The Old Dillard Settlement

Doretha Dillard Shipman

Oct-Nov-Dec 2000

I do remember a couple of times the winners didn't think about winning., they were only helping out to have enough girls to keep the event with more than just a scant few who would dare to enter "sich" a thing, as the old-timers would say. One winner was a widowed mother and business woman and she was totally embarrassed when it was revealed. A young teenager in Yellville was a winner and did her mother ever object to that! Those are special remembrances of the past."

" ... I passed the road that turns down to the head of Greasy Creek, where Leon and I used to live when he first came back from the war. At that time we had a horse drawn sled to haul our milk up the little rocky road to the county road. Once upon a time when we were going up the hill my baby daughter and I were ridding the back of the sled. The old horse gave a jerk and out the back of the sled I tumbled, with Ann held high and she never touched the ground ... I did!"

<a story about raisins:> "Once upon a time the weather had been real dry, about like it was here this summer, in California, I believe in the San Joaquin Valley. It was so hot and dry that all their grapes just "pur-o-de" shriveled up on the vines. We farmers of all kinds sometimes have to figure out what to do when things don't go as planned and one of the grape farmers though, 'I will gather up these dried grapes and take them to San Francisco.' He did and one good shop-keeper agreed to try to sell them. Here comes one of the "name" brands - he called them "Peruvian Delicacies," which sounded fine to enough folks around there that they were wold out within a few hours, which made other dealers start fizzing around trying to find more of the locally-grown 'foreign delicacies.'

By 1912 or thereabouts, the farmers formed the California Raisin Company, which provided work for many folks, including women. One young packing girl, Lorrain Collett Petersen, was most beautiful, which all the workers noticed. When the big celebration - the Panama-Pacific International Exposition - came to San Francisco about 1915, of course there had to be parade, just like with out Turkey Trot, and Lorraine was selected to represent the raisin company.

Being like all young ladies, she washed her long, black hair and sat out in the sunshine to dry it (she didn't have a hair dryer). She put her mother's red bonnet on to help control her hair and then her mother ever so gently curled eight long beautiful curls, which extended below the bonnet.

One of the executives of the raisin company was in town for the event of the year and happened to pass by and see the lovely girl sitting in her yard drying her hair. He recognized her as one of the workers who had been permitted to go up in a small airplane to throw showers of raisings out to spread over the ground for advertisement of their product.

With his advice, others in the company got the bright idea of a trademark and Lorraine was it, after she sat for two weeks for an artist to paint her for the new name, Sun Maid Raisin Growers of California.

This beautiful Sun Maid with the red bonnet and tray of grapes in her arms on our box of raisins today is Lorraine of long ago, even if her modeling for the two weeks of sittings was counted as her wages of $15 a week.

One never knows what getting prettied up will come to."

As he carried his lard bucket full of his school lunch, his mind was not on the ham and biscuits and jar of sorghum in the bucket, it was still thinking of the big boom it would make if he pushed the outhouse off the cliff. (There was one such outhouse here not far from the Buffalo River - or used to be.) The desire was so strong that he did it and it gave a rewarding crash.

The conscience of the poor little feller hurt him badly and he worried all day at school; what would his daddy and mother sayd, and what would they do to him? How he dreaded going home that evening. One thing gave him encouragement .. the class was studying about George Washington and how he never did tell a lie and when asked who cut down the cherry tree admitted the crime and he didn't get punished, so the boy decided to tell his dad the truth and he felt confident he had the problem solved.

As soon as he got home that evening, he said, "Dad, I have got to tell you what I did." Dad replied, "Yes?". "I was the one who pushed the outhouse off the bluff." Dad: "You what?!" He got a long switch and wore it out on the boy. After the severe punishment the boy said, "But, Dad, George Washington told the truth about cutting down the cherry tree and he didn't get punished."

Dad replied, "Yes, but George Washington's father wasn't in that tree."

She told of the time she and other young girls of the settlement went flower-picking in the spring of the year, with Blanche Curtis. Blanche, the oldest of the group became lost. She had lost her way in those Buffalo hills, but being the mountain girl that she was, she knew to follow the hollow and it would lead to the river. They made it safely, but not without being reprimanded by a group of worried parents.

These things took place in the area of other places on the Buffalo I was not acquainted with. Like so many other places which are named after people who lived there, or where some particular incident had occurred. The Brently Bend and the Lonely Hole were two places she mentioned.

She told of how her dad had learned to make cloth from his mother, Aunt Flo, you made my day and my next visit with you I will enjoy you telling me the same stories."

"Mr. Ives ... asked me if I had ever heard the story about corn and the lazy man?" .... Once upon a time there was a terribly lazy man in the community and folks took a dislike to anyone who didn't work. They told him if he didn't start working and keep up his family that they were going to bury him alive.

That didn't seem to have an effect on the problem, so the men built a coffin with plenty of space between the boards. They placed the man in the box and started down the lonely, rocky road to the burying ground. The wagon carrying the coffin and assistants was making a loud grinding noise on the stones as it was driven, but the men with the loud voice tried to bargain with the lazy creature and told him if he would promise to work they would turn him loose and provide him with a good batch of corn. He asked "Is it shelled?" "No", the men replied. The trifling man said, "Keep a-going.". I doubt if the corn got shelled for him, but what happened then?"

<I know Doretha won't mind me adding a bit from Frankie Seay's column (pg 6).> ".... ground squirrels are thick, which makes the five grandsons happy. That reminds me of about 40 years ago when one of their uncles was visiting family at Mull and took the Grayhound bus home to Yakima by way of Phoenix and his mother fixed him a paper sack of fried squirrel and biscuits to take along and he loved it, but got some weird looks when he took the squirrels' heads out and cracked them with a knife to get the brains out, which was one of his favorite foods. The other passengers wondered when they saw him eating what they thought was little chickens, but when he started cracking the heads they moved away from him and gave him plenty of room to eat his lunch. Too bad the squirrels at Terry's house aren't edible, she could feed a lot of boys on them. And squirrel brains and heads are really a delicacy to some people; not to me, but to some."

Since we grew up together, there was a little story I remember about his daddy (Jeff called him Poppy, if I remember right). Once upon a time on a cold, blustery winder day it was milk time and my daddy Pate took the milk pail ... milk bucket, we called it ... and went down to the barn, got his milk stool - it might have been a bucket - sat down and began to squeeze the milk out of the old cow. His hands were cold and he had his hat on and collar turned up and I am sure was in deep thought. He couldn't hear well and Lonzo, who was Jeff's father, came up behind Daddy unobserved. He always walked slow and quietly. He had an earflap cap pulled down over his ears (he couldn't hear well either) and a long black coat on. All of a sudden he spoke pretty loud. The old cow had no hard time hearing Lonzo and in her fright gave a full grown kick, knocking the bucket of milk to smithereens and Daddy fell off the stool. I don't know what Daddy said, but I am sure their conversation continued with both Daddy and Lonzo holding their hands cupped behind their ears so they could understand each other.

I think the cow had the remainder of that milking session discontinued."

<Dorthea's column> I am always happy to hear of our friends and relations in Washington, Thanks to Frankie Sue. She keeps us informed about Zelma (Davis) Baker and reading about her the past week, I wondered if she remembers when once upon a time, she was staying in the Loy Shipman's home attending school at Bruno along with the Shipman brothers, Leon and Verl, who were first cousins. One bitter cold winter morning they grabbed their dinner pail (a lard bucket) carrying the lunch. I'll bet it contained some good biscuits and sorghum. Anyway they took off walking the long distance to school. As the day dragged along, the children gathered by the old wood stove turned first one way and then the other to try to get their bodies a little warm. I doubt if their clothes were very thickly layered, but be it as it was, the time to go home had arrived and the day had grown colder. Ice had accumulated and they thought of the slick foot log they would have to walk over at Hampton Creek. When they arrived at the log, they began to carefully walk over the creek,, they thought of how cold the water would be to fall in. They soon found out. Leon and Verl hit the cold water with a breath-taking experience.

Lucky for them their school mates and neighbors, John Glen's daughters, were along and took them to their home to get dried and warm. When the little boys clothes were re moved, the overalls stood up alone, not from starch but be cause they were frozen stiff.

It has been cold these last few mornings, but was it that cold? I don't think so.

I was all ears and eager to hear even the least of anything about our Indian ancestry.

Bob Collins began his story: Once upon a time during the hardest of times, the Depression time, he, his dad, mother, brother, grandmother Mary and her youngest son Arlie, drove their old Model T car out to west Texas to try to make even a meek living.

They lived in an old cabin called a "line shack," where a lot of workers had to live who worked in that area. They had the bare necessities to exist. In fact, they really didn't even have that. His grandmother, my Aunt Mary, being of Indian descent, had a way of knowing how to make do under adverse conditions and used her ingenuity to build an oven outside, since they had no stove to cook on. (Bob said several of the Indians where he lives today, even though they have nice homes to live in, have ovens built in their yard to bake in like Aunt Mary built long ago.)

The owner of their abode gave them permission to use all the clay they needed to build an oven. Bucket after bucket of clay was carried for the construction. She started it large at the bottom to hold up the remaining portion, which gradually became smaller and came together at the top to make the cover.

Bob didn't know where she got a grate, but she had one built in to hold the baking pans. She put coals in the bottom of the oven for the heat.

In my imagination, I can almost smell and taste the biscuits and cornbread which were brought out of that meager, useable, humble oven.

I wonder where she learned how to do this. Was it from her father, mother Sarah (Cypert) Seats or her Indian descendant husbands?"

<Old Dillard Settlement> "Lee called the other day and said that Frankie Sue's column brought to his memory when once upon a time his family lived near Yellville and Grandpa Davenport stopped by and had caught a groundhog. He said, "I don't skin it, I fix it like when we kill hogs, by boiling water, scalding it, scraping the hair off and baking it." That didn't sound very appetizing to Lee and he told his Uncle Charlie so. That didn't make any different to Grandpa and the cooking continued.

It took a while for the groundhog to cook, but my how good it looked. The skin was golden brown and little crunchy. Lee wouldn't touch it. Grandpa encouraged him to take a nibble. To console his Uncle Charlie (my grandpa), he nibbled. He didn't stop at two or three nibbles. That was the tastiest hog he ever age. Finally Grandpa said, "I'll not try to get you to nibble like that anymore." Wouldn't that be good for a Christmas Dinner?

 <More about west Texas - see last week's column> "Something else about this west Texas they were living in, he talked of a two-gallon crock Mary made her sourdough in and it had to be replenished every two or three weeks. Fresh bread was made each day. Mary's grandson, Bob Collins, who has given me the info, remembers his dad hauling water from the windmill. They had two large barrels one held drinking water and the other was for washing. He said they didn't get many baths. This changed after they lived there for some time. In about six months other men started bringing their families out there. They set up two rows of tents, graded a street down between them and called it Rag Town. A well was drilled and water piped down to the tents. A town site was laid out, soon there was a store, a school was built and things were going well, but then Bob said, "Then the riffraff started coming into the town; gamblers, bootleggers, prostitutes and other undesirables. An election was held (I'm glad they knew how to county votes) and a judge, sheriff and police were picked. A courthouse and jail were built.

"An oilfield worker lost a lot of his paycheck one night at the gambling place. The cheating didn't pay off for the large woman who was running the place. The roughneck workers didn't take to letting one of their men get cheated, and the next day several of the bad people were found dead. One boy who had beaten his girlfriend was taken to a tree and hung. The bunch was told to get out of town by the next morning. They left." I can see why a jail was built and a sheriff elected.

This must be why the west is called the Wild West, don't you think? I'm glad those bad ole days are over, because I've read some mighty bad things which happened in Yellville, especially during the 1860s, according to the Turbolt [Turnbo] Chronicles".

Beci answered her phone of Christmas Eve (thinking it was one of the family,) with a Christmas Eve Gift, it wasn't the family but a strange voice answered after a pause, it was her daughter's boyfriend. I guess that's the last of that, with a ho! ho! ho!.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I saw a very unusual Christmas tree. I think it was one of the kind except in the woods or fields where the cedar trees grow. My dad, Pate was always a nature lover, so after my mother had died, he set him up a Christmas tree and gathered up leaves of nature and decorated it and under the tree among the presents or maybe I should say, the presents were among the leaves it was a sight to be hold. Perhaps if it had been full of lights, I would never have remembered it so vividly.

Have you considered how different the Christmas presents are today, than what they were years ago, you older citizens? For instance, I remember when aprons were a very popular gift, pretty handkerchiefs, socks, scarfs, dresser sets, baby dolls or dolls without batteries so you could talk for them, toy cars to roll with no controls except the hands of the little boy and perhaps a pretty kitchen dish, It was all as exciting then to receive the little inexpensive things as a new car now, I guess, and I know it could thrill me just as much. I remember making my mother a clothes pin apron which I appliqued a clothespin and a bar of soap to it. I was so glad to give it to her becau8e she could use it, One of the aprons I made her was just for Christmas because I appliqued a Santa Claus on it. She was always proud of anything I got for her however small it was. What a wonderful thought when I look back to my childhood with mom, dad, brother and sister, what a good memory I have of Leon and I raising our family, with a trip to Marshall or Harrison for Christmas shopping, and what an exciting time it is now enjoying these Christmas times with my extended family of in-laws, grandchildren and all the great-grand children.

Time goes and on and don't you just love it?

<Yakima Valley (Wash.) News by Frankie Seay Dec 17, #310> "I'm not even going to TRY to be jolly and upbeat today because I'm just plain miserable. As best I can tell, I have a cold, a stopped up nose, headache (and every thing else in that line). I called our doctor to complain to him and he sent me the strongest antibiotic he had plus a bottle of nasty tasting cough syrup that does absolutely nothing so I guess I'll just continue to gripe, take my nasty tasting medicine and see how long I can live. I did take my flu shot, and I have a dear little lady living next door who checks on me two or three times a day and I don't think either she or Rufus believe me when I say I AM taking my medicine. Jim Davenport used to come through the kitchen and turn the turpentine bottle up to his tongue and Swore that kept him from ever getting a sore throat. John Dillard's sore throat remedy was a DIRTY sock tied around his neck, Lee Davenport swore by Bayer aspirin and I'm about ready to start using all of them.

In the last two issues of the Echo, we read of the Legion Hut in Yellville being considered for nomination to the National Register of Historic Plies in Arkansas and I really hope that happens. I have a lot of memories of that old building; we used to go to moves there in about 1939 or '40 when my sister Jimmie Ruth and I cleaned the Methodist church every Saturday morning and made twenty five cents a week BETWEEN US so we couldn't go to the movies EVERY week, we had to save our quarter 'till we had enough for both of us to go so every other week, we'd both go and it would cost us 20 cents each for tickets and we each had a nickel for a Grapette, Dr. Pepper, or a Coca Cola. I know there were other forms of entertainment there that I was too young to go to, dances, etc, but Rufus remembers going there with his friends and his sister Zera and they all learned to dance to a juke box. And it was also used for stage shows, sorta like the old vaudeville shows but not as elaborate of course, I remember one summer a group came to town, recruited some of the local teenagers and put on a musical, with costumes, etc. (NOT like the costumes we see nowadays) and they played to a full house, .the first time most of us had ever seen any thing like that. Some of the local teens that I remember were my sister, Jimmie, Betty Jean Caviness, Anne Marie Pyle, Marie Adams, and so many more and they did a good job, something new for a little town like Yellville. And I also remember in the 1950s the Red Cross set up in the Legion Hut for a blood drawing and I helped by talking to the donors to keep them from get ting nervous, and when the Turkey Trot was new at Yellville, and I was the secretary of the American Legion Auxiliary at the time, we met at the Legion Hut to make plans. Lots more memories that are more important than mine, but I'm sure there are a lot of other just plain citizens with memories of the old building who would like to see it honored".