Favorite Ozarks People – 16

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art, craft, craftsmanship, Favorite Ozarks People, Ironton, Isla Armfield, Mountain Echo, printing, Richard Armfield, Wilbur Larkin

After my family moved from Fredericktown to our farm on the Black River, my mother wrote freelance articles for the Mountain Echo in Ironton, which was then owned by Richard and Isla Armfield. They were a lovely pair or people, old-fashioned newspaper folks down to their toes. Richard suffered from Parkinson’s disease, which ultimately led to their selling the paper, but when I knew him he just walked with an odd gait and showed a minor tremor in his hands. Isla was an elegant dresser and extremely cordial, who was engaged in all sorts of community groups.

But the person I’m thinking about today was one of the back-shop guys, a printer named Wilbur Larkin. Sometimes when my mom traveled to Ironton I would accompany her, and I always found myself drifting into the back shop to watch the printers work. Although the paper was printed elsewhere, the Mountain Echo had a thriving job printing business, with Wilbur and another gentleman whose name will occur to me as I continue (I hope – I think it was Kenneth, but can’t be sure).

Wilbur was the master of two machines. One was a Linotype, an honest-to-goodness Linotype, which fascinated me to no end. I remember the distinctive, horrid smell of molten lead that emanated from the machine when Wilbur fired it up; there was a container on top, where he would toss in some lead blanks and whatever waste pieces of type were lying around from previous jobs, and once the lead had melted properly, he would set the font size and line width and then begin typing the new job on a weird keyboard that bore little resemblance to the standard QWERTY keyboard used by everything else. Lead would run down a little channel and be formed, letter by letter, into a line of type (thus the name), which would then be ejected into a receiving rack on the side. I was always warned to keep my hands away from the finished product, because as you can imagine, it stayed hot for quite a while. It was like watching a cathedral organist at work: intense, concentrated hand movements on an oversized apparatus, incomprehensible to the casual observer.

By Unknown author – Popular Science Monthly Volume 40, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12205750

The other machine was a platen press. This one was electric, although there was a treadle-operated one elsewhere in the shop. Wilbur would daub a paddleful of ink (also strictly do-not-touch) onto the platen, then gradually accelerate into the on-off rhythm of placing a sheet of paper or posterboard into the frame in the moment of open space when the inked lettering was retreating from contact while simultaneously removing the newly printed sheet. Left hand out, right hand in. It was beautiful to watch, made even more so by the fact, repeated to me more than once, that despite the gentle, musical clanking of the machine, any finger that happened to be between paper and type at the moment of printing would be crushed. The platen press was mainly used for posters, and Wilbur kept several composing sticks hanging on the wall in which he would set the type; for the largest sizes, display type over an inch tall, he actually used wooden letterblocks instead of metal ones. I marveled at the cases of two- and three-inch type from which he would pluck the needed words: the number of letters was limited, so if your poster was something like “Massasoit for Assessor,” it might require two passes on the printing press so that the s’s could be reset onto the second line. Years later, I found a couple of job sticks and a type case at a garage sale; I bought them and still have them as souvenirs.

Wilbur was a soft-spoken man who didn’t seem bothered by my presence but didn’t exactly encourage it, either. But he tolerated me, let me watch, and answered my questions with patient good humor.

Few things in life are as satisfying as the sense of mastery: of a subject, a challenge, a tool, an activity. It’s always thrilling to watch someone who’s a master: I think that’s part of the reason for the popularity of professional sports, watching people whose skills are so clearly at a peak. But mastery takes many forms, all of which deserve honor. We tend to associate mastery with physical skills and to bemoan their diminishment. To some extent, that’s true; there’s aren’t as many master saddlemakers or quilters as there once were. But we shouldn’t overlook other forms of mastery. Over the years I’ve been fortunate to watch other masters, digital masters, at work, with design programs, data management programs, and others. And the speed and assuredness with which they work is just as thrilling to me. It’s just as amazing to watch over the shoulder of someone who’s creating a unique design on screen as it was to watch my dad peer into the innards of malfunctioning hay baler out in the field and diagnose its problem within a few minutes, or to watch Wilbur Larkin perform a sonata on the Linotype.

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Our Original Sin

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Henry Caldwell, history, Iron County, Ironton, J. W. Emerson, John Abney, Larry Wood, lynching, Missouri, Ozarks, slavery, William Hinchey

The circumstances of the original incident between Henry Caldwell and a Mrs. Peck on July 27, 1882, are unclear. An account of the incident can be found on Larry Wood’s admirable Ozarks history blog. Mrs. Peck, according to the original newspaper report, was more than sixty years old and Caldwell was thirty-seven; but we’re left to guess who Mrs. Peck might be, since her first name is not given in the Iron County Register story. But since the incident took place in Ironton, my guess would be Adaline Peck, who would have been 64 that year according to census records.

In any event, according to the Register story, on that Thursday morning cries for help were heard. Neighbors rushed to the scene and found Mrs. Peck and Henry Caldwell in the front yard of her home, struggling. Henry was subdued, taken to the jail, and charged with assault and attempted rape.

The next chapter in this grim story is dispiritingly familiar. Thursday night passed, Friday night passed, with Caldwell still in jail. Then late Saturday night, a mob of thirty to forty men assembled, broke into the jail, and dragged Caldwell to the railroad bridge over Stouts Creek a few blocks away, a noose around his neck. The other end of the rope was tied to a bridge beam and Caldwell was thrown off, but desperate to live, he clung to the bridge timbers until someone took a knife to his arm. When he fell, another gruesome miscalculation; his feet touched the ground. The mob ended his life with a fusillade of bullets.

In his book Witnesses to History: Stories from Park View Cemetery, which is available from the Iron County Historical Society, John M. Abney quotes a different version. The letter from which this quotation is taken is in the possession of the Historical Society.

Henry did something that frightened old lady Peck and it was construed by some as an intended attack on his part.  I [the letter writer, Cora Chase Charlton, daughter of the prosecuting attorney at the time] – who have heard her minute account of what really happened more than once, did not think so.  But a bunch of men who spent their time in the Schultz saloon inflamed themselves with liquor to the point of taking poor Henry out, hanging him on the railroad bridge, and riddling his body with bullits.

Thus occurred the only documented lynching in Iron County, Missouri.

I first became aware of this event many years ago, when I read the diary of a little boy growing up in Arcadia during that time. The boy’s name was Stephen Hinchey, and the diary entry (which I carefully copied down and filed away – this was in the days before computers) read as follows:

Sat July 29

I studied most of the day.

In evening father heard, while in Ironton, that a negro was to be hung by a mob when night came. Father and I went to home of Judge Emerson to warn him of the mob’s plan.

Sunday 30th of July

This morning we heard that the mob hanged the negro on the Ironton railroad bridge. About 60 shots were fired into his body.

A later entry reads:

Sat. August 12th 1882

Today is my 9th birthday.

A few thoughts:

Stephen Hinchey’s father was William Hinchey, an artist and teacher at Arcadia College, and a prodigious diarist himself. William Hinchey’s diaries, written in shorthand and transcribed by Stephen years later, described his travels to the West, his observations during the Civil War, and his life in Arcadia and elsewhere. The Arcadia Valley has drawn many fine artists over the years, and Hinchey was but the first.

William Hinchey

Henry Caldwell, thirty-seven at the time of his death, was identified in the Register article as married with four children. Census records from 1880 confirm that his wife was Millie, and their children Stella, Peter, Edia, and Nettie. A man who was that age in 1882 would most likely have been born into slavery and lived in that condition until his late teens, nearly twenty. The Register describes him as a bit daft “and at times out-and-out crazy.” Whether there was truth to this description, or a connection to having lived half his life as a slave, cannot be determined, as news accounts of lynchings are notorious for their retrospective portrayals of victims as dangerous and mobs as honor-bound. But Cora Chase Carlton also believed something to be aberrant about Caldwell. The editor of the Register, Eli Ake, went so far to say in his article, “We are not an advocate of lynch-law, but if there ever can be a case calling justly for its intervention, this was one.” The entire account can be found in the Library of Congress’ records. I have been unable to learn what became of Mrs. Caldwell and the children.

The “Judge Emerson” to whom Stephen refers was another significant character in the history of that era: J. W. Emerson, Civil War colonel, war hero, circuit judge, and founding investor in the Emerson Electric Company, a name we still see on consumer products although the ownership of the company has long since passed into the stock exchange.

J. W. Emerson

This lynching predates the horrific spate of lynchings across the Ozarks chronicled in Kimberly Harper’s book White Man’s Heaven by about twenty years. But the pattern is certainly familiar. I am left with a few unanswered questions. The newspaper account depicts the county sheriff, William Fletcher, as surprised and overwhelmed by the mob; but was he? According to the article he had made preparations for mob law the two previous nights, but was caught unprepared on the fatal night. How likely is that? The “colored servant” who usually slept in the jail overnight was conveniently absent. If he sensed something amiss, how did the sheriff not? As Harper’s book observes, a common tactic for law enforcement officials seeking to prevent a lynching was to move the prisoner to the next town or county, making it more difficult for a mob to form and disperse inconspicuously. Why that didn’t happen in this case is impossible to know at this late date.

It’s worth remembering, moreover, that Iron County was firmly Democratic by then, and as Aaron Astor points out in Rebels on the Border, one of the tenets of border-state Democrats of that era was the restoration of the prewar social order, which would include the firm subjugation of African-Americans. The racist language of the Register article and the perception of Caldwell as “dangerous” and “a brute” fit into this mindset. (It’s also worth remembering that Eli Ake, the editor, was a complicated figure who doesn’t pigeonhole easily; John Abney reminded me in correspondence that Ake opened the pages of the Register to African-American correspondents for many years and repeatedly took some risky stands against the Ku Klux Klan in the ’20s and ’30s.)

On a TV show the other night, I heard a historian refer to slavery as “our original sin,” with our meaning “white Americans,” of course. Americans tend not to believe in original sin, a stark doctrine that robs us of individual agency and casts us as largely helpless in deciding our own fate. I’m not a believer in it either, at least not in the religious sense, but it’s surely a powerful metaphor for the unseen forces that shape our lives and our thoughts. To avoid the theological implications, I think of it as “stain” more than “sin.” Some stains simply don’t wash out, no matter how much we scrub.

Caldwell was buried in Park View Cemetery in Ironton, a cemetery also known variously as “potters’ field,” “City Cemetery,” or “the colored cemetery.” It is obscure enough today that it doesn’t even appear on Google Maps. Of the estimated 300 graves in that cemetery, only about thirty have markers. Stephen Hinchey, William Fletcher, J. W. Emerson, and Eli Ake are all buried in Ironton’s Masonic Cemetery. May they all rest in peace, and may we all eventually find some way to fully include that stain in our understanding of the social fabric of our lives. Because more than 130 years have passed and it still hasn’t washed out.

Park View Cemetery

Favorite Ozarks People – 14

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Arcadia, doctors, Favorite Ozarks People, Ironton, Marvin Menne

The former office of Dr. Marvin Menne in Ironton. Looks like it’s a Goodwill store now, or at least it was when this Google Street View image was taken.

Marvin Menne was my family doctor from the time I was about ten (I tried to find a photo of the good doctor himself, but was unsuccessful–who knew that someone could be that far off the grid these days?) I was a tolerably healthy kid, but had the usual number of youthful ailments and necessary check-ups, so I suppose my medical involvement was pretty typical.

Dr. Menne’s office, as you can tell from this photo, was modest. A small waiting room in front, a receptionist/appointment setter behind the counter, a couple of examining rooms, and then an office and a room for more involved procedures, which I rarely saw the inside of, thank goodness. It was the office of a small-town GP, not far removed from the Norman Rockwell illustrations.

Dr. Menne had a vaguely mournful expression much of the time, the expression of someone who’s seen too many broken limbs and lives. But I recall that even as a child, he would square himself up to me, sit, and listen, until I had told him everything I had to say. Only then would he prompt me with further questions or continue with his examination.

In today’s overheated discussions of health care, we romanticize the small-town doctor, who made house calls, accepted chickens as payment, or what have you. Let’s remember that the modern health care system has resulted in a high level of care, far beyond what my small-town doctor was capable of, and overall health has been improving. Instead of a chicken, today’s poor rural patient brings a Medicaid card. But the necessity of caring remains, and I have a feeling that doctors like Marvin Menne can be found all over rural areas just as in my childhood. With the election of a doctor from Mountain Grove to the presidency of the American Medical Association, this is a year to think seriously about the state of health care in rural America. Here’s a hint: It’s not good.

 

Favorite Ozarks People – 12

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Arcadia, art, books, Frenzel, Ironton, libraries, literature

Stained glass window by Milton Frenzel

When I was a cub reporter, fresh out of college, many years ago in southern Missouri, I was looking for something to keep my mind active. I started attending a Great Books Club at the Ozarks Regional Library in Ironton, about an hour away.

And although I was a college graduate who had aced a couple of literature courses, and a working writer, Milton and Virginia Frenzel, who led the book discussions, were so deeply engaged with what we read, and on such a different level than most of my college professors, that they changed the way I thought about books for good. They didn’t just study them. They looked at them as living things, argued with them, demanded more from them. And by changing the way I thought about literature, they changed the way I thought about myself. And they weren’t even trying to do that. They were just being themselves, authentically and unselfconsciously, and in doing so opened up a new way of defining myself.

Milton and Virginia were an unlikely pair of Ozarkers: intellectual and urbane, they were among several artists who had emigrated from the St. Louis area to the Arcadia Valley, (others included Robert Harmon and Michael Chomyk). Milton and Bob Harmon designed stained glass windows for the Emil Frei Company of St. Louis, and Milton also painted. As I recall, Milton taught some art classes at the high school, although I don’t remember if he taught there full-time. I think they were largely in retirement by then. Virginia later served on the AV School Board.

That book group attracted some remarkable people, both natives and transplants. I may write about more of that group later. But for now, I’ll content myself by observing that if I ever dare to call myself an educated person, it’s a term that first began to become clear to me in a monthly book group at the Ironton library.

— Another Frenzel window.

 

Favorite Ozarks People – 8

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Branson, Ironton, journalism, Leon Fredrick, Missouri, Ozarks

Leon Fredrick

Leon Fredrick gave me my first job, when I was about 19, and then fired me from it ten weeks later when it became clear that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

He was a classic old-time newspaper editor, and when I knew him he had purchased the Mountain Echo in Ironton from Isla Armfield, the widow of Richard Armfield, the previous owner. They were an interesting pair in themselves and perhaps I’ll write about them one day.

Leon was a big guy, probably 6’6″, and rather intimidating. He had hired me to write feature stories, and I cranked them out like crazy. I wasn’t very good at hard news, though, and was far too shy at my age to walk up to people and start asking questions. If I had an introduction to someone, I could interview and write a story with ease; but generating my own story ideas was beyond my adolescent brain at this point in my life.

I remember one memorable day when a mansion just south of Ironton burned down. I dashed out the door, camera in hand, and spent the afternoon taking photos and scribbling notes. When I returned to the Mountain Echo office, I handed off the camera to Leon and started typing up my story. He emerged from the darkroom about twenty minutes later with my roll of film in his hand – utterly and completely clear. I had failed to load the film properly into the camera and had been snapping away all day with the film still in its canister. The look on his face was something I will never forget.

Leon’s wife, Nadine, was cheerful and upbeat, the opposite of Leon, who was all business. She provided a counterbalance to Leon’s rather sober demeanor, although I always got the feeling that she was just as focused on the business as he was and only showed it in different ways. After selling the Mountain Echo, the Fredricks pursued other journalistic business ventures, finally retiring to Branson, near where they had grown up. They’ve both passed away now, but they were certainly a memorable introduction to the world of small-town journalism for me. I’ve still got clippings of those feature stories, and they’re still pretty good.

Favorite Ozarks Places – 5

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favorite_places, Ironton, Missouri, Ozarks, rural

The Plunder Palace, Ironton, MO. Photo from the blog “The Mudshow Diaries”

OK, so the Ozarks aren’t all about natural beauty and crystal clear streams. They’re also about crazy-fun places like this flea market/weird stuff store on the east side of Highway 21 in Ironton. The interior is utterly crammed with incomprehensible things. Come for the “God” sign, leave with an automatic flyswatter.