Earl Cecil and the Magpie #T

 Our family moved from Nebraska to Canon City, Colorado the day before my fifth birthday.  Dad was the new pastor of the little church, not yet built, on the corner of Seventh and Floral.  The King family lived on the south edge of town, on the other side of the Arkansas River.  This family attended our church.  They had two teenage daughters, a son, Earl Cecil, about my age, and a younger daughter.  A friendship developed between us boys to the extent that for the most part we saw each other on Sundays as we attended different schools and our homes were not quite within walking distance of each other.

The Kings kept and raised a few hogs and at butchering time Dad would assist Mr. King with the chore of turning the pigs into meat.  This provided an additional opportunity for playtime with Earl Cecil.  To the best of my memory, I never heard anyone call this child anything other than Earl Cecil.  It was almost as if it were one name, Earlcecil.  But back to the story.  When we were probably about eight or nine years of age, Earl Cecil and the Kings moved to Las Animas.

Then Virginia and Marilyn, now young women, decided that marriage represented the life for them and as good fortune would have it each found the man of her dreams at about the same time and I suppose courtships ensued.  The girls decided a double wedding would be the ticket and they asked my parent to perform the ceremony.  The appointed day arrived, and our family made the trip to Las Animas.  It would possibly be a bit understated if I were to say that Earl Cecil and I were less than excited about the wedding and all the attendant folderol, but we were delighted to have the opportunity to catch up and spend time with each other simply horsing around and doing stuff that nine-year-old boys do.

And Earl Cecil had a magpie!  His very own personal pet magpie.  He had been told, and he told me, that were a magpie to be captured about the time it fledged one could clip a tendon or some such thing under the bird's tongue and the bird could be taught to talk.  Which is exactly what the kid did, for on his farm there was no scarcity of magpies.

Could the birdie talk?  Indeed it could.  "Hello."  "Dirty bird."  And probably not much more.  I do not recall exactly but I think its vocabulary was limited.

But of course, I envied my friend and always wanted my own magpie, a desire which so far has not been fulfilled.

It is said that the magpie is the brightest of birds and the most intelligent of all the animals.  I have read stories of magpies calling the family dog by name and waiting for the beast to come to it.  Anyway. . .

Stat feed tells me that this is post number 2500 on String Too Short to Tie.

Amity

Makes us think of the "Stories" tabs at the top of the page.

A Hole in the Ground

Did I ever tell you about the time we toured thoo the mountains?  Waal, the rains come in '39 'n by the fall of '40, harvest time, doncha know, things begin to turn around.  It seem time to get shed of th' ol' double A, 'n when I find ol' Hartmyer over to Syracuse have this nice '39 pickup he buy new, 'n now he want to sell hit, I have Gene take me on over to see hit.  Bought 'er, havin' survived the drought pretty good, still had a few pennies tuck away, an' now a bumper crop acomin' in.

Anyhow, Grace an' I decide to see a bit of the great State we live in.  Mostly we see nothin' but along the river atween here and Canon.  So we get the borry of Roper's tent--  you know Ephraim 'n Martha Roper.  They come over here fum Kentuck in '18 or '19, I think it was.  I know it was after th' war. They not kin to us, but Martha' mama grow up in the hills, was a friend of your Aunt Grace.  So then Grace 'n I, we get in the new truck, new to us, hit was, and head on west.  Nothin' much to stop for twel we get to Canon, on account we travel thet road many a time, 'n we wantin' to see the mountains!

Waal, we see the sweep of the San Juans to the south and are anxious to head on west into those mountains.  But first we treat ourselves to somethin' the like a which we have never done.  We check into th' St. Cloud Hotel.  Oh, my!  You shoulda seen thet place.  Chandeliers, the woodwork.  Shoulda eat in thet dinin' room; whut we did.  Venison prepare to tantalize yer memory ever after.

Middle th' night, though, Grace say she hear a strange noise, open the door and look down the hall.  There was a little girl, six, seven year ol', bouncin' a ball agin the wall.  She tell me, "This make no sense, three o'clock of a mornin', so I walk down to tell her she ought not be doin' thet, an when I get five, six steps from her, she jus' disappear!  No girl, no ball.  Ever'thing quiet as a tomb."  Waal, Grace, she not as young as she used to be, and, well, you know.*

Next mornin' we drive on past the penitentiary.  Even plumb out to Holly people hear tales about thet place, the whippin's an' 'specially the gas chamber.  Now we drive right on by.  No stoppin' there for us, no sir.  But on'y yet a couple more mile up the road we come to a turnoff for Skyline Drive.  Waal, why not?  I can now tell ya why not.  One way road, scarce wider than the tread th' truck, twists an' switchbacks, white-knuckle, I was, afore th' road dump us back into Canon.  Then we have to find our way back ta th' highway, and go right past the Pen and the Skyline turnoff again afore we drive on up to th' Royal Gorge.

I hear about this Royal Gorge fer years.  Now thet we are there, I will say thet is some hole in the ground.  Guy up there tell us, "Way back, hunnert years agone, a Scotsman visit this country, sightseein' hereabouts.  Standin' right on this very spot, he accidental drop a penny in a little crevice, start diggin' fer it.  An' here you see the mighty hole he dig afore he find thet penny."

Waal, our trip jes' gettin' started, but we got work to do.

"Uncle," I said.  "Go on with the story.  There shall always be work."

"You tried thet afore.  Now get up offa yer haunches."


*I heard years after Uncle told me this story that many people have seen the little girl with her ball.

© 2014 David W. Lacy

And Then There Were None

It was Mark Twain who observed that the promise of a tale to be told is too frequently lost in the telling.

"As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is blanketed with Indian tales and traditions.  But I reminded him that people usually merely mentioned this fact--doing it in a way to make a body's mouth water--and judiciously stopped there.  Why?  Because the impression left was that these tales were full of incident and imagination--a pleasant impression which would be promptly dissipated if the tales were told."*

At this stage of the telling of the history of the Sloan family on the Arkansas, one discovers that indeed the promise has been fulfilled to the extent that it may be done.  For to continue would require the telling of the fortunes of this Jason Sloan, great grandson of Jason Sloan, the progenitor of the line.

Truly, there are tales best left untold.

*Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, chapter 59. 

© 2014 David W. Lacy

Sloan: Higher Up the River #T

During the last decade of the nineteenth century, Jason Sloan spent much time in Western Arkansas.  He was enthralled with his grandson, Marshall, and the boy adored his Grandpa.  Sloan’s wife had died only five years after her youngest child, Lewis, left home.  John Sloan graduated with honors from Princeton, took his JD from Harvard Law.  He married extremely well, remained in the East and became one of New Jersey’s leading lawyers.  He was later elected to the United States Congress.  He had no children.

Jason’s daughter, as we might have predicted, married old money from the Deep South.  She lived in New Orleans the rest of her life.  She had one child, a son.  This story is not about him.

Marshall Sloan had taken an early interest in mineralogy, and from the time he was seven years of age, he and his grandfather took extended camping trips to the Pencil Bluff area, searching for and studying the minerals to be found in that region.  It was good that these fellows had this time together, for in June 1901, at the age of 78, Jason Sloan, once known on the Great River as Geoffrey John Slade, played his last hand. Marshall, thirteen years old at the time, took this loss very hard; but his interest in all things mineral continued.

 In 1906 Marshall matriculated at Colorado School of Mines where he pursued formal studies in his beloved field.  For the rest of his life, he was given to telling one and all that “the years I spent in Golden were the key to my happiness.”  Indeed, it was at Mines that Marshall met Jacqueline Boyce who was to become his wife.  Miss Boyce matriculated as a civil engineering student when Marshall was in his junior year.  Though she finished only two years due to her decision to marry Mr. Sloan, she was a brilliant woman and a strong help-meet to her husband.  Mr. Sloan’s in-depth studies of metallurgy and chemistry positioned him well for the career that he envisioned.  Marshall graduated in the Spring of 1910 .  He was immediately hired by Colorado Fuel and Iron.  He moved to Pueblo and went to work at once.  He was instrumental in overseeing the construction of the first coke furnaces in the Pueblo works.  These went into service in 1916.  The successes Mr. Sloan had in his endeavors could only insure his future, and a stellar career he had.

In addition to achievement of success in his own right, which seems to have followed this line of the Sloan family down through the generations, we should note that the original Slade/Sloan progenitor disposed of his enormous financial holdings in a most interesting way.  His wife predeceased him, his children were all financially well-fixed.  So, naming each of his children, Jason bequeathed to each one dollar.  The balance of his estate, then, was to be divided equally three ways.  One third to Marshall, one-third to the Louisiana grandson, and the remaining third to establish and support “in perpetuity” a river transportation museum to be devoted to the conservation of the history of the role of the riverboat in America’s development.

For the purposes of our story,  it is sufficient to note that Marshall Sloan was an extremely wealthy man.  Jacqueline and Marshall had but one child, Jason, whom they named after Marshall’s beloved grandfather. We met Jason earlier as Uncle Jep spun one of this yarns in which we learned that Nancy Woodson was the object of one of  Uncle Mack’s daydreams, but she married Jason Sloan.  Uncle said, “You recollect the Sloans.”  Indeed, everyone on the Upper Arkansas knows the Sloans.  Today, there is scarce a charitable endeavor in the Valley which does not have the names and some of the money of Marshall and Jacqueline Sloan.

Text© 2014 David W. Lacy

Sloan: The Second Generation #T

By 1871, Jason Sloan, considered to be one of Little Rock’s finest citizens, had amassed a small fortune in his business of real estate development, along with several shrewd investments in various enterprises in the state.  He performed his business duties with the same acumen which had made him a successful operator on the River.  His charm continued to be one of his greatest assets.  He had also by this time a beautiful wife, daughter of a state senator, who had stood beside him for these past ten years and had given him three excellent children, two boys and a girl.

There were those who would have avidly supported Sloan had he chosen to run for governor, and there were those who encouraged him to do just that.  But as we have seen, Jason was a shrewd individual.  He knew that power is exercised not in the offices where the titled people operate, but in the backrooms by people such as himself, bright, charming, moneyed, and incidentally, ruthless.  He exercised his power in this fashion, and by 1880 nothing moved in the State of Arkansas without Sloan’s imprimatur.  His elder son, John, was in his third year at Princeton, his daughter, Melissa,  who was just this season presented to society seemed poised to be the next “Belle of the South.”  His younger son, Lewis, at a mere sixteen years of age, decided that enough was too much and he departed for parts unknown.  Sloan himself would say, “Two out of three is not bad.”  But underneath this apparent cavalier attitude was the breaking heart of a loving father.  And, of course, with his resources, and unbeknownst to Lewis, Jason was aware of every move the boy made, knew exactly where he was and with whom he was associating.

Following only so far in his father’s footsteps, Lewis boarded a riverboat bound upstream to Fort Smith.  Lewis, though, did not undertake any form of gambling or graft, for what he lacked in guile, he made up for in ambition and raw physical work.  He traveled as a hand on the boat, chucking wood, firing boilers and generally taking sharp orders of the sort he would have resented had they come from his father.  He made two runs from Little Rock to Fort Smith, then decided that life on the river was not a career option.  He worked on the docks in Fort Smith, he worked in the livery, and wherever or for whomever he worked it was remarked that he was a go-getter.

Lewis Sloan had arrived in Fort Smith at a propitious time for an ambitious young man.  It was a mere five years earlier that Isaac Parker, later renowned far and wide, was named to the bench at the Federal District Court.  He, along with the federal marshals and other law enforcement officers, was “cleaning up” a heretofore lawless region, including not only Northwestern Arkansas, but also the Indian Territory across the River.  The decade of the 80s was a boom time for Fort Smith.  The population more than tripled to about 12,000 souls.  In June of 1886, a packet arrived with a shipment of goods, including industrial machinery, but the man to whom it was addressed was no where to be found.  The captain of the boat ordered the stuff unloaded on the dock.  Lewis was in the right place at the right time.  With his connections at the livery, he was able to obtain horses and drays with which to move the equipment, and with his small savings he rented a building, not much more than a shed, but with a roof overhead.  There he placed his find, and his road to riches, while not yet paved, certainly was under construction.  His business grew with the town.

Lewis married, of course, as young men, given the opportunity, will do.  Sally Ford had arrived in Fort Smith by train, the railroad having arrived there a decade earlier.  Her father was a furniture manufacturer from Philadelphia, and he was in town to establish a western branch of his company.   It was only natural that a manufacturer in need of equipment was going to deal with Lewis Sloan, and one thing led to another.

Marshall Sloan was born in 1888.  His parents had just seen their twenty-fourth birthdays, yet he was the only child born to the union.  A family reunion, one in which Jason Sloan was privileged to meet this new grandchild, took place in 1891, when the elder Sloan came to Fort Smith to study the possibility of establishing a glass factory.  The recent discovery of gas made that a possibility, and  it was done, but more importantly, the splintered family was reconciled.

Text © 2014 David W. Lacy

Riverboating #T

For four years Geoffrey John Slade had plied the Lower Mississippi riverboat game.  Early in the game he had moved from boat to boat, practicing his con games and his prowess at the card tables.  Slade traveled unarmed.  In the 1850s this was virtually unheard of.  No revolver, no derringer, and he never so much as carried a knife.  His theory was that charm defused any situation, and his practice of this theory proved to be effective.

In June of 1853, though, Slade’s fortunes increased immeasurably when he settled on Grand Turk as his more-or-less permanent home.  This riverboat had a capacity of 4400 bales of cotton.  She carried forty stateroom passengers, and hoi polloi in numbers up to 300 passengers, depending upon direction of travel and time of year.  The boat plied the Great River from New Orleans to Memphis, and up the Ohio to Louisville.  Slade was good at what he did.  It was clear, though, that things were about to change in this country.  Differences of opinion, philosophy, and differences in theories of economic practice and human relations between the North and the South were stretching things to the breaking point.  Old Geoff did a bit of reflection and personal analysis.  He is 31 years of age, has no roots and nothing to look forward to but ceaseless trips up and down the river.  He made a plan, a bold and daring plan, but one that if successful would see him into a new and different lifestyle.

Just before nine o’clock in the evening of January 17, 1854, Grand Turk pulled in to the landing at Napoleon, Arkansas where she picked up seven passengers for Vicksburg and New Orleans.  When she steamed from the wharf  an hour later, Geoffrey John Slade was no longer on board.  But this fact was not to be discovered until the great steamer was far, far down the river.  Meanwhile, Geoff with all his own worldly goods, that is, the clothes on his back and the hat and boots he wore, and one large carpet bag which contained the cash gains of the man’s gaming exploits in which he had recently done well, indeed.  In addition, the bag contained most of the cash that had lately been nestled inside the steamboat’s vault.  By the time it was discovered that the boat no longer carried its cash, Mr. Slade was many miles up the Arkansas on a small but fast packet that ran from the Mississippi to the interior of Arkansas.  The man’s good fortune, or guile, or good looks, or whatever combination of these it might have been, held fast as he settled in Little Rock. 

On February 6 that same year while at wharf in New Orleans, the Grand Turk, along with a dozen other craft, burned.  On that same day,  G. Jason Sloan opened a land office in downtown Little Rock.

© 2014 David W. Lacy

John Martin Reservoir

John Martin Dam and Reservoir, Colorado

Image: USACE, public domain

The John Martin Dam is about halfway between Lamar and Las Animas, Colorado.  The dam was conceived as a flood control and water management facility on the Arkansas River.  Construction was started in 1936, but it was not completed before World War II which halted construction for the duration.  The project was completed in 1948.

I recall as a child when we used to travel from Canon City to Lamar, or Granada, or Hartman that we passed the area where Caddoa Dam, as it was called at its inception, was being constructed.  I was well into my adult years before I ever knew the dam by any name other than Caddoa.  As many public projects are, this facility was finally named in honor of a U.S. Congressman. John A. Martin was a respected citizen, publisher of the La Junta Times, attorney and state representative who also served in the Congress 1909 - 1913 and from 1933 until his death in 1939.¹

An interesting item that I stumbled onto highlights the issue of water rights once again.  Though a purpose of the dam is to provide flood control and irrigation, the lake has become a major recreation area in Southeastern Colorado, the lake being the largest body of water in the state.  But a few years ago water supply from the mountains had been below normal, and in order to preserve the fish in the lake, management of the facility found it necessary to purchase water from the City of Colorado Springs which owns rights on the river.<sup>2

1</sup>bioguide.congress.gov

²The Colorado Division of Wildlife and Colorado State Parks have jointly purchased 3,000 acre-feet of water from the City of Colorado Springs to add to the permanent water storage pool at John Martin Reservoir. "This purchase will help ensure the long-term storage needs for fishing and recreation at John Martin," said Dan Prenzlow, DOW Southeast Region Manager.  Pueblo Chieftan, May 20, 2009

Arkansas River Valley #T

A number of the tales as told by Uncle Jep and presented here are set in the Arkansas Valley of Southeastern Colorado.  It was in this region that I was born during the Dust Bowl days of the "Dirty Thirties."  I did not grow up in the area, yet I was never far from it, and there has always been an affinity between me and the land, the countryside and the small towns that dot the Valley.

I do not profess to have special knowledge of the area, but I grew up hearing stories of the old days along the river; dry-land farming, windstorms; irrigation and water wars.  And thus it is that while the tales being presented are strictly fictional, figments of my imagination, they contain elements that bear similarities to life as it was lived.  There is truth in fact, and there is truth in fiction.

The West may have been won with six-guns and carbines, but the prize without water is not worth the taking.  Ergo, water disputes, rights and acquisition thereof, have been part and parcel of much of the West since the beginning of the conquest.  The waters of the Arkansas rise in the high Rockies of Central Colorado and as the Spring melt of winter snows heads eastward, the great river carries potential for human  settlement and agriculture.  Where there is water, there are conflicting claims.  Disputes over water rights have jammed the court system from the beginning, and I daresay that if one were to pursue it, he would find that there are pending cases and cases in progress related to Arkansas Valley water rights to this very hour. Dry-land farming has been practiced with greater and lesser success from year to year in Southeastern Colorado since the first settlers arrived.  But near the river, irrigation has been practiced since the first ditch was dug to divert water onto farmland.

In the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, sugar beets were introduced into this country, and two areas of Colorado were found to be ideal for this crop when water was available.  According to The American Sugar Beet Growers' Association, the first sugar factory for processing beets  in the United States was erected in 1879.  By 1917 there were 91 such plants in 18 states from Michigan to California.  The Arkansas River Valley was prime land, and there was river water to be had.  Many little towns, including Holly, Swink, and Hartman where I was born, had mills pouring out sugar for the market by the carload.  "Dirty, ugly roots in one end, sparkling white crystalline sweetness out the other."  What a deal!  The beet growers were blessed, too, in that, unlike cane which required a "double processing," beet sugar could be obtained in a single process.


Image: sciencedaily.com

But there was the water issue.  By 1893 the Amity Canal Company had filed for water rights.  A few years later Holbrook was granted rights.  There arose a dispute in which Holbrook claimed that by taking full draw on their rights Amity was depriving Holbrook of its grant.

To Law!  Bring on the lawyers, get to court.  In 1920 or '21, Holbrook sued Amity in Circuit Court.  Amity successfully defended its position and in 1921 the court so declared.  But that is not the end of it.  It never is.  In 1929 Holbrook filed in District Court and the matter was heard yet again, and again Amity prevailed.  It went to Appellate Court in 1931.  Amity prevailed.*

Or should I say, the lawyers won.  They always do, no matter how the court rules.

*Information extracted from leagle.com.

Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. John 4:13,14 (KJV)