USA > Iowa > Marion County > Down on the ridge : reminiscences of the old days in Coalport and down on the ridge, Marion County > Part 5
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Gus, after arriving at his majority, graduated from the College of Medicine at Keokuk. He entered upon
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the practice of medicine at once and established an enviable reputation. He practiced a number of years, during which time he married Miss Ella Momyer, an amiable, splendid girl. The fates were unkind to poor Gus. Disease came into his earthly house, locked the door and refused to retire. This cruel king with wanton glee numbered his days. He suffered on and on until with the scythe of time his merciless foe cut him down in the meridian of life, and to-day just a few words chiseled in granite tell the story of his birth and death. Mrs. Everett and Margaret, now blooming into sweet, young womanhood, still live in Knoxville.
Mont was one of the boys down there. We both remember how in the fall of 1862, after his father had gone south with his regiment, he and "Lade " and "Meck " and I gathered corn ; how we rushed the team along and left the girls away behind, and how his good mother threatened to take the girls off the job if we didn't let up with our "tomfoolery " and imposition. We remember having gone to Knoxville one day where Mont bought a little juvenile book entitled, "Lord Bateman," and how that night, in the little old log cabin in the lane, seated around the old grease lamp, Mont read to Sandy and John, which was Mead and Lala, the wonderful story of that celebrated lord. How we used to pop corn down in front of the forestick in the old fireplace! Mont will remember that when we had gathered all his corn we, with Charlie Crouch, gathered Martha Hegwood's corn down on the river bottom, near the first Welch mill, and how we ran away from Charlie when taking the down row, and how mad he got. He would cry out "You daggoned fools !" Yes, he even " bellered " like a calf. Poor Charlie ! We should ask his pardon even at this late day. I should dislike to do such a thing to him now, because if he should sit down on me there wouldn't be even a sign of where I went.
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Mont dreamed of other fields than those of corn and wheat and hay. He longed for music sweeter than the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the sheep, so he went to peddling pills and salve and colic remedies for the Baker Company of Keokuk. It was real refresh- ing to see him with his old gray mare and the little old buggy "hiking " about the country, perhaps saying to himself, "The more colic, the greater the sales." But, like the children of Israel longing for the fleshpots of Egypt, Mont longed for the music of the lowing herds, while a pen of hogs, to him, smelled like a bunch of bride's roses. He got married, made money farming, and now lives in Knoxville, sitting every day on the shady side of Easy Street. Mont is an honest Christian man, the atmosphere of whose home, under his protection, and presided over by his good wife, is surely refreshing and uplifting.
I remember how Lark and I when little fellows, even in our early " teens," used to ride stick horses. We held them up good and tight, whipped them and made them kick up. We galloped them down to the shore of the river and made them drink. We made them kick up again and squeal, and when tired of this sport we tied them to the old rail fence and played we were swimming in the tall smart-weeds that grew on the flat down near the old log barn built away back in the "forties " by Day Everett; and then for two days our eyes looked very much like balls of fire from playing in the weeds. Sometimes we would crawl into the loft of the old barn and help shell corn to take to mill, and then with the cobs we built houses and knocked them down, just like the many castles in the air we have built since which one after another have been cast down and destroyed by the gods of cruel fate. At school we used to have to stand at the head of the spelling class a full week to be entitled to a "head mark." Lark would be at the head of the class and I
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would work up to him, and he would hold me right there till the end of the week. Then it was his time to climb the ladder when I would hold him off until my week was up.
Lark plowed corn with a single-shovel plow, covered corn with a hoe, fed pigs and sheep and did about the same kind of stunts we other boys did, until one day he went to Pella and took up the study of telegraphy in actual work with Murray Cox, agent for the railway company in that town. He soon mastered that branch of railroad work and became agent for the company at Prairie City, if I remember correctly. His rise in the railroad work was made in leaps and bounds. He came to Des Moines where he soon became superintendent of the D. M. N. & W. Ry., now the C. M. & St. P. to Fonda and Boone. Later he became general manager of the Iowa Central Railroad, with head- quarters in Marshalltown. He found this road in deplor- able condition ; its road bed was little better than a wagon road, its rolling stock was on the "bum; " the engines were light and absolutely unfit to haul the traffic coming to the company. Lark dove into the work with all the energy he could muster. He improved the road ; he put on new engines and equipped the road with first-class roll- ing stock. The road seemed to have entered into a larger and more useful field. But, when a man thinks his honors are still aspiring, he falls like autumn leaves. While Lark lay sick for weeks, entirely unconscious of the old world's strife, of wrong, of deceit, of treachery, he was, in my judgment, pulled down from the pinnacle he had so nobly won by the very hand he had held up and trained in those days gone by.
Though Lark and I seem to have drifted apart since the old days, yet I have always rejoiced in his victories. I despise the hand that inflicted the wounds, coming as they did from the very house of his friends.
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Lark married Miss Ella Cox, sister of Murray Cox, so widely known. Two sons and a daughter blessed this union, all of whom are married and doing well. Mrs. Martin died a few years ago. After the sad breaking up of this boy's home he made his headquarters mostly in Chicago, where, after a hard fight in the old world's battles, in which he won many signal victories, and in a moment when it seemed that new trophies were already his, on the eighteenth day of September, 1909, he unex- pectedly faded into eternal sleep.
CHAPTER VII
OLD FAMILIAR SCENES AND THE RAVAGES OF TIME
Let us talk a little while of another character ; another one of the real boys, one who was an active part of the Ridge life back there-Joe, nicknamed "Joe Baleel." His young life, like those common to the times and community, began in the midst of toil and hardships and privations, yet his disposition was bright and sunny, and he was a general favorite among the boys. He shared the sports so common with the young fellows of the commu- nity. He was not extremely fond of the dance, still he rarely missed going, far and near. It was his supreme delight to be a wall-flower and watch the boys and girls in the giddy mazes of the dance, and, if he saw anything funny, go out doors and laugh. He and Mont and I used to meet at Granny's in the little log house down the lane, where, sitting around the old fireplace, we filled our pipes with "long green, " dipped them under the forestick, and then smoked to the four corners of the earth. We blew rings in the clouds as they ascended toward the low ceiling or curved up the little stone chimney and went out in the stillness of the night, and while the cold north wind whistled and moaned and beat upon the little log cabin we three builded and builded castles in the air, and listened to fairy stories as they came out from memory's storehouse, unfolded and told by "Granny." She would
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tell us of her old Kentucky home, of her girlhood days, of her journey to Illinois down on the Sangamon, where Lincoln grew and toiled and builded for the highest honor this land can give. She told of the early days down on the Ridge, of how she, with her own hands, helped to carve from the very bosom of nature the old home farm.
We boys drifted away from that old log house; the glowing coals on the warm hearth. One sad day the old place passed into other hands, and "Granny" made her home in a strange, new place. But it was never home to her ; no place like the old home with the sacred ties of years agone, no home like that, all hallowed with joys and tears and laughter and song; no spot so warm and cheerful and bright as the one which sheltered from the world's fierce storms her growing children, and from whose friendly shelter some went to war and never came back; no home like that with its four little walls where the angel of death came in and went out in the days long ago. "Granny's" old home, like Babylon, has fallen. The well and the old moss-covered bucket have dis- appeared ; nothing remains to tell the passer-by of the sad havoc time has wrought save the remnant of an old shade tree, planted there by " Granny's " own hands more than three-score years ago.
About 1873 Joe went to Monona County, where, buoyed up by the promise of better days and a home of his own, he wrought and planned and toiled. There he found a mate. One day she promised him she would help him build a home. Joe said, "Kate, I have nothing ;" and Kate said, "Neither have I," and so they started even away out there in western Iowa, and together they pros- pered and were happy. Long years afterwards, when my wandering days had, like the bursting of the golden rays of the early morning sun which kisses the dewdrops from the flowers, melted into that peace and quiet and joy
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which nothing but a home can give, Joe visited me in my own Des Moines home. The following month I visited him at his home in Onawa. The next day we lived over again the faded years gone by. When the eventide had come we said goodby, and in a few short months poor Joe, my boy friend and companion, laid himself down in that long, long dreamless sleep.
Now I am going to tell you something of "Dick, " as we boys called him back there. I used to love to go home with him to stay all night. If it were in the winter time we slept upstairs; one whole big room, not plastered. But we nestled down in a big feather bed, under great woolen comforters, and it was some sleeping we did there. We did not think it was cold outside. If it were sum- mer time we would crawl up in the barn loft and there on the new-mown hay we talked and talked until we unconsciously drifted away and away into the deep forest of dreamland. One time Dick's mother wanted some kind of work done, and Dick said that with my help he was sure we could do the job, for, said he, "Alf is as stout as a bear." Presently I said to Dick, "Do you know what makes me so strong?" "No," he said, "I really do not know." "Well," said I, "you will always find me at my best when I have a 'chaw of tobacker' in my mouth. Now, Dick, if you want to be a big, stout man right away, just chaw tobacker." But Dick did not propose to rush into manhood by the "long green " route. I soon found that the road that leads to the physical stature of a man does not run through a plug of "Battle Axe" or a twist of long green. I call to memory these lines I had heard "Lum " recite in school :
I'll never chew tobacco, no ; It is a filthy weed : I'll never put it in my mouth, Said little Robert Read.
--
-
DARIUS M. AMSBERRY.
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Dick and I went to Knoxville to a show once on a time. We had the money to pay the admission to the main show, but had nothing to buy our dinners with. We were crazy to see the side show, so we agreed to carry water from one of the wells in the west part of the town for the privilege of seeing the stunts in these side grafts. After that, it was show life for us; nothing else would satisfy us. We dickered for enough rope to build a tra- peze down in the ravine below the house by suspending it from the branches of a tree. We indulged in all the daring stunts incident to trapeze life. Then we got down on the bosom of old Mother Earth and went through con- tortions that were wonderful; why, even the saucy blue jays on the branches near by clapped their wings and cheered us long and loud !
Well, we soon began to peep over the laudscape of boy- hood into the distant horizon of a larger life. There had been little, indeed, in our boy life to stimulate us to higher thoughts, to nobler deeds and greater achivements. While we both knew that upon our own efforts alone must depend the measure of our success, yet we counted not the weary rounds that quarry the stone in its crude and natural state and then finish and polish it for the builders' use. Like Mary of old, Dick chose that "good part " which could not be taken away from him. He de- cided to enter Central University at Pella, and came pleading for me to go with him, but his pleadings were in vain.
Me go to college ! Me, a great big young man, my highest grade next to the primary class in a two-by- four schoolhouse; its furnishings, back-slab benches, a little old home-made desk for the teacher, one old smoky stove, an old water pail and rusty tin cup with a hole in the bottom, and every time one took a drink he had to put on a Grecian bend ; where I got more "itch" than
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education, and had to be greased every night and stood up before the fireplace to dry it in, and when it was all over wear a sulphur bag hanging down my front porch, sus- pended on a string, and nine times out of ten the sulphur didn't work and we had to go through the grease act again ! Me, having grown up down in the deep woods among the old "hoot owls," the bats and the ring-tailed raccoons, go to Pella to school ! Not me ; I was afraid of the " Dutch!"
But Dick went to school. He studied, he fought and he won. He went to teaching school and I went to digging coal. He became as gentle and peaceful and useful as a Homer pigeon, while I sailed at the very point of the apex with the honking geese in their wild nocturnal flight.
Once on sailing away on one of these aerial tours I had gone down the old beaten road two-hundred yards, my earthly possessions in a fifty-cent satchel, when I heard my father's voice calling. I stopped, and on looking back saw him running toward me. I waited, because I never in my wandering days went out from my old home with- out carrying with me a sore and bewildered heart. I. loved my home, though poor and humble, I will never know how many prayers went up to God nor how many tears were poured out for me by Christian parents while roaming away from the home fold. My father soon caught up with me and handed me a copy of the New Testament and asked me when far away to read it, and above all things never, never to gamble. Ten long wasted years I saw the world and sometimes fed on husks, but my promise I kept. I was thrown into all manner of temptations and among all kinds of people. I retained their friendship and their confidence, yet I never touched a gambling table nor dared to enter where I could not have taken my mother and sister with me.
Dick and I drifted apart. Once in my flight west- ward I was an hungered and thirsty when I settled down
.
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in his Grand Island home, more then a generation ago and he gave me food and drink; since which time I have known little of him and many, many times wondered if he ever thought of me.
It was in October, the orchard month of the year. The golden sun looked through the hazy sky, and the busy rounds of a week of toil were drawing to a happy finish when a short, rather stout, fairly gray man approached my desk. I thought I was in the presence of a stranger, so many of whom come into my place of business. The leaping, bounding years, had done their work. The burden of proof was on him. "Amsberry, is my name," said he. Then we clasped hands across the faded years and I called him "Dick," as of old down on the Ridge. He went with me to my home. When he and we had gathered around the dinner table we lifted our thankful hearts to God in earnest praise for having brought our paths together once more this side of that broad, strange river.
After a joyful, refreshing hour we took the train for Knoxville on our way for one more day down in that old homeland-one day among faces mostly new and strange, yet upon the ground made sacred to us by ties of long ago. About nine o'clock found us in Knoxville where we imme- diately took the trail for Charlie Crouch's. We found Charlie still able to laugh, as well as delighted to see us, especially Darius, whom we had not seen for more than thirty years. We spent the night with Charlie and Lou, and the next morning went for a call on Mont and Martha.
After we had secured a team at the livery stable we were soon speeding along over the old familiar road, bound for Coal Ridge, the Cooper place near town, the old McClain farm, the Zugg place, the Luther Fast home, wall of which e saw developed and builded up so long ago;
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then came the Compentine bottoms with its woods, its rippling streams, the bridge, the great bluff near by grown bald with age, the winding road along the foot of the hill, the little corn field nestled down near the creek, and here and there a stately elm or a sturdy old oak against whose sides the winds of more than a hundred years have beaten and driven the roots deeper and deeper into the earth. Then the old home spot where Lud and Adelaide in the early and middle daytime of life labored and toiled and loved. A little further on we passed the old spot where the little log house, " Granny's" pioneer home, gave shelter and cheer in the faded past, and then came the old home of those good people, John and Mrs. Hegwood, though changed in its outward appearance, yet the same home with its wondrous story of love and sorrow, of sunshine and shadow, of wedding feasts and the gloom and tears that come when a life goes out, tears for the little ones whose prattling voices were stilled down here but are full of laughter and song up yonder, real soul sorrow because a life-long companion has gone to a better land, yet cheered with the joyous thought of meeting some sweet day in the spring and summer land of God.
We drove on toward the old church at the cross- roads just beyond, to find that only one short week before the hungry fire gods had fallen upon it, and, save a few stones and charred timbers, nothing remained of that dear old sanctuary but a sweet memory sanctified by the tears and prayers and songs and sermons laid upon the altar there so long ago. In the very silence of the hour it seemed we could hear still voices coming up from where John S. and Elizabeth Everett, William and Emily Crouch, Sylvester McCown, John Hegwood and many others lay, calm and peaceful and still, saying, "Build ! build another house in which to worship your God and ours, even as we builded away back yonder."
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OLD FAMILIAR SCENES.
Then Dick and I drove to the little schoolhouse in the grove near by, tied our horses to a tree, and, Sunday school being in session, we entered and joined that little company of men, women and children. Although it was a joyous hour, yet our thoughts went in leaps and bounds away back over a long stretch of years to the same kind of a scene. We looked over that little band and not one face-no, not one- could we see who sat with us in Sunday school in the good old days agone.
Following the Sunday school hour came church services, with a sermon by the pastor, Jabez Beard, one whom I remember as a tow-head and never thought forty years hence I would find him pastor of the Coal Ridge Church. Jabez had one of the truest, one of the best Christian mothers I ever saw.
After the services, if Dick and I could have dis- tributed ourselves, we could have gone to a dozen places for dinner, but we compromised by my going one place and he to another with the understanding that immediately after dinner we should meet and stroll once more, but not on the same old road, down to the old "snake den." Nearly forty years since we visited that old trysting place. The shady grove above which gave shelter to the singing birds, and under whose friendly branches happy lovers built castles in the air as they whiled the hours away, had been felled by the woodman's axe, and old Mother Earth returns to the husbandman with added interest everything com- mitted to her care. The old well-worn path underneath the rocks over which we used to help our youthful sweet- hearts on a bright Sunday in the good old summer time, when we held their hands and they held ours, has been destroyed by fragments of stones thrown down by the hand of time.
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It was with difficulty we wended our way along that ancient ledge of piled-up stones in search of the name of this dear friend and that, chiseled in the old gray stone so long ago. The merciless tooth of time has gnawed away the names of some until no more their identity and date can be deciphered. Here and there on the cold, silent rocks may be found the names of those we had long since forgotten. We found inscriptions down there on those old rocks serving as a tombstone for some who sleep under the southern grass and dew. There are lovers' names in couplets, telling the sweet story of how two young hearts stood there side by side in the faded past. Then we turned with a last fond look away out over that great stretch of country round about, and wondered how much of joy and sunshine has come to them and how little of sorrow and heart burdens have been theirs, all along their drifted paths. Darius' name we could not find, while mine cut on that great rock of ages thirty-nine years ago is still there, and no one has ever chiseled his name so high on the face of that old rock.
We left this old spot probably never to be seen again by us, and going away we carried with us all we could gather up in memory-land, and then drove down the big hill into the old river bottom. We passed the very spot where, though the old home is gone, L. N. Amsberry, one of the early settlers, and useful in the activities of the church and neighborhood life, after a hard-fought battle in the old world's fierce strife, one day when the roses of June were quietly sleeping in the snowdrifts of winter, laid down the implements of warfare and went home to the God he loved. We drove on down the way and called on our old friends, Bailey and Neeley. There we said "How do you do?" and saw the finest bunch of babies at Joe's you ever saw. We said goodby, and away we went up the hill to see Jess and Gertie and Will and
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Laura, and, last but not least, the best mother-in-law in fourteen states, Grandma Hegwood. We then bade fare- well to the old Ridge and away we went. Happy day ! Happy visit ! Blessed memory ! Kindly people !
Darius was not through with his visit in old Marion, so I left him with Sallie and Emmet, who had kindly volunteered to take him to visit other friends. I return- ed home Monday. The next day Darius came over to the State House to say goodby. We walked slowly down that long, tiled corridor and out on the broad granite steps to the north. Twice we said goodby and twice our hands met in silent grasp, and when the last. word was spoken we knew that his heart and mine had beaten in unison with the hand. The dividing line fell and we found each alone again. Darius returned to his home in Broken Bow, Nebraska, where he holds a good government position, and where he has lived a useful and happy life.
Don't think, my friends, that in unfolding the scenes of the old days down on the Ridge we are content to live in the buried years back there. But it does seem to me after all that :
There are no boys like the old boys When we were boys together, When the grass was sweet to our brown, bare feet That dimpled the laughing heather ; When the pewee sang in the summer dawn, Or the bee in the billowy clover, Or down under the hill the old whippoorwill Echoed his song over and over.
There are no girls like the good old girls ; Against the world I'd stake 'em ; As rosy as a peach and clean of heart As the Lord knew how to make 'em !
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They were rich in spirit and common sense, And piety all supportin';
They could bake and stew, and hoe the corn, too And they made the finest courtin'.
Where are the girls of yesterday ? Pink-cheeked from the brush of morn,
Hoarding nature's rare wealth,
A bounding heart and good health, Pulling shucks from the yellow corn.
It will do you and me no harm, but it may soften the heart to go back just for to-night only to the scenes which make the starting point in our young lives. Back to the old churchyard, into that silent city along whose streets reposes the sacred dust of the dead. Perhaps father and mother sleep there side by side, with a single stone mark- ing the place beneath which they rest. And may be father waits for the heart he left behind, or mother peacefully longs for the final reunion of all the sweet home links. The grass has for years grown over their silent beds. There are many neglected graves down there. On the hillside overlooking the winding stream where once state- ly oaks tossed their branches in the wind are sunken graves overgrown with grass and heaped with debris, that no eye has seen or friendly hand caressed for years, and their names have long since dropped from human speech. And then we turn aside to other scenes, to other days down there, and plead again for the dear old days, saying in our hearts :
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