This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Charlton, Chase, Ake, Polly, Pauley, Diggs, Phoebe, Anthoney, Esterle, Metcalf, Grandhomme, Wilkinson, Russell, McSpaden, Stevens Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/zMB.2ACI/853 Message Board Post: IRON COUNTY REGISTER, Ironton, Iron Co. MO, Thurs. March 28, 1935. MORE MAINSTREET MEMORIES PART 3 By Cora Chase Charlton Some errors crept into our last contribution, doubtless because the proof reader was ill at the time. Am I not right, Mr. Ake? Perhaps one change from the original was done intentionally as most people would consider that my version was a mistake. That was in the spelling of the name Mary Pauley. Naturally it was thought to be Polly, but I have reason to believe the name came originally from the sir-name of owners, either Mary's or her ancestor's. There was a prominent family of the name Pauley. It may have become forgotten, but our old Tom Diggs inherited a distinguished name similarly. In Virginia the name of Diggs was a proud one, and he boasted of this fact about his old owners, to any who would listen, and I have read about the family since. It was curious by what means the ex-slaves acquired sir-names. Our Aunt Phoebe's children took her given name for their last names, hence we had John Phoebe and so on. Later he called himself John Anthoney, just why I never knew. Old Tom could truthfully be called the town drunkard, though he may have had good company, less in evidence. And, as my predecessor has said, were we kids afraid of him! (Beg pardon, we were not kids in those days.) He probably strove to keep up the illusion that he was a bad man, judging by the rolling eyes and dark grimaces he used to make, but really, did he ever commit any worse misdemeanors than getting drunk and lying in the gutter? I have one mental picture of him that lives. He was standing at our back door, (and he must have been hungry to get so far from his regular beat.) My mother had given him a ham bone from which the meat had not all been taken. In an effort at being very agreeable, (gratitude I suppose), he started a long harangue against the "goldurned revs" (rebels) which I suppose he thought would be bound to gain the favor of a Northern woman. (No doubt at his next stop he discoursed as elequently against the "damned Yankees"). But he used the ham bone to! good effect in wide gestures. I can just see his old gunny sack apron this minute. Anna mentioned an old timer, Dr. Esterle, (she did not quite recall his name), as being our first dentist, and so far as I can remember, she is right. There were years and years when people who had means went to St. Louis for dental work. Indeed I have an acute personal memory along that line. I had gone to stay all night at Metcalf's and during the night was seized with a desperate tooth ache. I was about twelve years old, and it would have to be a desperate ache that could make me run home in the dark, alone. My father started with me pronto for Grandhomme's. We had to go through a bar-room scene not readily forgotten, to a back room where Mr. Grandhomme kept some dental instruments and leeches. The deed was soon done, without the benefit of anesthesia of any kind, and I think I even had a feeling of deep gratitude for the relief. I have since decided I lost a good double tooth needlessly, which I could still put to good use! Two pictures in the house have served to keep the memory of Dr. Esterle green. He might have been the original Beau Brummel for all I know, and one of these pictures is a photograph of him sitting at a table playing chess with another dude whose name has tantalized by eluding us. It almost comes. They have their hats tipped back in the well known manly pose of deep thinking. Dr. Esterle has wavy side-burns, and really, I believe, spats! At any rate light striped pants. The other picture is an oil painting he made of the Tom Sauk falls. I suppose it is an easy trip to those falls these days and I dare say the same pond is still on top of the mountain with its dense population of frog vocalizers. And I wonder if one plank remains to remind one of the place which used to be called "Vail's Folly." I wish I had a nineteen hundred and four dollar for every time I ever rode horseback to those falls! My sister remembers the doctor's faun. But all those years we were going without a dentist and many other public conveniences we had a commodious and well conducted photograph gallery. And probably no business nor proprietor of any business there will be remembered longer than Mr. Wilkinson, because in almost every family are treasured from generation to generation the things he created, photographs of ourselves and other members of our families. How many "likenesses" could you produce in which his rustic table figured? Perhaps the baby sat on it, with a mother's protecting arm around it. Perhaps the grand-mother or father sat beside it with elbow resting on it. Perhaps the straight youth stood beside it scorning it's support. It may have been adorned differentily at different times, say a new cloth one time or a bouquet at another time. Maybe one of Judge Russell's beautiful bouquets. And they were good pictures for that day, because Mr. Wilkinson was a conscientious workman. As Anna reminds us, that building is! gone, but never the memories! It used to house the bank and at different times, other business. The family lived in down stairs rooms at the back. Still further back was a long grape arbor sheltering benches on which we youngsters played. Hanging in it were cages of pert redbirds, whistling and disporting their bright plumage. We have no redbirds in the west. I do not know why, for the climate is no more difficult on the coast. Perhaps not more than three souls living remember what a strict disiplinarian Mr. Wilkinson was. He must have inherited his methods straight from the severest puritan traditions. He thought it disrespectful for his boys to sit at the table while their elders were eating, so they ate standing. Boys have been known before and since to become quite blood-thirsty, simmering in the heat of what to them seemed rank injustice. Anyway Fred froze my youthful marrow once by confiding in me that his very first act after attaining his majority would be to mur-r-der his father! I haven't the slightest doubt that he was always an affectionate and dutiful son. I wonder if we have gone as far to an opposite extreme with children. Mrs. Wilkinson owned and played well a fine guitar. She taught me to play and saw to it that I cauterized my tender finger tips by searing them against a hot iron. All I ever knew of "thorough bass," chords and keys, I learned of her and transferred to other instruments. And now for some laughs! Their two boys were about the ages of we two sisters and as we lived near we played together a lot. Fred and I were co-partners in such projects as sled and stilt building. "Artie" being naturally docile and properly subdued by a big brother, consented (sometimes) to gentler ways of passing the long days. It was a favorite diversion of my sister's to "play lady" and to this game he now and then lent himself good naturedly. First of all she usually gave his hair a good shampoo and braided it far enough to admit of a ribbon bow being tied on. (Boys did not patronize barbers in those days as they do now). Then came a dress of our mother's which permitted a generous train. Last of all so! me piece of the then startling millinery was placed on his head, and a fan in his hand. At such times as he appeared in this role he became, automatically, Artemesia instead of Artie. And now permit me to skip over a period of a mere forty years or so, and what is forty years in the fulfillment of human destinies! During that period I had not seen the Wilkinsons. I had an exchange of letters with "Artie" once in a great while. Knew him to be a business man on a large and prosperous scale, in the East. I had not thought to renew our friendship on this planet. Then one day as I sat in our distant home I answered a phone call. One of the office force of our swankiest hotel said a guest wanted Mrs. Charlton. Then a deep and impressive voice said, "Mrs. Charlton?" Irked a little by the pause that followed I said, "Who is speaking, please?" And came the answer -- "Artemesia!" It was one of "those moments", needless to say. And this time I will end with another of my life's coincidences. I had the pleasure of spending about ten days with my old friend Mrs. Luke McSpaden, once of Piedmont, when she lived in Officers' Row at Langley Flying Field, Virginia, her son being an officer. That visit would make a lively article in itself. One of the interesting features of it to me was the presence in the home of Capt. Albert W. Stevens, one of this country's flying photographic aces over the seas. Lewis McSpaden had been his trusted pilot, and they remained friends. You will understand that it was a great privilege to become so well acquainted with Stevens when I tell you that he is the Capt. Stevens who was one of the three who went up in our Government's stratospheric experiment last summer; the Capt. Stevens who explored for the Government the upper waters of the Amazon; the Capt. Stevens who furnishes the Geographic magazine so many articles and wonderful pictures; the Capt. Stevens recently enterta! ined by Mr. and Mrs. Lindbergh. I might bask in a little reflected glory by saying that he visited us here and showed us his pictures of the Amazon trip before they got into the Geographic. One picture, among many that never did get in, reveals the streak of mischief still lingering in the Captain. In one of those never before visited villages, with their round, grass thatched habitations, the flying party were on friendly terms with the bewildered natives, and were privileged to take many pictures. A young pair that were recently mated stood up to be taken, in what you can imagine was an abbreviated costume. His arm was around her. Capt. Stevens stepped to her side and put his arm around her also. In developing the picture he rubbed out the "groom" (if we may call him that), and caused the most mystified savage that ever was. There stood his wife, there stood the Captain, but where was he! Myself, I think it was a mean trick. Probably the Captain did also and made up for it in plenty of ways. But the pict! ure -- should be seen to be appreciated. Imagine my surprise, after learning to like Captain Stevens so well as the friend of my old Piedmont friends, I made the later discovery that he was the son of one of Mrs. Wilkinson's brothers, own cousin of Fred's and Arthur's.