Winter camp

Allowing second childhood free rein is an advantage of being over 60 with loose ends. Like spending Sunday afternoon at play on the Cinder Path fitting myself into the skin of a Woodland Culture forebear, picking out a winter campsite among the low hills fringing the Chariton River valley. It’s getting to be that time of year, you know.

There are a couple of obvious problems with this forebear business. My Woodland friend’s grandmothers and grandfathers, for example, most likely trekked across the Bering land bridge. My redneck Euro-American antecedents arrived here on leaky boats between the 1630s and 1848. But we are all Lucas Countyans, after all, although separated by oh let’s say 1,500 years.

The office of Iowa’s state archaeologist inventories 103 archaeological sites in Lucas County, a drop in the bucket when compared to counties along the major rivers --- Mississippi, Missouri, Des Moines, Iowa and the like. But not too shabby. And it’s very likely that an army of archaeologists armed with fine-toothed trowels could turn up many more here if there seemed good reasons to do so.

A majority of these sites are along the Chariton, Whitebreast Creek, Cedar Creek and other valleys great and small, Six sites have been inventoried along a two-mile stretch of the Cinder Path beginning about a mile southwest of town. I have no idea exactly where the sites are or what they are --- most likely campsites or burial/ceremonial mounds --- and have no need to know.

Many families who have been hanging out in Lucas County for years have stories about signs of our predecessors here. One of my grandmothers, Eliza Rhea Etheredge, settled with her second husband on a farm that incorporated what now is Bethel Cemetery and the wooded hills north of it out in Cedar Township not long after 1850. There were, according to family lore, mounds along the creek there although I’ve not seen them; even stories of a few of the earlier Lucas Countyans who remained when the Etheredges arrived, dodging the feds determined to ship them off to Kansas.

When I was growing up, we owned and farmed my Myers grandparents’ land in Benton Township, a long and narrow assemblage of 40-acre tracts that ended at what we called the “lower 40.” This was a wonderful place for a kid in first or second childhood --- a high bluff along a stream to the south, source of mushrooms in the spring and bittersweet that set the woodland canopy aflame in the fall; Rising land to the north that climbed to a hilltop overlooking the Chariton River valley.


My grandfather was the finder of artifacts here, although he really didn’t search. But projectile points turned up as he plowed --- with horses, closer to the land than farmers nowadays are. And this odd chunk of raw copper hammered into a form that could be lashed to a handle and thrown. Perhaps there was a campsite here or nearby. I keep all three items on a table near my favorite chair because I like to handle them and think about how much skill went into their shaping.


Looking for my imaginary campsite on Sunday, I settled for now at least on this pleasant bowl encircled by low wooded hills and formed in part by a small stream that enters the Chariton here. The river itself has meandered close to the hills, so water is nearby as are game and fish (I almost managed to sneak up on five deer wading in a small pond nearby formed by the old railroad grade that forms the Cinder Path). The shelf is broad enough for a few dwellings as well as gardens, come spring --- near the river but high and dry enough to be clear of rising water and to catch the breeze. The hills offer shelter from northerly and westerly winter winds, but it’s a quick climb to the high prairie ridge that separates the Chariton and Whitebreast drainages.

Plenty of wood, plenty of water, plenty of game, shelter from the storms --- a pretty place, and I’m fairly certain our Woodland forebears appreciated pretty places as much as we do. What more could you ask for?

Well, I’d like Rathbun Rural Water Association water, thank you very much, electricity for my computer, a road in for my vehicle and the big truck that brings the propane needed to power my furnace … You can see the problem here and the reasons why my winter camp will have to remain imaginary.

White Breast Brewing

There are a few days a year when I wish I could manage to drink beer, when offered, without having to hold my breath so as not to taste the stuff. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time I drank a beer, or tried to. For better or worse, all beer tastes to me as if a large number of sour dishrags had been soaked in water, then wrung out and the result bottled (or canned). It may be genetic. My paternal grandma wasn't a member of the Womens Christian Temperance Union for nothing.

However, I am interested in the micro-brewery process; even know a brewer way up north (in Northwood), who considers brewing beer an art form.

So I was interested today when looking for something else to find the startup blog of folks aiming to start a brewery in Knoxville, called White Breast Brewing.

Now before you get all excited about that white breast, providing you don't already know the lay of the land around here, White Breast Creek (probably spelled "Whitebreast" more often than not here in Lucas County) is a tributary of the Des Moines River that rises over west in Union County, twists and turns through Clarke, then cuts northeasterly through Lucas and Marion to enter that big puddle called Lake Red Rock (it used to enter the Des Moines River near the Red Rocks on the river before the Corps of Engineers flooded everything up thataway). It also has created some of the prettiest scenery in the northwest half of Lucas County --- beautiful valleys and wonderful hills.

I see the brewing proprietors track the name White Breast (or Whitebreast) to a white-breasted bear, which is an interesting legend. But here's what Virgil J. Vogel, author of Iowa Place Names of Indian Origin (University of Iowa Press, 1983) has to say:

"The last treaty signed in Iowa by the Sauks and Foxes, on October 11, 1842, named "White Breast Fork of the Des Moines River" as part of the boundary of the tract that the Indians were to occupy for the next three years, preceding emigration to Kansas.

"According to white accounts, the Indian name for "White Breast River" was "Waupeka sepo." That differs somewhat from the more correct rendiition, Wapeskikaka (White Breast) plus sepo ("river"). The longer word was a name borne by several generations of a Fox Indian family of the Thunder gens. The name appeared as a stream name on maps by Albert Lea (1836) and J.N. Nicollet (1841). It is likely that whites named the stream for one or more of the Indians bearing the name."

Whatever the case may be, I hope the beer becomes famous and the brewers rich. If you'd like to check out the blog, here it is.

Listen and look

After my half-hour fix of Channel 13 “news” this morning, I’m prepared to list a few of things I don’t care about:

1. Exactly how Michael Jackson died or precisely who was responsible.

2. What sort of beer President Obama, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates and the cop who busted Gates as he struggled to enter his Cambridge, Mass., home, will drink when they get together. (In fact, I think they should drink lemonade, not beer; I recommend Minute Maid.)

What I do care about this morning are the sound of cottonwoods and sight of butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberose L.) now coming into full bloom along backroads and on the prairie, resurrected or remnant.

I could just sit and listen to the cottonwoods whisper for hours, and I’ve come close to doing that. It’s an amazing, peaceful, wonderful thing to do --- the cares of the day vanish, if you allow them to. The voices in your own head --- voices like those that obviously were troubling the president, the professor and the cop not to mention Michael Jackson --- still themselves. You become part of where you’re at, not just an isolated hunk of breathing red meat passing through.

There’s a spot in a stand of giant cottonwoods along the Twin Lakes Trail east of town that’s ideal for this. Haul yourself up onto the disreputable-looking picnic table under the trees and just sit there and listen.



Look on the hills to your right as you walk down the trail toward the cottonwoods and you’ll see emerging right now among the greens, yellows, whites and lavenders of high summer the brilliant orange fire of butterfly weed, my favorite of all the summer flowers.

I’m not prepared to argue the fine points of creation or the Creator, merely grateful that both cottonwoods and Asclepias tuberose L. were created.

To reach the Twin Lakes trailhead, drive east of Chariton a couple of miles on the gravel Auburn Avenue extension, enter the water treatment plant driveway and keep driving until you can’t drive any more and, if you’ve got a license, take a fishing pole along.

The relative nature of excitement

It's all relative I guess, but I'm pretty excited about the new bridge over the Union Pacific tracks that reunites Auburn Avenue in east central Chariton and allows me easy access to the Twin Lakes Trail. Others have considerably more substantive reasons to be excited --- the city, for example, since the old bridge's failure cut off convenient access to both the water treatment plant and the waste water treatment plant. And then there were the folks who lived on the "wrong" side of the tracks and found it necessary to travel (briefly) miles rather than a few feet to get into town.

A good neighbor out there promptly authorized construction of a temporary street down through his pasture to a railroad underpass and that eased the difficulties, but that was not an easy route. So opening of the new bridge is a cause for celebration.

A lot of the problem went back to the original covenants agreed to by the Rock Island line when it built the north-south railroad through Chariton almost a hundred years ago now. The railroad was supposed to provide and maintain crossings for non-rail traffic --- at grade in most instances but via bridges when the line passed through cuts.

Nearly all of these bridges were high-arched wooden structures two-lane for horses and buggys perhaps but hardly designed for internal combustion. They weren't that expensive to begin with, occasionally they just burned down especially when coal-fired locomotives spitting sparks still were in use and when railroads fell upon hard times, they weren't well maintained.

So finally two of these old bridges in Chariton got too dangerous to use --- the high-arched Auburn Avenue bridge and the bridge connecting the Bluegrass Road to the southwest part of town, flat because the cut there is very deep.

Technically, the Union Pacific was responsible --- but ... So the city worked and waited and collected money and finally got this bridge under way. And like I say, I'm really excited! I'd be more excited if there were a new Bluegrass bridge, too, but you can't have everything all at once.

In all fairness to H.D.C.

I had intended (and still do) to use the Copeland mausoleum in the Chariton Cemetery to illustrate the fleeting nature of fame in regard to other earlier members of Lucas County's "elite." Got to thinking about it, however, and decided that in fairness to Howard Darlington Copeland himself I should include a little information about that guy whose name is writ large in stone. So rustled up his obit, which follows.

After I posted the obit to the Lucas County mailing list at RootsWeb this morning, Dick Kinkead asked about the location of Darlington Heights, the Copeland home --- and I'm a little vague about this although I recall my dad talking about it. It was located, if I'm correct, on the Auburn Avenue extension east of Chariton --- the road that now leads to Lakes Ellis and Morris and the water treatment plant. I don't believe either the house or farm buildings are there now, although someone still lives on the site, a hill just before the road curves southeasterly downhill to cross the creek.

The Copeland mausoleum is one of two still standing in the Chariton Cemetery. The Lockwoods have a grim little sealed box in the northwest corner with no indication on its exterior of who specifically is interred inside. The far larger Stanton Vault, built as a commercial venture as well as a final resting place for the Stantons, has been demolished and its remaining occupants unceremoniously buried in a heap where it once was located.

Anyhow, here is Howard Darlington Copeland's obituary, and it is a humdinger:

LIFE OF HOWARD DARLINGTON COPELAND
Tribute to His Memory Written by His Friend, Hon. T.M. Stuart of Chariton
(The Chariton Patriot, 12 May 1910, Page 1)

Chariton has seldom lost as loyal and valuable a citizen as was H.D. Copeland, and the beautiful memorial tribute to him, written by Atty. T.M. Stuart, expresses only in part the loss the county and the state sustains in Mr. Copeland’s death, recorded last week. The large attendance of out-of-town visitors at the funeral, the lavish floral offerings, and the many words of comfort and sorrow that have come to the family, but warrant the high estimate that the people of this community placed upon Mr. Copeland.

One of the most touching letters received was from an employee of the Copeland Commission Co. of Chicago, who writes to this paper ---

Chicago, Ill., Union Stock Yards
May 10, 1910

Please permit me on my own behalf and my fellow co-workers to kindly express through the columns of your esteemed paper, the deep and sincere sorrow we all feel over the death of our fellow business associate and esteemed friend, the late Howard D. Copeland. Knowing him as we did, his death is a personal loss to us all. No man here at this great commercial business center ever stood higher in the estimation of his associates. He was the soul of honor, strictly honest in all his dealings, he endeared himself to all. His kindly and genial disposition made him hosts of friends. By his nobility of character and upright life, he has left a name to his family and friends that will be fondly cherished throughout all time. To have known such a character and been numbered among his friends is an honor we most highly regard.

(signed) A Friend

Those in attendance at the funeral from out of town, besides the pallbearers, were:

Arthur P. Copeland, Rochester, Ind.; George D. Copeland, Marion, Ohio; Mr. and Mrs. C.H. Boothroyd, Chicago, Ill.; Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Long, Osceola, Ia.; Simon Press, Sedalia, Mo.; Henry F. Mitlan, Kirksville, Mo.; Mr. and Mrs. A. G. Trump, Kahoka, Mo.; Geo. A. Young, A. H. Corey, F.H. Dewey, Fred Corey, H.P. Smith, H.B. Morgan, Des Moines; Mrs. Jennie Yetts, Dr. G.W. Whitehill, L. Cristy, A.E. Holcomb, Ottumwa; H.J. Green, Deocrah, Ia.; E. A. Patterson, Iowa City; F.M. Barner, Ames; T. G. Bilson, Knoxville; L.D. Jones, Coffeyville, Kan.; G. W. Humpsted, Victor, Ia.

The memorial tribute written by Hon T. M. Stuart is as follows:

Howard Darlington Copeland has passed away. He died at his home at 2:45 o’clock p.m. on the 3d day of May, 1910. The following is an epitome of his busy life:

He was born at Marion, Ohio, on the 19th day of August 1853, being the eldest child of Howard and Catherine Darlington Copeland. He was educated in the public school of that city, and at the Ohio Wesleyan University of Delaware, Ohio. He came of a family of bankers, two of his brothers and four of his uncles are bankers. At the age of fourteen years he entered the bank of his uncle, Guild Copeland, on Wall Street in the city of New York, and continued in that business, under the directions of another uncle, Arthur C. Copeland, at Rochester, Indiana. He came to Chariton in the fall of 1873 and was employed in the bank of his uncles, Percy and Elijah Copeland, where he remained for nine years, the bank in the meantime becoming the property of Manning and Penick. He was then appointed State Bank Examiner for the state of Iowa, and acted in that capacity for about eight years. At the close of his services as State Bank Examiner, he entered the law office of T.M. Stewart with the expectation that he would study law and fit himself for the legal profession which he always liked, but circumstances were such that he was required to engage in other business, and he drifted into the real estate business and has continued to pursue that business in part ever since, buying and selling real estate for himself and others. In 1893 he founded the commission house of H.D. Copeland & Co. at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, becoming its president and he continued to act in that capacity up to the time of his death. In 1904 he organized the Burlington Savings Bank at Burlington, Iowa, became its president and continued to operate that bank for about two years, when his growing business enterprises at Chariton demanded his time and attention to such extent that he concluded to and did sell his interest in this bank at a fair profit. But true to the men who assisted him in organizing that bank he did not consent to part with his interest therein until he obtained the express consent of such parties thereto. In August, 1907, he purchased the controlling interest in the Chariton National Bank and became its president and he acted in that capacity up to the time of his death. In the same year he became owner of a hallf-interest in the Osceola Sentinel, which proved to be a profitable investment. He also became interested in the First National Bank of Rochester, Indiana, becoming its vice president. He was one of the promoters of the Fraternal Organization known as the Homesteaders and became its surpreme treasurer. He was also a member of the republican state central committee, and notwithstanding his numerous other duties, he found time to advise with that committee, always being stalwart in politics.

He was married Jan. 25th, 1877, to Carrie Custer, daughter of James and Susanna Custer, pioneers of Lucas county. He left surviving him his widow and two children, Mrs. Sue Copeland Whicher and Howard Custer Copeland. He was confirmed in St. Andrews church in 1901 and has since that time filled the position of senior warden of the vestry. He was active in all church duties, and very liberal in his support thereof, and in his death the church has sustained an irreparable loss.

His pall bearers consisted of one representative from each of the business enterprises that he founded, viz.: Mr. C. H. Boothroyd, of H. D. Copeland & Co. of Chicago, Mr. J.A. Penick of the Chariton National Bank, Mr. M. F. Roberts, representing his farming interests, Mr. J. L. Long of the Osceola Sentinel, Mr. R. T. Gilson of the Homesteaders, and his brother-in-law, W.S. Custer,

A large number of people of Chariton and friends from other cities attended his funeral, which was held at St. Andrew’s Episcopal church on Friday afternoon a two o’clock, conducted by Rev. Webster Hakes. His brothers, J.C. Copeland, A.P. Copeland and G.D. Copeland, were present. The Chancel and all of its departments was a mass of beautiful flowers. The casket was covered with rare flowers, the gifts of loving friends. The family pew in St. Andrew’s was left vacant, with the exception of a wreath of beautiful flowers hung on the end thereof.

“His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to the world, this was a man.”

Yes, his life was gentle; it was more like the placid lake, fringed with pines and flowers, basking in the moonlight than it was like the rushing river. While friends and acquaintances by the score sought his association, yet so quiet and unostentatious was his life, that few, comparatively realized the full extent of his mental capacity, or fully comprehended the big heart that led him to quietly shower blessings upon others. Think for one moment on the cares and the responsibility necessarily attending the founding, management and control of the numerous and extensive business enterprises epitomed in the foregoing brief statement. Think of the magnitude of the interests involved and then note the quiet, safe, and masterly manner in which he operated the same. H. D. Copeland was a natural financier, and yet he did not permit the pursuit of money to harden his heart, or close his eyes to the rights of others. He was always just.

His beautiful suburban home, Darlington Heights, through his efforts and hospitality, became the favorite resort of his friends, who were always assured of a hearty welcome, but above all, Mr. Copeland was a Christian gentleman. At the time of his death he was one of the chief supporters of St. Andrew’s Episcopal church, and was regarded as its chief advisor in all temporal matters, but he came to his position so quietly that perhaps very few remember when this church work began. The writer feels that he may speak frankly concerning that part of Mr. Copeland’s history, when he commenced the study of law. He came to my office with the hope that he would complete the study of law and become a member of the legal profession. Strange to say, his services in my law office were valuable from the very beginning. He possessed a legal mind, and he seemed to go intuitively to the legal points in a case. I shall never forget his valuable service in an important personal injury case in which he assisted me in looking up the facts and law of the case. The party was injured in a coal mine at Lucas, and while we became satisfied that he had a meritorious case, yet it became very difficult to find the evidence necessary to sustain the case. Mr. Copeland became very much interested in the case and without my knowledge he visited the coal mines in other parts of the state and came back with affidavits of expert coal men, making it so clear that we were in the right in regard to a certain question, that the case was promptly settled, and our client received ample compensation for the injury he had suffered. I have no doubt if Mr. Copeland had devoted himself to the law, he would have become one of the finest lawyers in the country. Perhaps not as an advocate, but as a judge of law.

Our dear friend has gone, his body moulders in the tomb, while his spirit has returned to the God who gave it, but his example is left for us, and may we not cherish the thought, that time, the destroyer of all, whose almighty arm blots from the face of earth empires and kingdoms, under whose power the eternal hills dissolve, will fail to destroy the influence for the right arising from the acts and deeds of H. D. Copeland.

His friend,

T.M. Stuart

Too beautiful ...

... a morning not to take a quick walk down the Cinder Path, where the colors of high summer are beginning to dominate, hot yellows above in the foreground with a marsh beyond and (below) the cool whites and blues of Queen Anne's lace and chicory.

This is going to be the morning now, I think, to move the over-achieving coneflowers that have swallowed the gas meter, causing my friends from Alliant Energy undue distress.

The lazy way out ...

I'm accustomed to sending out reports to one and all via e-mail now and then. Since I'm too lazy today to do anything specifically here, here's the latest --- like it or not --- entltled "Down South on the 23rd of July."

Occasional rain continues, the grass is growing, the flowers look great and I’m hovering hopefully over the tomatoes, wating for the first to ripen. Neighbors on both sides already are enjoying their produce. My excuse is, I got a late start. Lee’s garden, especially, is a wonder. His corn is 12 feet tall, I kid you not, and a towering contraption the corrals cucumbers is just as tall, if not taller. So it’s great day to be alive in southern Iowa. But July is moving too fast --- I’m not ready to give it up yet!

RAGBRAI overnighted last night in Chariton and that provided lots of fun for everyone and seemed to go off without a hitch --- other than a brief early-morning thunderstorm today that seemed to have no purpose other than getting everyone camped outside good and wet. It’s seemed a little empty today after our population dropped abruptly from 25,000 to 5,000, but today’s route is one of the longest and prettiest --- through Millerton, Bethlehem and Confidence, past the new Honey Creek Resort on Lake Rathbun, then into Moravia and down the old Mormon Trail to Unionville, up to Blakesburg and then into Ottumwa. So everyone was eager to hit the road.

At St. Andrew’s, it was great to host Team Timmy and the Greasy Chains, including several Mason Cityans from St. John’s (including the rector, Wendy, just back from General Convention in Anaheim and headed for the altar with that judge many of us know in two weeks) and First United Methodist as well as a variety of other bikers Episcopalian and otherwise. What a crew! They got up Thursday morning, scrubbed and vacuumed, and left the joint so spotless there was nothing for the St. Andrew’s clean-up crew to do. Fred and Sherrie Steinbach had the whole Team Timmy crew down for supper Wednesday evening, a truly impressive feat since they already had a house and lawn full of RAGBRAI participants.

Speaking of St. Andrew’s, I’ve been entertaining myself for the last couple of weeks starting a new blog for the parish --- nothing elaborate all, but designed to give us a Web presence. Entering the Internet era is a challenge for congregations of all denominations and sizes, but especially the smaller ones like us without resources to hire a developer. A blog (darn it, John, I should have mentioned this during that seminar session I had a lot of fun presenting for you a couple of weeks ago) is a quick, easy and cheap way to start. Before all is said and done I’m going to figure out how to design and launch Web pages myself, but that’s still a ways in the future. Anyhow, you can find it here http://standrewsofchariton.blogspot.com/ if you care to take a look.

I was planning a quiet day, since it’s unwise to travel east of here today with RAGBRAI on the road, when Nick called say he’d just located more of the fabric of the Ilion (Mallory’s Castle --- several of you already have shared our Mallory’s Castle fireplace adventure in that old chicken house down toward Millerton), but the items had to be removed TODAY! So that will be my afternoon. This is window trim and other scraps of stonework that have been at rest as part of the landscaping at the mayor’s house for several years. John now has sold this house, however, and if we want the stuff it’s got to be evacuated. My aching back!

I’ve found an ally in my Iowaville adventures in the person of Mike Miller, who chairs the Bonaparte Historical Society. He did a bit of scouting for me among records in Ottumwa and found the 1846 probate file of John Tolman, an early Indian trader along the Des Moines River and one of founders of my favorite ghost town, so I’ll be off to Ottumwa tomorrow to examine that file. Now this may not seem especially exciting to you, but remember --- all excitement is relative.

That’s it for this time. Hope all of you have a great weekend!

Porta potty nation

I got to wondering (but not for long) while walking around the square a while ago about how many hog confinement outfits it would take to produce the waste generated by 16,000 or so RAGBRAI participants. It had something to do with the ranks of porta pottys surrounding the courhouse, obviously I should be thinking more elevating thoughts about The Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa and so I've put that train of thought to rest.

Tomorrow's the big day and city workers had the east, west and north sides of the square blocked off practically before dawn. It's a fairly short trip down from tonight's overnight stop, Indianola, so I expect people will start rolling into town early. By this time tomorrow it will be difficult to get anywhere in town if you're not on foot or on a bicycle. Don't even think of trying to get out of town to the west and north Wednesday or to the south and east Thursday.

RAGBRAI's a lot of fun for the participants and for many in the communities it passes through, too. So more power to it. It also gives civic organizations and others a chance to separate riders from a considerable amount of cash by selling food, cold drinks and other stuff along the route. Many a worthy cause has been aided.

I could live without it, but that's just me --- way too many people way too close together in way too much of a hurry. I used to be able to ride a bike, but grew up on back roads not condusive to extensive travel on two wheels, skinny wheels at that since English bikes were in vogue when I first climbed aboard. Now I'd probably just break my neck. Besides I like walking better.

I emphasize with bikers, however, really --- bicycles offer "green" transportation and healthy exercise. Bicyclical fundamentalists, however, get on my nerves. A group up in Mason City holds an annual memorial service for Iowa bikers killed on the road during the preceding year --- and built into that service is the implication that those of us who transport ourselves on four wheels much of the time are an uncaring murderous lot. Not the case I think.

Couple of years ago, RAGBRAI wore out its welcome in one southwest Iowa county after a RAGBRAI rider hit a crack in a county road the wrong way, went flying off and managed to kill himself. Family sued alleging the road was "unsafe for bicycles," county settled out of court to avoid the expense of a lawsuit and no one was happy. RAGBRAI hasn't been allowed back since. Sure too bad the guy was killed, but not too surprising. Happens at least once on RAGBRAI almost every year.

I hope everyone makes it into and out of Lucas County this week alive and well and has a heck of a good time. Me, I'm running for cover.

Shaking Walter Cronkite's hand

One of the first things I read this morning after Walter Cronkite’s obit was an aggravating little piece that was passing as MSNBC’s lead “analysis” piece devoted to the legendary newsman’s life and times. The writer grabbed ahold of the “America’s favorite uncle” theme and didn’t let loose of that sucker until he’d shaken it to death.

But I think he missed the point. We didn’t trust Cronkite because he reminded us of our uncles but because we knew he was reporter first, trusted his skill, curiosity, broad knowledge base and integrity and appreciated the fact he managed to sound and look a lot like the rest of use when he sat down with us every evening to talk about the news. He wasn’t pretty, and pretty seems to be a factor in the news these days, but knew what he was doing.

About the only negative thing that could be said about his career is that after that famous reporting trip to Vietnam he started us down the slippery slope toward news anchors who feel obligated to share their opinions. I guess that was OK for Walter, who generally knew what he was talking about, but that’s not necessarily the case these days.

One of my few brushes with fame is the fact I managed to shake the great man’s hand and exchange a few tongue-tied (my tongue, not his) words with him during a trip to New York just before the 1968 election.

The occasion was a convention of college and university journalists held in those headier days at the Waldorf-Astoria. I had enrolled in graduate school while waiting for the draft and landed a job as advisor to the University of Iowa “Hawkeye” yearbook. Therefore, I got to tag along in an advisory capacity with the delegation representing University of Iowa student publications.

Two memorable events, one sublime and the other ridiculous, came out of that trip.

Ridiculous first. One member of our delegation, coming back to the Waldorf after we’d been out for supper at Mama Leone’s, decided she couldn’t make it through the night without a bottle of sloe gin, awful red stuff, and so took a detour through a liquor store.

As we walked through the grand main lobby of the Waldorf, chandeliers and marble floors glittering as grandly-clad bigshots mades their way to a Nixon campaign event in the Empire Room, the bottom went out of the sloe gin sack, the bottle crashed to the floor and its contents spattered everywhere and over everyone within range.

The rest of us averted our eyes and walked away as if we didn’t know the young lady holding what was left of the bag. Poor Debby.

The sublime --- for budding journalists at least. A buddy of a few of us, who had gotten his bachelor’s degree in journalism at Iowa a couple of years earlier, had landed a job at The Associated Press in New York. He’d had time to develop enough contacts at CBS News to get us into the fort and up to the newsroom.

So we toured the set that a few days later would become Election Central for the Nixon-Humphrey race and then stopped at Cronkite’s desk (this was late afternoon and he was getting ready for the evening news) to say hello. None of the fame rubbed off on any of us, I’m sorry to say, but it surely was memorable --- almost as memorable as washing the Waldorf-Astoria’s marble floors in sloe gin.

Walter Cronkite, although 92 and long retired, was one of those people you like to think about as still present and accounted for. And now he’s gone. God rest ….

Navajo Rug

Moving the Navajo rug around again, studying it and thinking about it, I started wandering around on the Internet last night, looking for photos of something similar. That gave me a headache and I gave it up for the time being, but won’t rule out wading in again.

I saw a rug one time with a similar pattern in the small museum near Buffalo Bill’s grave on Lookout Mountain, overlooking Denver, but other than that haven’t spent much time looking at Navajo rugs.

It’s not that I care about what the old rug’s worth, if anything; it’s just that I’d like to know more about it. It’s wonderfully woven and in fairly good shape considering the fact it’s been bouncing around from Myers house to Myers house since the 1920s or 1930s and hasn’t been given the care some might think it deserves.

There are a couple of small stains and the side cords have come loose in places but I really don’t expect to do anything about that. I like it the way it is. I like to think of a Navajo weaver in or near a hogan somewhere in Dinetah producing this from wool shorn with clippers like those I’ve got out in the garage somewhere, then carded, washed, spun and colored.

My guess is that it was woven in the 1920s by a woman who helped support her family by producing such items for sale to tourists and others, including salesmen like my Uncle Bob Dunlap, who wandered through the region. But of course I don’t know that for sure.

Uncle Bob, actually my grandmother’s uncle, was a roamer and a rambler --- Iowa, the Dakotas, California, the desert Southwest --- and no one ever figured out exactly what he did for a living --- lawyer, real estate speculator, traveling salesman and goodness only knows what else..

Tried marriage briefly when he was 40-something and she was older; didn’t like; didn’t try it again. Died flat broke at 77 in Los Angeles in 1950. Whoever was looking out for him started sending out letters suggesting his family (consisting by then of six nieces and nephews including Grandma and her Wyoming brothers) might chip in to bury him when he died. No one did that I know of.

Bob was one of eight children and exactly half of them --- Samantha as a teenager, Melinda at 26, John W. at 35 and my great-grandmother, Susan Elizabeth (Dunlap) Dent at 39 --- died of tuberculosis. Bob father, Franklin Dunlap --- after whom I am named indirectly via my great-uncle, Frank Dent, and his namesake, my dad --- was one of five children. All save Eugene, who died of typhoid near Jackson, Miss., while serving in the Union army during the Civil War, died of tuberculosis, too. It took an awful toll. “Ran in the family,” my dad said, stating the obvious.


Uncle Bob seems to have had an affinity for the Four Corners country and was always bringing or shipping something from there to his favorite niece, my grandmother, and grandniece, my aunt Flora, in Iowa. The rug and a small handmade riding crop encircled by a carved snake are about all that survive although I remember other things, long gone.

Interesting to think about the fact the weaver, Uncle Bob and everyone else other than me who ever claimed the rug have long since crossed that great divide. But the old Navajo rug is still going strong and I certainly hope will outlive me, too.

Slings and arrows, or the revenge of the coneflowers ...

... but very minor slings and arrows on a gorgeous summer morning in Lucas County, Ioway. Wow! I'd burst into a few lines of "O What a Beautiful Morning!" but that would just embarrass us all.

The first burr under my saddle is the fact my coneflowers (above) have had a run-in with the law --- the law as interpreted by Alliant Energy Co. that is. I love coneflowers; don't care that they reproduce so enthusiastically by self-seeding that given an inch they would bloom for miles if left to their own devices.

I like that. Sometimes when I'm a little down about the excesses of the human race, the white tribe in particular, I like to think about what would happen if we inadvertently eliminated ourselves --- and in darker moments I do think that is entirely possible. Wouldn't take that long here in the land between two rivers for the prairie --- my coneflowers, goldenrod, Indian grass and such --- to reassert itself, chew up abandoned highways and streets, overwhelm our fancy ticky-tacky houses and aided by a few strategically placed lightning strikes reduce them to piles of compost. Oh there still would be plastic left, but that would soon be buried under mulch. But I digress.

What you see behind the coneflowers here is my Alliant Energy gas meter. It's an ugly sucker and I don't enjoy looking at it. And thanks to the coneflowers I haven't had to lately --- just sit in my lawn chair and admire the flowers along the east wall of the house.

So the other day I got this letter from Alliant, which read in part as follows: "Dear Alliant Energy customer: We are having difficulty reading your meter. The meter reader has told us that the meter is blocked or obstructed by shrubs or other foliage around it. In these cases we may be forced to estimate your bill for monthly power use, which may cause an over- or under-billing of our account. It may also create a hazard for an Alliant Energy employee. Sincerely, Customer Service Billing."

Yup, them coneflowers is dangerous stuff. And lord knows I don't want to endanger an Alliant Energy employee.

Alliant already is on my list. First, it swallowed up more local, efficient and less-expensive utility companies --- Iowa Southern Utilities and Interstate Power Co. among them --- then after raising rates rushed off to invest its ill-gotten gains in South America. A couple of months ago, trying to close out my Mason City utility account, I spent an excessive amount of time on hold while awaiting the single customer service representative Alliant employs to serve its Iowa customers --- a most efficient and pleasant woman who managed to be helpful despite the fact she's allowed only two five-minute bathroom breaks a day and is chained to her desk the rest of the time. And now this.

It's tempting to let the coneflowers bloom and Alliant to estimate my bill until fall, but I don't trust those folks any farther than I could toss a power pole. So I guess I'll go out and move the coneflowers even though it will mean looking at that butt-ugly meter for the rest of the summer.

+++

And then there's my crisis of faith --- in Google Map. Just when you think you've found something you can trust, it comes to this.

This issue developed as RAGBRAI's overnight stop in Chariton next Wednesday nears. Every Iowan and Iowan-in-exile knows about The Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, the biggest bicycle event in the country. On Sunday, 8,500 registered cyclists and untold thousands who aren't registered but have decided to bike along anyway, will dip their front wheels in the Missouri at Council Bluffs then pedal across southern Iowa to dip their front wheels in the Mississippi at Burlington a week later.

That'll cause a good deal of cussing among some of the locals along the route since travel by any mode other than bicycle when RAGBRAI is in the neighborhood is next to impossible. But as a rule, they're a decent plague of spandex-clad locusts on wheels and it does give us something to talk about. Some make money, too. One bunch of Lutherans here in town is renting pews as sites for slumber (there is room in the inn, for a price). And you'll notice I did not say, "typically Lutheran."


At St. Andrew's, we'll be housing a bunch of wandering Episcopalians (free of charge) in the parish hall overnight and allowing others to camp on the lawn. But that brings up the question of how to tell people the route to St. Andrew's and you'd think that would be a breeze in this era of instant mapping services and Web-enabled cell phones.

But not so fast --- Google Map and other mapping services for reasons known only to themselves have located St. Andrew's at a specific address in the Hillcrest cubdivision in southwest Chariton. St. Andrew's is actually located in far northeast Chariton on the east side of Highway 14 North just beside the entrance drive to Lucas County Health Center --- and has been there since 1956 after the grand old church building downtown succumbed to dry rot and was replaced by our modest A-frame in the "suburbs."

I suppose at some point one church officer or another, long dead, decided to have the St. Andrew's mail delivered to his or her home address rather than to the church and this confusion about addresses got transferred to the latest in map technology. It seems to be one of those things no mere mortal can correct or at least I've not figured out any way to communicate with either a computer or real live person.

Since Chariton is a small town, I'm sure this all will work out. But it could be an interesting day for whoever now lives at that address in Hillcrest if hordes of Episcopalians start wheeling up asking to sleep in his parish hall.

+++

Don't be surprised if this blog starts looking different. Because of laziness, I've stuck with a basic Blogger template called "Harbor," or something like that, for as long as I've been blogging. It's a pleasant template, but there just aren't that many harbors, or lighthouses, in Iowa.

So while helping someone else fancy up his blog this week I've decided it's time for a change at the Lucas Countyan. Haven't quite decided what, but that will become evident to us all as time passes.

Praise the Lord and pass the three-bean salad

Some folks have faith in their physicians, others trust their lawyers and according to the latest CBS News Poll, 57 percent of us have confidence in the president of the U.S. of A. (that’s down some). Personally, I believe in three-bean salad.

Three-bean salad won’t kill you, is inexpensive and when its approval rating starts to drop won’t send a can of yellow wax beans to Cleveland to engage in damage control.

Mind you, not all three-bean salads are created equal. There are inedible canned varieties and stay away from the kind sold pre-prepared in grocery store delis.

But my Aunt Mary Krutsinger’s three-bean salad is perfection with just the right combination of sweet and sour. It’ll keep in the refrigerator practically forever. In fact, the longer it sits the better it gits. Here’s the recipe:

One No. 2 can cut green beans drained.
One No. 2 can yellow wax beans drained
One No. 2 can kidney beans rinsed and drained
Half cup minced onion
Half cup minced green pepper

Combine all of the above in a large bowl and pour over a dressing made by combining and mixing well the following:

Half cup salad oil
Half cup cider vinegar
Three-fourths cup sugar
Half teaspoon salt
Half teaspoon pepper

Keep the salad tightly covered in the refrigerator for at least a day, stirring now and then if you’re in the mood, then drain off the dressing before serving or carting off to a potluck.

Long time passing ...

Some things you think are going to be hard to do turn out to be easy and it works the other way, too.

Moving stuff around this afternoon still trying to bring order to generations of mild chaos I found my late mother's stash of stuff related to my wonderful and remarkably surreal U.S. Army career, including all those letters home. Every one of them.

So I sit down cross-legged in the upstairs hall and says to myself, "Wow. I think I'll read these." I could not do it. I honest-to-God could not bring myself to do it. Back into the closet they went for a while longer.

But I did pick out two snapshots that will at least amuse those who know me.

Frank looking owlish (above), was taken in the dorm at the U.S. Army Intelligence School, then located at Fort Holabird in a Baltimore suburb called Dundalk.

Quite a place, Fort Holabird --- in that era perhaps the most laid-back of the U.S. Army's training establishments. We worked hard and wore green in class, drove out to Fort Mead to qualify with our weapons, did K.P. now and then, but generally were turned loose --- literally. Civilian clothes on base and off, come and go as you please. Weekends in D.C.

From Fort Holabird onward to a brief stay at beautiful Fort Lesley J. McNair in D.C., then Saigon. Scared shitless. But intelligence types soon found out that for the most part others did the shooting, and got shot, for us.

The photo below was taken during January of 1970 --- that's 39 years ago friends --- at the International, a big restaurant in downtown Saigon. The occasion was a party given if I remember correctly by the Vietnamese staff of the Combined Document Exploitation Center (CDEC) for the American and Korean staff. I see by the invitation (yes, my mother saved that, too) the attire was to be "formal" (who did I borrow that tie from?) and that it began at 9:30 p.m. --- late by U.S. standards.


I'm on the right and my good friend Rich Schleifer (God love you Richard wherever you are), on the left.

The food was great, unless memory has failed me, but then the food almost always was great in Saigon since me and my buddies didn't have any place to eat military food and thus were spared it. We ate, as they put it, "on the economy." Somebody said something the other day about how well I handled chopsticks. I've gotta tell you if you were eating on the economy in Vietnam and didn't how to use chopsticks you were in big trouble.

Chopsticks inflicted the only wounds I know of at the big party at the International, though. The International had great chopsticks. Damnfool lieutenant, drunk, decided to steal a set. Stuck 'em down the front of his pants. Not too smart a thing to do, but then no one ever accused that lieutenant of being smart.

Many months later I came home, jerked out of Saigon one day and unceremoniously dropped in Des Moines a few days later. Talk about whiplash.

The end of my tour of duty coincided with the end of my enlistment which was just as well, my buddies told me later, because while we were away the Army Intelligence School and associated agencies had been packed up and shipped to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, no longer quite as laid back and a heck of a lot hotter and drier.

So I went back to Iowa City and got a pointless master's degree because I didn't know what else to do. You didn't tell anyone there you were a Vietnam vet. Vietnam veterans were freaks.

Interesting times, those. By rights I should be dead and I'll be damned if I know why I'm not. Grateful, of course, but ....

Ideas of order along the Cinder Path

I’ve been thinking lately about order and harmony and some of that thinking has been going on along the Cinder Path, a 13.5-mile trail that follows an abandoned rail bed from southwest Chariton down along the river and then up across the prairie to Humeston.

The trail dates from 1974 and is the first of Iowa’s rails-to-trails project, a creation of the Lucas County Conservation Board. We’re more attuned to such projects now, but its development was a challenge then. Many land owners along the right-of-way were appalled at the thought of long-haired and dangerous hikers and bikers and heaven only knows who else passing unsupervised near their property. They wanted the narrow strip sliced into tiny parcels and divvied up among them to keep the Other out.

That reflects one idea of order, the demand that land be surveyed, divided into grids of sections and quarter-sections, then sold and owned and that what the owner does with his or her slice of it is no one’s business but his or her own.

This was not an idea shared by the first people here, who were territorial but had no sense that they could or should own the woods and hills, prairies and river valleys. Mother Earth owned herself, they thought.

That difference of opinion resulted in much conflict and many sorrows --- and still does sometimes.

+++

The three miles of trail from town edge to the first east-west road south, now minimum-maintenance and often disabled by high water, is the part I know best. Down to that road on foot and back is a 6-mile trek, about the maximum I have time and energy for. My usual walk is 3 miles, down to a stand on the river bank just beyond the 1.5-mile marker, up into the stand to observe the river, then down and back.


But I have traveled the trail as far as Derby on days when the Conservation Board opened it every fall to one-way vehicular traffic so that those who couldn’t or wouldn’t walk or bike it could enjoy it briefly, too.

Those were interesting trips, especially when some poor soul started driving from the wrong end down a path barely wide enough for one vehicle and met our procession head-on. Impasse created by defying the order of the day.

+++

In summer, I like the trail best on sunny mornings. The elderberries have been in bloom this week, scenting the air when warmed by the sun.


Summer wildflowers including the Michigan lily (Lilium michigananse), above, a native, and Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota), a pretty import from Europe that has become a serious weed, are coming into bloom.


And the continuous concert of birdsong. It strikes me as discordant, out of order, to meet a jogger or walker with earphones, eyes fixed, focused only on his own movement and on sounds imported from somewhere else.

On the late afternoons and evenings of summer days and on cloudy days I do not like the trail so much. In many places it becomes a dense and dim green tunnel through overarching trees, vegetation pushing in from either side, almost ominous. I suppose my uneasiness is an old and primitive one.

My sense of order involves the sky and I am most comfortable when I can see it --- on the prairie, in the savannahs or on the trail in late fall after leaves have fallen, in winter when the snakes are sleeping and in early spring.


That occasional mild discomfort is not shared by the deer, always present, nor by the owl I startled from his perch last week with a burst of camera flash I hadn’t expected either. We both jumped.


The owl circled me twice then in powerful and total silence --- a sudden splash of shadow on the trail ahead, a glimpse of spread wings and gray feathers as he soared above me beyond the trees. I knew for a minute how it was to be hunted although I am far too large to serve as an owl’s supper, or at least I think so.

Coming back up the trail 45 minutes later, a coyote concert from a bluff on the other side of the river.

+++

The trail itself is a wound slashed through the landscape even through naturalized. Nature would not have tolerated a path here before the railroad grade was built. The land is low and marshy, the vegetation too dense, kept beyond the reach of prairie fires by water. There are a few remaining trees down here from those days, venerable and vast.

The trails of earlier humans skirted the river bottom to the west, keeping to the ridges where travel was easier and the view could be measured in miles rather than feet.

Nature’s idea of order demands that wounds be healed and if the trail’s surface were not regularly groomed, fallen trees cleared and the bridges repaired the grade and its hard-packed surface would be breeched and the Cinder Path would vanish.

+++

The only discordant notes along the trail are human.

When the trail was developed, redwood benches with concrete bases, outhouses and small shelters were scattered along it. It was thought trail users would move slowly along it, stopping often.

That has not been the case and these constructions have been allowed to deteriorate, vegetation obscuring them, nothing here now that anyone would care to sit on.

A long stretch of rubberized matting, once laid across bridge planks so bicycles could negotiate them more easily, has been pulled off to the side of the trail and left. A stand near a marsh is missing a step, hazardous on the way down, and the walkway above water to it has partially collapsed. And near the Chariton trailhead, rusty machinery has been allowed to accumulate in a row alongside a deteriorating shed with gaping door.

My sense of order demands repair or removal to a landfill. Nature’s sense of order will deal with them in its own way in good time.

Both human and nature’s ideas of order often disconcert me. Human ideas of order are often wrong, I think, but nature’s, never --- even when it sweeps us away in a tornado because we built in its path, drowns us in a flood or perhaps feeds us to a hungry owl.

+++

The title of this odd little meditation is a paraphrase of “The Idea of Order at Key West,” the title of a work by one of our best but most difficult poets, Wallace Stevens.

That poem offends my sense of order because I cannot penetrate it. It seems to have been one of Stevens’ favorites.

On the other hand, Stevens’ “Sunday Morning,” lyrical and evocative and about lost faith, fairly sings in my head and I know its opening lines by heart:

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug, mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.”

Stevens, a lawyer and insurance executive, too, could be contentious. He reportedly fought repeatedly with Frost and slugged Hemingway. Much of his poetic effort was devoted to exploring ideas of order in a world where he was convinced God was dead or absent or never had been.

Dying of cancer, he was baptized a Roman Catholic and took Communion, entering, as he put it, “the fold.”

One idea of order toppled by another, as often happens.

Coming up roses on the 4th of July

By late June the screen of trees, brush and vines that separates trail from water around the lake at Red Haw has turned into a variegated lattice of green.

But just in time for the 4th of July an explosion of pale pink erupts like fireworks around a bend along the north shore of the southwest inlet. This is Iowa's state flower, the wild rose, so named in 1897 by the state Legislature.

The lawmakers, who squabbled a little as might be expected before making the designation on the second try, failed to specify which variety and I'm not sure which this is. There are several, some more common than others depending upon which part of the state you're in.

But it was a good choice I think and matched the elaborate motif applied to a set of of ornate silver presented by the Legislature to the first USS Iowa, launched on 28 March 1896 and commissioned on 16 June 1897. There's something to be said for consistency.

The wild rose even has it's official poem, composed by that literary star of the Fifth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, Brevit Maj. Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers, also composer of Iowa's official state song (and that's not the tall corn song) but most widely known for his ode, "Sherman's March to the Sea," written while cooling his heels in a Confederate prison after capture at the Battle of Chattanooga.

Hast seen the wild rose of the West,
The sweetest child of morn ?
Its feet the dewy fields have pressed,
Its breath is on the corn.

The gladsome prairie rolls and sweeps
Like billows to the sea,
While on its breast the red rose keeps
The white rose company.

The wild, wild rose whose fragrance dear
To every breeze is flung,
The same wild rose that blossomed here
When Iowa was young.

O, sons of heroes ever wear
The wild rose on your shield,
No other flower is half so fair
In loves immortal field.

Let others sing of mountain snows,
Or palms beside the sea,
The state whose emblem is the rose
Is fairest far to me.

Golly, they just don't write them like that any more --- but I like it anyway. The official Iowa song isn't bad either.

Chariton's grand and glorious 4th --- one of its bigger celebrations of the year --- went off without a hitch so far as I know despite overnight rain preceding it. Sunday dawned bright, clear and beautiful for an ecumenical service that drew several hundred to square. Then a good old fasioned Chinese buffet for several of us at the Panda. What could be more appropriate on Independence Day weekend in the U.S. of A. than Chinese?

And one other thing --- something I never thought I'd live long enough to see --- a nice bunch of kids from a Baptist church deep in Missouri performing dramatic dance prior to altar call as Sunday's service closed. Baptists? Dance? Lordy, lordy.

Issues du jour

I'm having issues with the shaggy grass at Red Haw State Park, just east of town. This is not a complaint, nor even a lament --- I'm just having issues.

I understand why acres of lawn sweeping down to the lake have been allowed to grow up this year. The number of seasonal state park workers, the gals and guys who mow the grass, maintain the trails and clearn the restrooms --- has been cut as an economy measure from the usual 250-300 to 143 and their allocated hours, from 180,000 to 74,000, according to a June 2 Iowa DNR news release. So maintenance at all of Iowa's state parks has taken a hit because of budget woes.

And philosophically at least I agree with the idea we mow too much grass in general publicly and privately and that to naturalize is a good thing.

Still, my mind's eye is accustomed to seeing acres of mown grass stretching out under the trees and down to the water far beyond the smaller mown areas that now surround shelter houses, restrooms and a few of the picnic tables.


It's a little like driving by what until last year had been a showplace farmstead and noticing that the lawn hasn't been mown, a window has been boarded up and the paint is beginning to peel. I hope that doesn't happen at Red Haw and our other state parks.

On the other hand, the Red Haw trails are dryer now and have been well maintained. That's a plus.

A minus is the musk thistle (Carduus nutans L.) up top, looking so pretty right by the circle drive near the main shelter surrounded by newly shaggy grass. And I noticed quite a few of these growing in the prairie area south of the woods, too.

As pretty as they are, musk thistles are not native, are highly invasive and extremely hard to get rid of once established. So they need to go. I thought briefly about knocking this one down myself, but then decided I'd better not. Maybe thistles are part of the new DNR park management plan and I'd hate to interfere.

+++

I don't like to dwell on bathroom topics, but I'm having shampoo issues, too. I ran out the other day, so visited the hair-care wall at the HyVee Pharmacy while grocery shopping Thursday.

I don't think about my hair very much. It's still there, it continues to grow and I like to wash it once a day (at least) while showering. Beyond that, it just flies around up there on top of my head and I try to run a comb through it before going out in public.

So I have trouble understanding why hair-care walls are needed --- and HyVee's wall is modest when compared to the hair-care aisles in the big-box stores.

I have no idea if my hair is fine or course, dry or extra-greasy, or why I should care. All I really want to do is find something that doesn't stink (if it does, It'll make me sniffle, cough and sputter until it's gone, not to mention attracting flies) and that costs $5 or less.

Standing prayerfully before the hair-care wall I usually panic. You could spend hours here reading label and instructions and trying to figure it all out. So I tend to grab Johnson's Baby Shampoo because it's all I recognize, my Aunt Mary Krutsinger swore by it and it seems to work just fine --- for under $5.

I got into the shower this morning, but forgot to grab the new shampoo off the bathroom counter. Sloshed out to get it and got back under the shower. Discovered that the bottle was sealed with some sort of foil under the cap. Got the cap off with soapy hands, but couldn't manage the seal. Used my teeth. Got a mouthful of Johnson's Baby Shampoo. It didn't taste that bad.

Don't say you weren't warned

Looks like a pretty good road, don't you think? Dirt, but freshly graded. We're on our way here to one of Lucas County's "Missouri crossings," installed on lesser-used roads the county doesn't want to close but where the expense of a new bridge can't be justified once something goes wrong with the original.

In this case, some damnfool drunk several years ago decided to lead the law on a high-speed chase, slammed into the old iron bridge that crossed the Chariton River here three miles southwest of town and ruined it. If you keep going over the hill in the distance, providing you can keep going, you'll come to Waynick Cemetery, then meander back to town.

A Missouri crossing involves tearing out the bridge, regrading the road so you drive down into the stream bed, installing a culvert of some sort if the stream is big enough, then putting an inexpensive gravel or in some cases concrete surface over it. When it's dry, it's a breeze; when the stream is running a little high you drive through water; when the water's high you find another route. Or that's the idea.


There are plenty of signs to warn drivers about the sort of crossing they're approaching, three of them here on either side.


The difficulty with the Chariton River, however, is that it's probably just a little too large to be managed effectively by a Missouri crossing. It's not that big, up her close to its source, but powerful during high water --- and we've had lots of that this spring. So the crossing washed out and I don't think we'll try it across today.


But all this grading suggests that there are plans afoot to repair it --- once it stops raining long enough to allow it.

I have a feeling this road is blockaded at either end to keep the unwary off it, but don't know that for sure. I took the pedestrian shortcut Wednesday, a three-mile hike down the Cinder Path from town, then about a quarter mile east on the old road.

That was fun. The three-mile hike back to town wasn't since I hadn't actually planned to come this far when I started out, but one thing led to another. I was not wearing appropriate footwear and now my feet hurt. Ouch!

Prince among Gypsies or a chief of the Cherokees? (Part 2)

The following continues a line of thought begun here on June 6 regarding John Rinehart, who died near Chariton in 1881, and the legends surrounding him. Part 2 will make more sense if Part 1, which is here, is read first. Eventually, I’ll combine the two parts into one and repost the result. FDM.

+++

A good many difficulties impede efforts to explain John Rinehart and his family and friends. While there is no reason to doubt the old chief’s Cherokee blood, he and his family were entwined with Gypsies of English birth or descent, sometimes called Romanichals, most notably the Joles. That is a fascinating mix, but a research nightmare.

Relatively few early Native American and even fewer Roma resources are available. Roma research is further complicated because these families, often known as travelers, were on the road much of the time. Births, deaths and marriages could occur anywhere and census takers often missed them.

The traditions of both Native Americans and the Roma were oral --- they were story-tellers rather than story-writers, at the mercy of people who wrote about them, often with skewed vision and often with malice.

And there were those Roma families who identified themselves with intent to mislead as “Indians,” when they weren’t, because they felt with justification that “Indian” was more acceptable to the standard Euro-American than “Gypsy.” This sentence from a 1902 Chariton Herald article dealing with visitors to John Rinehart’s grave is a good example of why: “The Indians who were here look fully as much like Gypsies as Indians, but they attend to their own respectable business which Gypsies do not.” See what I mean?

While the threads of relationship that united the Rinehart family were evident to its members not that long ago, they mystify outsiders today. There are members of this interesting family out there and John Rinehart’s story may remain theirs to tell. Peculiar and destructive ideas created and repeated by majorities about minorities, ideas that have discouraged story-telling outside closed circles, are dissipating. Hopefully, we’ll all benefit from that --- before the last story-teller is gone.

I can tell you neither the full story of Lucas County’s fabled Cherokee chief nor that of his extended family, only report on a few of the signs they left behind as they traveled and make a few guesses.

+++

Consider “Sahria” Mason, 98, identified by The Chariton Leader of July 24, 1923, as a daughter of John Rinehart, whose body was brought to the Chariton Cemetery on Sunday, July 22, 1923, for burial. This probably was the “Salria” Mason who died in Douglas County in central Minnesota on July 19, 1923, according to the Minnesota Death Index, a Minnesota Historical Society online database.

If Sahria/Salria were indeed 98 she would have been born during 1825 and could not have been John Rinehart’s daughter unless he had been unusually precocious. A calculation based upon his tombstone inscription (died Jan. 2, 1881, age 66 years, 2 months and 17 days) produces a birth date of Oct. 16, 1814. John would have been 11 when she was born.

It is a human tendency to knock off a few years at first and then when extreme old age becomes a badge of honor to add a few. Still, it is likelier that Sahria/Salria was a daughter of Rinehart’s wife, Rachel, by an earlier marriage. Rachel seems to have been at least 14 years older than John and so would have been of an age to have children in 1825.

Efforts to clarify the situation by finding a Sahria/Salria Mason in 1920 and earlier census records produce enigmatic results in 1920 and nothing at all before. When the 1920 census was taken, an Ellen Mason, age 95, was living with her widowed son, Jess, 41, and grandchildren Earl, Lilly, “Plu” and Dow in Beltrami County, Minnesota. All were identified as “Indians.”

But Beltrami County (in far northern Minnesota) is the homeland of the Ojibwe people and of the Red Lake Reservation and according to the census Ellen and her parents all were born in Minnesota, as was Jess. Based on this, it would be logical to conclude that Ellen is not our Sahria/Salria, but a venerable Ojibwe. However, according to the census, her grandchildren were born in Missouri (Earl), Kansas (Lilly and Plu) and Minnesota (Dow) to a father born in Minnesota and a mother born in Missouri. This suggests that the Masons were travelers.

It is possible some of these questions might be answered by obtaining a copy of Sahria/Salria’s death certificate, then again perhaps not.

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A little insight into the band camped with John Rinehart near Chariton during the winter of 1880/81 can be achieved by backtracking to Minneapolis, where census-takers found them during June of 1880. The encounter seems to have distressed the principal census-taker, T.R. Newton, who scribbled several explanatory notes on the record.

“These families have been camping in the city for some weeks,” he wrote. Then, “Some of them claim to be Cherokee Indians. Others claim to be Gypsies. I think perhaps one man may be an Indian. The women are all darker than the men. They may be Gypsies and Indians mixed.” And finally, “Further information I was unable to obtain from these families with regard to birth places” Clearly, T. R. was having a confusing day June 15. The “may be an Indian” probably was John Rinehart.

The group included 41 men, women and children --- more than the “some 30 persons in all” attributed to the Rinehart party by The Patriot in January of 1881 when John died near Chariton, but not everyone camped together in the summer necessarily planned to travel south together in the fall.

It’s a popular misconception that travelers were homeless. In one sense, the road was their home. But in another, most had home bases where they spent at least part of the year, often owned property, joined lodges like the Masons and Odd Fellows and attended church. Trades practiced on the road were their livelihoods, however, and life on the road a part of their culture.

The Rinehart family as camped in Minneapolis consisted of four people, but they were enumerated as “Hunt” or “Hart” --- penmanship was not Newton’s strong point --- rather than as Rinehart. It’s impossible to say if they actually were using another name or if the census-taker, dealing with people he found disconcerting, just got it wrong.

The John Hunt/Hart family included John himself, age 66, identified as an Indian born in Indian Territory; his wife, Rachel, also an Indian born in Indian Territory, age 80; and two “daughters,” Isabel, age 24, and Roney, age 14, identified too as Indians born in Indian Territory. The census stated that John was ill with consumption and that tells us what claimed his life in Lucas County the following January. Neither Isabel nor Roney could have been Rachel’s daughters, providing her age is accurate here, but could have been John’s by a previous marriage --- or they could have been grandchildren.

Other than the John Hunt/Hart/Rinehart family, the most significant member of the party for Lucas County purposes was Ephraim Joles, age 40, born in England, whose household included his three children, Hannah, 17, Richard, 16, and Minnie, 12, all born in Ohio according to the census taker, and a black “servant,” George W. Flynn, age 14.

As sometimes happened with mobile people, Ephraim and his family were enumerated twice in the 1880 census. Another census taker, Bradley Phillips Jr., had found the family camped separately a few days earlier, on June 5, in St. Anthony Township, Hennepin County. This census entry, which spells Ephraim’s name “Ephrian Joels,” gives slightly differing information. “Hannah” is listed as “Anna,” age 18 rather than 17; Richard again as 16 and Minnie as 12. Ephraim’s age is given as 37 rather than 40. In both instances he is listed as a widower. Where the Minneapolis entry had listed the birthplaces of all the children as Ohio, here Anna’s birthplace was given as Ohio; Richard’s, as Canada; and Minnie’s, as Indiana. According to this record, both of their parents were born in England.

“Are what are generally called traveling gypsies living in tents,” Phillips wrote on the St. Anthony Township census page.

This Joles family is significant because, referring back to the May 1934 Chariton Herald report of what may have been the final visit by members of the extended Rinehart family to John’s grave, Dolly Frier, who identified herself as John Rinehart’s granddaughter, also said that her father was Ephraim Joles and that he had married one of Rinehart’s daughters.

Other members of the Minneapolis party, some of whom also almost certainly accompanied the family south in the fall, included Ephraim and Nellie Warton, ages 22 and 24 respectively. These were almost certainly the Ephram Worton and Merilla Joles, married 28 September 1878 in Sangamon County, Illinois, according to Illinois marriage records. Merilla actually was known as “Mellie” not “Nellie.” The Joles family seems have been headquartered in Springfield, Sangamon County, and Mellie in all likelihood was closely related to Ephraim Joles.

Other members of the party were Fred and Sarah Meyers and their six children; Andrew and Dorah Ward and their three children; George W. and Elizabeth Ward and their seven children; Fred and Susan Rinehart and their three children; and Walter and Hester Cooper and their son, Elias. Fred Rinehart’s age was given as 32 and his birthplace as Kansas. It is possible that he was a son of John Rinehart. Fred and his family were the only members of the Minneapolis party bearing the Rinehart surname --- at least according to the census taker.

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To understand a little more about the puzzles surrounding our Ephraim Joles, father of Dolly Frier and identified by her as a son-in-law of John Rinehart, it’s necessary to take a look at the Stanleys --- the “royal family” of the American Roma.

King and queen of the Gypsies are not terms I’m exactly comfortable with because I’m not sure those titles had any particular significance for the Roma themselves. One of the “kings,” Levi Stanley, reportedly said the title was purely honorary, based on respect and trust, and reflected no particular power. Although the Stanley kings and queens were without doubt revered in the Roma community, Coyote may be at work here and it’s useful to remember that in many instances the Roma were willing to allow outsiders to believe what they would. So kings and queens of the Gypsies may be as much Euro-American romantic fancy as Roma fact.

The first of these kings and queens, Owen and Harriet (Worden) Stanley, came to the United States from England with many other English Roma families in the 1850s. Like all other emigrants, they came in search of opportunity.

The Stanleys came first to Miami County, Ohio, then moved on to Dayton, which became their home and headquarters for the extended family. A farm was purchased for use when family members were not traveling. Upon Owen Stanley’s death in 1860, he was succeeded by his son, Levi. Levi’s wife was “Queen” Matilda Stanley, identified as a daughter of an Ephraim Joles, undoubtedly related in some manner to our Ephraim Joles.

Matilda, born 1821, conceivably could have been an elder sister of our Ephraim, born ca. 1837. Aunt and nephew and several other degrees of relationships are possible.

To get some idea of the prominence the Stanleys enjoyed, it’s useful to read newspaper accounts of the funeral of Matilda (Joles) Stanley, who died 15 January 1878 at Vicksburg, Miss., and was interred in the large family lot at Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery during September of that year. The funeral of this “queen of the Gypsies” drew a crowd estimated at 25,000, including hundreds of Roma mourners and thousands of curious non-Roma spectators.

Although the American Roma practiced many portable trades, the Stanleys and their kin were renowned horse traders, the principal source of their income.

I may not know exactly how our Ephraim Joles was related to the Stanley family, but I do think the relationship probably was present in more than one degree. It seems likely to me that Ephraim was married at least three times and that his first wife had died prior to May 19, 1872, when an Ephraim Joles married Jente Stanley, then apparently in her mid-30s, in Sangamon County, Illinois.

The three children enumerated with him in 1880, Hannah/Anna, Richard and Minnie, probably were products of his first marriage.

I do not understand Jente’s place in the larger Stanley family, but her relationship (or Ephraim’s) was close enough to ensure a burial place near Owen and Harriet Stanley on the Stanley Woodland Cemetery lot in Dayton, now something of a tourist attraction, after her death only three years after the marriage to Ephraim.

Because several months separated her death from burial, it seems likely that she died far from Dayton and that a good deal of effort was involved in arranging for her burial there. The same was true for all members of the Rinehart family buried in Chariton except John. Non-Roma families most likely would not have gone to the trouble.

According to Woodland Cemetery records, Jente, or Jeantie, born in England, died April 6, 1875, age 38, at an unspecified location, and was buried at Woodland on Nov. 13 of that year. The inscription on her tombstone reads, “Jeantie, wife of Ephram Joles, died April 6, 1875, aged 38 years.”




Also buried on Nov. 13 at Woodland, perhaps with Jeantie, was Henry Joles, age 1, who died April 9, 1875, according to Woodland records.

Three other Joles children are buried in a close grouping near Jeantie: Temperance, age 15, died Feb. 3, 1876; Jessie, age 2, died Feb. 11, 1876; and Walter, age 4, died Feb. 16, 1876. All were buried, according to Woodland records, on Feb. 18, 1876. A fifth Joles child, Louisa, died June 27, 1872, age 2, and was buried on July 3 of that year.

Henry, Temperance, Jessie and Walter probably all were children of Ephraim, although the only visible inscription, “son of E. & J. Joles,” is on Jessie’s tombstone.

It is my theory, for now at least, that the Ephraim Joles enumerated twice during 1880 in and near Minneapolis as a widower was the husband and father of Jeantie Joles and her children buried at Dayton a few years earlier. There is a reference I cannot track to its source of Jeantie’s husband mourning the loss of both his wife and “all” his children, although “all” in this instance probably meant all of his children by Jeantie.

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The fact that virtually all of the 1890 census records were destroyed in a fire produces a 20-year gap between 1880 and 1900 that makes it extremely difficult to track people. Many things could happen in 20 years. And finding a mobile people like the Roma in census records even when the records are intact is problematic.

However, when the 1900 census of St. Paul, Minn., was taken James D. Harris found on June 7 “Ephriam Joels,” age 63, and “Dollie Joels,” age 8, living with Leonard and Philla Wells and their two children, Robert and Ida M., in tents along a street called University.

The occupations of both Ephraim and Leonard were given as horse traders. Ephraim and Dolly are listed as boarders and their relationship to each other is not specified, but this surely must be our Ephraim Joles and his daughter, the Dolly (Joles) Frier, who paid what may have been a final visit to the Rinehart graves at Chariton in 1934.

Ephraim told the census taker that he had been born in England in January of 1837, that he was a widower and that he had emigrated to the United States in 1855 but had never been naturalized.

Dollie, according to the census, was attending school and had been born during January of 1892 in Minnesota to a father born in England and a mother born in Canada.

So it seems likely that our Ephraim had married again after 1880 and that the product of that marriage had been our Dolly (Joles) Frier, the striking woman who spoke with a local reporter near Chariton during 1934. Was his third marriage to one of John Rinehart’s daughters? Ephraim knew. Dolly knew. I don’t.

I have not found our Ephraim in subsequent records, although Dolly said during 1934 that he had died three years earlier in Minneapolis, age 94. If that is the case, his death was not recorded.

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Life changed dramatically during the next 30 years for the Roma people, as it did for everyone else. Horse-trading declined as an occupation as the road and fields were claimed by vehicles with internal combustion engines. The Joles and other families became more settled.

Several members of the extended Joles family settled down in Wisconsin and their descendants remain there today. But the tradition of Cherokee heritage remained.

In 1930, according to census records, Dick Joles, age 64 and born in Canada of parents born in England, was engaged in general farming on land that he owned near the village of Hallie in Chippewa County, Wisconsin. This probably was Ephraim Joles’ son, Richard, enumerated twice during June of 1880 in the Minneapolis area.

Dick’s wife, Libby, age 65, was born in Illinois. Living next door was Richard Joles, probably the son of Dick and Libby, age 44, born Wisconsin, and his wife, Elizabeth, age 33, born Minnesota, and their four children.

The 1930 census asked each person enumerated where his or her parents were born, and in the case of the Joles family the census-taker did an odd thing. After carefully writing in a state of birth for the parents of everyone, he crossed out the names of those states of birth in every instance except that of Dick Joles and wrote “mixed blood” for father’s place of birth and “Cherokee” for mother’s place of birth.

Also in that year, on April 8, 1930, census-taker Mrs. Myrtle Giese, found living in an “Indian Camp” in Honey Creek Township, Sauk County, Wisconsin, a family of 13 including it seems highly likely our Dolly Frier, daughter of Ephraim Joles and reportedly a granddaughter of John Rinehart. This almost without a doubt is the same family, no doubt with additions and deletions, who camped in 1934 near Chariton.

Dolly, who gave her age most likely inaccurately as 27, told the census taker that she had been born in Minneapolis to parents born in Oklahoma and was “full Cherokee.” Her husband, Joe Frier, age 30, had been born in Wisconsin to a father born in Germany and mother born in Oklahoma. He was a “mixed Cherokee.”

The Frier family was headed by Charles Frier, age 61, born in Germany of parents born in France, and his wife, Anna, age 70, born in Oklahoma of parents born in Oklahoma. She was described as “full Cherokee.” Children listed as members of their household included sons Rudolph, 25, Tom, 20, and George, 16, and daughters Daisy, 21, and Ada Hart, 26.

A separate household in the family was made up of Sam Frier, 31, born in Wisconsin to parents born in Germany and Oklahoma; his wife, Lilly, age 21, born in Wisconsin to parents born in Oklahoma, and described as “full Cherokee,” and their two children, Bennie and Delores.

The occupations of eight of the adults was listed as “herb collector” for a “private concern” owned by Sam and Charles Frier.

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Four years later, it seems likely, the Friers were camped near Chariton. Mary Ruth Pierschbacher is not old enough to remember the visit, but clearly recalls stories about it told by family members because the “Indian Camp” was on her Grandmother Holmes’ farm, in timber near a spring just over the hill west of Holmes/Waynick Cemetery on the downslope toward the Chariton River.

It would be interesting to know if this were a traditional camping place, perhaps even where John Rinehart died.

Mary Ruth recalls that the people who visited the camp thought highly of its occupants and of the cures they sold.

And this is where my part of the story ends. It would be possible to find out more, I think, and perhaps I’ll work on that, but not right now.

I’ve not answered the original question, prince among Gypsies or a chief of the Cherokees?, because I can’t, although I hope there are those who still can. It seems likely that John Rinehart was neither prince nor chief but undeniable that he was highly respected among people, be they Roma or Native American or both, who placed great value on family.

Flowers still appear sometimes 130 years after John died at the Rinehart graves there just inside the gate beside the open road on Chariton's south edge, perhaps placed by romantically-inclined Lucas Countyans caught up in the legend. Or perhaps not ….

Photographs of Jeantie Joles' tombstone at Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio, are taken from the "Find a Grave" online collection.