Footman . . . 12½¢
Wagon and team . . . $1.00
Two-horse carriage . . . 75¢
Hogs and sheep, neat head . . . 3¢
Horses and cattle, neat head . . . 6¢
There was a special half rate for citizens of Osage Township crossing the ferry to attend elections, which put the cost at 12½¢ for man and horse and 6¼¢ for a footman. I have never learned just how the ferryman made change involving the fractions of a cent. Jurors were given free passage on the ferry if they were on the way to duties at court.
Today huge transport trucks go shuttling back and forth through the Ozark Country, carrying all sorts of cargoes. In the days before the highways, boats on the rivers carried raw materials from the Ozarks to St. Louis, and brought manufactured goods from the city to supply trade throughout a large section of the hill country. At one time Linn Creek, in Camden County, was an important distributing point for river traffic.
One firm, J. W. McClurg and Company, sold more than half a million dollars’ worth of goods annually for a good many years. Dodson, Roberts, and Company was doing a thriving business at the same time. For about six months of the year, boats could run from St. Louis to Linn Creek, and from this point freighters with ox or mule teams formed the transportation system of the Southwest. Goods went into Arkansas and the Indian Territory, and raw materials came from those distant points to be marketed and shipped to St. Louis.
Sometimes there would be enough water in the Osage River to carry boats as far as Warsaw in Benton County. But when the river was low, the supplies were transferred to flatboats and these boats were propelled by manpower. Ten or twelve men were employed to pole a loaded flatboat up the river. Warsaw shipped a surprising amount of produce to the city, such as wild honey and beeswax, hides, and deer meat.
It is on record that during the height of prosperity, an average of twenty wagon loads of wheat per day came into Linn Creek the year round. However, the building of railroads changed the status quo of this little Ozark town, and the people could only look forward to the time when a railroad would be built to their village. It was a dream that never came true, and now there is no Linn Creek, only the deep water of the Lake of the Ozarks where the old town once stood. There is a new Linn Creek a few miles away, but it lacks the halo of romance that surrounded the old town.
The first settlers built their homes on the ridges at the heads of the creeks. The fear of malaria kept them from the fertile river valleys. The land was cleared and heavily cropped with little rotation. Within a few years, erosion set in and farmers found it necessary to change locations. Some of them occupied the valley lands and built permanent homes there. Villages sprang up at strategic points. Others moved out of the Ozarks, seeking greener pastures in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. A few drifted to the mining centers around Joplin; many engaged in the timber industry. The deserted ridges were soon covered with second growth and became open range for hogs and cattle.
The first tourists in the backhill country were sportsmen who came from St. Louis and Kansas City. They came in large parties to hunt deer, bear, and wild turkey. These hunters were good spenders and the natives gave them a warm welcome. The modern tourist invasion began with motor transportation and the building of highways early in the twentieth century. Many of these furriners were not considerate of property rights and the practice of posting land against trespassers came into vogue. One farmer in the backhills put up the following sign.
NOTIS! tresspassers will B persecuted to the full extent of 2 mungrel dogs which never was over-sochible to strangers & 1 dubble brl shot gun which aint loaded with sofa pillors. Dam if I aint gittin tired of this hell raisin on my place.
Saturday evening was an exciting time at our house. The big boys curried the horses and filled the wagon with straw. Mother sent out one of her best quilts for us to “set” on. A basket of cookies and baked ham was placed near the spring seat where father and mother sat. We were going visiting and would stay all night, all day Sunday, and Sunday night at Aunt Mary’s or Cousin Jim’s. Either we visited friends and relatives on Sunday or they came to see us.
On Sunday we went to church. But after a deacon in one of the churches accused father of stealing his silver spoons and they had a church trial, and the deacon gave father a libel written on paper cambric, my parents decided that we could get to heaven without mixing up with such hypocrites. But I can see our family at church now. Father on the end of the backless seat, mother next, and then the eldest child and so on down to me. I can hear the preacher denouncing sin with a vengeance and outlining the miseries of hell. After the energetic parson had expostulated and pounded the stand for an hour and a half, I usually fell asleep and missed the rest of the service.
Beauty parlors were unknown in that day but women made use of simple devices to enhance their loveliness. Buttermilk was used to keep the skin soft and white. For a quick bleach, tomato juice was applied to the arms and face before retiring. Tallow was melted, perfumed with petals of flowers, and used in massaging the face. A curling fluid was made by pouring hot water over flax seed. When young ladies wanted to put a pink glow on their cheeks, they took soft young mullein leaves and pressed them gently but firmly against the face. For “whitening” they used rice flour in little flannel bags “starched” or dusted on. Shoes were shined by rubbing black from the bottom of a kettle.
We carefully guarded the chunk of fire on the hearth, wrapping it in ashes between usings. If perchance it did die out, we could borrow coals from a neighbor, use flint and steel, or start a fire with gunpowder. We would place a little powder on the hearth, place a gun cap in it, cover with lint cotton and spread with fine pine splinters, then strike the cap with a hammer and a blaze would start. Sometimes we would “spin fire” with a yarn string which had been soaked in copperas solution and dried. One end of the string would be wrapped around the “whirl” of a spinning wheel and turned so fast that the string would catch on fire. We would blow the spark and catch the blaze with a piece of cotton sprinkled with powder. This was transferred to pine splinters on the hearth.
One day a peddler came along selling matches, twelve in a little wooden box for a dime. We purchased some of them but they were used only on special occasions or when we “lost fire.” Even after the regulation-size five-cent boxes came in, matches were used sparingly. One neighboring family used the same box for more than twenty years.
Candles were our only means of lighting in the days of my youth. They were made from beef tallow and beeswax. We had learned to steep the wicks in limewater and saltpeter and dry them. This made a brighter flame and prevented the tallow from running. The parlor candle was made with a double wick to give it a brighter light. We had discovered that putting a little salt on the candle would make it last longer.
We didn’t have to live on corn bread and spring water or eat sowbelly with the buttons on.2 We always had a few hams in the smokehouse, some of them two years old, and plenty of pork sausage, properly seasoned with sage. A woodsman could eat a pound of this sausage at a meal without discomfort. All through the morning hours, hog jowl and cabbage were cooked soft and tender in a big black pot, and these potlicker memories linger with me still.
If we broke a looking glass, it meant seven years of bad luck, for it was usually that long before we got another mirror. If one of the boys thoughtlessly carried a hoe into the house, it brought a storm of protest and he was ordered out immediately. If anybody twirled a chair on one of its legs, we knew father would come home mad as a wet hen about something.
One day my oldest sister dropped the dishrag and neglected to throw a little salt over her left shoulder. She did not report the incident to the rest of the family. Of course, mother could not take the usual precautions against calamity when she did not know it was coming. Sure enough, that very evening one of my little brothers stuck a thorn clear through his foot and probably would have had lockjaw had my sister not realized her neglect and reported the dishrag affair to mot
her. A vinegar application was applied to the boy’s foot and in almost no time he was outside trying to get a doodlebug to stick up his horn “so that he could give it a barrel of corn.” These superstitions seem ridiculous now but many of them were taken seriously in the old days.
We broke green gourds above our old dog’s head to make him bark up a tree. If a cow swallowed her cud, we wound a ball of wool thread, fried it in lard, and made her swallow it. If a white moth lingered around us, we thought it was the spirit of one of our deceased grandparents hovering over us. A poultice of droppings from black hens, mixed with lard and applied to the chest, was a sure cure for pneumonia. For itch (we called it “each”) we used a paste made from gunpowder and cream. It didn’t matter to us whether a hen set or sat on a nest of eggs, but it did make a difference how the eggs were carried and how the “set” was started. We thought that eggs carried in a woman’s bonnet invariably hatched pullets while a hen set on Sunday brought a hatch of roosters. Eggs set in the dark of the moon would not hatch; chickens hatched in the month of May would not live. We never burned sassafras wood in the fireplace for we didn’t like the idea of the devil sitting astraddle the comb of our house roof. Yes, we were superstitious, but many of these odd beliefs provided a veil of protection that was needed. Logic is sometimes bedded in a strange way.
A “water witch” was an important man in the community. My father could locate a vein of water with a forked stick. He would take the stick firmly in both hands, fork upward, and start walking across a plot of ground in search of a location for a well. When the stick turned down it meant water below. To determine the distance to the vein, the “witch” walked away from the spot, counting the steps, until the stick regained its upright position. Six steps meant eighteen feet to water. To make sure of the location, he would approach the spot with his witching stick from all directions. We never dug a well without first witching for water. It is my opinion that what scientists call “corpuscular philosophy” is just plain old water witching gone to college.
A few men in our neighborhood claimed they could locate metals with the witching stick. To locate silver, the witch would cut a slit in the forked stick and insert a silver coin in it. Gold was supposed to locate gold. To find mixed ores he used two coins of different metals, usually a dime and a one-cent piece. A stick reinforced with metal would not react to water. My father didn’t take much stock in this treasure lore. He stuck to plain water witching. He believed that only one member of a family could possess this witching power.
Marriage was regarded as a serious matter in the old days and divorces were rare. The sexual code was strictly masculine. No matter how much tomcatting a young man might do, he was determined to select a virgin for his wife. It was thought that virginity could be detected by a tiny depression in the end of a woman’s nose.
When getting married, we stood on the floor the way the boards ran. We thought an unhappy marriage would result if we set our feet at right angles with the planks.
Many trivial happenings were accepted as signs of death. A bird flying in the house, a ringing in the ears, a cock crowing from the housetop, a dog howling at night, the falling of a window sash, or the breaking of an object without anyone touching it—these were definite signs of the approach of the Grim Reaper.
We were awed by the appearance of “angel wreaths” or “heavenly crowns” in the pillow on which the head of a dying person had lain. These perfect wreaths are of artistic design and appear in sharp contrast to the mass of feathers surrounding them. They are not made with human hands.
“Telling the bees” at the time of a death in the family was a common practice in the old days. Some member of the family would knock on the beehives, call the name of the departed one, and report his death. Sometimes the hives were draped with black cloth. Failure to do this meant that the bees would either die or depart.
We left our home in White County, Arkansas, in the nineties and moved to Texas. My grandfather (mother’s father) remained behind at the old home in Arkansas. We owned a large grandfather clock which sat on a shelf against the wall in the dining room of our new home. One summer evening, a few months after our arrival in Texas, all the family was sitting on the front porch talking. Suddenly the clock began rumbling and ringing in a strange manner. It had no alarm on it and had never done that way before. We all rushed into the house, but the ringing ceased as we entered. The clock struck nine and stopped. My stepfather remarked that someone we knew had died and that the sound we heard was a “death bell.” News traveled slowly in those days, but three or four days later came a letter from Arkansas, edged in black. The missive informed us that grandfather had died. The time of his passing coincided with the death-bell warning.
We saw many will-o’-the-wisps or “Jack-o’-lanterns” along the river and thought they would lure men and animals astray. Sometimes it was a ball of fire shooting through space horizontal with the earth. Or it might be a flame-like appearance hovering in a swamp. My father saw one that had little bluish flames as long as a man’s finger, moving in a group like a flock of blackbirds.
During an electric storm, all the dogs were driven out of the house as we thought a dog’s tail drew lightning. We were taught to stand still and hold our breath when meeting a mad dog. By doing this we avoided all danger of being bitten. If birds made their nests from the combings of our hair, we thought we would have headaches. If we could succeed in spitting between the eyes of a red worm, we would live to a ripe old age and never wear glasses. It was considered bad luck to kill a bat. We had a superstitious fear of these creatures for it was believed that if one entered the house after nightfall, someone in the family would be missing before morning. If we “took bread and had bread,” someone was coming to our house hungry.3 We always tried to kill the first snake we saw in springtime as that meant we would be able to conquer our enemies. To cure asthma, we would back the patient up against a tree and peg a lock of his hair into a hole bored into the trunk, and snip it off with a pair of scissors. When the bark grew over the hair, the asthma was supposed to be gone.
A child born out of wedlock was called a wood’s colt. If it grew to school age, the neighboring children would refuse to play with it, or loan it slate and pencil. If, as was sometimes the case, this child could diagram a sentence better than the rest of us, our home folks would conclude that Lum Skinner was surely not its father as the gossipers supposed.
A loose woman was considered a disgrace to the neighborhood. She was a bitch, and hillsmen did not mince words in voicing their contempt of her. Of course, there were immoral women in the hills, plenty of them. But they kept themselves in the background and did not court respect, even from their men associates. They were not “commercial daughters of joy” like their city cousins.
The better class of people refused to countenance immorality in the community and they frequently used force to subdue it. If a person disregarded the conventions of decency, he was warned by placing a bunch of switches on his doorstep. The number of switches indicated the number of days allowed for the man and woman to wind up their local affairs and get out of the country. Failure to comply meant that they might be “drummed out” of the neighborhood.
“To plow with one’s heifer” was an expression that meant to deal with the wife to get something from the husband. “Saltin’ the calf to catch the cow” was a phrase frequently used to explain a man’s unusual attentions to a widow’s child. We never used the word “bull” in mixed company, but said “cow brute” instead. Prudery put reticence into our speech but there were exceptions to the rule. Many women used salty expressions when referring to members of their sex whose conduct was under suspicion. Profanity was used freely by both men and women but even it had its acknowledged propriety. A man who would “gawddam” at almost every breath would carefully avoid obscenity in the presence of women.
Acts of sexual perversion between men were practically unknown in the hill country, but the practice of sodomy, that is copulation wit
h animals, was more prevalent. A belief existed that such unions are sometimes fruitful and monstrosities were frequently rumored.
Every peculiarity in appearance or oddity of action had a definite cause. The pop-eyed idiot of the neighborhood owed his tragic condition to the fact that his mother stepped on a toad two or three months before the child was born. The seventh son of a seventh son was endowed with strange powers and could remove warts, take out fire, stop blood, and provoke cures of all kinds. A baby born with a veil over its face was likewise empowered with supernatural gifts.
Birthmarks were thought to be caused by shocks or fright during pregnancy. A neighbor woman watched the butchering of a calf and her child’s feet were formed like hoofs. Our hired man could show a mark on his leg caused, he said, by his mother being frightened by a betsy bug. One woman had the mark of a snake coiled around her ankle. She explained that her mother had been frightened by a snake at about the time it was shedding its skin and that the scales on the birthmark peeled off at that season each year. One of the strangest markings was reported to us by a maiden aunt. The woman had been frightened by a cow brute during pregnancy and the mark resembled a cow with two small growths protruding from the head like horns. But the marking did not stop there. It was psychological as well as physical. The woman emitted low, mumbling sounds like the bellowing of a bull.
Midwifery is an old, old custom, carried to America from England by early migrants. It was a Victorian institution firmly established in English life. Charles Dickens is credited with having ridiculed this practice to its eventual ruin. But it made a new start in backwoods America and again became an institution of importance. The midwife knew obstetric lore by experience and, like the boy on the burning deck, she remained at her post “when all the rest had fled.” Her methods were crude, but she was a godsend to the hillswoman in the throes of childbirth.
Ozark Country Page 14
