USA > Iowa > Marion County > Down on the ridge : reminiscences of the old days in Coalport and down on the ridge, Marion County > Part 8
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It was in Pella we boys first had the exquisite pleasure of seeing a show. How we did hang around that lone elephant, and wonder why it was he had two tails, and laugh right out every time he stuck one of them in his mouth ! We were simply amazed at the monkeys, and the girl in a great bunch of short skirts standing on one big toe and the other foot pointing toward heaven, palm outward, while the horse on which she stood went gallop- ing around and around, was a wonder to us. I could not understand how she could stick to that horse, just what mysterious power held heron, with only her toe touching, while I, astride and with both hands firmly twisted into his mane, would always fall off every time a horse went out of a walk. But when the old clown came out with his trick donkey hitched to a little cart and went through a few stunts, we just simply went wild, and the Sunday school lesson for the following Sunday all went glimmer- ing in the circus ring.
Following that show some of us boys went immediately into training. We tried somersaults backward and
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forward ; we erected a trapeze on a horizontal limb down in a shady, secluded spot, and performed wonderful feats on that. We made a hard fight and lost.
Some of us never missed a show. How we got the price I do not know. We usually walked to town, carried water to get to see the side grafts, and paid our way into the big show. For dinner we usually filled up on dried herring, crackers and water from the town pump. We walked home in the evening, or begged a ride from some farmer who had taken "Liza Jane " and all the children, "just to see the animals," and "blowed himself" for two dollars and six-bits, collected for eggs his wife had sold.
But I want to tell you now that in after years, when riper, bolder days had come and fortune had shed her smile upon us broad and deep, we boys hitched up to th old farm wagon and with spring seats or boards for seats went to Knoxville, saw the show and all the side grafts, filled our girls up on crackers and cheese, candy and red lemonade, stayed late and drove home in the night, drove slow, and drove the fartherest way around, and had the girls do the driving because they liked to! Practice had made some of these girls very proficient in the art.
My friends, seriously speaking our advantages were very meagre. However, in most of the girls and boys down there was an inherent love for music, for things beautiful. How unfortunate, indeed, that some of them couldn't have postponed their beginning in life until a later period, so as to have enjoyed the privileges of to-day ! O how much faster and farther would they have marched up the hill of life! But this I know, we made the most we could of the advantages, circumstances and oppor- tunities the day and conditions then afforded. 1 lay down this challenge, that no community in Iowa has given to the world more professional men, more business
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men, more successful farmers and teachers, more honest, Christian people or better wives or mothers or mothers-in- law than has that old neighborhood, down on the Ridge. In a conversation with L. M. Martin one time on this subject, he remarked: "Blood will tell." Now, I know that the good old blood our pioneer fathers and mothers brought from "Old Virginia " in the long ago was good, blue blood.
I said awhile ago that love for music was inborn in the most of the girls and boys down there, but their opportunities for cultivating these faculties were very limited. These musical instincts were natural, because the only music the neighborhood afforded was the song of the birds in the springtime and the awful squeak of the old wooden cane mill in sorghum time ; or, when some old fiddler hauled down his fiddle and bow and gave us "Money Musk," "The Arkansas Traveler, " or "Pat Mulligan's Wedding." There was not much dancing down there unless we could dance these same pieces or something else without the fiddle. Dancing was all right, but the fiddle was off. If we could find some one, and I was usually "it," who could whistle
Charlie, he's a good-natured lad ; Charlie, he's a dandy ; Charlie, he will use you well, And treat you on good candy :
or The Girl I Left Behind Me." A cotillion would be made up at once and then it was:
O, the merry swings and whirls, Of the happy boys and girls, In the good old cotillion long ago.
O, they danced the Highland fling, And they cut the pigeon wing, To the music of the whistler long ago.
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It was "Swing your partners, and all promenade !" while the whistler kept up his whistling :
If you love me as I love you We'll have no time to tarry ; But will have the old folks fixing around For you and me to marry.
I suspect, I know, some of them did get married and many a " Susie " has not known the taste of candy since. Some men think their wives' tastes pass through a sudden and lasting change immediately following the wedding ceremony.
Dancers are expected to pay the fiddler, but these being whistling dances the whistler got nothing but dry cracked lips ; and, besides, it took the balance of the night to reduce the pucker in his whistle.
The first organ we young folks ever saw was a little bit of a dinky thing not much larger than a cracker box which was brought into the neighborhood by one Dan Van Ness, a music teacher from Eddyville, who had secured a class on the Ridge who were anxious to cul- tivate their musical talent. He brought with him his daughter who played, and, besides, being pretty, we thought she could sing. Anyway, every time she played and sang we thought we were in heaven and were being entertained by one of God's angels playing on a heavenly instrument. There was, then, during the course of these lessons, and for a long time afterwards, such a wave of music as has never been equaled in any rural community in this fair land of Iowa.
Show me the community where its young people come together to sing and laugh and drive the clouds and tears away, and I will show you a people whose ideals are above and beyond the reach of the gross and sordid things. The sweet strains of music have moved and
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melted multitudes into tears. By its sweet notes tired and weary armies have been marshalled into battle array.
Music will soften where language will fail us; Feelings long buried 'twill often restore.
Don't you know that while we applaud the singer of to-day and the musician who lets his hair grow a foot and a half long, their singing or their playing does not appeal to us like the music away back yonder ?
Oh ! give me the old songs, the kind we used to sing : When the dew was on the flower and the bee was on the wing.
O, say ! Don't you recollect :
Them ol' sweet hymns that used to float so high
'Peared like they shook the winders in the ever- lastin' sky ;
Fer, when we heard the preacher say : "Some brother pitch the tune ! " We allus knowed " Amazin' Grace " was comin' mighty soon.
Then somehow or other the songs of to-day do not go down into the heart like the old songs : not like the old songs we heard at mother's knee before the evening prayer was said ; not like the old songs our parents sung in the early evening twilight, the sweet mellowing cadences of which mounted round after round the mystic ladder that reaches into the highlands of heaven. Don't you, my dear friends, this very night, remember the good old songs we used to sing away back on the old home playground ?
King William was King James' son, And from a royal race he sprung.
How we bowed to the east and bowed to the west, and then picked out the girl we loved the best! And while we kept going around in youthful bliss we knelt beside a lassie there and stole the first sweet kiss. I'd
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like to sing " King William " now just like we used to sing. when life was like a primrose just bursting into spring. Somehow I like those old songs. Don't you ?
"The Old Elm Tree," "The Maple on the Hill,"
"Some Twenty Years Ago, Tom, " and " Dear Old Whip-poor-will;"
" A Starry Night for a Ramble," "The Miller and His Mill."
"Mollie Darling " and "The Poor House Over the Hill."
O my friends of the long ago, wherever you may be this night, I tell it to you again and again, that as I look back upon the scenes of my early recollections down there in the old homeland I am softened and subdued into a sweet, pensive sorrow which only the happiest and holiest associations of bygone years can call into being. There . are times in my life and in yours, no doubt, when grief lies heaviest on the soul, when memory weeps, when gather- ing clouds of mournful melancholy pour out their floods and drown our very hearts in tears.
O beautiful isle of memory, lighted by the morning star of life, where roses bloom by the wayside, where the robins sing among the cherry blossoms, where the old river ripples along toward the sea! There are echoes of songs that are sung no more, tender words spoken by lips that are dust now, blessings from dear and kindly hearts that are still ; there's a useless cradle and a broken doll, a sunny tress and an empty garment carefully and tear- fully folded and laid away ; there's a lock of silver hair and an unforgotten prayer ; a mother and father, a brother or sister, a friend of my boy life is sleeping in that returnless land.
There are few people who do not look back with more or less pleasure upon the days of their childhood. Those
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days may have been marked by poverty, by hardships, by many privations, but childhood and youth care nothing for these things. There was a young life looking out upon a world that was new and full of wonder; the great, round, red sun sinking to his rest beyond the western hills, the full or crescent moon, the glittering stars shin- ing down from their lofty thrones, the cloud, the tempest, the green grass and beautiful flowers, all living things- these filled our young lives down there with awe or glad- ness. And then there was the trust of childhood which lends to the young life its chief and most valued charm. There are the loves of youth-time which come back to us like perfume of fragrant flowers across the gulf of depart- ed years. Those early loves may be broken, but scarcely, if ever, entirely forgotten. Not many but think of their sweetheart lassie or boy lover away back in the morning of life, when every day was like the morning sunshine, while they day by day builded castles in the air. All these things make boyhood and girlhood beautiful as we look upon it in the deepening twilight of memory.
And yet in spite of the charms that attended us in the faded past few of us would be willing to go back and begin our lives at the cradle and live them over again. Too well we know the thorns that infest life's pathway and the bitterness and grief and tears that are mingled in the cup of joy. It was beautiful, indeed, to have been a girl or boy once and to have had the experience of youth- time, but we do not care to purchase this blessedness again at the price of traveling once more life's rough and thorny way.
CHAPTER XI
THE WELCH AND DAVENPORT FAMILIES. PROMINENT FIGURES IN PIONEER LIFE
Among the early settlers of the Ridge community I am quite sure it would be of interest to a great many of my friendly readers to bring out of the shadows of the past the Welch family, who were a part of the pioneer life down on Coalport bottom. These people came originally from North Carolina. They settled near the west bank of the Des Moines River. Being in the midst of a mighty forest of magnificent timber they soon erected a saw mill and began the manufacturing of lumber, a thing of neces- sity then to the many newcomers.
The frame of the saw mill building was of massive square timbers mortised and pinned after the fashion of the times. It had an upper and a lower story. Into the upper story the logs were drawn on a heavy carriage run on an incline of trestle work, the carriage being drawn by the aid of a large rope and windlass. The method of sa w- ing lumber in those days would seem very unique compared with our modern methods, by which many thousands of feet of lumber are cut in a day. This old saw was called a " Muley." It looked very much like a large cross-cut saw, worked straight up and down through the log, and each and every board that fell from the surface of the slowly-creeping timber told the story of a long and tedious trip against the gnawing teeth of that old saw.
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A little later a circular saw and proper machinery were purchased and installed down on the ground floor, and a . set of millstones with hopper and spout and all the . necessary equipment for grinding corn and a kind of a grind at wheat was put in place on the upper floor. To this mill many of the pioneers brought their corn, carry- ing it on horseback. In those days "corn pone" and "pioneers " were synonymous terms, and sometimes it was hominy instead of corn pone.
I want to tell you right now, you latter-day saints and sinners, you do not know what real life is unless three times a day, day after day, you have sat down in front of a plate loaded down with corn pones, made of meal, a little salt and lard and perhaps a goodly supply of old- fashioned saleratus. A real corn dodger is from four to eight inches long, made something like a big goose egg, then flattened down a little on the terrestial and celestial sides, with deep impressions of the fingers therein, baked in a heavy skillet or oven placed on a bed of coals and covered with a heavy iron lid well heaped with the same kind of fuel. These big brown boys taken out of the skillet real hot and pulverized in good rich milk and eaten from an iron spoon produced the type of soldiers whose physiques and endurance excited the admiration of General Sherman, who, during the civil war when review- ing a long line of western men, asked the colonel of his regiment, " Where did you get that fine bunch of men ?" the colonel said : "Raised them out west on corn dodgers and beans." But the youngster of this day and age must have " cream puffs and pie and puddin'. As a matter of fact, if one of the boys back there had landed on a fellow like these, in just one minute there would not have been enough left of him to make a square meal for a buffalo gnat.
William Welch built, of native lumber, what for that period was a very large and commodious home into which
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Betsy and the boys and girls, of whom there were a goodly number, went and set up the family altar. Just west of this new house was a small log shanty about 10x10 feet in dimensions. It was entered by one small door and lighted by one little pinched-up window of four panes, 8x10 inches, and in one end was a fireplace. In this shanty lived Joe Kinney, reputed to be the laziest man living, without the aid or consent of any other man on earth. This man, if I may be allowed to call him such, placed his bed alongside of the north wall with the bed near the chimney. In the morning his wife would get up and start the fire and old Joe would reach for his long- stemmed pipe, load it up with long green, plunge it into the red hot coals under the forestick, light it and lie there and smoke like a steamboat.
On the north side of the Welch home was a long narrow room in which were groceries, minus all the modern health foods, one pound of which is guaranteed to contain more actual nourishment than a ten-pound cut of the best beef put on the market by the biggest beef trust in America. The merchandise kept in this little room was shipped by boat from Keokuk. The boat land- ing was at the end of " Western Avenue," which extended from the Day Everett place on the westto "River Street," fronting the waters of the classic Des Moines. Here the " Des Moines Belle, " the "Ad. Hines " and " Clara Hines " and other floating palaces used to head in on their way to Fort Des Moines.
This Welch house was originally intended for a large merchantile stock, but, owing to the factthat of the small number of people living in the community, nearly if not quite all got their clothing from the sheep's back and reveled in such substantial luxuries as corn dodgers and bacon, Uncle Billy Welch was wise enough to confine his stock largely to salt, saleratus and chewing tobacco. As a matter of fact the tobacco trade was very dull, because
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most of the men (and some of the women ) chewed and smoked long green, while as to nails they went like tar through a very small gimlet hole on a cold day in January, for most of these pioneers when they wished to fasten a rail or pole to a post " withed " it on with a young hickory sprout twisted until it was as pliable as rope. So, in ad- dition to the nail trade, the rope business was also para- lyzed. He, however, kept a small roll of rope in stock for the vigilance committee organized to hang horse thieves, but to the best of my knowledge the only thing ever stolen in that pioneer neighborhood was a ham of meat, and I always had serious doubts about that little transaction. The party missing the ham maintained from the very beginning that he knew the color of the hair of the man who got the ham by the size of his tracks left on the smoke- house floor. That statement may have been true ; but if the supposed man who purloined that ham was hungry he was certainly entitled to something to eat, because he that hath shall have it taken away from him, and he that hath not shall get all he can.
Uncle Billy Welch and his family were the most well- to-do people in the entire community, and withall very fine people. They were kind and thoughtful and helpful to the poor, struggling along trying to get a toehold in the business activities of the county, which, owing to the lack of shipping facilities, afforded no market for farm products. Hence the farming activities of the neighbor- hood were at an exceedingly low ebb. The farmers raised just simply enough to afford food for themselves and for their stock, which was few in number, so to get in all the time they hunted deer and "coons" and employed the extra days shaking with ague. Why, I have seen people down there trying their level best to keep from freezing to death in the merry month of August.
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" In dog days, " when every dog has his day, I have seen the ague victims go to bed about ten o'clock A.M., heard them call for all the bed clothes in the house. and finish up with a feather bed on top, weighted down with chairs and benches and three-legged stools, and even then the old fashioned bed rattled like a "horse fiddle." When the freezing frenzy had subsided the very fires of hades seemed to be let loose and the suffering victim could drink the river dry. Some of these poor pioneers down there had the ague so long and so severely they grew so thin that in these shaking seizures you could hear their ribs rattle, while some carried oil cans to oil their knee joints. In one family down there a young man had an annual chill which lasted from New Year's Day until the week after Christmas. If one should meet his father and enquire after the health of the family he would invariably say, "Oh, they're all well except Joe, and he has the damned agie."
A way back there many of the pioneer fathers went to Keokuk or Burlington to mill, or pounded their corn into meal on a flat rock, or else boiled the corn until it was soft and ate it like a cow. Aunt Betsy Welch used to tell how over in Illinois they used to go many miles to the mill and returning would bring back flour, shorts, bran and corn meal. She said they always ate the best first and finally wound up on bran. There came a time, however, when those people lived on the fat of the land. During the war period they purchased the L. N. Ams- berry place on the hill. Sometime prior to this they had, together with Jonas Leiter, bought and installed a new and modern mill plant near where Joe Neely now lives. Mr. Leiter soon after retired from the business and went back to Pella, leaving the mill in full control of the Welch families, then including Uncle Johnnie Welch, a brother of William, and his boys. In .
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addition to the lumber productions they also made shingles for both of which there had sprung up a ready demand that continued until the advent of the railroad into Pella, bringing the pine products from the great pineries of the north.
In those days among the luxuries that were scarce, and one which most boys crave, were nice big red apples. Uncle Billy Welch, as was his custom, would send teams down into Jefferson and Henry counties and bring back a wagon load or two for the winter's use. Aunt Betsy, knowing the appetite of the average boy, never forgot to give me a bountiful supply when I happened around, and I never forgot to happen around good and plenty. By reason of these little kindnesses on the part of Aunt Betsy a few of the boys soon acquired a keen relish for that kind of fruit.
In the course of time Uncle Jack Reynolds had suc- ceeded in developing the only bearing orchard in that community. Uncle Jack had also cultivated a very fine taste for apples, and besides was very jealous of his rights. It was said he enjoyed the game of taste or smell; that is, he would select a very fine apple and was kind enough to let the boys do the smell act while he would do the eating. We boys submitted to this thing until we became raving anarchists, so laying aside our moral rectitude, if we ever had any of that article on hand, a few of us many a night dragged ourselves on our bellies for more than two hundred yards to a certain tree previously located, where we proceeded to fill up on apples and carry some away for future use. These we hid in the deep woods, buried with leaves alongside of a log. Then when grim old winter had come and covered up all the roses of June, when those friendly old apple trees seemed so firmly held in the em- brace of the old winter king that the blossoms and fruit and song birds would never come again, we knew where the old apple hole was.
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Down in the orchard Uncle Jack would bury the tempting fruit and leave a small opening through which he could thrust his arm and hook out the fruit. This opening he kept filled with straw, and over all he piled the pure white snow. We boys, like the pretty little squirrel who, on a bright winter day ventures from his tiny home in the heart of a big old oak and goes straight to a nut hidden beneath the snow, knew where the old apple hole with its juicy treasure was located, all covered with the frozen tears of heaven, down there under the leafless branches of an old apple tree. There with the aid of a rod from the end-gate of a wagon, pointed for that purpose, we quietly pulled those juicy old fellows from their hiding place, one by one, and nobody saw us but God and the man in the moon.
I want to say to you that there was one person down there we boys would not have taken one single apple from if they had been piled high in the road, and that was good old Aunt Betsy Welch. Uncle Billy Welch's family were actively devoted to the things that furnish uplift to human life; they catered to the æsthetic, the beautiful things dedicated by the Creator for our use. They were not satisfied like so many are with any old thing, but be- lieved that it was part of God's plan that his children should strive for the very best of everything; that they should by honest methods lay hold of everything which would add beauty to life and home, that would appeal to higher ideals, and stimulate to higher thoughts and greater achievements.
God himself set the pace and gave his approval to the attainment of the best and most beautiful things of a material kind that enhance pleasure, increase innocent enjoyment, and lend a refreshing charm to all. He never made anything that was not beautiful. Everything shows that the touch of the brush was in the hands of
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a skilful artist. The beautiful plumage with which he clothes the singing bird, whose sweet morning songs bring so much of cheer, the beautiful flowers with their many- tinted colorings and their many varieties of fragrance growing all along man's pathway, the buds and blossoms and fruits, the green fields of waving grain, the golden harvests, the rosebud kissed by the morning sunbeam, the blade of grass bearing upon its tender tip the silent tears of night nodding a kindly welcome to the morning sunshine-all, all appeal to us for the best we can give to society of beautiful things, of kindly surroundings, of all the material things which add to the pleasure and happi- ness of mankind and enlarge and expand the æsthetic sense.
God furnished in detail the plan and sent the widow's son, whose skilful hands beautified and adorned the first temple erected to him as a place of worship. All of God's "blue prints" tell of beautiful things. He emphasized his disapproval of things distasteful when he said : "Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass." He knew that a team of that character could plow, but he also knew that a team of that kind would not be attractive. He knew just what sort of a man would drive a team of that kind. Then why should man be supremely contented with the things which bring no awakening response for better things, for the things which cultivate and enlarge the mind and that fit the soul as a living stone for that temple on high, that city whose very streets are said to be paved with gold ?- a figurative illustration of things beautiful. Our places erected for worship should be the very best we can do for God. Think of the dazzling beauty of the temple on Mount Moriah, whose magnificence and glory came from God's own hand.
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