A Railroad Ran Through It

By Calvin E. Sturdivant

As a gifted storyteller, the author captures the readers’ imagination with riveting accounts of the events that shaped his young life. He leads the reader through a spellbinding sequence of events; which uncover the remarkable stories of his past. These stories bring to life his family of orientation, their lives in the rural segregated south, their financial struggles, and their indestructible bond even as tragedy struck.

Sturdivant lays the ground-work in his native Arkansas. This epic heartwarming story about a family’s struggle in the south takes place in the twentieth century. It uncovers many tales of good versus evil with good eventually winning out. Follow the author as he discloses why the railroad in Chelford was necessary for the efficient functioning of the economy there and how human life was fractured for the families and the community after it disappeared.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Mar 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483427669

Book preview

Sturdivant.

A Railroad Ran Through It

I n my preteen years, in the early 1930s, times were unsettling. We were going here and there as my father moved us several times from house to house. Some were not too roomy, and they all had tin tops, until finally he moved us in a house with four rooms on the Bell Clair plantation near the back side of the place, called Two Ninety, meaning two hundred and ninety acres, or there about.

But—digressing a bit—before we moved to the Bell Clair plantation, one notable place we lived in the year of 1930 was the property of Daddy’s Aunt Ella and her husband Ed Mullins. Aunt Jenny, Ella’s sister, was their resident. The Mullins owned about twenty-five acres of land, including acres of woods with trees of hickory, oak, elm, maple, sweet gum and a few sycamores.

But it was at the small home we lived in that some memories stayed with me. It was there that I recall my mother taught my sister Latha and I our bedtime prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Should I die before I awake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Then there was the time Daddy killed a hog that had shotgun pellets in the meat. We ate it nonetheless.

Then there was the time that Professor Dodson followed my sister Latha home and stayed the night. Although he was welcomed by my parents, that remained with me as one odd situation.

And there were times I noticed Daddy coming home with sacks of items from the Red Cross during those lean times.

And I also recall the day our sister Zettie (Jeanette) was born. That was a hot mid-August day, and our dad had sent Latha and I to play under the plum trees not too far from our house. We had a visitor that day, a very light-skinned—at first we thought she was white—long-haired lass named Christina McFadden. She was friendly, outgoing, and we bonded. We were playmates for a few years, although she was quite older than us. We were permitted to walk the railroad to visit her. At this point in time, we lived about a stone’s throw from the railroad, and Christina lived just a few steps from it. She was involved in the Red Sweater incident that’s included in this story.

Now back to the subject. That was a speculative number, but that house was near a manmade canal. After a year there, we moved to a house by the railroad on the same plantation, the southwest side of Two Ninety. I was so pleased to move to the house by the railroad and to get away from that treacherous canal that spilled over a time or two from very heavy rains. In this house, we had to contend with the usual things: family additions, hard times, good times, insects, sickness, death and the whole ball of wax.

I recall a scary thing that happened one evening. My mother’s uncle was on his way to our house to visit and while walking the railroad, a cottonmouth moccasin bit at his heel, and the snake’s teeth got caught in Uncle’s pant leg. Uncle Will was laden with fright, and he took off running, dragging the reptile and thrashing it against the rail and crossties for about twenty-five yards. Finally, the snake’s teeth got untangled, and my mother’s uncle was a free man, although sweat was pouring out of his skin when he reached our house. I have a feeling sweat wasn’t the only thing he had disposed of. That was a constant warning to us youngsters traveling that railroad: Y’all watch out for snakes!

Mother’s Aunt Emma was the first funeral I attended at a young age. I wrote this story in Good Old Days magazine.

Our house by the railroad had four rooms, including an upstairs apartment. I thought it was something special to live by the railroad and not have to trudge through mud and water to get to high ground. In the fall there was a bonus for us. A cotton-hauling train rattled those rails and saturated the air with coal-induced fumes from September to November. That was an exciting event. We—my sister, Latha, and I—looked forward each autumn to seeing either number 180 or number 444 engines. It was exciting to us watching the local motor and boxcars ramble by, which was a respite for us temporarily from bending over picking that backbreaking cotton. Though we were young and didn’t have much back problems, anyway.

Chelford, where we lived, was a small farming community in northeastern Arkansas. Farming was the backbone of that area’s economy. People raised gardens, planted peanuts, potatoes, pumpkins and other truck patches, but cotton was King Capital. As the radio broadcaster Harold Sudberry used to say braggingly in the 1940s: This is KLCN Blytheville. The Wonder City in the Wonder State, King Cotton’s Capitol Land of Opportunity. The railroad supported the cotton economy by transporting bales of cotton in the fall from local gins to the compress in Wilson, Arkansas. Wilson was a small town that was discovered by a man named for Robert E. Lee Wilson in Northeast Arkansas in Miss. Co about thirty miles from Memphis. Cotton hauling was the railroad’s main objective, but it also served another purpose: it was a pathway for pedestrians of different persuasions: many used the railroad for daily traveling; everyone used it when flooding was a factor. Unlike other rail lines that serviced towns, cities and large metropolitan areas, this track didn’t have the large strong rails nor did it have slate or granite for its bed stones. But it was a firm passageway, whether rain, sunshine, or snow. For some people in need, it was a path to gather food for their families, to satisfy their needs and ease their hunger pains. Many times, in our sojourn by the tracks, we saw it as a highway for the helpless.

But the railroad in the late 1930s introduced us to a new scene. That was when we saw a man of color at the helm of the cotton-hauling train. That was quite historic in our eyes and something to gloat about because this job responsibility was something above the menial tasks that blacks were often handed.

On the negative side and on the other side of the track, this innocent railroad was—strangely enough—used by a few dishonest trampers. The lasting lessons I learned were: there are good, decent people and not so good and dishonest people in every sphere of influence. Some good deeds were done by many people who lived by the railroad and in the community. At that time, living by the railroad was almost paradise. Compared to the muddy lowlands and rain-swollen canal that released water all around, the house by the railroad was like heaven. I probably thought my parents would live there for the rest of their lives—I was a bit naive. A few years down the road, though, I knew I wouldn’t. When I was ten years old, something within me told me to leave and seek my fortune elsewhere. But it was nine years later when that transpired. My family lived in that house by the railroad for fourteen years.

Daddy moved the family, trying to improve his fortunes, in the spring of 1946; however, it would have been just as well had he stayed in the house by the railroad. There were good years and some not so good, but the years in that house by the railroad and some of the incidents left an indelible mark that is not easy for me to erase. Nor do I want to. The railroad was an innocent conveyer; it had no impact in the way people traversed it. For the most part, positive events took place, but not all times.

Daddy moved away from that house to a house by a dirt road. That was a sad time for me, even though I was absent; living in another city, but it concerned me nonetheless.

One pedestrian used the railroad as an escape route from his murderous deeds which I called the The Red Sweater Incident, and two night prowlers used it to imitate our family. Then there was a time, in the mid-1930s when two brown-suit uniformed white law enforcement officers came and picked up a young male neighbor for questioning, having been identified by a white female who claimed she had been assaulted by a colored boy. I believed she was caught in a lie and the case was dropped. These incidents opened our eyes to the behavior of some canines and how they act or react in extraordinary situations.

But I have sometimes, and in some ways, associated our house by the railroad with Samuel Foss’ House by the Side of the Road in that there were people we befriended who needed help in those troubling times. But all too often, we had to contend with the racial attitudes which forced us to ‘stay in our place,’ like the situations where we blacks or colored had to contend with, such as whites being served first whether it was in stores, transportation or whatever.

I saw an incident where a white male perpetrated violence on a black female without from retaliations black males, including her brothers. It would have been courting disaster for either group to act. And this was the kind of fear and intimidation that many blacks had to contend with in rural Arkansas. But by no means was it all the time one-sided.

In the late fall of 1939, we three teenage schoolboys took advantage of two white brothers one time in the mid-1930s. That could have been explosive. I will extrapolate later. There were a few myths associated with the railroad that my sister and I explored, and there was the train man who delighted us when he smiled and pointed his big dark finger at Daddy’s turnip greens. The indication was: He wanted a mess of those beautiful turnips greens. These and other events made our lives interesting.

However, through the generosity of my parents helping those who were in need and those who just wanted a handout, I got a lifelong lesson in sharing. I was the second to leave the nest and yet I wondered if I ever left: well, not mentally anyway.

I had a longing to board a train and hear the words: All aboard! In November 1943, I left home. My, sister, Latha, was first. She joined the WAC in July of that year. I was gone for three years but really never left, and to some extent, even today I find myself residing in the area that the railroad ran through.

My first introduction to the railway of travel was a bit ominous. It was in the early 1930s when my sister, Latha, and I had to travel it to go back and forth to school. In doing so, we had to pass this house and from time to time, we were chased by a boy and girl that lived there. They were older and larger than we, and they took delight in chasing us, to the point that we took great delight when we didn’t see them at all. But they never gave up. We could not understand why they did not go to school and we thought they were jealous of us because we did. The female had grey cat-like eyes and an evil stare, with dirty blond hair; on the other hand, her brother had brown hair. I don’t remember the color of his eyes; we never made eye contact. I did notice they both wore unkempt clothing. My guess is she was in her early teens (about thirteen) and he was about eleven.

Anyway, it came to the point that I had had enough of them chasing us. So one evening, I said to my sister, Latha! We’re not running from those peckerwoods anymore!

So I gave her a stick and got one for myself about three feet long and about a grownup’s thumb-size in diameter and told her if those two bothered us today, she was to shellac the boy and I was going to whack the girl. This time we would run for a good reason. My sister was nine, and I was eight.

That day we passed their house and were pleased to see that all appeared to be quite peaceful, but a few steps further, we saw them. Their white faces hiding behind some tall, dried grass and small bushes.

I told Latha, Get ready!

When we reached the vicinity where they were, they sprang out running towards us, the female shouting, Let’s git em! Let’s git em!

We stood our ground. When they got close enough, I said, Now! Latha! She whacked the boy across his shoulders with a hard blow, and I struck the girl twice on her legs with blistering blows. She screamed like she had been stung by a couple of bumblebees. Then we took off running. My sister and I never told our parents about those incidents. The good thing about it was, those two never bothered us again.

It seemed that strange and odd things happened to people in general and to our family in particular, mostly for the better. The house where that family lived and the two children that chased my sister and me later that year became our house, but not before my dad washed and scaled it from top to bottom with hot water laced with lye.

There was another oddity associated with this event. In the late spring of 1932, the oldest son knocked on our door one cold rainy evening to visit our family and when he left my family gave him meat to take home. Two weeks later, the young man brought meat back for us and thanked Mother and Daddy for their kindness.

As young children, we sometimes got caught in the trap of gullibility. One was if it rained while the sun shone, one could hear the devil beating his wife; the other was walking on the rails bare feet would cause the bottom of the feet to turn to steel. So my sister and I, a few times, tried to hear Miss Devil crying on one of those rare occasions when it rained while the sun was shining. We didn’t hear a beep. Our thinking was, maybe the Devil heard us listening and decided to behave himself. The walking on the rails to see if the bottom of one’s feet turned to steel turned out to be fallacious as well. As the months and years went by, we children grew to adore our house by the railroad. We even got a sense of weird enjoyment when the train went by and we could feel the vibration, a thrilling sensation for us busybodies.

Emma

F rom my memoirs, The House by the Side of the Railroad 1932, I recall from the year of 1931 those times when my mother and us children visited her Aunt Emma, whom she dearly loved.

I can hear Mother saying now, C’mon, you children get ready. We’re going to see Emma today! In the early fall of 1931, before we moved to the house by the railroad, my mother visited her beloved Emma each Sunday afternoon. Auntee, as we youngsters so lovingly called her, was a casualty of tuberculosis. She had been a resident of a sanatorium for some months, but now she seemed to be recuperating fine at her sister and brother-in-law’s home. The place where she convalesced was a good two-and-a-half country miles from where we lived. But Mother gathered us three walking off springs and the baby in arms for the regular trips, anyway.

My mother was so endeared to Emma because Emma was a mother figure to her. After Mother’s mom died, her father abandoned the children—my mother, her brother and younger sister. And so, at age eleven—I’m guessing now—I don’t remember what age my mother told me she was at this time—my mother was separated from her siblings and was forced to live with Emma’s sister and brother-in-law Ella and Will Washington family. They were also my mother’s relatives, but they treated her like a stepchild, she often said. Her Aunt Emma visited that home often, and she was the one person with whom our mother had a strong relationship.

Mother looked up to Emma, who gave her encouragement, inspiration, and advice in those trying days. Emma’s infectious smile made my mother strong and self-confident. Emma became her surrogate mother and often took her shopping; buying her clothing, snacks, and other items she would not have received otherwise. In any event, Auntie’s health declined to the point where, in late February of 1932, she was readmitted to the sanatorium for a short stay. But then she came back to her sister and brother-in-law’s home to spend her last days. What I recall is one early March morning, Mother’s three male relatives came to our house to tell Mother of Emma’s passing and to escort her to see her before the funeral director took her away. Mother remained at her uncle and aunt’s house for a couple of days. After she came back home, she had to get things in order for the funeral, which was held in a week. The day of Auntie’s funeral was a hassle for Mother. There were four of us youngsters to get ready. Daddy was not there to help. He left to go to the church to make a fire—it was cold—and ring the bell. Funeral etiquette was to ring and toll the church’s bell when the hearse was nearing the church.

I never forgot that day; as I said, it was cold and that March wind was sharp and painfully punishing. It was as cold as all get out. There was not much of a problem with the two oldest siblings (myself and Latha) but the younger brother and babe in arms were a problem. Mother was at wit’s end to get us ready and be on time. What I