April 20, 2000:Top of Page ... As we were wondering how our Great Grandmother Mary grew up, it is the same thing we all wonder about - how it was, what they did and the times they lived through. One think I know in common with us now, wild turkeys to hunt and foot on the table - if you are lucky. Some have been fortunate to get one or tow. I have heard some tall tales, tired bodies adn sleepy eyes during this period of hunting and have experienced some good eating. With Willard Stoops, the turkeys seem to almost run over him, or, "I hard them a little ways off." I don't think he ran from them. Louie, his son, heard the fowl somewhere. He used his caller (I reckon that's what you call it) and the answer came back loud and clear - but it was down under the bluff. He gave another call and didn't hear a thing. Would you believe he heard it on top of the bluff, where he had just come from? He ventured back up the steep place, ever so quietly, and the turkey would never see him because he looked like the dirt and forest all over. Maybe the wild thing smelled him ... it flew right from the spot where he had been. He said they flew away and sure were pretty. The bluff was the cause of all of the mishap. The echols from that bluff threw all his hearing off direction. When Wesley Shipman heard Louie's story (Wesley had also climbed a bluff) Wesley asked, "How high was that bluff?" Louie told him. Wesley dropped his head and said, "You bested me. Your bluff was the biggest." Once upon a time my Uncle Guy Dillard was the best turkey hunter around. He learned to use his own vocal cords to call the birds and acquired the name of "Hooter." Maybe the men around here need to take heed of a little more of our ancestor's hunting abilities. Wesley got his quota of turkeys and shared them. I hope he looks more rested this week. I like turkey talk, even if it is cold turkey!
Apr 27, 2000: Top of Page Once upon a time, a long time ago, a child growing up near the Mississippi River acquired a nickname he hated. Because he had red hair and freckles, folks called him "Freck." This he told to his wife, Sarah (Smith, I think her maiden name was) when she asked him about his past. Freck told Sarah he had no brothers or sisters to take up for him in school and many times the bigger boys ran over him. They verbally abused him about some of his past. As the tears came into both his and his wife's eyes, he continued the story. "One morning while I was working hard on my lessons, I looked up, to rest my shoulders, and the teacher said, "Get that lesson, Freck." This was a heyday for the kids in that one-room school an they laughed as the teacher made a laughing stock out of me." The poor little boy had lost his mother at the age of 2, and no wonder he felt alone. His dad was a doctor and he had a stepmother, but he felt he had no real ties at home. The teacher had a habit of ducking his head when he laughed. Little did he know that Freck had a big glass marble in his pocket. As the teacher ducked his head and roared with laughter, that little boy's hand grasped the marble and threw it at the teacher. As the teacher's head was turned toward the big boys, that marble hit his temple, just at the edge of his hair, and he flopped to the floor. Freck declared, "That was the last I ever saw of that teacher or school." He built a raft with some good sound logs, which were plentiful, and lashed them together with bark. He floate on that raft for several days, eating wild onions, eggs from nests he knew not what, a soft shelled turtle raw .. but the best things he had to eat on this trip was frogs. The persimmons were tasty, too. At last, he left the raft in search of work and found it with a good farmer. Somehow he came here to the Ozark Mountains and made his home at Water Creek. He was accepted here to an extent, but was still called Freck and teased about so many things. He realized the men were laughing at him but not his wife, who loved him dearly and never turned away from him, no matter what. He was her only love. He worked at the cotton gin and gristmill in the community, which was owned by Riley Smith, perhaps, and they shared food and firewood with them in the cold of wintertime. Even the owners of Bruno and Water Creek stores were accommodating, but as time went on business owners had some stormy times and formed a union, trying to put each other out of business. There was competition back then as now. Some of the people of this long ago time who were in the business world of the little community were Jesse Baker, S A Lay, Ben Mullens and Charles Cummings. Mr. Cummings, who was a bachelor, bought a little sandy field on the creek, worked hard and got a good prospect of a young crop of "sang" (ginseng) in the garden. He made a deal and sold out the garden to Frank Rice. The "sang" garden was where high-priced medical herbs were grown. Lots more could be said about this community and I will tell more, but back to our Mr. Freck. One day he was feeling poorly and the men at the mill said they would pay him his wages and for him to stay home until he felt better. He thought it a good time to pay the men back for making fun and teasing him. His sick spell was lasting too long and the men were about to run him out of the settlement. He and his wife did leave. He got a gob in the mines at Rush Creek, but not before the post office on Water Creek was named "Freck". According to Dwight Shipman, a group of men, including Freck, were sitting outside the store discussing what to call the up-and-coming post office. The whole settlement was excited. One of the men said jokingly, "Let's call if Freck." Officials in Washington DC agreed to the name, so Freck it was called. Freck was heard to say, "I despise that name so bad, I get mad every time I hear it and it makes me nervous." It reminded him also of the time Bow Harris filled his eyes with tobacco juice. He never went inside the post office named after his nickname. Sarah, his dearly beloved wife, died in the spring of 1912. He married again. He left the area and no one knew where he went, but his mark is still with us.
Cold has a name – LEON. America, are you ready
Jun 1, 2000: Top of Page In "This 'n That," another column in the Echo Elda Powers asked if anyone remembers the Paradise Theater in Cotter. I don't know if that is the name of the one we attended when I was young, but once upon a time, in fact, more than once, in the later 1930s and maybe early '40s my dad and mother would start the old ton-and-a-half flatbed, which was used for a log and lumber truck, as well as being our community transportation, and start gathering the kids up around here. We rode safely back and forth to the movies at Cotter. Some nights it would be very cold and we all had quilts to wrap up in. The wind on the back of a truck was still cold, but we didn't seem to mind much because the next time we could get Dad to take us we were ready to brave the rain or snow, just so we could be together and have the big treat of going to a show at Cotter, which was located right downtown. It would be interesting to know if that was the same theater. It wasn't the safest way of travel, I grant you that, but most of the time that was our way of going to church, the river to swim or the woods to work, but the police never stopped us to see if we had seatbelts on, nor did they stop us when four, five or more were in the cab. I remember when the CCC Camp was located out here, they also had what we called an outside theater and I remember one time when there were around nine people riding in the dab to go to the show. As time went on, more cars were appearing and Daddy asked, "What do you want, a new car or new house?" Mom was outnumbered. We got the car, or pickup. That's always the way it was. She did get a new house, though.
Nov 16, 2000:Top of Page "Aunt Flo (Laffoon) Davenport seemed very chipper a few days ago. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her and having her tell me once again about when her grandmother and grandfather lived below Rush on Plum Creek, which runs into Cedar Creek, as she remembered, then on into the Buffalo River. Their home was a one-room log cabin. At the Civil War time things were in a state of confusion, as in all wars, loved ones leaving to fight for our welfare. This was true of Flo' grandfather. When he went to the call of duty he had to leave his wife and two children, of which Aunt's dad was the oldest. There were left with only an axe for protectin. One night she heard the scream of the dreaded animal, the panther. I have written a few stories about that. Quietly, she got up, sat on the side of the bed with the axe in her hand, ready to protect her young ones and kept the panther away from home and family. Her wish was the children would not wake up, because she had heard how panthers are attracted to children: They didn't awaken. She told of the time she and other young girls of the settlement went flower-picking in the spring of the year, with Blanche Curtis. Blanche, the oldest of the group became lost. She had lost her way in those Buffalo hills, but being the mountain girl that she was, she knew to follow the hollow and it would lead to the river. They made it safely, but not without being reprimanded by a group of worried parents. These things took place in the area of other places on the Buffalo I was not acquainted with. Like so many other places which are named after people who lived there, or where some particular incident had occurred. The Brently Bend and the Lonely Hole were two places she mentioned. She told of how her dad had learned to make cloth from his mother, Aunt Flo, you made my day and my next visit with you I will enjoy you telling me the same stories." "Mr. Ives ... asked me if I had ever heard the story about corn and the lazy man?" .... Once upon a time there was a terribly lazy man in the community and folks took a dislike to anyone who didn't work. They told him if he didn't start working and keep up his family that they were going to bury him alive. That didn't seem to have an effect on the problem, so the men built a coffin with plenty of space between the boards. They placed the man in the box and started down the lonely, rocky road to the burying ground. The wagon carrying the coffin and assistants was making a loud grinding noise on the stones as it was driven, but the men with the loud voice tried to bargain with the lazy creature and told him if he would promise to work they would turn him loose and provide him with a good batch of corn. He asked "Is it shelled?" "No", the men replied. The trifling man said, "Keep a-going.". I doubt if the corn got shelled for him, but what happened then?" I know Doretha won't mind me adding a bit from Frankie Seay's column (pg 6). ".... ground squirrels are thick, which makes the five grandsons happy. That reminds me of about 40 years ago when one of their uncles was visiting family at Mull and took the Grayhound bus home to Yakima by way of Phoenix and his mother fixed him a paper sack of fried squirrel and biscuits to take along and he loved it, but got some weird looks when he took the squirrels' heads out and cracked them with a knife to get the brains out, which was one of his favorite foods. The other passengers wondered when they saw him eating what they thought was little chickens, but when he started cracking the heads they moved away from him and gave him plenty of room to eat his lunch. Too bad the squirrels at Terry's house aren't edible, she could feed a lot of boys on them. And squirrel brains and heads are really a delicacy to some people; not to me, but to some."
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