, too, things I could close my eyes and see as he talked, things I will never see first-hand because like Mr. Gosnell, I, too, was born too late. He told me of ducks falling into tiny potholes and sloughs until they blotted out the sky and blanketed the water, returning stubbornly time after time while Mr. Gosnell shot them by the hundreds for the markets in Memphis and Little Rock and St. Louis. He told me of Canada geese sailing into his smoking guns along the gravel bars and sand bars, and he told me of killing them by the dozen. He told me of the infrequent but terrible raids of millions upon millions of passenger pigeons, and of the temporary but near-total devastation they wrought on the mast-laden oaks and pecans along the river. “I hated to see those things come,” he told me. “When they got through, there wasn’t enough food left to fill up a cat squirrel. But they sure were good eatin’.” Those pigeon stories were the most outlandish of all the stories he told me, and I now suspect they were probably the most truthful as well.

            He was much too old to take me anywhere, but he described a lot of his favorite places to me. I found some of them when I got old enough to roam those bottoms myself, and I’m still finding some of them today. Every time I do, it gives me a little thrill.

            “There’s a little slough back in the woods ‘bout a quarter and a half a quarter southwest of Holly Lake,” he told me one fall morning as we munched cookies on the step. “Used to be a lot of bears back in there on account of there were lots of striped oaks and hackberry trees, and bears like striped oak acorns and hackberries. I never paid much attention, but I expect a fellow could kill a mess of squirrels in there, too, in a dry year when the pecans and white oaks didn’t make.” During a dry year 25 autumns later I recalled what the old man had said, and one morning I walked southwest from Holly Lake. Sure enough, the slough was there. Sure enough, the squirrels were, too.

            My oldest friend is long dead now. His old heart finally gave out on him at 104, and they said he kept his wits about him to the very end. I feel privileged to have known him, because he was one of the last of a vanished breed – men who made their way in the wilderness with hook and trap and gun without changing either themselves or the land on which they lived. A century earlier, Mr. Gosnell would have been a mountain man, trapping beaver, fighting Indians, meeting his compatriots at rendezvous each summer. The only thing men like Mr. Gosnell were ill-equipped to handle was the very thing that killed them off, one by one – the inexorable advance of the monster we know as civilization.

            “I think I’m about ready to go,” the old man told me the last time I ever saw him. “The summers are hotter than they used to be, and the winters are colder. There ain’t no big trees left, and it’s been 20 years since I seen an eagle. A bear steak would ruin my stomach even if I could find one to eat, and the cold water from the dams has ruint the river. I seen the best of it, and now it’s gone. I might as well be going, too.”

            And go he did, not long after. But thanks to him, I “seen the best of it”, too, through the faded blue eyes of a worn-out old man. I can close my eyes and see it still, the way he described it to me 50 years ago, and I can’t walk those bottoms or float that river without remembering something or other he once told me.

            And every time I drive past that brushy vacant lot, I can smell fresh oatmeal cookies.

Clip from its publication in the Pine Bluff Commercial, Feb. 24 1981

Water Rising - Spring 2011

An email from my childhood friend Sharon Bullock Rush on Tuesday Evening, May 10, 2011:



"Dale,

Thought you would like to know that the water in Stinking Bay is almost as high as it was in 1927.  Two feet lower, and I think that it will crest tomorrow.

So that means all of the snakes are coming up the hill.  We have killed three in the driveway.  This morning my yard man was here picking up sticks and he killed three in the back yard.  I have to really look good when I go out side.  I always do.  

The farmers  have finally gotten back in the fields.  The fields were flooded and the roads were real bad.  Even I-40 was shut down.  The big trucks had to come from Hazen through Stuttgart to  DeWitt, Gillett, and to Lake Village and then head north to Memphis.  Now, that was a long haul!

Take Care,

Sharon

Water Rising May Floods 11

White River Flooding

Pictures Awaiting their "Thousand Words"

Many pictures, particularly those with some age and history behind them, are indeed worth a thousand words, as the old saying asserts.  Such words are at the same time worth even more when they are rich with detail and enlightenment -- or even simple nostalgia.

The following pictures are examples special to me.  Although I know something about them, others still among the living know even more than I, particularly about the circumstances of the moment captured in the image, as well as the subjects pictured.

Pictured above is my sister Maurine and my brother Neil on either side of Carlotta Smith at our old home place at the Bluff during the days, perhaps in the late 1940's, before the old water tank was removed from its platform near the back porch.  It's obviously summer and Carlotta's white sandals stand out above the bare feet of my siblings resting in the grass out of sight.  Special occasion?  Who made the picture and why?

This is the basic structure of the Lutheran Church that stood for years before World War II on the river road at the end of drive up from our house.  Sometime after the Prange family closed its store and moved to California the congregation diminished apparently to its end, and the structure was somehow moved four or five miles west of the Bluff to replace a previous structure of the Afro-American congregation at Poplar Creek where it stands today with several of the concrete piers that supported the west end of the original structure serving as an entry.  There must be former Bluff dwellers  still alive with knowledge of the details of this transformation.  If so, these details need to be recorded before they are lost.

These pictures made by Ken Shireman -- originally 35 mm slides recovered digitally -- capture a visit made by him and his sons John and Jason, along with my father S.A., to the river side houseboat of Tony Elmer? a half mile or so around the bend and down from the bluffs themselves, perhaps the last of its kind (that actually floated on logs) to survive in the Bluff area where there had been numerous such structures into the 1930's and early '40's.

The second picture of my father S.A. Woodiel and John Shireman obviously captures the excitement of  what might be John's first deer.  Details please?

The final image of this series is of Russell Marrs on an occasion when he was explaining to Ken the reason for dragging for shells from the White River -- the "pearl button" industry.  Though this procedure has been depicted over the years by others, it was an arduous enterprise -- genuine hard and hot work -- for many river residents during the depression years, especially.  There's much to be said about both the process and the "work ethic" that dragging for shells reflects.  [After "the war," several heroic individuals such as Russell and O.V. Gosnell created rudimentary diving helmets that enabled them to "dive" or decend on anchored ropes to simply gather the mollusks from the river bottom into long knitted sacks.    O.V. hired me at fifty-cents per hour (great wages at the time) as a lookout while he "dove."  My duties were to watch for steamboats and the maintenance of the simple engine that pumped air through a garden hose to his helmet below.  This, of course, is another story on my list.]

Harvest Scenes: Before the Arrival of the Combined Harvester

This series of images were found by Sharon (Bullock) Rush in a collection of family photographs.  Although they obviously depict various parts of the threshing process associated with harvesting rice and oats before "combines," or self-propelled combined harvesting machines, replaced binders and threshing "separators.  Although the individuals pictures are unknown, Sharon assumes they are various workers of the Rush family farm. [Double click to enlarge.]

Pictured above is a rare recording of the gathering by horse-drawn wagon of the sheaths of grain left to dry in carefully collected "shocks" before being deposited in the great McCormick Deering separator -- long before the coming of the grain "dryer" that cut short the process.  [Collecting the "shocks" left by the binder was a skilled process carefully explained to me by Darrell Gardner during my recent visit to the Bluff.]

Albin Anderson on wagon; Howard Bullock on truck

The separated grain was re-lifted directly into a waiting truck.

And the whole operation relied on the power of a single tractor that powered  a very long belt to the threshing machine by its flywheel.

A marvelous portrait of an unknown harvester atop a mound of collected grain set against a clear sky

The machine pictured above as it is today long retired and on display at the Rush farm on Rush Lane near Crockett's Bluff.

Colored pictures by Ken Shireman

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