| A
few months back, Nov. 1, 2009, to be exact, I wrote here about my ole friend David
Peterson who was raised in Illinois. Titled, “Texas
to Illinois - Youthful Rebellion is no Different”, the story related some
of David’s experiences as he grew up in the Great Lakes area of East Central Illinois
near the towns Rossville and Mann’s Chapel. I highly enjoyed reading his memoirs
and hope you do to.
David is now in his mid eighties and lives in SE Texas
with his wife. His father, deceased in 1973 at age 82, worked as a seaman and
later as a Chief Engineer in the shipping business sailing all over of the huge
Great Lakes area.
At an early age, David went into the Merchant Marines
and worked as a seaman himself for many, many years. And with the his permission,
I will copy some excerpts here from David’s writings.
He says, “Since
my earliest days, I can remember when my mother, sister and I would pile into
our car, usually in the wee-hours of the morning, from near Rossville; would take
off headed to either Chicago, Milwaukee or maybe even Duluth, Minnesota, to meet
father as his ship came into port to discharge its cargo of iron-ore. Just watching
the huge ship sailing into harbor made me want to be onboard and enjoy the life
of a sailor. But of course I did not realize at that time, all the activities
taking place in the wheelhouse, or below decks in the engine and boiler rooms,
to keep this ship on course. Most ships at that time were coal fed, and someone
had to keep stoking the boiler with coal to heat the water that created steam
to propel the engine. This was hard work for any man.
Soon after we all
had a good visit, the three of us left father and departed whatever port we had
visited. It was back in the car, and we left for home, but I never forgot those
ships with which I was so fascinated. But, as we lived on a farm with animals
to feed and care for, the ships faded a little from memory, and it was back to
school for my sister and me.”
Plus, David recently sent me the following
email message.
“Hey Ray.. I been sittin here thinking about when I was
a young kid back in Illinois before I had any sense. According to some folks,
still don’t have much. But what I wanted to write about were the big black walnut
trees we had on the farm there, big suckers, we’re talking about tennis ball size.
We’d leave them on the ground ‘til they were good and rotten, turned almost black,
then wait about another week ‘til they had a few maggots in the hulls. We smashed
them with our hands and get that brown stain all over our hands, let it dry and
go back for more smashing. We didn’t worry about getting it under our fingernails
cause we always chewed the nails off.
We’d go to school like that and
show the teacher who had the darkest stained hands. Teacher always asked if we
didn’t have gloves to keep from staining our hands. I told her I’d bring a can
of walnut stain and she could try it out. But we got some old spar varnish for
her, she rubbed that varnish all over her hand, said it smelled like varnish,
but we said it smelled a little like that. Just before she died in the 80's I
went back to Illinois to see her, she brought up the stained hands and varnish,
said she knew what it was all along, but just having fun with us smart-ass kids.
I went to that one room school house for 8 years. Its gone now, but I’ll bet there
are a lot of memories hanging around where it used to be. Don’t make teachers
like that any more!!! That was the only school house, church or cemetery in the
county. All my ancestors are buried there.
I used to swim in the creek
there and get those big old black suckers (leeches) all over me and go home and
let mom pull them off. She’d get a hot stick out of the stove and burn them off.
Dang!!
Well, hope I didn’t bore you too much, Ray, but I do a lot of thinking
these days about days left behind. Hope to tell more later. David”
©
Nolan Maxie
"Nolan Maxie"
May 1, 2010 Column
piddlinacres@consolidated.net |
