The Chariton Leader, Chariton, Iowa Thursday, December 28, 1905 'In The Early Days' ------------- Lucas County is Full of Historic Resources and Long Forgotten Love. There is a fascination about one's boyhood that the future years fail to obliterate. In fact the memories of the youthful days are ever fresh in the minds of those who can be described as "aged" when the more important things of middle life are forgotten. You perhaps have noticed this among your older acquaintances. Early impressions are lasting. This is the reason that moral and intellectual training should not be neglected in childhood. But we digress. It is not the intention to invade the realm of the philosophic at the present time. There is a sort of romance clustering about childhood which sweetens the years to come, be they ever so disappointing. The term "romance of childhood" is used, not that childhood is unreal -- but the dreams of future greatness seldom materalize. The prophecies do not come true and that rose future pictured in the imagination is but a mirage in almost everyones career. Still they are pleasant in the retrospect and the struggles and bi! tter disappointments -- and oft time sorrows -- of the present are forgotten. The individual with a blighted childhood has neither beginning nor ending of days. He knows nothing of earthly joys. He has a scant stock of primitive happiness to draw upon and as a result his future prospect for Heaven, fewer charms. Still a boy can get considerable satisfaction out of adverse circumstances but care should be taken not to let the clouds obscure his perpetual sunshine. The writer was once a boy in the enchanted haunts of Washington Township. A trip up the river Nile has never been enjoyed by globe trotters with greater realism than the meet at the old "swimmin' hole," in the Chariton River, after Sunday School on Sunday afternoons, in the good old summertime, when the sun glinted the green prairies and the southerly winds variegated the flower studded scenes with its receding waves. No mountain chain offered grander nights than the bluffs along the stream -- and the stretches of pampas beyond -- Iowa pampas, however. In the autumn "jarvisberry" expeditions into the wilderness were full of wild adventures and after the bleak winter came Theodore Roosevelt never pursued the spotted tailed deer into the game fields of the west with greater zeal than the cotton tailed rabbits were hunted to their warrens. The prairie fires in the springtime were a delight, magnified into all imaginable proportion, and torches glowed from a thousand hills. Then all herding beasts sought cover and many a writhing serpent perished before the unrequiting flames. When next the charred tufts had sufficiently cooled expeditions went forth to search for the lifeless remains of big snakes. This sport seldom failed to elicit the wildest enthusiasm. Often the warm embers made it uncomfortable to bare feet but the ardor of the game banished all tendency to flinch. This was the one daring superb. A trip to JERRY DUTTON's saw mill was more wonderful than a world's fair and the boy who could graphically explain to his wondering fellows how the big steel circle could cut the great elm logs into boards or building material was an august personage indeed. Then it was a matter of extraordinary wonderment among them the way JERRY could sweat. He had the reputation among the boys of beng a marvel as a "cusser" and often at their gathering they discussed the matter as to what kind of punishment would be meted out to him after life's fitful fever. In after years it occurred to us that JERRY's profanity had probably been exaggerated but as an extenuating circumstance let it be understood that JERRY made no profession of religion. In looking back over the years it is with befitting sorrow that we realize the "original characters" of the earlier days have nearly all been called to the pioneer's reward. One is called to mind -- DAVY EVANS -- who resided just across the Lucas County line on the white oak ridge near the grave yard. We had had tales recited to us from the Arabian Nights by an eccentric pedagogue, but had never read the book. Likely there was not a copy of the work in the neighborhood, but owing to DAVID's naturally superstitious nature, intensified by his peculiarly favored location up against the grave yard he was constantly seeing things and stories of ghostly encounters were blood curdling in the extreme and it became the talk among the boys that DAVID was also the author of the Arabian Nights entertainments as welll as the spook yarns. It took many years of adult reasoning to rectify this impression in the writer's mind and there yet may be those of his earlier associates still lab! oring under the delusion. DAVID was frequently chased by apparitions in his belated journeyings from the grist mill or the little obscure post office, and sometimes he was compelled to appease their wrath with offerings of corn meal or bacon purchased at the OSPREY Store, however, never halting in his Tam-O'-Shanter flight to venture an interview. It became noised about that some of the young men of the community knew more about this spiritual aggression than was wise to tell, but be that as it may, years and years and years ago, DAVID moved to Kansas with his faith in ghosts unshaken and his horror for grave yards unabated. As you travel up the county line -- or for that matter down it -- you will pass the ancient site of the "big brown house." In the early days when the "prairie schooners" plied along the "Trace" the prevailing question of the "dry land" mariners as they passed on the prairie wilds, was "How far is it to the big brown house?" Perhaps it would be a more startling embellishment to associate this primitive mansion with some startling tragedy. But as we are not delving into the realms of romance we care not to excite interest in that way. It is simply coupled with the history of that part of the country, and while the building would not be of unusual size today, at that time it was looked upon as a marvel of architectural greatness. This habitation was erected by one, JOHN STODDARD Esq., well known to the history of the times, and typified his eccentricity in its design and arrangement. His cultivated fields skirted the historic old road and undulated far into the vista. The! old house may be standing still, if so it is to that highway what the castle ruins are to the Rhine. Boyhood life was full of frontier embryo. The genius of youth invented plenty of excitement. During the Nauvoo hegira, years previous, a band of Utah pilgrims halted on the creek, off from the Trace, and went into winter quarters. Starvation and famine carried many human beings away, as the numerous graves in the clearings could testify. The trials of these people abandoning their homes and fleeing to the wilderness for conscience sake, as related by our elders, aroused youthful interest -- especially when the endurance of savage hostility further west was taken into account -- and the impressment of the flower of Mormonism into military service during the Mexican War. It is not strange then that this field of the dead should form the rallying ground for the youthful defenders of the oppressed. The writer confesses that he has shot many an imaginary red warrior from behind these earthern tombs and it is to be doubted whether Col. Cody or Gen. Custer ever experienced a ! greater satisfying glory. "Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands -- The smith, a mighty man is he With broad and sinewy hands." The above is one of the immortal odes of Longfellow. From the days of the ancients the forge has held a high place in the useful trade. In the olden times of war it shaped the battle axe and the sword and of later time modeled them into plow shares and pruning hooks. Down at "Union Corners," half way around the quarter from Old Greenville, on the Trace, to the "big brown house (we boys called it red) stood "Uncle" ABBOTT KENDALL's blacksmith shop. Down the sweep to the river was a most beautiful view, and across the road was "Uncle" JIMMY WOODRUFF's store while constantly were passing the current of restless humanity in the caravans of the age to the then almost unexplored regions of the sunset. The spreading chestnut tree in this case happened to be a broadleaf maple which tempered the vertical rays while the artisan toiled and talked -- though of a somewhat reticent nature. The smith was a man of character "with broad and sinewy hands." It is remembered that on lone! some occasions the boys used to congregate in the smoky little shop to "watch the flaming forge and hear the bellows roar." to them there was fantasma in the flying sparks and a rhythm in the anvil's ring. It was often the forum for discussion of subjects germane to neighborhood and state and the opinions of the pioneer philosophers here were freely exchanged. It is yet vivid. We agin see "Uncle ABBOTT" halt over a half formed piece of mechanism to interpose a suggestion and then return to his model with even regularity. One of his favorite sayings was: "When a man is honest in money matters, why, with me, that covers a multitude of sins." The philisophy was that the redeeming qualities of the financial dead beat were to be doubted. Has publicist or prelate improved on the philosophy? We think not. This was more than a generation ago. Men and women have passed on and scenes have changed, yet it seems but yesterday. -- Author Unknown. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert September 1, 2004