Death at The Bridge

There’s a road near the center of Lonoke County, Arkansas called “Doc Eagle Road.” It takes off from “Old Highway 70” just before you reach the city limits of Lonoke and runs generally south until it reaches Bevis Road at which point it becomes “Cole Road,” a name chosen by the 911 folks. It’s the road on which Brenda’s family and a bunch of other Coles lived.

Anyway, Brenda’s dad and his family lived on Doc Eagle Road when time came for him to be drafted into the United States Army in early 1944 and spend the rest of the war with the 79^th Infantry Division—called “a fighting unit”— as it battled its way across France, Belgium and Germany.

So Julius, that was Brenda’s dad’s name, was quite familiar with Doc Eagle Road and its most widely known landmark, called simply, “Doc Eagle Bridge.” He told this story.

It seems that in 1866, just after the Civil War, a stranger wandered into the town of Lonoke. Nobody knew much about him, but he got into an argument with a local man and it resulted in a “cuttin' scrape.” Actually, locals called it “a duel,” and it took place at Doc Eagle Bridge.

The local man killed the stranger and they buried him a mile or so to the east at the edge of a field. Years ago, after Brenda and I married, I spent a lot of precious time with Julius. He would tell me about coming home from the war and walking the five miles or so from where the bus dropped him off to their new place, just off the far end of Doc Eagle Road. Incidentally, he would find that his family had spent the money he sent home to “buy me a fillin’ station,” on more farmland and a car for his younger brother. That’s a story for another day.

He would also point out, as we drove to tend his cows, the grave of the stranger killed at Doc Eagle Bridge. He never failed to tell the story again. He was like that. He didn’t give up on a good story. If a story was good, it was worth retelling.

They had plowed around the grave site for years, the simple tombstone standing among growing cotton or soybeans. There was no name on it, just "Born 1833, SC" and "Killed 1866." I couldn’t help noticing that the rows came closer to the grave each year.

Then one year, the tombstone disappeared and the plowed rows obliterated the grave. I couldn’t even begin now to tell you where it was. Maybe Brenda could. Julius always said that they threw the tombstone in a ditch somewhere.

As I get older, I can’t help thinking about the stranger who wondered into a strange land to face death. Was he a trouble maker? Was he an inciter? Was he careless? Was he different? We know he must have been white, for his murder wouldn’t have merited the honor of a duel otherwise. Was he thoughtless? Had the trials of his own cruel war clouded his judgement? Was he, perhaps, just walking his way home when he stopped in Lonoke?

Or was he a simply a stranger? That’s enough cause to call a person out these days. It probably was then, too. What thoughts might have passed through the mind of the young veteran, Julius Cole, as he walked across Doc Eagle bridge that night, the horrors of war still swimming in his head?

Do you suppose he might have wondered about his own case, being sent into “harm’s way” and surviving, as opposed to a man seeking food and shelter and finding death instead? Do you suppose he found life, at that moment, a little unpredictable?

We’ll never know.

Julius Cole, center—survivor

Jogging Through The Past

When I left you yesterday, it was February 17, 1980, a wintery day in Little Rock. There were clear skies, and the chilly temperature was perfect for jogging. My friend, and sometimes running, buddy John Woodruff, and I were set to follow an advance team of faster runners on a 20+ mile jog, our last before the Arkansas Marathon coming up on March First.

We had but one regret. There was excitement in Little Rock that day. Two icons of Arkansas history were to be imploded that morning and the whole city was prepared to watch, either in person or live TV. The majestic Marion Hotel and its neighbor, the Grady Manning, had been fixtures in the city for ages. Our schedules would force us to miss their end.

Jewish businessman Herman Kahn broke ground on the Marion Hotel in 1905. The hotel bore the famous nickname "The Meeting Place of Arkansas." The Marion Hotel had five hundred rooms, a marble fish pond in the main lobby, green carpets, and green leather couches. The bellboys also wore green twill uniforms. Interestingly, Kahn’s great-grandson, Jimmy Moses, as a dreamer and developer, is making a significant impact today on the physical setting of Little Rock.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Ford, before he was a famous writer and during summers as a boy, lived in Room 600 of the Marion, where his grandfather, Ben Shelley, was manager. Other famous guests of the hotel included Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Douglas McArthur, Will Rogers, Helen Keller, and Charles Lindbergh.

In our time though, the Marion and Manning had been more widely known for phenomenon tinged with notoriety. They were favored meeting places of the Arkansas legislature. In an infamous bar, in the Marion, known as the “Gar Hole,” many, in not most, of the legislative decisions that determined our state’s future were made during that era. Note to my out-of-state friends: the gar is a trash fish, native to Arkansas lowlands, that grows to great lengths. They say the bar had a stuffed one on the wall, but I never saw it.

Stories abound, some even repeatable. I’ll share one that I heard years after the Gar Hole ceased to exist. An old barber, who had worked in the Marion during the heyday of legislative history, told it to me. It occurred, this story, during the reign of State Representative Paul Van Dalsem, one of the acknowledged bosses of the legislature for years. Yes, he’s the one who became locally infamous for his remark about some female detractors. All he said was that in Perry County (his home), such would-be troublemakers were kept “barefoot and pregnant.” Arkansas women were a little touchy back in those days. Many still are. Others have become inured to such degradations.

Anyway, according to my barber, the representative became outraged when he heard that the Gar Hole was raising the price of a beer from a quarter to thirty cents. Almost immediately, a bill appeared on the legislative agenda that would seriously and adversely affect bars in our state fitting the description of the infamous Gar Hole. Next day, it was announced that the price of beer stayed at a quarter. The bill disappeared into the dustbin of legislative history.

So that was what the City of Little Rock and the State of Arkansas were going to lose that day. One might say it was the end of an era. One would be more accurate in saying that the day would begin the evolution of an era.

As William Faulkner once observed in his famous novel, Requiem for a Nun, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

The Paul Van Dalsems and his pals from the Arkansas Legislature still hang out here, in spirit, if not in body. They all changed political parties a few years ago. Don’t ask me to explain. The answer is highly complicated but terrifyingly simple. Decisions affecting our state are still being made in bars and secret meeting places. Those places just aren’t in our state, where innocent-looking barbers might overhear.

But John Woodruff and I knew nothing of all that on this fine winter morning. All we knew was that we were off on an adventure in a city that we both loved.

Our seat of government?

 Fiction Friday. Here's one I did long after reading From Romance to Ritual by Jesse Weston. Yes, you'll recognize it as one of the sources recommended by T. S. Eliot as an aid to understanding his classic poem The Waste Land.

ARTIFACTS

By Jimmie von Tungeln

The fierce August heat poured from the sky without mercy upon the solemn fields. Below, nothing moved or showed any signs of life except the efforts of a small boy darting like an atom below the cruel sun. He hopped along a turn-row from one stalk of cotton to the next. The loose soil burned hot enough to scorch the soles of his feet, but at row’s end, the cotton threw a small circle of shade, providing relief for the traveler. He rested in each shadow for a moment before hopping to the next and, with this strange rhythm, reached the trees along the edge of the bayou where the dark forest promised relief. He reached into the pocket of his overalls to make sure his prize was still there, that it hadn’t bounced out or found a hole through which to escape. Feeling its cool, polished form, he smiled and entered the woods, safe from his ordeal by heat. The woods enveloped him like a mother’s arms might wrap around a young child and the vast fields of cotton again lay unmarked by human activity.

            Inside, giant, brooding trees shut out most of the sun’s light so that the boy felt the cool damp soil against his bare feet. He eased to his right and found a familiar trail, then struck for the bayou. The forest was quiet like the world on a frost-covered morning and the boy shivered at its majesty. He moved with a knowing assuredness among the vines and bushes. Before long, he spotted his target. He approached without making a sound on the soggy leaves.

            The old man sat in his place, like a piece of the ancient vegetation itself. A rusted five-gallon bucket provided a seat. He held a long bamboo fishing pole over the water and a white flour sack on the ground held, the boy knew, both bait for fishing and food for the old man. The man sensed, rather than saw, the boy and he spoke without turning his head or removing a battered pipe from his mouth. “Marse Robert,” he said.

            “Hey,” the boy replied. “They bitin’?” He found a spot to the old man’s right and sat.

            “Mostly slow, today,” the man said. “How you doin’?”

            “I’m almost six years old. My birthday’s day after tomorrow—August 21.”

            “Well now isn’t that something?” The old man eased the fishing pole forward until the baited hook emerged. Then he swung the line toward him, grabbed it and inspected the bait. A mangle of worms dangled in several directions and he found no sign of molestation. He adjusted the cork—a relic that had long ago been retrieved from the top of an empty snuff jar—then slid his hand along the line towards the hook. Turning away from the boy, he spat on the bait and tossed it back into the bayou. Late summer rains had flooded the banks and the dark, sluggish water pulled the cork toward some unseen destination until the line went taut and stopped it.

            “I was born in 1920,” the boy continued when he saw that the man was no longer occupied.

            “You don’t say,” the man said, pulling the pipe from his mouth and exhaling a puff of smoke which floated across the bayou like spiritt seeking a companion. “You be grown before we know it.”

            “How old are you?” the boy asked.

            The old man looked at his pipe. “The ‘chidren’ says I must be pushin’ on the door of 90 years or so,” he said. “I don’t rightly know.”

            The enormity of the number stunned the boy and he drew is knees up and stared at the meandering water. Then he remembered. He stood up in that single, fluid movement that only the young can accomplish and thrust his hand into his pocked. He retrieved his prize and thrust it toward the old man. “I fount an indian ‘arrerhead,’” he said. He held a perfectly formed artifact of pure black stone, contrasting against his small, white hand. The stone approached five inches in length and still held the sharp edges and fine point that its maker had first chipped into it.

It was too large to fit an arrow’s shaft. It doubtless had formed the head of a small spear. The old man regarded it, admiring its symmetry and the perfection of the creator’s art. “You shore fount a beauty there. Wherebout’s did you get it.?”

“Up the bayou aways, on the edge of the field the day after it rained. Hit was just a layin’ there. Poppa said Indians used to live here before we did.”

“They did indeed,” the old man said. He took the pipe from his mouth again and looked at the boy, bent toward him slightly to increase the importance of the moment. “Would you like to know something?”

“Sure,” the boy said, infected by the old man’s solemnity.

            “I remember when there were Indians here, at least one family. I remember when that last family left.”

            “You never…,” the boy started. The man’s look stopped him. “How could you remember Indians? Ain’t that been long time ago?”

            “It has for a fact,” the man said. “But I’m an old man and I wasn’t much older than you when the last ones left.”

            “Where were they at?”

            “Right down on this very bayou. This land wasn’t all cleared then and they lived in a lean-to right down near the edge of the water.”

            “Did you ever talk to them?”

            “Never did,” he said. “They kept to ‘theyselves’ and nobody ever went near them far as I knows.”

            “What happened to them?”

            “They just disappeared one night. Somebody noticed they left and nobody ever knew a thing about where they went.”

            “Did they leave anything?”

            “Not that I ever saw. When folks disappear like that, ain’t usually much left of them, ‘cept something like that there thing you holdin’. Folks finds things like that ever now and then.” He nodded at the artifact for emphasis. "Hit's a beauty alright."

            They boy stood without moving, absorbing this information and turning it around in his mind. The man returned to his fishing and his pipe. After a time, the boy closed his fist and returned the artifact to his pocket. “See you around,” he said and started walking upstream.

            “Yassuh,” the old man said and moved to inspect his bait again.

            The boy found a trail and followed the water as it edged sullenly toward its destination. From time to time, he felt in his pocket for his prize. It seemed to grow larger, he thought, the farther he went upstream. He thought about what the man had told him, and he thought about how the old man’s eyes had seemed to sparkle as he talked, almost as if a mist settled on them. He seemed to see the mist again and he felt as if he could see through it right into his own existence until he could almost see the very essence of what made him himself. He shuddered, “Indians,” he said to himself. Then he stopped and made a decision.

            The bayou was about to make a bend and he knew the trail would end. This was the perfect place. He searched among the trees until he found what he needed—the stump of a large tree left when a storm had taken its top. He scooped up a double handful of the soft mud at the water’s edge and carried it to the stump.

            He formed the mud into a small, smooth base. Then he went back to the water and washed the mud from his hands and wiped them dry on the legs of his overalls. He walked back to the stump, and looked at it, examined the small mud bed he had formed, and evaluated the worthiness of his handiwork. Then he took the artifact from his pocket and examined it as if he were seeing it for the first time. He held it in both hands, aiming the point upstream and into the impenetrable forest ahead. He slowly, and with as much respect as he could muster, laid the object on the bed of mud, pointing into the unknown. Then he backed away and stood still until he felt himself merging with the woods, the bayou, the artifact, and even the old man still fishing downstream. Maybe even, he felt, with the vanished ancients themselves. He felt himself becoming dizzy and then he felt a shaft of light coming from beyond the trees. He turned towards it and started from the forest.

            He whistled now as he walked.

Retracing history ...

I’m heading over to the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History in a bit to board a bus taking a group of us in a day-long tour. We’ll trace the route of Major General Frederick Steele’s ill-fated campaign during the Camden Expedition, a part of the Red River Campaign. Federal troops left the site of the Museum on this date in 1864 and came back in May, let’s just say: less than successful.

We'll trace the old Military Road past Elkin’s Ferry and Poison Springs, the latter the sight of debacle that resulted in an entire wagon train of goods being captured and members of the First Kansas Colored Infantry being savaged by Confederate troops.

We’ll lunch at the site of Steele’s headquarters in Camden and proceed back toward Little Rock as did a deflated Union Army. After stopping at Mark’s Mill, site of another Union disaster, we’ll arrive at Jenkin’s Ferry where the Union Army finally stood its ground, and the Second Kansas Colored Infantry exacted some revenge for the treatment of their brothers at Poison Springs. A reconstructed scene of the battle formed the introduction to the film Lincoln of a few years back.

I’ve read that my great-grandfather’s Confederate unit took part in the Battle of Jenkins Ferry. If so, he was only about 50 miles away from where my other maternal great-grandfather was stationed with the First Indiana Cavalry. One’s daughter would marry the other’s son after the war and the family would be a bit confused forever thereafter.

If standing on the spot where history occurred doesn’t make your nerve-ending jingle a bit, I pity you. Here’s Great Grandpa Coats of the 23^rd Arkansas Infantry. He farmed and served as a part-time preacher after the war. His obituary noted that “… he never took part in a neighborhood brawl.” There’s something to be said for that.

My Redacted LIfe: Chapter 38 (Cont._2)

 What did a young married couple do back in the fall of 1972 when they had no spare money to spend, i.e. neither pot nor window? Oh, we were making money enough, but spare cash went into saving for a home. The GI Bill offered substantial benefits in a home mortgage and I intended to take full advantage. So, recreational outings were both creative and inexpensive. We saved and improvised.

Brenda introduced me to a cheap pastime. The area in which her family farm sat was rich in Native American history. A sluggish wetland called Baker’s Bayou was the center of much ancient activity. After a farmer had plowed a field rains had come, one could walk around and spot artifacts rising to the surface of the earth. We would collect specimens and store them roughly by location. Later we learned that the major collection points coincided roughly with bases identified by the state archaeologist's office. The effort produced much fun at little cost.

I suppose collecting them was insensitive, but by now they would have been pulverized into unidentifiable bits of stone by the huge farming rigs.

Brenda’s dad, Julius, told us of being a very young boy and talking to a very old former slave who said he could remember the last Indian family that lived on the Bayou. One morning they had simply disappeared during the night. Figuring placed the time somewhere in the late 1850s. An archaeologist acquaintance, who once helped us categorize our collection, considered the ages and verified that the story could have been true. I’ve thought about it many times over the years, the continuity of history and all.

While we were walking the ruins of a past civilization, I was working to control the nature of the next civilization. It struck me as how little impact the ancients left on the land and how much power we now possessed to enact change. Maybe the role of my profession wasn’t to design paradise, but to ward off hell. It made me think.

In the meantime, Brenda taught, I travelled the state, and, after a rain, we walked, hand in hand, over the remains of a past civilization of people who had no doubt worked, loved, and dreamed of a future. I suppose, perhaps, that one day some life form will walk over the remains of our efforts to lead a meaningful life.

Wonder what they will find?

Cars probably. Lots of
rusted old cars.

My Redacted Life: Chapter 26 (Cont._3)

As hard as it was to tell that woman that she was right, Brenda had me walking by noon Saturday. The more I walked, the better my ankle felt until I could get around without my arm around her shoulder. I didn’t share that with her for a spell, but she finally figured it out on her own. She spun away from me, turned, cocked her head and smiled. “Miracle cure, if you ask me,” she said.

What could I do but agree? I leaned over and kissed her. “Thanks.”

“Want to do something special? She flexed her eyebrows up and down in a disarming and devilish fashion.”

My heart fluttered. “Like what?”

“Take me to Hot Springs.”

“Hot Springs?”

“Yeah. I wanted to go before school starts in the fall. This seems like a good day for it.”

“Okay,” I said. I was stuck a couple sentences back, but it didn’t seem like terrible idea.

“Let me go change. I’ll be right back.”

I showered quickly and put on some jeans and a t-shirt, not a nautical one, just a modest blue thing that spoke, I thought, of stability and masculinity. I was hardly limping by now.

She came back just as I was finished dressing. She wore loose white slacks, a form-fitting and revealing blue pull-over and sensible walking shoes. Her long hair sparkled as it hung down her back. “I’m ready,” she said. “And quit looking at me like that.”

I came to my senses and escorted her to the car. I added a slight limp for pity’s sake. Soon we were on University Avenue headed for I-30 and adventure. She settled in an told me about some stunts that she and Vernell, who was from the Hot Springs area, had pulled while attending college. Common courtesy and a natural life-wish prevents divulging details. Let’s just say they weren’t the placid students they sometimes wished to portray.

We passed the Arkansas Highway Department “castle” just before leaving the Little Rock city limits. It towered over the landscape, an isolated and independent part of state government. Its chief function was to build highways and freeways that would induce traffic congestion. It would become very good at it over time.

We came to the small settlement of Bryant, a community that had grown up around a sawmill and boasted a bank that had been robbed four times by the same man. Next was the blue-collar union town of Benton, center of the state’s aluminum industry. Beyond that, was the Saline River, on which, farther south, Civil War armies had fought a fierce battle at a place known as Jenkin’sFerry. A Union victory had saved the remnants of a large force that left Little Rock months earlier with conquest in mind and nothing but adversity in waiting. My great-grandfather’s unit participated in the battle, on the losing side.

We didn’t care about those things. We turned off the freeway and began the lovely drive that would take us to Hot Springs.

All cities in our state are unique. There are three that are more unique than normal: Eureka Springs, Helena (as it was known at the time—any city where Robert Johnson had played guitar is unique), and the “mostest” unique city in the state, Hot Springs. It is the only city in the country built around what would become a national park. In fact, the official name of the city is “Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.”

Oddly the spot on which the city rests has always been a place of peace, a welcome site in what can be, at times, a troubled world. Ancient Native American tribes, often at war otherwise, would meet in harmony there, in the “Valley of the Vapors” to trade, often for Novaculite Rock, also called Arkansas Stone, a hard rock useful for fashioning knives and other instruments, including arrowheads.

During the mobster era, rival gangsters would visit the city under a truce of peace to avail themselves of the baths that utilized the natural hot springs that flowed from subterranean sources. Characters as disparate as Al Capone and Babe Ruth knew the city well.

We didn’t care. I had parked the Green Angel and we were walking along Central Avenue, the main, actually the only, through street in the downtown. It was built over a creek that ran through two hillsides. That provided the only option for transportation through the pass, but it also tempted Nature, periodically, to remind puny humans of its power to flood and destroy.

As we walked along, I felt people staring at me. After much observation, I realized they weren’t staring at me. As we walked along Magnolia-lined sidewalks, I felt proud. Let them stare at that sashaying beauty holding my hand.

I didn’t care. Was I a lucky man, or what?

Our special city.