“Whoa-haw-Buck! Jerry!” The oxen seemed to sense danger and the wagon
was turned around in no time. Just then a man on horseback came running
up. Without stopping to say a word the man jumped off his horse and
touched a lighted match to the tall dead grass in front of the outfit.
An effort was made by the man to beat out the fire on the windward side.
The man then excitedly commanded my uncle to drive across the thin line
of back-fire into the newly burned space. It looked like the rider had
come out of that blazing inferno especially to warn us. And as the wagon
moved away he yelled loudly so as to be heard above the roar of the
encroaching flames from behind, “For God’s sake, man, follow it up as
fast as you can.”
That young man was Fred Liebig.
Boyhood impressions stick like the bark on a tree, while later events
are submerged in the whirlpool of life and are forgotten. One of the
outstanding incidents of my young life took place upon this Wolfley
creek farm. I remember it as distinctly as if it occurred only
yesterday. It was my first—and last—alcoholic debauch.
I have already told you that rattlesnakes infested that place way back
in the distant past. One of them—a fat, seven-button specimen—took a
whack at me one summer day, its fangs loaded with deadly green fluid
sinking deep the top of my right foot. It was August — dogdays — and of
course I was barefoot. The children of pioneer settlers didn ’ t wear
shoes, except in cold weather, even when their fathers were excellent
shoemakers, a distinction my father enjoyed at that time.
My father was over at Granada. A neighbor was sent after him — and for
whiskey, the then universal remedy for snakebite. Finding no whiskey at
Granada, the courier, on horseback, came on to Wetmore, which town was
just starting then, and failing again, pushed on the Seneca, stopping on
the way long enough to change horses. The round trip approximately sixty
miles and eight hours had elapsed when the rider returned with whiskey.
He brought a generous supply.
In the meantime my mother had dumped a package of baking soda into a
basin of warm water. She bade me put my foot in it — and two little
fountains of green came oozing up through the soda-whitened water. And
she gave me tea made from yard plantain—why, I wouldn’t know.
Also my Uncle Nick had arrived by the time the rider returned with the
whisky. I didn’t like the taste of the nasty stuff and, boy-like, set
up a howl about having to drink it. And my Uncle, desirous of helping in
every possible way, said, soothingly, “Johnny, take a little, and Uncle
take a little.” We both passed out about the same time.
I don’t mean to infer by this that my Uncle was a drunkard. He was not.
And, mind you, he grew up in a country at a time when you could buy good
old Bourbon at any crossroads grocery store as you would buy a jug of
vinegar—and almost as cheaply.
My Uncle Nick was a soldier in the Mexican war of 1848. And he was
a soldier in the Civil war—an adventurer, and in a way a “soldier of
fortune.” He prospected for gold, and hunted mountain lions—with the
long rifle—in the Rockies, just as he and my father had hunted panthers
in Tennessee.
This ferocious beast, if you don’t know, is the big cat with four names.
In the South and East—extinct in most sections now—he is the dreaded
panther. In the Rockies he is the mountain lion. Farther west, in
Arizona and the Sierras, he is the cougar. Somewhere he is called the
puma. And everywhere he is “the killer.”
Two strangers stopped at our home just after I had passed out—that
is, after I had become limp, unable to stand, unable to talk, from the
effects of the whisky. But I could understand as well as ever what was
said. One of the men suggested that if they could find the snake and cut
it open and bind the parts to my foot that it would draw the poison
out. I knew that Jim Barnes had killed that snake, and the stranger’s
suggestion gave me a mental spasm. I could not speak out and tell’ them
that I had had about all of that snake that I could stand.
The earthquake of 1868 — or thereabout — greatly frightened my mother.
It was her first experience with quakes. And, woman-like, with a
perpetual grudge against the erratic Kansas weather changes, she laid
this shakeup in climate, which, it seemed, she never could become
accustomed to. And when the house trembled and the dishes cupboard
began to rattle, she rushed out into the yard, where my father and the
children were, and said, “If we must all go to the devil I would just as
soon walk as ride.”
Also Indians from the Kickapoo reservation, while harmless enough at the
time, had a habit of prowling about over the country, and a band of them
nearly scared the wits out of my mother one hot summer day. She saw
the blanketed red skins, on ponies, coming down the road, single-file.
Gathering her youngsters, much as a hen gathers her brood the approach
of danger—and much as my mother had once before taken her children
under her protecting arms and saved their lives, as you shall see
presently—she hid in the cornfield until the rovers had left our farm.
And now another prairie fire. If there could be any question about the
youngster having retained with photographic accuracy the horrors of
the one earlier mentioned, there can be no doubt about this later one,
which, whipped by the ever-present wind, stole in upon us in the night,
My father’s much prized rail fence was laid low, and only by heroic
efforts was the house saved. These dreaded prairie fires and other
subjected frights incident to the new country seemed to place a mark
upon my mother.
“William,” she said one day to my father, “we might as well have
remained in Tennessee and taken our chances on being killed by guerillas
as to come all the way out to this God-for-saken country only to be
burned to death by prairie fires, or shaken to pieces by earthquakes, or
frightened to death by Indians.” And I am sure that if the Kansas
cyclone had then enjoyed the widespread reputation that it does in this
year of grace, my mother would have included that also.
In Tennessee, my father was a shoemaker and tanner by trade. And, by the
grace of a kind Providence—and some quick shooting—he was a live Union
“sympathizer” in a Rebel stronghold. The great conflict—the Civil
War—between the North and the South was then on. My father had not, at
this time, joined the fighting forces on either side. He was content
to ply his trade, make leather and shoes, both of which were very much
needed at the time. But my father made the almost fatal mistake of
“exercising his rights as a free-born citizen,” in having his say.
The South was not quite solid for Confederacy. Sometimes even families
were divided. In my mother’s family two of her brothers favored the
North and two were for the South—”rank rebels,” my mother said. None of
them went to war. They worked in a powder mill—more dangerous, by far.
Twice the mill blew up, and each time one of my Uncles was blown into
fragments. Also one of my mother’s acquired relatives hid in a cave for
the duration of the war.
The guerilla element was composed of Southerners, not in colors — and
they made life miserable for any o ne who dared to express an opinion,
on the aspects of the war, contrary to their views.
The hush of a November night lay upon the forest, in the thick of which
was located my father’s home, his tan-yard, his shoeshop. The night’s
stillness was broken by a volley of bullets from the guerilla guns
crashing through the windows and doors of the log house.
My mother—herself only a girl in her teens—took her two babies and crept
under the bed, which, luckily, had been moved to another part of the
house that very day. And that shift of the bed saved the family from the
death-dealing bullets poured into the house with that first onslaught.
My father had only a muzzle-loading, double-barrel shotgun, with two
charges in the gun—and no more ammunition — with which to defend himself
and his little family against that mob of armed men. The main body of
guerillas, on horseback, were in the front yard. The house stood upon
the bank of a deep gully, with little or no backyard. A wide plank
served as a walk across the gully. Beyond that was heavy timber.
Believing that his family would be safer with him out of the house, my
father, only partly dressed, grabbed his shotgun and flung open the back
door. He quickly emptied both barrels of his gun into the two men who
were guarding the back door. The revolver in the hands of the first man
in line, standing on the plank, was being brought down on him when the
charge from father’s shotgun cut off the crook of the man’s arm at the
elbow and entered his body, killing him instantly. The bullet from the
guerilla’s revolver plowed through my father’s hat. And that was the
revolver my father shot squirrels with in Kansas. It was retrieved by
Federal soldiers and presented to him.
The other man was mortally wounded and lay there in yard, at the far end
of the plank walk, until morning, Things had happened so quickly, and
so disastrously to their ranks, that the mob believed the house was
occupied by armed men. And, after firing another volley into the home,
many of the bullets this time penetrating the bed under which my mother,
with her babies, lay flat on the floor, the mob withdrew to a safe
distance—but sentinels were kept posted in the nearby woods until
morning. All told, more than one hundred shots were fired into the
house.
And now a man from the outside dashed in at the back -the door by which
father had made his exit. Hurriedly he bolted the door from within.
My mother, peering out from her hiding place under bed, exclaimed in
surprise, “You here, Sandy! What does this mean?” And before he could
explain, she cried, “Oh, I smell smoke. Is the house on fire, Sandy?”
“Yes,” he said—”it was. And the tanyard buildings and shoeshop are now
burning.”
Sandy Fouse, a Southern boy, had worked for my father in his tobacco
fields, and lived at our home. My father grew tobacco on the side. I was
told Sandy took a marked interest in me—a baby. God only knows why
it was so, but it seems I was destined to become the favorite of the
family. I had an older brother, too. But it seems I was the favorite of
my Aunt Harriet who helped my mother, and the pet of Sandy who “wormed”
the tobacco.
And as with the prairie fire—only with positive conviction this time—I
must again rely on what has been told me. Reaching under the bed and
hauling me out, Sandy said, “Why, I’d risk my life any time for this
here boy Johnny—or any of you-all.” And that was just what he was doing
that night.
When the mob had withdrawn after starting a fire against the house,
Sandy ran back and kicked the blazing sticks away from the building—and
then made a dash for the door. He was now afraid of the mob and did not
leave the house again that night. Good old boy — Sandy, Pal, Protector.
Just why you were out with those guerillas that night has never been
explained to me.
My father did not come back into the house, and my mother believed that
he had been killed, or mortally wounded, as she could plainly hear the
groans of the dying man outside. And she was, of course, frantic with
grief. After hours of agony, when she could stand it no longer, she took
a lighted candle and went outside to investigate.
My mother’s name was Martha. The wounded man kept groaning, “Oh, Lordy.”
And my mother thought it was my father calling her name. It took some
tension off when she discovered the dying man was not my father — but
she was horrified to find he was the son of a close neighbor. The young
man asked for a drink of water, and wanted someone to pray for his soul.
She gave him water. And she prayed for him. At daybreak the young man’s
companions took him to his father’s home where he died a few hours
later. He told his people that he got what he deserved, that he had no
business in permitting the mob to persuade him to go out with them that
night.
Still my mother did not know the fate of my father — and of course her
mind and nerves were harassed to the point of breaking all through the
long hours of the night. In this story I can only give the facts and
trust that some power of understanding in every human heart may lead the
reader to some appreciation of the tense situation—the web of destiny
seemingly inextricably entangled, in which my parents had been caught.
After shooting his way out, my father had kept on going, and under
protection of the night and the dense woods surrounding the house,
eluded the mob. And after fifteen miles of weary tramping over the hills
and through woods, after hours of worry for the safety of his family, he
reached the Union lines, at daybreak. In the afternoon of that same day
the family was moved to Clarksville, by solders sent out from the army.
The guerillas had burned my father’s tanyard and shoeshop, and his
tobacco barn. They had stolen his horses — four fine grays which were
kept on the plantation for plowing the tobacco fields and for hauling
tanbark. And in the end, someone stole his farm. The trusted agent
forgot to remit.
My father then went as a scout with detachments the Union army. He
served under Major E. N. Morrill, who was later Governor of Kansas,
and a resident of Hiawatha for a number of years. The guerilla band was
broken up. But hostilities did not stop altogether with the surrender of
Lee. And bushwhacking” became a pastime with the embittered few.
My mother, with her sister, Nan Porter, went back to Tennessee some
years later for a visit. And about the first thing they did was to
attend church—a new church in the old neighborhood. My resident aunt —
Aunt Harriet Lovell—had said to her sisters, “You-all will meet lots of
friends after church.”
The two Kansas women, with their handsome and deeply religious young
escort, marched into church a trifle late, and my mother was smiling
and nodding to close seated old acquaintances, and properly attuned, all
were living in the happy anticipation of a real love feast when church
would be out. Then suddenly, abruptly, as if she had received some
deadly stroke, the smile faded from her face. She looked at her sister,
in crestfallen dejection, and whispered, “Let’s get out of here, Nan,
just as soon as the services are over.” That pained look did not belong
on my my mother’s sweet face. Some highly disturbing thing had happened.
Quickly, my mother revised her plans. She could consistently have
waited for the preacher to come down from the pulpit and address her as
“sister” with more significance than ordinarily accrues to the church
going woman. But no, thank you—not my mother. Not in that spot. She had
recognized in that coarse-voiced preacher the leader of that guerilla
mob. He was my non-consanguineous uncle — father’s own brother-in-law.
And the accommodating young man who had been so kind as to “carry” them
over in his shiny new buggy could not understand what made them in such
a hurry to get away.
That meeting house was set in a small clearing in the dense woods on top
of a high ridge. It was called “Sentinary.” The worshippers came in from
the lower settlements from every direction. It was their custom to tarry
after services for a visit — and especially^ if there were strangers in
the congregation they must be wholeheartedly welcomed, Southern style,
as I was to learn.
Some years later it was my pleasure to attend that same church. And
Walter Cox “carried” me over in his buggy—the same rig in which my
mother and my aunt had ridden with him—though the buggy was now, of
course, somewhat the worse for wear, as the roads down there are rocky.
Fully half that four-mile trip was in the bed of a creek which flowed,
clear as crystal, over a rock bottom, between high hills. And when not
in the middle of the creek that road crossed and recrossed the stream
many times.
But the guerilla-preacher—he of the “foghorn” voice — who had so
disturbed my mother’s tranquility, was not at the Church to greet me. It
was my uncle, one of my mother’s rank rebel” brothers, who stepped down
from the pulpit to meet the stranger.
And when Walter Cox introduced us—after effusive greetings and some
emotional tears from the older man — uncle, with fine Southern accent,
said, “I’m powerful proud that Walter here didn’t introduce you before
the services. If I had known one of sister Martha’s boys was the
congregation I believe I would have forgotten my text.” He stroked his
whiskers. “Yes, suh, it would have frustrated me a heap.”
Having registered at the Maxwell House—the one that presumably made a
certain brand of coffee famous—I attended the Nashville Centennial for
three days before looking up any of my relatives. My Uncle Thomas Cullom
lived Nashville — but my Aunt Nancy Cullom-Porter had written from
Wetmore to my Aunt Harriet Cullom-Lovell at Newsome Station, twelve
miles out, of my expected visit—and I went there first, by train. I
inquired at the Newsome store for a way to get out to John Lovell’s,
five miles up Buffalo creek. Mr. Newsome said, “Just go right down
to the mill, the boy there will carry you over plum to his door—you a
Cullom?” The boy led out two horses, and I was “carried” over astride a
horse to my Aunt’s home, arriving at about four o’clock. And here I
met, for the first time, Uncle John Lovell, his two daughters, Emma and
Margaret; and of course my Aunt Harriet—not however, for the first time.
My mother had told me that we had been pretty good friends in my baby
days.
Also, I met here the renowned spirit medium Jim Spain, of whom I had
heard my mother and my Aunt Nancy tell some tall stories—but Jim got on
a horse, rode away, and I did not see him again that day. Jim Spain at
this me was about thirty-five years old. He had come to the Lovell home
when a young man—and just stayed. I don’t know if he had any relatives;
though undoubtedly there was a time when he might have been blessed—or
plagued—with kin.
At eventide—maybe it would define the hour better to say as dusk settled
on the hills and hollows surrounding my Aunt’s home, making the hollows
thick with semi-darkness—girls, in twos and threes, began coming in—in
all about a baker’s dozen. That spirit medium had made the rounds
spreading the news of my arrival. The girls were too nearly the same
age—sweet sixteen—to be of one family. They were my relatives — or maybe
just relatives of my relatives. They were all cousins. I asked one of
the girls where had they all come from? She said, “Just over the east
hill—apiece.” It was a steep hill.
The Lovell home, a double structure with the usual open spacious gallery
separating the apartments—a typical Southern home—was near the junction
of Buffalo creek on the north and a deep gulch between high wooded
hills, flowing in from the south. The building spot, about the size of
an ordinary town lot, had been leveled off some fifteen feet above the
wash, with the west end of the dwelling resting on piles reaching down
almost to the water level. To the east, the hill above the flattened
space, was so steep and high that the sun did not» shine on the house
until after ten o’clock. A cook-house stood in the yard about thirty
feet south of the dwelling where family meals were prepared—presumedly
by a colored cook.
Here, I must explain.
After I had returned home, I learned that my Aunt Nancy had written my
Aunt Harriet advising her to get rid of her Negro cook for the duration
of my visit. Whatever possessed her to do this, I wouldn’t know—there
was, in fact, no justification for it. I had no reason to be prejudice
of Negroes. On the contrary, I may say I “owe my life” to a Negro —
my mother said he was the blackest Negro she had ever seen—for having
rescued me from the river after I had fallen off the deck of the boat,
when coming to Kansas from Tennessee. I was about four years old—and
still wearing dresses, in the fashion of the times. I was told that the
Negro said he had saved my mother’s little darling girl. I didn’t like
to be called a “little girl”—either with or without the “darling”—but
this was no cause for me to forever dislike the colored folk.
Might say I was nearly six years old before I got my first pants—and
even then I didn’t wear them regularly. They were knee pants—in style,
which style endured for a long time. I knew one young fellow in Wetmore
who wore his knee-pants right up to his wedding day. When I first began
howling for pants, my mother said I was lucky she hadn ’ t dressed me
in a flour sack, with holes cut out for head and arms, like Preacher
Wamyer’s kids had been clothed, in our neighborhood. But the joke was,
she did not happen to have a flour sack, and she said that in this
God-for-saken country she was not likely to have one for ages. My mother
made me shirts with long tails — and when around home out there in the
sticks, in hot weather, I would not bother with the britches. I recall
the time mother took me with her to a quilting at the home of one of the
Porter women—it might have been at the home of Kate Evans, wife of Bill
Evans, the famous old stage-driver; but more likely it was the home of
Amanda Ann Watson, widow, who later married Brown Ellet. Johnny Bill
Watson, a red headed, freckled face boy about my age, played rough,
making it plenty hot for me. I pulled off my pants, went into the house,
and threw my britches onto the quilting frame—greatly humiliating my
mother, and creating uproarous laughter from the women.
Well, you know, I didn’t see a “Nigger” or even hear one mentioned
during my visit at my Aunt Harriet’s home, That cook house was the one
place not exploited. But somehow the meals got cooked—tempting meals
just like my mother used to cook—and I suspect by Auntie Lovell’s
regular colored woman, after the Cullom technique.
The smoked ham, produced and cured on the place, was the best I
have ever eaten. Uncle and Auntie’s 200-acre farm lay in irregular
boundaries—likely described by chains and links zig-zagging between
blazed trees—for two miles up and down Buffalo creek. Uncle John showed
me the limestone ledge protruding over the north bank of the creek,
which sheltered his hogs at such times as they would come home to spend
the night—and feed on perhaps the first “bar’l” of corn produced on a
near-by clearing. The hogs came home only at such times as the “mast”
was insufficient. This combination made for cheap pork—and delicious
hams.
I had recently been in Texas—and because of that trip to the Lone Star
state, I had a message from a relative to a relative to be delivered
in Nashville. Here again I should explain. On learning that I planned a
trip to Galveston ten days hence, my Aunt Nancy Porter asked me to stop
off at Dallas and call on a relative—a Cullom of the Tennessee tribe.
I believe his name was Jerry. But if he were not Jerry, he was a close
relative. When I called at Mr. Cullom’s real estate office in Dallas, I
was told he had gone to Galveston. I went on to Galveston, and dismissed
all thought of seeing my relative. I went out to the beach, and
while strolling on the sands—on the gulf side of the sea-wall — among
hundreds, perhaps thousands of other strollers, fell in with a friendly
man. He told me he was from Dallas, and I told him that I was from
Wetmore,„Kansas. He said, quickly, “Did you say Wetmore? Reckon you
might know my cousin Nan Porter, there.” And I said, “Then, I reckon
you know that my Aunt Nancy asked me to stop off at Dallas, and call on
you.” He grabbed my hand, saying with real Tennessee accent, “Mr. John
Bristow, I’m powerful proud to meet you.” Again, I may be wrong. It
could have been the Texas accent. In the course of our conversation
I told Cousin Cullom that I would be going to Nashville for the
Centennial, and he said likely he would go, too. The message from him
was for my Aunt Tennessee Cullom-Clark, mother’s sister, living in North
Nashville.