Killing Your Own Snakes

By Xlibris US

This is not a biography of John Harvey Sorrells.
I expect there'll never be one of those, and that's probably just as well. Sometimes I think a writer's work is his own best autobiography, certainly, and as much biography as he needs.
But I'm doing this because of two things: one simple, the other far from it. My late oldest brother, John, sent me a couple of boxes back in 1993 chock-a-block with manuscript and newspaper printed "stuff" written by our father. I looked through it quickly and was intrigued right away, but didn't have the time to do anything with it.
Over a period of about a year I managed to root around considerably more--along with my son, daughter, and wife--and eventually I knew I'd have to mess with it in a much more formal and intentional way. But that was the simple part: reading all the material; lifting this bit from here and combining it with that shard from there to create a whole that didn't injure the narra-tive; deciding to stick with the newspaperman's spellings of words like thru, and cigaret, along with standard newspaper punctuation; deciding how to include not just the "best" stuff, but the typical as well. All that simply comes with the turf of editing someone else's material.
The much harder part, though, was the realization that I was in some ways on a fool's errand.
My father died about five weeks before his fifty-second birthday. At the time, we were living in New York City. That is, my parents were. I was the youngest of four children; fifteen; and, with my older brother, Bill, a high school student in Virginia.
In spite of its rampant self-absorption, crudities, cynicisms, vulgarities, and erupting juices of sexuality, fifteen is a tender age. Maybe vulnerable is more accurate. In any event, it's an age when a boy--even a boy/man--really needs his father. It's a fragile time, because the boy coming into manhood is coming into a period when he's just about ready to start knowing his father as another man, as a person, as a human being, as a wonderfully imperfect critter he can love in a way that transcends the boy/Dad relationship.
It's always going to be father/son, but when the two are adults, that relationship changes, deepens, transforms. At least, that's what I've seen and heard from those who got to go through it, and as I've experienced it from the father side with my own son.
But I was suddenly and unexpectedly cut off from that chance. One night my father was alive, sitting at a card table in the living room reading, as I recall my mother telling it--likely a mystery novel--in the apartment in New York, when he got bushwhacked by a massive heart attack.
My mother, who was in their bedroom in the rear of the apartment, said she heard some-thing fall. Hurrying out to see what had happened, she found him on the floor. She knelt by him and said he kept looking up at her asking, "What's wrong? What's wrong?" as though something had happened to her. Within five minutes he was dead.
What these days might be called a lack of "closure" absolutely overwhelmed me, and one way or another I have been looking for my father ever since. One way or another his wrenching disappearance has informed virtually everything I myself have ever written.
So when I saw the mass of stuff in those boxes my brother sent me, I was againcon-sciously for the first time in years--on the gossamer trail of my father, hoping to find out some-thing, trying to learn something, circling like a dog before she flops, anxious to discover some-hing that would do . . . what?
Easy: It would let me know my father just as though he hadn't died when I was a boy; just as though he hadn't been a-moldering in a Graceland Cemetery grave in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, for more than forty-five years.
. . .
While all that was going on, another part of me was looking at the stuff, fascinated by the man's insights, intrigued with how his mind worked, embarrassed by his p

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483647753

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE

Pine Bluff

Trading Post

Family

That Goat

Pursuit Of Knowledge

Small-Fry Journalist

Small Fry-Journalist

PART TWO

Uncle Panther

Flood

PART THREE

Newspapering

The Mission Of A Newspaper

Horse Sense From Texas

The Working Press

Surveying The Survey

The Editorial Page

Speaking For The Chains

Columnists

Letter To A Young Editor

A Letter To A Young Man

DEAR JOE

Reflections Of A Bureaucrat On What’s Right And What’s Wrong With The Press

Part Four

The Censorship Years

Blueprint For Dictatorship

Code Of Wartime Practices

The Newspaper In War Times

PART FIVE

Editorials And Letters

Another Road To War

Getting Into War

By ‘Toil And Sweat’

Free Enterprise Vs. Security

Two Men On A Mule

Jobs For Tomorrow

Campaign 1944—I

Campaign 1944—Ii

The Communist Issue In This Campaign

Why We Are For Dewey!

Just An Old Ickes Custom

Have We Got What It Takes?

What Is Russia Up To?

By Joe Williams

Letters—I

Letters—II

Letters—III

Part Six

–30—

What Do You Think?

You Were Not Too Late, Mr. Truman

John H. Sorrells

Dedication

In loving memory of my late brother John H. Sorrells, Jr., who stood in as my father as well as any man could; and for his wife, Mary Morris Blakely Sorrells, who helped that surrogate-parenting more than a sister-in-law should have had to do;

For the memory of my deceased sister Peggy Ann Sorrells Moore: herself a daughter, sister, wife, and mother of newsmen; and for her husband Ellis, who greatly admired our father;

For my brother William Gordon Sorrells, who, like our father, died too young, leaving another kind of void in my life;

For my father, of course, who had already done his work and knew its worth; and for my mother whom I did get to know;

Requiescat in pace

But mostly for all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren who can’t remember or never knew him—especially my own Walter Arl Sorrells and Ruth Lindsey Sorrells; and for their mother—Marjorie Dillman Baker Sorrells who has given up more than she will admit to for all this chasing of ghosts and marveling at rainbows in my life.

INTRODUCTION

T his is not a biography of John Harvey Sorrells.

I expect there’ll never be one of those, and that’s probably just as well. Sometimes I think a writer’s work is his own best autobiography, certainly, and as much biography as he needs.

But I’m doing this because of two things: one simple, the other far from it. My late oldest brother, John, sent me a couple of boxes back in 1993 chock-a-block with manuscript and newspaper printed stuff written by our father. I looked through it quickly and was intrigued right away, but didn’t have the time to do anything with it.

Over a period of about a year I managed to root around considerably more—along with my son, daughter, and wife—and eventually I knew I’d have to mess with it in a much more formal and intentional way. But that was the simple part: reading all the material; lifting this bit from here and combining it with that shard from there to create a whole that didn’t injure the narrative; deciding to stick with the newspaperman’s spellings of words like thru, and cigaret, along with standard newspaper punctuation; deciding how to include not just the best stuff, but the typical as well. All that simply comes with the turf of editing someone else’s material.

The much harder part, though, was the realization that I was in some ways on a fool’s errand.

My father died about five weeks before his fifty-second birthday. At the time, we were living in New York City. That is, my parents were. I was the youngest of four children; fifteen; and, with my older brother, Bill, a high school student in Virginia.

In spite of its rampant self-absorption, crudities, cynicisms, vulgarities, and erupting juices of sexuality, fifteen is a tender age. Maybe vulnerable is more accurate. In any event, it’s an age when a boy—even a boy/man—really needs his father. It’s a fragile time, because the boy coming into manhood is coming into a period when he’s just about ready to start knowing his father as another man, as a person, as a human being, as a wonderfully imperfect critter he can love in a way that transcends the boy/Dad relationship.

It’s always going to be father/son, but when the two are adults, that relationship changes, deepens, transforms. At least, that’s what I’ve seen and heard from those who got to go through it, and as I’ve experienced it from the father side with my own son.

But I was suddenly and unexpectedly cut off from that chance. One night my father was alive, sitting at a card table in the living room reading, as I recall my mother telling it—likely a mystery novel—in the apartment in New York, when he got bushwhacked by a massive heart attack.

My mother, who was in their bedroom in the rear of the apartment, said she heard something fall. Hurrying out to see what had happened, she found him on the floor. She knelt by him and said he kept looking up at her asking, What’s wrong? What’s wrong? as though something had happened to her. Within five minutes he was dead.

What these days might be called a lack of closure absolutely overwhelmed me, and one way or another I have been looking for my father ever since. One way or another his wrenching disappearance has informed virtually everything I myself have ever written.

So when I saw the mass of stuff in those boxes my brother sent me, I was again—consciously for the first time in years—on the gossamer trail of my father, hoping to find out something, trying to learn something, circling like a dog before she flops, anxious to discover somehing that would do… what?

Easy: It would let me know my father just as though he hadn’t died when I was a boy; just as though he hadn’t been amoldering in a Graceland Cemetery grave in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, for more than forty-five years.

. . .

While all that was going on, another part of me was looking at the stuff, fascinated by the man’s insights, intrigued with how his mind worked, embarrassed by his prejudices, amazed at his competence and directed energy, amused by his wit.

My conclusion was that this was really good stuff. There were things here that people in Arkansas would like to know—along with other small-town people—that newspaper folks would like to be reminded of, that ordinary citizens would find insightful or, at the least, just interesting reading.

So I got to work.

For the most part I let my father’s letters, retrospects, editorials, columns, and other writings speak for themselves. All I felt obliged to do was provide a context, a nest, for them, to help keep readers in touch with a time or place or special situation.

. . .

John Harvey Sorrells (March 31, 1896-February 25, 1948) was a newspaperman with the Scripps Howard newspapers, serving, among other jobs, as managing editor of the Cleveland Press, editor of the Fort Worth Press, his life ending while Executive Editor of the entire chain. In Fort Worth, he wrote a daily column, As Uncle Panther Sees It, and as executive editor in New York City, he wrote a number of editorials representing the chain’s position on various national issues. The editorial he wrote on the occasion of the death of Harry Truman’s mother, for instance, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize—which I had never known about.

During World War II, my father was asked by Byron Price, then-Executive News Editor of the Associated Press and newly-appointed Director of the Office of Censorship, to come to Washington, D.C., to organize the Division of Press Censorship. He did, then stayed on as its director, and within six months was named deputy director of the entire Office.

While editor of the Fort Worth Press (his appointment in 1927 made him the youngest editor of a major daily newspaper in the country), he wrote a style book entitled The Working Press. Later, while Executive Editor in New York, he completed A Handbook of Scripps Howard, a brief history of the chain with biographical sketches of the papers, editors, and top brass—including himself—shortly before he died. He also wrote about his family history; his home town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas; letters to his brother—also a newspaperman—about matters such as Roosevelt, communism, Russia, etc.

Because his work was divisible into several clear (if often overlapping) categories, I have organized this book in much the same way: his home and family; his own columns; newspapering; the business of press censorship in a democracy; editorials and letters; and a brief concluding section.

. . .

I pretty quickly realized there wasn’t anything to gain by pretending I was a removed, objective historian of American journalism poking through the literary ana of some distant figure. The man was my father, after all, so I call him Dad most of the time. It helped make my life in this project simpler.

Finally, I first wanted to get a scanner for my computer so I wouldn’t have to keystroke all the letters and columns and editorials that I was going to be reprinting myself, but I started retyping, and after not too long, I was glad I hadn’t managed to get the scanner. Actually typing his words put me in touch with him as a writer in a way that simply editing a pre-existing screen couldn’t have done. I got in touch with cadences, rhythms, usage, vocabulary—all the matter of writing—so much so that periodically I was actually anticipating his next moves: where he was going with an argument, what words would likely be coming up—even where he probably should have left off because he’d already pretty well made his point.

And I have come to know him better as a man, a human being. Some.

It’s not the same as the real man, but it’s more than I had.

PART ONE

PINE BLUFF

T his first section is about a home town, family, and the beginnings of a career. Most of the manuscript material existed pretty much the way it appears here. But every time Dad started writing about something, he quickly came back to one subject: his grandmother. So a good bit of the stuff in the section that deals directly with the family had to be gleaned from all over the place.

He said that she had a profound influence on his life, and truly she must have been a remarkable woman. But here, something tells me that the land was filled with such women: strong, hard working, dedicated: achievers who helped do everything there was to be done—not because they were particularly driven, not because they were particularly ambitious, not because they were particularly good, or moral or virtuous, but because that’s what you did if you were going to survive. You had to. Life was hard, but that was simply the way life was. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot else to compare yourself to, except those who drifted down into various sloughs of despond after The War, or those who just never had the pride to try to amount to anything.

My father wrote all of this, it’s pretty obvious, during the final years of his life. I can only guess which years by the state of the manuscript pages, the rate of deterioration of the newspaperman’s yellow foolscap he often typed on: The flakier and more deeply yellowed the sheets, the older the draft. But that could be misleading, because in reading material on newer paper, I had no idea how many drafts he might have gone through, as well as which ones survived—earlier or later versions?—if there were many of them over some fair number of years. Some of the material was worked over pretty well because it came up in so many different places—and often with different details. For instance, in one place his grandfather was clean-shaven; in another (the one that matches some old photos) he had chin whiskers. It’s possible, of course, that the man shaved now and then. But I would guess most of these pieces were written from near the end of the Second World War until very near his death.

What he intended for all of this, I don’t know. Other material in the book had a clear point: to be published as a column, sent as a letter, distributed as an editorial, or whatever. But this material remains, in that sense, a mystery. He may have been anticipating death in some general or even specific way and wanted to set things down before they all disappeared into the vapors of history: having a paratrooper son in combat in Europe and an infantryman son-in-law in combat in the Pacific during the Second World War—not to mention his backhanded bouts with heart problems—could certainly have sparked that kind of desire: Set it down for his children and grandchildren; do what you can to avoid being more hostage to Time than need be.

Or he may have been trying to recall it all for himself; trying to capture it all again; trying to take some back-azimuth on his own life; trying to make sure he knew who he was by who he had been, and where he was by where he had come from. Still, my father had never emotionally moved very far from the center of his roots, from home; and reading this, I got the feeling of something else at work here: simple pleasure. This was all done by a man who much earlier in his life had started writing a truncated history of the world, probably for his own pleasure and information.

And there may also be a few mean digs in here—just to settle a couple of old scores, little angers of memory that still twitch, if not rankle. Writers do get the last word about some things.

. . .

The people here are just people, the place just another place. Yet we have undergone so many wrenching changes in our lives since the end of the Second World War that whatever roots we have seem to have receded with such terrible speed that we forget—quite literally—who we are. In that sense this section was incredible to me: My father—my very own father—was raised largely by a woman, his grandmother, who was born some dozen-odd years before the Mexican-American War. That would be about 1836; whose grandfather raised a troop to fight in the Civil War; who, himself born in 1896, didn’t live in a house with electricity or an indoor privy until he was a boy.

Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was never my own home, so in most ways I wasn’t reading about my place at all. But the pictures my father draws of his Pine Bluff are pictures that could be drawn of many places that are now big towns or small cities, places that not very long ago were truly frontier settlements. We are still a very young people.

TRADING POST

M y home was established as a trading post, one of those innumerable redoubts of a vast army of commerce which was driving its conquest irresistibly westward along the river highways in the early eighteen hundreds. It was a tiny settlement hacked from a grove of lofty pines—a cluster of squat log houses amid jagged stumps on the crown of a bluff overlooking the broad, lazy-winding Arkansas River.

It was a promising place for trade. Earlier, men whose bellies were gaunt with the hunger for land came to those parts with ox and ax and plow; they tore great patches from the green forests, and laid bare the earth all up and down the river. They furrowed the soil until it lay naked black, its clods lifted like moist, hungry lips to the hot sunshine. It was a fertile land which spawned richly of corn and cane and cotton; a land with lush meadows which produce beef and hides and tallow; with dense groves of tall trees which were made to yield turpentine and lumber. And at the little settlement on the river bluff, these products of nature were exchanged for the products fashioned by the hand of man.

Flatboats and big canoes, and later steamboats, came up the river from the factories and mills of the East, bringing nails and implements, powder and firearms, boots and cloth, gimcracks and gadgets. All manner of merchandise to satisfy the comforts and whimsies of those who tilled the soil and felled the timber were freighted to this frontier village; and the men from the farms and the woods strode or rode—jounced and jolted—the deep-rutted, winding roads which led to this crossroads of commerce, there to dicker, to barter, to love and lust and fight in the manner of men in river towns the world over, and throughout all ages.

As time went on, the clearing on the bluff was enlarged; it took shape and form. Roads became streets; log houses gave way to frame, wings and stories were added; fence barricades, called palings, were erected, not against man or beast but as measures of prosperity and evidence of elegance. Yet when I was a boy, and my town then nearly a hundred years old, it was still a primitive habitat, in many respects. Most of the streets were unpaved—wide dirt roads, with buckboard sidewalks, and drainage ditches along the side. We used coal oil lamps and had outdoor privies, and bathed in a washtub, in water heated in an iron kettle on the kitchen stove. We had telephones; two in fact. The Old and the New phones, a chaotic business resulting from two competing systems. They hung on the wall, and were rung with a crank.

. . .

Our town lay on the south bank of the Arkansas, where the river made a wide bend, and the north bank always was a smudge far across the water. The town began at the courthouse at the crown of the bluff, and spraddled out south, east, and west. The streets were wide, the yards broad and deep; people liked plenty of room. The courthouse was a square built, two-story white brick and stone building, with broad stairways, lofty ceilings, age-stained woodwork, and high, wide windows. It was a place familiar in my earliest recollection; I often accompanied my father there, and sat at the lawyers’ table within the railing in the courtroom. There I witnessed drama in its lustiest and rawest form; drama unrefined by the dilution of the playwright’s art.

The courthouse had been set in the center of a park of thick grass and old trees, a park which was surrounded on three sides by streets paved with red, up-ended brick, forming a three-cornered square. Under the bluff behind the courthouse, were the boat landings. It was the familiar setting of a hundred Southern river towns—a shelf of brick or cobble-paved beach running from the base of the bluff to the water’s edge; freight houses standing on long piles; scows, flatboats, skiffs, half submerged rowboats at water’s edge. All day the waterfront rang with the clang of dray wheels and the iron plop of hooves on the paving.

The arrival of a steamboat, heralded by the blowing of the whistle—a sound like none other on this earth—was an event of community interest. Spectators were always on hand to witness the slow turning in against the current, the back-paddling, the shouts of the roustabouts, the hurl of the ropes, and the tieup. After the passengers had debarked, and been well remarked by all—and after the freight had been trundled off—the townspeople would stream aboard and saunter the decks. There would sometimes be dances aboard at night. The SS Brown was a frequent and favorite packet in my home town. It was a side-wheeler, as most of the early steamboats were.

Across from the courthouse, on the west side, was the Jefferson Hotel. It was a six-story brick building painted apple green. It set a good table and housed the town’s leading saloon. There, loungers, office-holders, politicians, businessmen, drummers, and visiting notables would gather for a snort or so before going home. People did not, as a rule, keep liquor at home—at least no more than a bottle for medicinal purposes—and never served it in any form to guests. Liquor drinking was strictly a man’s game, and it was supposed to be conducted in places strictly and exclusively devoted to men. The Jefferson was the leading hotel. It was owned by Walter Trulock, a heavy-set man of great charm and ability, who was of the planter breed and well connected among the older families.

The street forming the east side of the courthouse square slid down the bluff to the boat landing. The business places on that side of the square were pertinent to and designed to serve the interests of the river traffic. There were blacksmith shops, warehouses, and wagon yards. Further east, on Barraque, was the red light district, originally established there, of course, because of its proximity to the river and its convenience to the desires of the steamboaters and river travelers.

The chief business district was on Main, from Barraque to Fourth. The railroad ran down the middle of Fourth and the Depot was at Fourth and State. The stores and business houses were of one or two stories, rarely ever three. They were built of brick and painted red. As Main went into Fifth, and then on out, the stores became one-story frame buildings with false fronts over their porches.

The First Methodist Church stood at Sixth and Main. It was a squat, ancient brick building covered with vines, and with a mellow-toned bell that could be heard all over town. There were many churches in our town, of all creeds and denominations, and on Sunday their bells made a medley of sweet-tolling music. Merrill’s Institute was at Fifth and Main, and when I was a very young boy, it was the town’s only auditorium. Lectures, magic lantern slides, singfests, road shows, and other forms of indoor entertainment were held there. Years later it was taken over by the YMCA.

The few paved streets were Barraque, Main, Second, Fifth, and Sixth. Fourth was covered with a film of gravel; the rest were dirt. Sidewalks were brick-paved, or of plank. The dirt streets were ankle deep in dust in summer, deep-rutted in mud and sheeted with puddles of water in the winter.

While Main was the chief commercial artery, Fourth was the street of heavy-duty traffic, for it was here, near the Depot, that the wholesale houses were established. Fourth was always filled with high-waisted cotton wagons and long drays slanting down at the back; with wagons and buggies and vehicles of all sorts; with straining mules and big horses; with the sound of cracking whips and shouting drivers.

Across the tracks on the south side of Fourth, there was a cluster of blacksmith shops, fifty-cent hotels, and wagon yards. The farmers would haul their produce to town, usually arriving late in the afternoon. They would stable their teams and park in the wagon yards and either spend the night under quilts in their wagons, or take a room in the nearby hotel.

A room with chamber pot, pitcher, and bowl cost fifty cents for a night; breakfast was thrown in. The farmers would mill about at night, talking crops, weather, and prices; next day they would market their produce, load up with feed and food, visit the dry goods store to match cloth and take home part of a bolt, visit the Racket Store for notions, get the kids a sack full of stick candy and licorice, then head for home, their teams plodding leisurely toward the distant countryside.

Our principal street and the dividing street of the town, was called Main Street. It ran from the courthouse due south to Seventeenth Avenue, where it bent into what we called the gooseneck and lost its identity in a country road. All of the streets to the east of main were named after states of the Union, practically all of them Confederate states. Streets running north and south were called streets, those east and west were called avenues. The first street east of Main was called State Street. That meant it was our own state, Arkansas. Next to that was Alabama, then Georgia, and so on. We had a negro cook during one period of my boyhood named Penny. She weighed about 300 pounds, and every ounce oozed dignity. She lived in a negro settlement which we called Hoboken, and which lay outside the city limits, about where Georgia Street became a country road. We would tease Penny about being a country woman. She always said she lived on Gawger extended.

The streets to the west of Main were given the names of trees. Most of them, appropriately, were lined with oaks and elm and willow. This foliage laid deep cool pools of shade in the harsh, hot sunshine; at night the tall fronds cast rippling patches of shadow and light as they weaved and bobbed in the white moonlight. These quiet streets—dusty lanes between the rows of trees—were serene and beautiful; and they linger in my memory with the same haunting quality of the smell of burning leaves, or the shrill cries of children playing at twilight.

. . .

Our town went through several successive phases from the time of its founding as a trading post; but its character remained commercial in spirit. By 1840 the fields which had been hacked from the forests at the turn of the century, had been expanded into broad plantations. The earlier trading post had become an important river town and a gay social center for the plantation folks. People with means had begun to cultivate the art of gracious living. The society of the times was colored with the romance and pageantry—by the codes and conventions—of an antebellum river-plantation way of life.

But the army of commerce was pushing inexorably onward, by river first, and then by railroad. Jay Gould extended his road down from St. Louis and took our town in on its way to Texas. Roundhouse and machine shops were established. The proximity of prime timber, combined with improved transportation facilities, invited the building of sawmills and lumber yards. There was an immigration of hard-handed people who had no tradition of gracious living, but who contributed toughness and vitality to the social fabric. The older families and the older ways gave way to new people and new ways. A new type of hard-headed, aggressive merchant came to town. The vanguard of these were Scotsmen, and they held their own grimly and without quarter until after the Civil War; then they succumbed to the Jewish peddler who dropped his pack and stopped for good.

In the early days my town was cut in two by a bayou which ran in a ragged loop from the river west of town, winding southward, then curving back to rejoin the river to the east. It was in fact a capillary of the river; and although it was a running stream, it was always referred to as The Lake.

The terrain of the town was that of a shallow platter, high at the river and sloping gently southward, to rise again to the high ground which continued on into the rolling hill country. When the river came to flood, The Lake became a roiling, boiling sluice which invariably lost its banks in the overflowing water. All of the lowlands in the middle part of town would be flooded, and some persons living near the edge of the lowlands were forced to get about in rowboats. This low part of town came to be known as The Lakebed, and a part of town south of The Lakebed was known as Lakeside. We lived in Lakeside.

. . .

There had always been a big flood on the Arkansas. The river usually flooded in late winter or early spring of every year, and in the course of time, it had devoured great hunks from the bluff behind the courthouse. Instead of a hundred or so yards between the courthouse and the bluff, as it had originally been, the river bank curved to within fifty feet when I was a boy.

It was a broad, swift river and the current hit that bend at the courthouse with tremendous weight. A half mile out, there was a small island, possibly starting as a sandbar, but growing up in heavy foliage and with a reliable footing in the river. This sandbar had a long point extending out into the channel, and when flood time came the channel would be flanked by this island and turned to sweep on toward the town with an extra pileup of weight.

When the really big flood came—the Great Flood—the river rose steadily until it was within a foot of the top of the bluff behind the courthouse. While a river like the Arkansas (or the Mississippi) in flood looks like an expanse of still water, actually there is a swift-flowing underneath current which hits with an irresistible impact. The surface is yellow and oily looking, with little ripples that undulate like the muscles of some bronzed athlete; it coils and uncoils slowly; there is a calm, majestic look about it as it sweeps along. But a river like the Arkansas is an implacable beast: a savage, rending, tearing, destructive force.

The banks of the river were lined with people. Hundreds stood behind the courthouse and stared in silent fascination at the vast, majestic stretch of water which now rippled and roiled at their feet. Occasionally a ton or so of bluff would melt and slide silently into the muddy water and be swallowed and consumed with hardly a break in the calm surface.

It was obvious that unless the flood receded within a few hours, the courthouse and the Jefferson Hotel would go. Except for a recession—and the full flood stage had not yet been reached—only one thing could save these buildings. That was to blow the point of the island out there in the river. If that was done, the channel would follow its natural bent and sweep unhindered away from the bluff; the tremendous impact which was being delivered full force against the bluff behind the courthouse would be parried, and what water remained would be calm backwater.

Nobody ever knew exactly who did it, but during the night someone got in a boat and took some dynamite and managed to row across that broad, swift channel. They set off the dynamite, blew the point, and then rowed back to safety. It was a bold and courageous act, but there was always some question about it, because the blowing of this point was bound to change the channel of the river. If that happened, it was contended, the town would be removed forever from the great traffic artery which had served as a means of travel and communication since the days of its founding.

They who had contended that were right: The channel changed its course; the town was isolated; all that remained was a vast reservoir, a huge, hollowed out place which had once been the bed of a mighty river. A mere trickle of water ran thinly along its bottom. My town had seen its last days as a river town.

. . .

I was born on State Street, near Tenth Avenue, in a one-story, rambling frame house. It had a tiny front porch, but was cut up in the rear with outside galleries running in all directions. It was the home of my maternal grandmother. It had once been a fashionable place of residence, but by the time I was born it was a weather-beaten, shabby old house in a down-at-the-heels neighborhood. A number of the old families still lived in the neighborhood, but they lived there because they were too poor to build or buy more fashionable places, and they drew into them—themselves, existing precariously but proudly in dim, musty old houses which had settled to weary decay in weed-choked