A LUSH, EGYPTIAN LAND
The next morning, after purchasing our customary picture cards, we were
about to achieve an early start when I suddenly remembered that I had
not tried to find the one man I really wanted to see—a man for whom my
father had worked in years gone by, the son of a mill owner who after
his father’s death with a brother had inherited this mill and employed
my father to run it. Although he was very much younger than my father at
that time, there had always been a bond of sympathy and understanding
between them. But even in my father’s lifetime the woolen industry in
this region had fallen on hard lines—the East and some patents on
machinery held by Massachusetts manufacturers crowding these westerners
to the wall—so that this boy and his brother, who had been such good
friends to my father, had been compelled to abandon their woolen
properties entirely and Adam Shattuck had gone into the electric
lighting business, and had helped, I understand, to organize the local
electric light plant here and for a while anyhow was its first
vice-president and treasurer. After that I heard nothing more.
I had never seen him, but as is always the case with someone
commercially connected with a family—a successful and so helpful a
personality—I had heard a great deal about him. Indeed, in our worst
days here, the Shattuck family had represented to me the height of all
that was important and durable, and to such an extent that even now, and
after all these years, I hesitated whether to inflict myself on him,
even for so laudable a purpose as inquiring the exact site of the old
mill or whether he recalled where my father first lived, on moving to
Terre Haute from Sullivan, and which was the house where I was born.
Nevertheless, I looked him up in the city directory and could find only
one Adam B. Shattuck, “hay, grain, and feed, 230 South Fourth Street,” a
region and a business which did not seem likely to contain so important
a person. Nevertheless, because I was anxious to see the old mill which
my father had managed under his ownership (I knew it stood somewhere
down near the river’s edge), I ventured to go to this address, to find
perchance if he could tell me where the true Adam B. Shattuck was to be
found.
And on the way, because it was only a few blocks at most in any
direction, I decided to look up the old St. Joseph’s Church and school
which I had attended as a child, my first school, to see if possibly I
could recognize anything in connection with that. A picture postcard
which I had found showed a quite imposing church on the site my father
had given, but no school.
Imagine my surprise on reaching it to be able to recognize in a rear
building to which a new front had, in years gone by, been added, the
exact small, square red brick building in which I had first been drilled
in my A B C's. Owing to a high brick wall and the presence of an
encroaching building it was barely visible any longer from the street,
but stripped of these later accretions I could see exactly how it
looked—and remember it! As I gazed, the yard, the pond, the old church,
the surrounding neighborhood, all came back to me. I saw it quite
clearly. As at Warsaw, Indiana, I now suffered a slight upheaval in my
vitals. A kind of nostalgia set in. The very earth seemed slipping out
from under my feet. I looked through the small paned windows into one of
the old rooms and then, because it was exactly the same, I wanted to get
away. I went round by the church side and seeing a funeral train in
front walked through the door into this newer building. Before the altar
rail, surrounded by tall candles, lay a coffin. And I said to myself:
“Yes, it is symbolic. Death and change have taken much, so far. They
will soon take all.”
Then I climbed back into the car.
It was only a few blocks to the hay, grain and feed emporium of this
bogus Adam Shattuck, and when I saw it, a low, drab, one story brick
building, in a very dilapidated condition, I felt more convinced than
ever that this man could have nothing to do with my father’s quondam
employer. I went through the dusty, hay strewn door and at a small,
tall, dusty and worn clerical desk saw an old man in a threadbare grey
alpaca coat, making some entries in a cheap, reddish paper backed
cashbook. There was a scale behind him. The shadowy, windowless walls in
the rear and to the sides were lined with bins, containing sacks of oats
and bran, bales of hay and other feed. Just as I entered a boy from the
vicinity followed me, pushing a small truck, and laid a yellow slip on
the desk.
“He says to make it four half sacks of bran.”
“Can you tell me where I will find a Mr. Adam B. Shattuck, who used to
own the Wabash Woolen Mills here?” I inquired.
“I’m the man—Adam B. Shattuck. Just excuse me a minute, will you, while
I wait on this boy.”
I stared at him in rude astonishment, for he seemed so worn, so
physically concluded. His face was seamed and sunken, his eyes deep
tired, his hands wrinkled.
“You’re Mr. Shattuck, are you? Well, I’m the son of Paul Dreiser, who
used to work for you. You don’t remember me, of course—I was too
young——”
“This isn’t by any chance Theodore, is it?” he commented, his eyes
brightening slightly with recognition.
“Yes, that’s me,” I said.
“Your brother Paul,” he said, “when he was out here a few years ago, was
telling me about you. You write, I believe——”
“Yes.”
“Well, of course, I’ve never known of you except indirectly, but—how
long are you going to be in town?”
“Only this morning,” I replied. “I’m just passing through. This isn’t my
car. I’m traveling in it with a friend. I’m visiting all the old places
just for the fun of it. I was just coming to you to ask if you could
tell me where the old mill stood—whether it’s still standing.”
“Right at the foot of the street here,” he commented very cheerfully, at
the same time bustling about and getting out the half sacks of bran and
other things. “It’s just as it was in your father’s day, only it is a
wagon company now. All the woolen mills in this section died out long
ago. Your father foresaw that. He told me they would. I went into the
electric lighting business afterward, but they crowded me out of
it—consolidation and all that. Then I got into this business. It isn’t
much but it’s a living. One seventyfive,” he said to the boy, who put
the money on the desk and went out.
“Yes, indeed, I knew your father. He was a fine man. He worked for us
off and on for pretty near fifteen year, after his own mill went up.
This was no country for woolen manufacture, though. We couldn’t compete
with the East. Why, I read here not long ago that two hundred mills in
Indiana, Ohio and Illinois had closed up in twenty years—two hundred!
Well, that’s all over. So you’re Theodore! You couldn’t stay and have
lunch with me, could you?”
“Thank you, I couldn’t possibly,” I replied. “I’m only a guest in this
car and I can’t detain them too long. I did want to see you, though, and
so I came.”
“That’s right; that’s right,” he said. “It’s good of you. Times have
changed with me some, but then, I’ve lived a long time. I’ve a son in
New York. He’s with ... (he mentioned a large and successful company).
You ought to call on him some time. He’d be glad to see you, I’m sure.”
He rambled on about one thing and another and followed me ... to the
door.
“You couldn’t tell me, by any chance, where the first house my father
ever occupied in Terre Haute stands?” I said idly.
“Yes, I can. It’s right around here in Second Street, one block south,
next to a grocery store. You can’t miss it. It’s a two story brick now,
but they added a story a long time ago. It was a one story house in his
time, but then it had a big yard and lots of trees. I remember it well.
I used to go there occasionally to see him.... Right down there at the
foot of the street,” he called after me.
I climbed into the car and down we went to the old mill to stare at
that, now whirring with new sounds and looking fairly brisk and
prosperous; then back to the old brick house, looking so old and so
commonplace that I could well imagine it a fine refuge after a storm.
But I had never even heard of this before and was not expecting to find
it. Then we raced forth Sullivan-ward and I was heartily glad to be
gone.
The territory into which we were now passing was that described in the
first chapter of this book—of all places that I ever lived in my youth
the most pleasing to me and full of the most colorful and poetic of
memories. Infancy and its complete non-understanding had just gone. For
me, when we arrived here, adolescence—the inquisitive boy of twelve to
sixteen—had not yet arrived. This was the region of the wonder period of
youth, when trees, clouds, the sky, the progression of the days, the
sun, the rains, the grass all filled me with delight, an overpowering
sense of beauty, charm, mystery. How eager I was to know, at times—and
yet at other times not. How I loved to sit and gaze just drinking it all
in, the sensory feel and glory of it. And then I had gone on to other
ideas and other places and this had never come back—not once in any
least way—and now I was to see it all again, or the region of it——
Sullivan, as we found on consulting our map, lay only twentyfive miles
south, or thereabouts. Our road lay through a perfectly flat region, so
flat and featureless that it should have been uninteresting and yet it
was not. I have observed this of regions as of people, that however much
alike they may appear to be in character there is, nevertheless, a vast
difference in their charm or lack of it. This section in which I had
been partially reared had charm—not the charm of personal
predisposition, as others will testify, but real charm. The soil was
rich—a sandy loam. The trees were shapely and healthy—peaceful trees,
not beaten by angry winds and rains. The fields were lush with grass or
grain—warm bottom lands these, composed of soil carried down by ancient
rivers—now, in the last hundred years or so, given names. As we came out
of Terre Haute I turned and looked back at it, a prosperous, vigorous
town. East of it, in a healthy, fruitful region, in that hill country
around Reelsville and Brazil, there had been coal mines—soft coal mines,
providing work and fuel. Here on our route to Sullivan were other mines,
at Farmersburg, seven miles out, a town by the way which I recalled as
being somehow an outpost of the priest who read mass at Sullivan, at
Shelburne and other places still farther south. You could see the black,
dirty breakers across flat green fields in which stood round healthy
trees.
As we went south, one of those warm sudden rains sprang up, or came
down—one of those quick, heavy rains which I recognized as
characteristic of the region of my infancy. We saw it coming in the
distance, a thickening of smoke clouds over some groves in the west.
Then a green fog seemed to settle between us and the trees, and I knew
it was raining.
“Here it comes,” I called. “Had we better get the top up?”
Bert, who was now the master of motion and a radically different
temperament to Speed, paid no heed. He was very taciturn or meditative
at times, but equally gay at others, and much more self sufficient and
reliant, if anything. I had been most interested by the quiet,
controlling way in which he had gone about getting himself housed and
fed at night and at other times. Porters and garage managers gave no
least care to Bert. He managed them and suggested ways and means to us
occasionally. Whenever anything happened to the car he leisurely
extracted himself with the aid of his crutches and set about adjusting
it as though there were not the least thing defective about him. It was
interesting, almost amusing.
But now, as I say, he paid no heed and soon a few heavy drops fell,
great, splattering globules that left inch size wet spots on our
clothing, and then we were in the storm. It gushed.
“Now, will you listen?” I observed as we jumped down. Franklin and I
bustled about the task of getting the hood up. Before we could do it,
though—almost before we could get our raincoats on—it was pouring—a
torrent. It seemed to come down in bucketfuls. Then, once we had the
hood up and the seats dried and our raincoats on and were suffocating of
heat, the storm was gone. The sun came out, the road looked golden, the
grass was heavenly. In the distance one could see it raining elsewhere,
far across the fields.
“Yes,” I observed feelingly and tenderly, “‘this is me own, me native
land;’ only I wish it wouldn’t make its remembered characteristics quite
so obvious. I can be shown that it is just as it used to be, without
being killed.”
The land smiled. I’m sure it did. Aren’t there such things as smiling
lands?
And a little farther on, without any suggestion from me, for I am well
satisfied that he would never be so influenced, Franklin was commenting
on the luxurious character of the region. The houses were all small and
simple, very tasteless little cottages, but very good and new and
seemingly comfortable, sheltering no doubt the sons and daughters of
people who had been here when I was. Excellent automobiles were speeding
along the roads, handsome western makes of cars—not so many Fords. The
cattle in the fields looked healthy, fat. Timothy and corn were standing
waist high. It was hot, as it should be in a fat riverland like this. We
had not gone far before we had to get out to examine a hay baling
machine—the first hay baler (for the use of individual farmers) I had
ever seen. There had been a haypress at Sullivan, a most wonderful thing
to me to contemplate in my day—a horse going round in a ring and so
lifting and dropping a great weight which compressed the hay in a box;
but this was different. It was standing out in an open field near three
haystacks and was driven by a gasoline motor, a force which made short
work of the vast quantities of hay piled on the feeder. Three men
operated it. The horses that drew it stood idle to one side.
“How much hay can you bale in a day?” I asked of one of the farmers.
“Depends on the number working,” he replied. “We three men can do up a
couple of stacks like that.” He was referring to two goodly mounds of
sweet brown hay that stood to the left.
“Do you call it hard work?” I asked.
“No, not very,” he answered. “Pitching hay from the stacks down onto it
and pulling the bales away.”
“What will the farmer not get next?” I inquired of Franklin. “It seems
that nearly all the heavy labor of the old days is gone.”
“It’s true,” he said. “I never saw a machine like this before. I’ve
heard of them. All that they need now is a good, cheap traction plow and
farming will be a weak man’s job—like golf—and twice as healthy.”
We climbed back.
Scudding along under green trees and through stretches of meadow and
under a hot, almost baking sun, we came at last to various signs
reading: “For Fine Dry Goods Visit Squibbs, South Side Square,” or “If
You Want The Best Hardware In Sullivan Go To Beach & Gens.”
“Ha! then someone of the Beach family has gone into the hardware
business,” I commented.
Presently a huge sign appeared hanging across the road. It read:
“_Sullivan Welcomes You._”
“Imagine ‘dirty old Sullivan’ venturing to welcome anyone!” I commented,
quoting my sister. “If she could only see that!” I added.
“There’s another name I recognize, anyhow,” I commented to Franklin, as
another sign came into view. “Some member of that family owned the
clover field back of our house in my time. Good luck to him, if it’s in
good condition.”
In a few minutes we were rolling up a street which would have taken us
to the public square if we had followed it; instantly I was on the _qui
vive_ to see what if anything I could remember. This was a section, the
north-west corner of Sullivan, which I recalled as having been a great
open common in my time, filled principally with dog fennel and dandelion
and thistles and containing only one house, a red one, occupied by an
Irish section boss, whose wife (my mother having befriended her years
before when first she and her husband came to Sullivan) had now, at the
time my mother was compelled to make this return pilgrimage, befriended
us by letting us stay—mother and us three youngsters—until she could
find a house. It was a period of three or four days, as I recall it. The
father of this family, Thomas Brogan, was a great, heavy handed,
hulking, red faced Irishman who knew only work and Catholicism. On
Sunday in some weird, stiff combination of Sunday clothes and squeaky
shoes, he was accustomed to lead in single file procession his more or
less recalcitrant family through weeds and along the broken board walks
of this poorly equipped region to mass. I saw him often, even in my day.
His youngest son, Harry Brogan, often played with Ed and me and once he
instigated some other, older boys, to lick us—a tale too long and too
sad to be told here. His second youngest son, Jim—alias Red Brogan and
subsequently known to fame as “Red Oliphant,” a bank robber (finally
electrocuted by the state of New York at Sing Sing for murder—he and
three or four others shot a night watchman, or so the police said)—was
often beaten by his father with a horsewhip because he would not work in
the local coal mine or perhaps do other drudging about his home. This
coal mine, by the way, had killed his elder brother Frank some three or
four years before by explosion, a tragedy which you might have thought
would have ended coal mining in that family. Not at all. Far from it.
These beatings had continued until the boy ran away, uneducated of
course, and became the character he subsequently was or was alleged to
have been. I do not know. If you want to know of a fairly good boy who
died a criminal in the chair owing to conditions over which he had no
least control or certainly very little, this was one. If I were Red
Brogan and were summoned before the eternal throne—would that there were
one—I would show Him the stripes on my back and my neglected brain and
ask Him why, if He were God, He had forsaken me.
I have heard my mother tell how she was present at the time this older
brother’s body was brought up out of the mine (eight men were killed at
the time) and how tragic seemingly was the grief of both Mr. and Mrs.
Brogan. Later on, after we left Sullivan, the family became somewhat
more prosperous and it is likely that the youngest son was not compelled
to work as the others had.