Reminiscences of a Middle-Western School
I
DURING some of the most impressionable years of boyhood, I attended a school whose faculty was composed entirely of itinerant professors, some of them the most delightful and instructive men it has ever been my fortune to meet in the teaching profession. It was distinctly a vacation school, holding sessions only during the summer months; but, in spite of this, the small boys who attended there went gladly, without the least urging on the part of their parents; and their only regret was that classes were held in such haphazard fashion. The professors came and went as they pleased, held classes or not as they pleased, or played truant altogether; so that the scholars, who were most regular in their attendance, could never be sure one day whether they would find anyone in the chair the following day, or not. I can’t forbear giving some reminiscences of this institution, which has long since disappeared, if only that a few of the ‘old boys’ who attended it, or others like it, may spend a pleasant half-hour dreaming some of their old dreams.
But I remember that it was not called a school by the boys of Prairie Hills, who alone knew of its existence. They named it ‘The Stockyards Hotel,’ because the faculty usually ate and slept on the premises, and the campus lay close to the railroad yards, adjoining the pen used as a collecting point for cattle and hogs in transit to Chicago.
The campus was neither beautiful nor well kept, even during the flourishing days of the institution in the late eighteen-nineties. Although within thirty yards of the main line of railroad, it was hidden from the view of carwindow observers by a rank growth of willow bushes and pepperweed. A footpath led through this thicket, to a pile of discarded railway ties, where the earth had been trampled by the feet, and burned by the supper fires of innumerable itinerant professors, to the hardness of a brick floor. Close by, a giant cottonwood tree offered them shade during the long afternoon siestas which they seemed to find so necessary; and at the edge of a luxuriant thicket of burdock and plantain weeds was to be found a pile of their discarded cooking utensils: rusting fruit and vegetable tins, battered kettles and skillets, and pieces of sheet iron. The railway watertank was conveniently near, and there, during moments of leisure, the professors carved their names, and often the dates of their sojourn at Prairie Hills.
From the first days of early summer the railway yard was the favorite rendezvous of small boys. The fine cinder roadbed made an ideal marble-playing ground, and passing trains gave splendid substance to our dreams of lands beyond the horizon. Our town was on the main line of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific — a road busy with the traffic of the westward-growing nation. Stock trains from the plains, vehicle and implement trains from the east, transcontinental passenger trains going east and west — with what longing we watched them pass! We envied the passengers, but the train crews far more; and particularly the brakemen of the fast freights, which gathered tremendous speed on the long Middleton grade and went thundering through the town. We gazed in silence at these happiest of wanderers. One would be perched on a brake wheel, swinging his legs; another standing with his hands behind his back, leaning into the wind; another strolling leisurely along over the roofs, from caboose to engine, having a journey within a journey. If one of them nodded or waved his hand as he flashed past, we were astonished and grateful for such condescension.
We knew the names of every important traffic-route in the country; and when some box car, wandering far from its parent line in New England or the legendary South, passed through the town, we could not rest until we had learned the meaning of the initials it bore. Usually it was some professor at the stockyards school who gave us the information. Let all mothers who wish to keep their boys provincially content beware of this true home of romance. Let them prevent, their young heroworshipers from striking up friendships with those veteran travelers and philosophers, ‘A No. 1,’‘Frisco Jack,’ ‘The Brooklyn Kid,’ ‘Chicago Slim,’ who break their journeys at just such small towns, where the law is tolerant and food may be had for the asking.
But I remember that I am speaking of twenty years ago, and the damage is done if damage it was. Those travelers have long since left the road, and the boys of this generation have never known them.
We knew them all by name, through careful study of the water-tank registry; and many a name became a fleshand-blood reality as the summer days went by.
‘Do I know Frisco Jack? Sure! That’s me, kid!’ Then, to his traveling companion, ‘Shorty, w’en was it I said I stopped at this yere God-fersaken little way-station before? Run an’ have a look, sonny! See if they ain’t a date on the water-tank under w’ere I carved my name.’
‘Eighteen ninety-four!’ several of us shout, at once. We have all such valuable data at our tongues’ ends.
‘So it was! So it was! I mind me, I was travelin’ west that season.’
I remember, too, our first meeting with ‘Three Fingers,’whose name on the water-tank had become blackened with age and smoke. He had made three yearly visits, as more freshly carved dates beneath testified; but none of us had ever seen him.
‘I betcha he goes through at night,’Buller Sharpe used to say. ' I betcha he gets off the Midnight Flier when she stops here for orders, an’ he probly takes Number Eight out the same night. He would n’t stop in this little ole hole mor’n a few hours.'
‘No! gee! A’ course not! I betcha he’d go right through to Denver if he did n’t get tired ridin’ the pilot all that way.’
The pilot, or cowcatcher, of the Midnight Flier we reserved for vagrants of the very highest distinction in their profession. Three Fingers was one of these, and we were all of Buller Sharpe’s opinion, that he traveled only at night. Otherwise we should have seen him. When, at last, we did, we were a little disappointed, and being jealous for his reputation, decided that the daylight visit was a mere whim, a sudden fancy. We recognized him at once, for thumb and forefinger of his left hand were missing. He was much pleased, and assured us that he was the Three Fingers in question.
‘Yes, that’s my trade-mark on the water-tank,’ he said. ‘Well, well! I got fame an’ I did n’t know it!' Through a sultry July afternoon he sat under the cottonwood tree, telling us stories of his travels. ‘I been the length of every trunk line in this country. I’ve rode ’em forrards an’ back, Yessir! I’ve seen a heap o’ this little ole U. S. A. He smoked his pipe in silence for a few moments. ‘But they ain’t nothin’ to this life, kids. Don’t you never take to beatin’ yer way around the country. If you do, you won’t never amount to a hill o’ beans.’
We listened in respectful silence, and he may have thought that his counsel was sinking deep into our hearts. He may have believed that, in warning young lads against the attractions of a wanderer’s life, he was for once doing something worth while. At any rate he continued with increasing earnestness, picturing the pleasures of a settled, well-ordered existence, such as our fathers enjoyed.
‘Now there’s your pappy. Very likely he keeps a store, or mebbe he’s a doctor or a banker. You got a nice home an’ kinfolks an’ reg’lar meals. Don’t you go an’ do nothin’ foolish, like I did! I wanted to see the world, an’ I ran away from home w ’en I wa’n’t no bigger’n you boys. Now look at me! I’m a hobo, an’ I won’t never be nothin’ but a hobo. What’s your pappy do?’ he asked another of his attentive audience.
‘He’s a minister,’ said ‘Preacher’ Goodwin, a boy of ten years. Three Fingers opened his eyes very wide. He started to speak, thought better of it, then, after a long silence, said: —
‘ Don’t it beat all how ministers’ sons take to devilment! I know — they ain’t no devilment yit, but yer leadin’ up to it, my lad, bangin’ round the railroad yards. Purty soon you’ll be beatin’ yer way up to Dess Moines, and onst you git started — I don’t know what ministers is up to, goin’ round a-visitin’ an’ a-fussin’ and lettin’ their own young-uns run wild.
This new evidence, slight as it was, of the waywardness of ministers’ sons, evidently strengthened an old conviction, for Three Fingers came back to the subject several times.
‘You gotta be careful!’ he said, pointing his pipestem at little Goodwin. ‘You’re a preacher’s son, an’ you ain’t got the same chanst other boys has. I don’t know why it’s so, but it is so, as sure as I’m a settin’ here.’
He took a shiny, nickel-plated watch from his pocket, thumbed it for a moment, and put it back.
‘You going to leave town this afternoon, mister?’ one of us asked.
‘Oh, I reckon mebbe I will, an’ I reckon mebbe I won’t.'
He had no more than said this, when we heard, far to the westward, the sound of a deep-toned whistle.
‘An’ I reckon mebbe I will,’ he added, getting up from his seat and knocking the ashes from his pipe.
‘That’s seventy-two mister!’ someone volunteered. ‘She’s a fast freight, but she nearly always stops here for water. You can catch ’er easy!’
Three Fingers smiled, as he sat down again on the pile of railway sleepers.
‘I can catch ’er, can I, sonny? Well, I guess I can, if you say so.’
The long train coasted down the Middleton grade, and came to a halt, with a screaming of brakes and a bumping of cars reverberating far back along the line. The ensuing quiet seemed the more intense by contrast. The engine panted gently while the water-tank was being replenished. Then the fireman threw up the canvas nozzle, letting the water run over his head and shoulders before swinging the spout back to its place. Taking his seat again in the cabwindow, he pulled the bellcord. The engineer, aroused from a deep reverie, sounded two sharp short blasts of the whistle.
‘That’s the highball, mister! She’s pulling right out!’
‘You going to ride the bumpers?’ ‘She’s a meat train! You won’t find any empties!’
No reply from Three Fingers. The train gathered speed. Car after car, each one closed and sealed, rumbled by, the heavy trucks clicking over the rails in faster and faster time. Still he sat on the railway ties, seemingly indifferent, lost, in thought. At last, he rose leisurely, and took a large bite out of a plug of tobacco which he wrapped again in a piece of brown paper.
‘Now, you boys mind what I been tellin’ you!’ he said.
With that, he walked briskly out to the moving train, ran alongside a little way, and swung in on the rods of a refrigerator car. We had a glimpse of him as he adjusted himself more comfortably to his berth. A moment later, the caboose went by, the conductor reading a newspaper by an open window in the cupola.
The train dwindled and vanished around a distant bend. Far away the deep whistle echoed among the wooded hills, the roaring became fainter and fainter, and we were conscious again of the drowsy music of grasshoppers and locusts, and the sound of the puffy exhaust of the engine at the pumping station.
Three Fingers was gone, and that was the last we ever saw of him.
II
Our professors were of all sorts — some talkative, some taciturn, some genially tolerant of our adulation, some morosely intolerant. ‘Now you kids hike! You ’ll be getting us pinched first thing you know!’ For the most part they permitted us to mingle freely with them; and in return for the high privilege, we told them the most likely places to go for ‘hand-outs.’ What a to-do there would have been, had our parents known who directed the long summer procession of vagrants to their doors! Once my mother said to Goodwin’s mother, ‘ I declare, I ’ve never seen so many tramps as there are this summer! They are eating us out of house and home!’ and Mrs. Goodwin said that she had been having a like experience. ‘ Preacher ’ and I, who were present, went quietly out, feeling a little guilty.
It is as well that our parents did not know how we were spending those summer afternoons, for they were saved much needless worry. At the stockyards school we learned nothing worse than some picturesque profanity, and lessons in this respect were unconsciously given.
Thinking of the many vagrants we knew in boyhood days, it seems to me that they must have been men simple of soul and clean of mind. Some, like Three Fingers, preached us homely sermons on the snares and delusions of a wanderer’s life; but their practice was at such alluring variance to precept, that it would have been a delight to go to school to them forever.
Only once, I believe, was advantage ever taken of our guilelessness, which, in those days, I fear, amounted almost to simplicity. One midsummer morning, Goodwin and I — we were always together — met at the railway yards at four o’clock, for Robinson Brothers’ Circus had come to town in the night and we wanted to watch them unload. We paid a visit to the stockyards hotel merely to see if there had been any new arrivals, and found a tall, middle-agedlooking man sitting under the cottonwood tree. He rose the moment he saw us, his face beaming with pleasure.
‘ Think about angels and they ’re sure to appear,’ he said. ‘Boys, I’m in a fix and I want you to help me. You see my clothes? I’m all rags and tags and old paper-bags, and I ’ll tell you why. I got charge of the lions in this show. I feed ’em and train ’em and all the rest of it.’ Then he went on to say that the lions often clawed him, not in anger, but playfully, after the manner of lions. They never injured him, but they ruined his clothing; and what with his never-ending, day-and-night duties, and moving on constantly from one town to another, he had no opportunity to replenish his wardrobe.
‘Now, if you boys could help me,’ he added, wistfully, ‘I’d sure be obliged to you. Maybe your dads have some old shoes, or an old spare suit I could have; something to do me, you understand, until I can go and get fitted out proper. I’d pay you for ’em, of course, and let you into the show to boot.’
Preacher and I were not only willing but eager to help. He agreed to furnish the clothing and I the shoes, and we rushed home at once. My parents were still asleep upstairs. I did n’t think it advisable to waken them. They might have raised objections, after the manner of parents, and I knew there could be no possible objection after I had had time to explain. My father could easily buy a new pair of shoes. He had plenty of leisure; but here was a lion-trainer who had scarcely a moment to himself, and it was very important, as he had told us, that he should be decently dressed in time for the morning parade. I went hastily through my father’s stock of old shoes, selected the best pair I could find, and ran with them back to the stockyards hotel. Preacher was there before me, with a very decent suit of blue serge, his father’s best everyday suit as I afterward learned. The trainer of Robinson Brothers’ lions was deeply grateful.
‘Boys,’ he said, ‘you’ve done me a great favor, and I won’t forget it. Now I must hurry along. Lord! There’s a heap of work to be done. But you be at the main entrance of the big tent at one-thirty sharp. I ’ll be there in these clothes, and with the money to pay for them. And I ’ll have passes for you, and if Mr. Robinson don’t give you the best seats in the place for what you’ve done for me, I’ll miss my guess. Now remember! One-thirty sharp! You ’ll be there?’
‘Oh, yes, sir!’ we said.
‘Right! Now I must go. Lord! there’s a heap o’ work to be done!’
When we last saw him, he was hurrying away in the direction of the showgrounds.
Twenty years ago this wretched man disappeared; and since that time, every seventeenth of July, — if I happen to think of it, — at 1.30 P.M. sharp, I wish that he may come to no good end.
It is pleasant to turn, in thought, from this ignoble vagrant to a wanderer whose name must still be held in pleasant and grateful remembrance by many ‘old boys’ of the stockyards school. In so far as we knew, he had visited Prairie Hills but once, and at that time had carved his nom de voyageur, ‘A No. 1,’ on a wooden support at the water-tank. Each letter was cut deeply into the wood, and fashioned with exquisite craftsmanship. The ‘A’ had then been colored with red paint, and the ‘No. 1’ with blue. There was no other inscription which could compare with this, and we were sure that no other nomad could compare with him in character and experience of travel. Even the most distinguished professors of the stockyards school spoke of him with respect; and taking advantage no doubt of our willingness to believe, they told marvelous tales of his exploits, and threw over him a glamour which was quite in keeping with our conception of him. He always traveled alone, they said, and ranged not only the United States, but Canada as far as Quebec, and Mexico, and South America, to ’Bonus Airs.’
One afternoon, when Sharpe, Goodwin, and I assembled at the marbleplaying ground near the water-tank, we found a bright-eyed little man sitting on one of the cross-supports, whittling a stick and whistling softly to himself. I remember nothing more of his personal appearance, except that, he wore a blue cap, and was dressed in decent clothing; and he had beside him a scuffed and baggy leather satchel. He was a stranger, but evidently no ‘ hobo,’ so we were not interested in him, and proceeded with our game at once.
We had been playing for some time, when he whistled sharply, to attract our attention.
‘Here you are!’ he said. ‘Catch, one of you! ’
Goodwin caught it. It was an Indian head, an Indian in full war-paint, carved out of a potato.
‘Well, where’s your manners?’ said the stranger. ‘Can’t you say thank you?’ And without waiting for a reply, ‘Fetch me another one of those spuds.'
Several potatoes which had been jostled from some car were lying nearby. We brought him all of them, and he made for Buller Sharpe a head of Abraham Lincoln, which we thought a marvelous likeness. Then, examining the remaining potatoes with the swift appraisal of the artist, ‘These won’t do,’ he said. ‘Too bumpy’; and he threw them away.
I was keenly disappointed and he must have noticed this.
‘Wait. Another keepsake for you. Scoot! Go back to your game! I ’ll tell you when it’s finished.’
He turned his back to us and bent over his work, and hours later, it seemed to me, ‘All right,’ he said. He held out a match-stick, and on it was carved, in blocked letters, ‘A No. 1.’ — ‘Keep that, and be it,’ he said. ‘Now go home to your suppers, and don’t bother me any more.’
There was a hasty bolting of suppers that evening. We were at the watertank again within half an hour, but A No. 1 had gone. Evidently he had taken the west-bound passenger, on his way to Denver, or, as we thought more likely, San Francisco. He had freshly painted his old inscription and carved beneath it, 7/9/’99.
Last summer I returned to Iowa, and long before the brakeman of the local train came through the car shouting, ‘Prairie Hills! Prairie Hills!’ I had my window open and was leaning far out, in my eagerness to recognize boyhood haunts.
But I soon regretted my curiosity, my foolish longing to link past with present days. The stockyards school had disappeared, and the wooden watertank had been replaced by an upright steel pipe, which had nothing to commend it but its utility.