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Fair ~ High: 88°F ~ Low: 67°F Wednesday, June 19, 2013 |
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All Cotton Choppers Knew 'The Man's' Identity
Posted Thursday, January 31, at 9:30 AM Pretty Patricia and pampered pooch "Honey Bear" may not have understood why I couldn't sleep the recent night Stan "The Man" Musial died at age 92. During farm days of youth, "The Man" was all you had to say to let all the other cotton choppers know you were speaking of St. Louis Cardinal slugger Stan Musial...
Gaylon Lawrence - GIANT man and farmer First met this "farmer/businessman" as a young newspaperman in Poplar Bluff and Sikeston. Did one of the first stories about his "vision" of transforming his farm acreage from traditional crops to rice...a move that helped transform a lot of the Bootheel's farming economy...
Little Farm Town Produced One Bank Robber One of my youth baseball coaches of the 1950s moved from Canalou to Morehouse. Another ended up working in and near D.C.'s White House. The third, perhaps the most colorful, was sent to the "Big House," as in the state penitentiary in Jefferson City...
1952's 'Heat Wave" Also Hurt Bootheel Folks It was 60 years ago that the heat wave of 1952 settled over the Bootheel. I recall the tortureous sweltering heat like it was yesterday. Three things I particularly recall from long ago 1952: First, I recall the terror, from seeing Momma Whittle suffering a "heat stroke". ...
Memories Help Prepare for Road of Life Memories...I love dusting them off, savoring them a while before putting them back on the shelf for reference during future tough emotional days of life. Earliest life's memory goes way back in my iron-barred baby bed at our farm house in New Madrid County. It was my second birthday when I recall hearing my loving mother complain to neighbor farm lady Ollie Bryant the family could get no rest, because of my incessant "crying."...
Fourth of July Fireworks In 1953, merchants at Canalou's seven small grocery stores agreed to stay open for business on the Fourth of July. That included Tootie Ralph's combo grocery/whiskey store, the scene of some real Fourth of July fireworks when Ralph, a former resident of Dexter, got into an argument with an area farm laborer about which farmer had the first cotton bloom that crop-growth season...
Father's Day, 2012 Daddy Whittle was a hard-working, successful farmer, who gambled on Mississippi river boats during non-farming months. As a tyke, when he gambled in local gambling rooms in Canalou, Morehouse, Charter Oak and Hill's Store, he'd let me sit on his knee with two firm instructions: "Don't talk while Daddy's playing poker," and "Don't tell your mother where we've been..."...
"Bootheel" book coming soon through SEMO State U Sorry for not posting columns regularly of late, due primarily to final detail editing, picture-matching, and "re-editing" of book chronicling the life of early Bootheel "swamp" settlers, the bravery and toughness it took to survive the elements, the world-record dredging it took the drain the 6-county region now transformed into some of richest farm land in the nation...
Bootheel Snow Days Deep in Joyful Remembrances It's mystical we have such warm memories of otherwise brutal cold tundra-like "snow days" of youth. Brrr, even when freezing back on the farm, snow days seemed to end snuggy and warm by our trusty Warm Morning coal stove, where Momma Whittle and aunts Doris Whittle and Durette Reed had prepared us children some hot sassasfras tea to drink as we removed our layers of clothing to let dry in the stoves' radient heat...
'Damn Ditch': Life threathening flood issue of the 1950s Glad to read last week where the Army Corps of Engineers is getting $800 million to make repairs along the flood-damaged Mississippi River. Flooding can not only endanger lives, it can endanger livelihoods for farm families. This I learned as a young boy, when my recently widowed mother came charging into our New Madrid County farm home, while ordering older brother to "get the shotgun and follow me!!"...
'Gandy Dancers' Helped Maintain Peavine RR As a small boy in the Bootheel, I thought they were "chain gang" convicts working on the railroad between Morehouse, Canalou, Parma and Gideon. But well-read farm neighbor A.J. Neel, informed they were "Gandy Dancers" who worked and chanted in rhythm as they laid and maintained railroad tracks...
This "Buck" Doesn't Stop Here Famous Missourian Harry Truman, as U.S. president, once said: "The buck stops here." A not so famous Missouri native, John Buck Jr., who was born at Canalou in New Madrid County, said: "This Buck does not stop here." Following a four-wheeler accident that snapped his neck in 2004, the prognosis from medical experts,was that he would never walk again...
Christmas and 1948 hog-killing celebration Christmas 1948...my "last" Christmas of "innocense." As weather dictated those cold winter months, my family decided to kill hogs on Christmas Eve. No problem, for a good hog killing day meant that farm families from miles around would pitch in, bring their hogs for slaughter and butchering. It was hard work, but enjoyable because it was a coming together of our Bootheel farming community...
School bus drivers were "Rolling Sheriffs" Country school bus drivers were important in the fabric of Bootheel life of my youth. One of the best was Gray Ridge School driver Walter Wyman. Being that our farm house sat a mile outside of the official Gray Ridge district, it was good ol' Mr. Wyman who would "fudge" a little, and drive across Little River, the boundary between New Madrid and Stoddard counties,to keep me from freezing or getting soaked to the bone during inclement weather...
Robert Rasche, hero school man To quote Gray Ridge High graduate Ann Rice (Simone), Robert L. Rasche was more than just a great educator. "He was a God-send," credits Ann, now a neighbor down in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Like Ann, I would not have graduated from high school, if not for the patience and tender/tough intuitive guidance of the late Superintendent of Schools Mr. Rasche, who died the year following my graduation in 1962...
Song Idea Came At Cotton Gin It was the late 1950s, when I needed a "ride" back to Canalou from the swimming pool in Sikeston. Fortunately, Gray Ridge High School fellow student Larry Tubbs was there in his family's new swoop-finned Chevy red-and-white Impala. Upon climbing in the car, it was the first time I heard the song "Alley Oop" over KSIM Radio...
Second Grade: Emotional Journey (Correction: In last column blog, I mistakenly identified the late Hutson Goza as co-owner of the Sikeston's Goza-Harper Motor Co. It was his brother, Kelly, who sold us our Plymouth "farm cars.") Forgive me for taking a personal journey back in time. Ain't nothing bach there I can change. If I could, don't know that I would...
Goza Family Supplied 'Farm Cars' I had moved to Tennessee before hearing the phrase "farm car." One of my newspaper editors was describing Plymouth automobiles. "That's what we call Plymouths in Tennessee," editor Mike West editorialized. "They're 'farm cars.'" It was 1950 when the Whittles got their first "farm car."...
Bootheel folks share good and bad times It was Oct. 25, 1950. Momma Whittle and her three youngens were at farm neighbor A.J. Neel's house where another neighbor farmer knocked on the door at about 7:30 p.m. "Mrs. Whittle, you husband has been in a bad car wreck in front of KSIM Radio Station in Sikeston," farm neighbor shared. "It's bad..."...
Hitler was a dog, a real good dog!! Not Germany's mad man Hitler, who doesn't deserve to be compared to any dog, much less a real good ferociously-loyal farm dog. Daddy Whittle showed his unusual wit in post-WWII days when he named our farm dog "Hitler." "He'll have to be strong to walk around with that name," Daddy explained...
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Retired recently as world-traveled newspaperman, career made possible by late Superintendent of Schools Robert L. Rasche, about to have Bootheel life book published by SEMO State University. Loved farm life, but knew at five years old, didn't want to be a "cotton picker" when I grew up.
Hot topics All Cotton Choppers Knew 'The Man's' Identity(0 ~ 9:30 AM, Jan 31)
Gaylon Lawrence - GIANT man and farmer
Little Farm Town Produced One Bank Robber
1952's 'Heat Wave" Also Hurt Bootheel Folks
Fourth of July Fireworks
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