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.

"Lower White River more than Mud Country

From today's Arkansas Democrat Gazette: a reporter's visit to the sites and sets of "Mud," a film set in part on the White River and the Crockett's Bluff, DeWitt, and St. Charles areas.

http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2013/may/16/lower-white-river-more-mud-country-20130516/

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.

Wooddell, Woodell, Woodle, Woodiel

43rd Alabama Infantry Flag

What's in a Name?

The names above were used -- for just reasons -- as a title by our cousin Alice (Woodiel) Craft for Volume I [West Haven, Utah 2001] of  "A One Name Study," her history and record of the Woodiel family that we know today.

When I began my personal search for the genealogical trail back through my surname Woodiel in the late 1970s I quickly discovered there really wasn't a trail.  Of course there was no Google to consult in those days, nor were there extensive and elaborate ancestry sites anywhere, save it certain volumes to be found in certain libraries.  I found very quickly that just about every Woodiel mentioned in any of these books was probably directly related to me, and I probably knew them.  Where were my ancestors?  Obviously the name had been changed  -- from, one assumed, a similar name.  But what?  Woodward?  Woodson?

So, after mulling about for a lead in local libraries in Connecticut and finding little or nothing, I spent my school's spring vacation in 1979 in Washington, D.C. at the National Archives.  I had decided to go where, if it existed, what I wanted to know had to be.  It was there, thanks to the dedicated assistance of  a librarian in charge of what in those days were vast rooms of microfilm readers, that I found, among his Civil War records, my great grandfather, a man of many names indeed. 

I should note that the only potentially worthwhile lead I had was the story that had come down through my family, often repeated at family gatherings, that my father's grandfather Tom had grown up in Alabama and had been a Confederate soldier in the Civil War where he had had one of his ears shot away (or, in better versions, cut away).  This is all I had to offer the library assistant.

After following for several days a C.R.P Woodle and a James Woodell and a J.A. Woodel and others, all of various Alabama Infantry units, I returned to the Archives one morning to the microfilm room to find the kind assistant waving to me from across the room as I entered.  "I think," he said, "I've got your man." 

Copy of Tom's enlistment document 

There it was: Woodle, William, T.J., Co K, 43 Alabama Infantry (Confederate), Private. On the next page: W.T.J. Woodle , along with a notes verifying he had enlisted May 14, 1862 at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a period of "3 years or the war."

And on yet another record a note verifying that on May 16, 1864 T.J. Woodial of the 43rd Alabama had been admitted to the General Hospital, Howard's Grove, Richmond, Virginia:  Disease: "VS Right Ear neck (severe) shoulder."  Evidence enough for me that I had found my great grandfather Tom.

Tom's medical document.

But why all the different names?  The answer was there all the while in  a usually modest "x' where each of the documents required a signature.  In many later documents I was to locate underneath the "x" would be in parentheses (his mark).   Tom was, like his forefathers I would later discover, simply illiterate -- unable to spell or write his name.  I imagine him just muttering it in his Alabama twang, no doubt, and some sergeant writing down on his pay slip what he thought he heard.

The confusion of the varied spellings can be easily eliminated if one simply envisions the last three letters in a world before the typewriter.  What you actually have in written script are three loops.  Depending on the scribe, you have "iel" or "eel" or "ele" or "ell," etc.  Consequently, the various spellings.

Tom's great grandfather, John Waddell, was born in Donegal County, near Londonderry, Ireland, on or before 1736.  His parents were Scottish people who had settled in Northern Ireland and were what is known in this country as Scotch-Irish.  Stories vary as to why he left there for America.  However, it is generally believed he came to America in about 1750 probably as an indentured servant and settled in the Philadelphia area before eventually moving southward to northwestern North Carolina near where his older brother (according to some reports) had settled earlier.  What is clear is that John eventually crossed the Smoky Mountains to settle in what was then called Washington County North Carolina, later to become the state of Tennessee.

He was illiterate to his dying day, as were his son Jonathan, his son John, and Tom himself. The familiar "his mark" appears on his fascinating will.  William Lafayette, born in 1871 and his siblings were the first literate members of the Woodiel clan in America.  Most of us have become fairly literate since, I think it's fair to say!

First spelling of Woodiel:
Tom's furlough paper 

So, how did "Woodiel," of all the other options, rise to the top.  Well, as usual in such matters, apparently a combination of chance and circumstance.  Part of the credit goes to a Confederate Captain named (it appears)  J.S. Duerewall who signed furlough papers for Tom about a week after he was admitted to the hospital in Richmond.  He was paid forty-four dollars and apparently sent home.  He writes Tom's signature along with "his mark," but he clearly spells it Woodiel.

I remember discussing this with my father and mother, and they concluded the current spelling of Woodiel stuck because his widow Winnie, after Tom's death, was entitled to a small "veteran's pension" which required her to sign the name on perhaps the last official paper he had, his furlough certificate.  Perhaps it was she who then decided it would be spelled as it is by her children as they (unlike their ancestors for who knows how long into the past) ventured off to school.

My timeline for establishing the sons of sons.

One final note re the Tom of many names:  There is a story apparently passed down in the family by my uncle and namesake Paul Woodiel who related he had heard that Tom returned home from the war and married very soon afterward and joined his brother and his bride heading westward as far as the Mississippi River where they separated, his brother and his wife waiting on the bank while Tim and his new wife Winnie somehow floated their ox team and wagon across to the western shore, after which there was an exchange of waves to one another before the brother's wagon ventured southward down the eastern bank as Tom and Winnie headed west to the Ozarks eventually to settle around Marshall, AR.  The two families would never see one another again.

I continue to wonder, as I reflect on this piece of family history, how Tom, recently wounded, got home.  There certainly was no train, the war being nearly over, or, for that matter, a horse.  I suspect he, like Inman, the protagonist in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, the best selling novel of a decade or so ago, simply walked home.  Of the details of that venture we can only speculate, but, unlike Inman, he survived.  He made it home, and he married Winnie who must have been a pretty hearty soul, or most of us wouldn't be around.

************************

To the Memory of W.T.J. Woodle (His Mark)

                                      I'm thinking of you Tom!  You've impressed me during 

                                         the past four days while I've searched for you.

                                     Your name is everywhere -- and nowhere -- in many forms: 

                                        Thomas,Tom, William T.J., W.T.C.

                                     I have searched for you from a sense of history and out of

                                        respect for your legend, and respect for you and my father

                                          and his father who have, in part, come from you.

                                    Your memory awakens in me a sense of history: the past, 

                                       my past, and yours!

                                    Since "your mark" was the sign for what you did not know 

                                       about writing (and reading, I suppose), how did you know 

                                          why you were at Chickamauga?

                                    How did you justify the pain and anguish of your wounds 

                                       at Drewry's Bluff?  

                                    What did you stand (and fall) for Tom?

                                     In the sun here near the shadow of the U.S. Capitol 

                                        (that symbol you were bent on putting down) 

                                           I sit and wonder what you stood for, and why.

                                     After the first for the prophet Levi, I know 

                                        you were to name your second son Lafayette!  

                       

                                     Was this your sense of history?

                                      I'm thinking of you Tom.  Your progenitor knows 

                                         you were here, cause you're on the record 

                                            in the U.S. Archives.

DPW

Washington, D.C.

April 26, 1977

Myrtle Elmer Image: 1929?

I owe Hallie (Gosnell) Keithley, pictured below, for this picture.

                       Back Row L/R: Abbie McGrew, Hallie Gosnell, Addie Pool, Dorothy Pool

                       Front Row L/R: Jewel Elmer, Bobby Pool, O.V. Gosnell, Riley Pool Jr.

     Image taken by Myrtle Elmer (Mrs. Tony), mother of Jewel, pictured above in the dark dress.