Photo above: Des Arc Street & Church
After we moved to Upper Camp Creek, Des Arc was our “town”, It was a big day when I was permitted to go into town with one or another of the family members. Those times were not frequent enough that going to town ever became “old hat” and uninteresting. Des Arc held out many attractions to adventure-seeking youngsters. Perhaps, the main attraction being the train. Some of the big boys, mostly town boys had a “sport” they called “train-hopping.” They would catch the rail. Lifting themselves onto the platform between coaches, just as the train started moving out. They rode as long as they dared before jumping off a somewhat dangerous sport, but exciting. I never had the nerve to try it, but I was an avid spectator. We could hear the roar and whistle of the trains all the way to Camp Creek, and the sounds of the train never failed to bring a little surge of excitement, seeming to beckon us. As it passed within our hearing, the train spoke of distant places and people and things we smaller children had only a dim knowledge of.
Des Arc was a main shipping point for the produce of farmers and cattlemen, as well as for lumber, ties, spokes, handles etc. A big spoke mill and a planing mill for lumber provided much business for the railroad. And for a few years, George Kent operated a hoop shaving business in Camp Creek valley, working five men, and turning out barrel hoops by the carload. These were made from small hickory poles, brought in by the various farmers around the country, when they wanted to pick up a little extra cash, and it furnished a main source of income for farm boys. Who could easily cut a load of hickory poles, thus making some money for themselves. Dads of that time provided very little spending money for young fellows.
The first trains I remember had smaller engines and coaches than later trains, but they looked just as big and wonderful to me; trains and I got bigger during the same years. Different members of my family rode the trains now and then. Pa rather often, not only had Pa been to ST. Louis many times, but he pastured the Bismarck Christian Church for a time, making the trip once a month by train. He even went back to Marine, Illinois, where he had grown up, to preach occasionally. In fact, the best way, and frequently used to get from our place to Piedmont was by train. Most of the older family members attended the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904. Many were the tales to be told when such excursions were over and the travelers safely home. This is the part we little ones go in on! We shared the excitement of those journeys, and dreamed of the time it would be our turn to take a train trip.
On one of Pa’s trips back from Marine, he had an unusual experience, distressing at the time, but it provided us with chuckles afterward. The restroom door lock jammed, making it impossible for Pa to get out. No matter how loud he yelled and how hard he beat on the door, no one heard above the rattle and chug of the train. Just as he was wondering what to do next, the train switched onto a side track and stopped to let another train pass. Pa quickly took advantage of this, crawled out the window, and went back to his seat by way of the coach door. (The platform between coaches could not be closed on the trains of that time.) Presently the conductor came along, checked the rest room door, found it locked, and one responded to his knock, he took his key and opened the door, fully expecting to find some kind of emergency. Much to his surprise, he found no one inside, and he went away with a puzzled look on his face. Pa did not bother to relieve his puzzlement with an explanation. So the conductor had to put that one down to “just one of those things!”
My oldest sister, Sadie, who married George Neely lived in Bismarck for a time along about the year 1906 and, or 1907. Being a first-rate blacksmith, George sometimes got offers that were too good to turn down, so he and Sadie pulled up stakes rather often, finally ending up in California. George had been a widower with two children when Sadie married him about two years before I was born. His daughter, Musie, about the age of my sister, Stella, and Earnest, a couple of years younger spent more time with relatives than they did with George and Sadie. One or another of them came to our house often for an extended visit. They called our parents “Pa and Ma.” just as we did. They had an uncle in St. Louis, with whom they lived for whatever period of time they might choose to be there and they spent some of their time with their grandparents, the Raney Harrises of near Patterson. In other words, Musie and Earnest were “footloose and fancy-free” youngsters. I am sure Sadie was perfectly willing to have them at home, but I suppose they got used to being passed around between relatives before George and Sadie married. Of course, they got to ride the trains a lot! They were real cosmopolitan kids most interesting playmates. And they, in turn, seemed to enjoy our humble home and our countrified ways; we were “family” to them~ as much as anyone, I expect.
I built a little “boiler” out the pasture back of the barn. It did nothing whatever but shoot out steam, but I liked to “imagine” as I fired it up and watched it shoot out. One day, when Earnest was there, we went and fired up the “boiler,” and Earnest, who was a few years older than I, got a bright idea. I do not remember how he did it, or what he made it out of, but he found something and made a whistle, a good one capable of a big noise. We fitted it down over the hole where the steam came out, and the old whistle really took off, making it easy to visualize a train as it approached the next town. The only thing that spoiled the illusion, we were always approaching the next town! But that might be the very day Earnest decided “railroading” was the life for him, because that is what he followed in adult life. He became an engineer on the Wabash between St. Louis and Chicago.
Ma made at least one trip, maybe more, to Bismarck to visit Sadie and George, and she probably took Fred the youngest, with her. I remember one time especially well; the house caught fire during the time she was gone. It was in May, the week of her birthday, not many of us were home, but we put it out, sort of like “we killed the bear, but Pa shot it!” Actually. Millard went into the loft with an axe, and chopped the burning shingles and board out. Knocking them into the yard, where “we” contributed a bit to the “killing” of the “bear” by raking them away from the house, beating and stamping the flames out. Millard likewise saved the Kimmel School house once, only in this instance it was the ceiling around the stove that caught fire. We boosted Millard into the loft, where he beat the flames out with something. I do not remember what then we handed up a bucket of water, which he poured on the smoldering remains. Millard was the “Johnny Gage” of Camp Creek.
I was probably the last one in the family to take a train trip, but at last it came my turn! My big sister, Ruth went to Bismarck to visit Sadie.
Ruth, who had mothered me almost as much as Ma ever did, chose me for her traveling companion. I had been the one to “keep her company.” More than any of the others during the years she kept house for our brother, Will at Patterson. In a way, I became Ruth’s boy after Fred came along. Ten or eleven years old at the time of this trip. I can say without the slightest deliberation, that was the biggest day of my life, up to that time. Ruth packed our suitcase and we left early, walking the four miles to Des Arc. taking turns with the suitcase. I am sure the nieces and nephews do not remember Ruth before she got fat. Sadie had started putting on weight, and she was fatter than Ruth at that time. But Ruth was taller and bigger-boned than any of the other girls. She stood just one inch of being six feet tall, heavy-boned and robust, but not especially fat in her younger days. She could walk with the best of us and what a worker!
It was the end of June, wheat-threshing time, and a “perfect” day, just like the poet wrote about. My pulse beat fast with anticipation, even before we got started, even days before, and all the way to Des Arc the tachycardia increased. When the final moment came for me to board the train, it was probably a bigger thrill than the astronauts got when they went to the moon! The first few moments were given exclusively to a contemplation of the train; the sound of the rails, the smell of the smoke, the gently swaying motion, but ere long I sat spellbound viewing for the first time the grandeur of Iron County. How beautiful the Arcadia valley! Clinging to the side of the canyon, the train gradually climbed until we came to Tip-top, a flag stop, which was the highest point. We passed through the town of Arcadia, then Ironton and Middlebrook traversing the whole length of Iron County, on to Iron Mountain, where iron ore was being mined at that time then shortly coming to Bismarck, located in the edge of St. Francois County.
With the train windows all open, we occasionally got sprayed by a few cinders and engulfed by more than a little smoke, but people of that time accepted this without complaint as a condition of “modern” travel. For most people of this modern day, it would be just awful, a real trial to take a trip on a “thing” like that! To me that day, it was just wonderful! We arrived a bit grimy to be sure, and with that certain “train” smell, a smell I savored for as long as possible eventually, Ruth insisted I must wash up.
Sadie’s daughter, Lenora, five months younger than I, had a full week’s “agenda” already prepared when we got there. Lenora and I had been cronies since the early days, when we were learning to talk. She absolutely refused to call me “uncle.” and I might have knocked her down if she had Sadie’s second daughter. Alla, probably no more than 3 years old at the time, was far beneath my notice. I was not big enough to assume my roll as an uncle, and she was not big enough to play with me. Lenora knew every nook and cranny of Bismarck, as well as the country round about. One day we went to the outskirts of town and watched them thresh wheat. Streets were safe for children (no motor vehicles of any kind), and we had the run of the town. Mr. Lucy, son of Uncle Henry Lucy of Brunot, owned the store where Sadie bought her groceries. Lenora and I were daily visitors there. drooling over the candy. Lenora could easily wheedle her Pa out of a few pennies, so we had more candy than was good for us, but not as much as we would have liked.
We spent a lot of time with a “polly” parrot, the first one I had ever seen. which hung (in her cage) in a barber shop, begging crackers of anyone who looked her way. That parrot rivaled the hand-press at the print shop for my spellbound attention! Each big sheet had to be removed when printed, and a clean sheet laid down, then the press brought down like a big rubber stamp, all by hand. It printed the local newspaper!
That week we took in a funeral at the Christian Church and a revival meeting at the Methodist Church. A noted evangelist, Swope, conducted the meetings which drew overflowing crowds. Lenora and I “took in” the meetings, but we did not “go.” George and Sadie’s house was only a few feet from the Methodist Church. The rest of the family dressed up and went over to the church house, but Lenora and I sat in the open window, closer to the famous preacher than those in the back of the church and heard every word.
That was a week like no week I had ever had before in my whole life, an adventure into the unfamiliar. I suppose it made up, in part, for the sprouting, the cocklebur pulling, and other distasteful farm duties. It also made them appear even more distasteful! I was far from anxious to get back home, especially to that cocklebur pulling! The trip home, although a train ride and quite wonderful (same superb scenery and same cinders and smoke!), lacked the nerve-tingling sense of anticipation produced by the trip to Bismarck. Those fellows who went to the moon might have gotten a bigger thrill than this one!
