Edith McCullough Perry:
My Story

I don't know when they moved to Alicia. It is a little town with a Post Office and a train station on the main line of the Missouri Pacific from St. Louis to Little Rock. Alicia is 101 miles Northeast of Little Rock and we used to count long lines of box cars, sometimes as many as 90 empties going back -- not so many loaded. They never stopped but went through like 'greased lightning'. A passenger train went North about 4:00 P.M. and another went South at 5:30 A.M. Mama arrived on that early one, as did all passengers from the North. We could take it South to Newport and return on the other one, which we did often, for trips to the doctor and to shop. there was another train at 9:45 P.M., bedtime for all, and it was so regular it was like a clock. There was also a local train, carrying mostly freight, with only one passenger coach, which is mentioned later in my story.

There was a water tank for the trains right across from our front gate where engines took water, and a pump house on the other side of the track where Dad Allen lived and managed the pump. One time when he returned from a trip, he brought me a gift--a little vase made of tinsel like a Christmas ball, with a rose painted on it. Of course, it couldn't last the years.

When they moved to Alicia, Uncle put in a store on the corner of his property, facing the railroad, just as Papa did on his corner across the big road in later years. He was proud of Papa, called him a Good Boy, was proud of his industry, and his willingness to work, promised him one of his best teams and 40 acres of his best land when he married. But when the time came, he offered Papa the sorriest team he had and 40 acres where no crop had ever been grown. Papa said, "No, thanks. I'd rather take my chances." and he did. His reputation was the best and there were plenty of men willing to stake him; it seemed that everything he set his hand to prospered.

They were married in that house and set up house-keeping in a house that stood during my childhood at the northeast corner of our front yard, one lone side forming that much of the north fence, and facing the road (later the street), the railroad the the tank. The other two sides were in the garden and I remember currant bushes along the side of the house.

While they lived in that house they had four children: -- a boy who died in infancy, Lizzie Berniece who is Elizabeth Hodges, William Lynn, and Hubert, all very fair, the boys being blue-eyed like Papa.

At the southeast corner of the yard stood the store. It was a general merchandise store, across the big road from Uncle Will's, facing the depot. The road crossed the tracks. From a small beginning that store grew and was extended at the back halfway across the yard--only the woodpile and the chopping block stood behind it. There was a back door into the yard under the walnut trees just back of the office.

In the summer of 1893 they moved into the big house which was built on the rise and back farther from the road. It was that summer that Mr. Julius Guelck came to us. He had left his home in Freeburg, Germany to escape military service and a stepmother he didn't like. He had worked at Scruggs, Vandervort and Barney in St. Louis and had somewhere mastered the English language, for his spoke it fluently and was well-read. After a period of wandering (he had been out into Indian Territory), he came to Alicia as a painter and paper hanger just as the big house was ready for those services. He got the job, and did not want to leave when it was done. He loved Papa and said it seemed more like home than any place he had found in this country. Papa told him of some cottages he was going to build and hired him to come back to do them. He did, and begged Papa to let him stay--he would do any kind of work. He did excellent work, felt at home, and he and Papa became good friends.

The store became his home. A room was built for him extending into the yard at the side of the building in front of the back door under the walnut tree, and opening into the office of the store which had a wall only so high and open work above. He could see all over the store but his desk and safe could not be seen from the store. In his room there were windows on the east and west, but no door into the yard. He kept a neat room and every Monday morning he had a bundle of laundry neatly rolled and tied with his shirt sleeves, which one of us would be sent for, because Tuesday was always washday.

He did all the bookkeeping. Farmers, who bought their supplies all through the year, brought their cotton in to be ginned in the fall, and settled their accounts. I haven't mentioned the gin before for I don't know when it was built. I cannot remember when it wasn't there. But I know that Papa gave most of his time to it while Mr. Guelck ran the store. There were always clerks who could wait on the customers, sell boots and shoes, measure yardgoods, weigh out sugar and sell flour by the sack. But the book-work was his job and he did it well. During the ginning season the store was a busy place, and we were never there at that time.

I was born that year (1893) -- the first baby born in the big house. It was November 21, and I was the first tiny baby Mr. Guelck had ever seen. When they named me Edith, he said, "When you get old and lose your teeth, you won't be able to say it. I shall call her 'Tom'", and he did as long as he lived. He loved me dearly and was always bringing me gifts. Every year when he went to St. Louis to buy goods, he would come home on the early train, bringing a 5 pound box of chocolates and a gift for me: -- a ring or a bracelet or a necklace (that I still have); and I still have the silver jewel-box he gave me later when I was in High School and the Edith Doll that I am sure was his selection, though I got her the Christmas after Papa died in November. He must have had it tucked away since his trip that year.

A few times Mr. Guelck sat in the room where we little girls slept while Mama and Papa went to church at night, and I remember one time when he had been telling us about his childhood in Germany and about the big storks that flew over the house and built nests on the roofs, Maibelle, from her pillow, heaving a sigh, said, "Oh! I wish I were a Gernam!" He thought that was rich and reported it to our parents when they came home.

Also I remember that he received from his home some silver that had belonged to his own mother. Of course, he gave it to me and I still have it: -- some small spoons, a sugar tongs and a coffee strainer with an ivory handle.

Papa thought himself a Methodist, but when a meeting was being held in the schoolhouse by both Baptists and Methodists, and he was attending every night and deeply interested, Mama, attending alternate nights so the hired girl could go on the other nights, her neighbor, Rena Davenport, who was living in their former house, came to her, saying, "Oh, Mrs. McCullough, you just must go to church tonight. I know your husband will reach a decision tonight". Mama said, "This is not my night to go, and he will make his decision without my presence". That evening after they were gone to church, the children were in bed, she set me (her baby) on the floor and went out behind the smokehouse, knelt down beside a block of wood and prayed earnestly for his salvation that night. She prayed until the answer came, and when he came home, hung up his topcoat in the hall, saying, "Well, Wife, I settled it tonight.", she answered, softly, "I know it." The next time it was her night to stay home, the meeting closed with invitations to join the churches. The schoolhouse had a platform for the teacher's desk with steps on either side, and that night the two preachers stood on those steps to receive those who came. Papa came home to tell Mama that he had joined the church, and when she asked, "Which one?", he answered, "Oh, the Baptist, of course; I've served the devil 34 years; now I'll serve the Lord 34 years or as many as I may." He had only 10 more years to live.

Our house was set back from the big road and as the town grew, Campbell's store was the first building north of us and set out on the road, and a sidewalk continued on north past other houses. The store backed to our garden, so that the back of the store had a door onto the area in front of our front fence. Dr. Huggins had his office in the back of that store with this outside door and we children used to wash used medicine bottles and sell them to him.

When I was a toddler with no little sisters yet, I had a favorite Sunday School teacher who lived just beyond Campbell's store, named Mrs. Lloyd. When September came and the other children went to school, I was lonesome; and I wandered off to see Mrs. Lloyd -- and lost my diaper on the store porch. I don't know who brought me home, bit I know I loved Mrs. Lloyd. When she asked me for the Golden Text one Sunday morning, I remembered, "The Lord is in His Holy Temple -------- everybody keep still." After she moved to Bald Knob, Mama took me to see her and it was on that trip that she gave me the little red and clear glass pitcher. I think it was the spring while I was 2, so where was Gladys?

First-born in the big house -- always a bright, healthy child, just a few days before Thanksgiving. I know one person who was truly thankful; that was Lizzie. She was almost 10 and when Hugh was born, four years earlier, she had said, as she looked at him, "Two stinkin' boys here, I can't have anything." (Lynn had just broken her nicest doll.) She still had 20 dolls and she let me break them one by one by giving them to me too soon. 'A picture of health' I was called, but Gladys who was almost 3 years younger was sickly and not much fun for me. But when Maibelle came, blue-eyed and rosy, a healthy baby, I was almost six. I took her on, changed her diaper on the bed before I was allowed to lift her, and when she was a little older I put her to bed in my doll bed. It had been Lizzie's -- an oak bedstead with mattress and linens about 27 inches long. Also I rode her in my doll buggy. She called me 'Eee-ah', said I was her best friend, cause "she keeps the turkey gobbler off". That gobbler was mean. One time when our furniture was on the front porch for some reason, that gobbler saw himself in the dresser mirror and flogged it soundly. We always had to look out for him and Mama finally killed him accidentally. Mr. Guelck teased her about it. Maibelle called me 'Eee-ah' until Mama forbade it. She told me not to respond to that name any more because she could say any word she wanted to.

The summer Maibelle was two, Papa sent Mama out to the West coast. She was in poor health, and people were already dying from heat prostration in Chicago. Mr. and Mrs. Doan, who had been our best teachers at Alicia had moved to Whatcomb, Washington and Papa had had some correspondence with them about sending Mama out there. Of course, Mama demurred. She was almost past going, and said, "I can't go and leave my baby!" "Well, take your baby, then.", he said. "Oh, I couldn't without Edith." "Well, all right, take Edith then." "Take both of them and leave Gladys?" "Well, then take all three." She did -- five days and nights in the same pullman, out of St. Louis. I had a good time. There was a couple, brother and sister, going out from St. Louis to Seattle to a Y.M.C.A. Convention, and they enjoyed an alert little seven-year-old girl; I spent lots of time with them. When we got to the Columbia River, the southern border to Oregon, the train crossed it on a ferry-boat, and those young people took me off the train with them to stand on the boat and see the train and the river. Boy! that was something! (Later after we got home, they sent me a photograph of themselves on their front porch in St. Louis.)

Mama began to feel better immediately, during that 5 days, and continued to improve steadily the whole six weeks. I remember seeing Indians from our train window, dressed in Native costume, selling rocks that seemed to be shot through with silver. Sometimes we could look out the window and see the engine and many cars ahead, going around a curve. Sometimes there were two engines through the mountains.

We arrived in Whatcomb at night were taken to the "Quiet Home". Mama laughed at the idea of taking three children into place that called itself quiet, but we did not make any disturbance. We're not that kind of kids. Just a few steps down the hall, Granny Blake had her ice-cream parlor and we visited her often. We could go on down to the sandy beach and the water of Bellingham Bay and pickup Pretty little rocks. Across the street from us lived a blind girl, who was always 'it' when we played Hide-and-Seek. We watched from the porch. One day we went away across a body of water in a motorboat launch, and walked up a mountain to Wickersham--I think it was a sawmill, to see some people who had kin folks in Alicia. We had a buggy for Maibelle, but she disdained it and walked all the way. In a Whatcomb I have always remembered going down open stairsteps over water and seeing the biggest pansies and nasturtiums I ever saw. They must have been in boxes. Another day we strolled by a pretty stream, clear as crystal, and I dropped my red organdy bonnet watched it float away, coloring the water as it went.

I have no recollection of the trip home, but I know I lost my first tooth out there, that Maibelle soil her last diaper in the depot in St. Louis going out, at we stopped in Portland on the way home to visit the Bill Lee family, who had lived in Alicia. The daughter, Ruth, a son, Guy, and another daughter about my age, named Ethyl. (The next Valentine's Day, Ruth sent me a Valentine with a little pipe on it; the verse said, "Sweet is the smoke of tobacco, pleasant the mild cigar; but there's a dear little maiden, sweeter to me by far." I still have that little pipe.)

When we got home was Papa ever glad to see us! He said it was the longest, lonesomest time he ever spent, but Mama was so much better, feeling good and looking well, he was greatly pleased. That brings us to September when Gladys would be five and I was almost eight, Papa superintended Sunday School; Lizzie was at central college in Conway, coming home for vacations; I suppose the boys went to school, but I don't know who the teachers were; I may have gone too, but the school was not graded--all were in one room, reading different readers, and when one was mastered the next one was assigned.

About this time there came a letter from somewhere around Jonesboro, written by a negro named Jim Wilson, and asking for help. He knew Papa by reputation and now that they were flooded out, he wanted to get out onto higher ground. He could do gardening and his wife and daughter would do laundry and cleaning and cooking--anything to get under his wing. He made them welcome and got busy preparing the place to live. The washhouse-woodhouse could be made together, ceiled and floored with windows, and a door that would lock. Also, in the fall a little heater could be put up. They came and were very happy until they began getting warning letters from some of the town people. We had never had negroes in Alicia. So they left and that house became our playhouse. It was just a few steps from the kitchen porch in the plum tree was between, and a Climbing Meteor rose grew at the end of the building just this side of the chicken-lot gate. Mama told us that she stopped many times at that rose bushes to listen to our talk. We carry all our playthings, furniture, and buggies down from the back room, upstairs over the diningroom--trip after trip we made. The front yard was big and grassy with shrubs and shade trees and we often moved out there and set up our play on the lawn. It was cooler than the playhouse on a hot summer afternoon. Arthur Byrd, who worked in the store, made a lawn swing for us and Maibelle had an enlargement made of a snapshot of the four of us on that swing, had them framed and gave them to us. I love mine and have it hanging in my room. It makes me think of a poem by Riley, "Oh, the beauty of the Springtime, Oh, the magic of the Spring, With old green boughs to blossom white And all the birds to sing."

We always had paperdolls, cut from fashion magazines, and furniture for them called light-weight cardboard. The cover that was around light-weight piece-goods was exactly right, light colored on one side and clean white on the other. That is what we were asking for when we had to stand and wait for Mr. Guelck to raise his hand and say, "Vell, vot iss it, Honey?" (see E. Hodges poem.) He never failed to produce the desired article from the base shelf under the counter--(they told me one day I was found sound asleep on the folded overalls on that same shelf.) That nice cardboard was perfect for our purpose and not a piece of it was ever destroyed, but saved for us.

Sometimes we played paperdolls in Mama's room--I suppose when it was too cold in the playhouse--or maybe before the negroes left. Anyway, I know we were something of a chore to Lizzie. I remember one morning she came with the broom just as we got settled to play, and with a swish of her eleven-gored skirt and a swing of the broom, saying clearly, "Cyclone!", she sent us scrambling! On another day she found a bit of paper in the Paperwhite narcissus bowl on the table, called out, "What is this in the narcissus bowl?" The anxious reply was, "That's Moses in the bulrushes."

After the negroes were gone and we had that good house, we build our paperdoll houses out of wooden boxes and nailed them to the wall with legs underneath so we could sit on boxes to play. Always before I made my own house, I had to make one for Marguerite (the baby), and see that Maibelle's was coming out all right. Our dolls got flimsy from so much handling and sitting and being folded and unfolded. So we would have a baptizing, and spread them out in the sunshine to dry.

One time out under the trees on the grassy lawn, when we were set up to play, Maibelle, in a grown-up voice said, "I'm coming to see you and you must ask the what I have." So, when she got to "my house", I asked, "Mizzoes, what do you have there?" She said, "Oh, Mizzoes, it's a little brand new sweet fresh baby."

In winter we each had a cardboard box about 20 inches square and six inches deep that fascinators had come in. They had good, wellfitting lids and we were allowed to have (in the house) as much as we could put away those boxes every night before going to bed. We loved that, and one night, playing at the end of the dining table--things moved down a little and the cover kept on--I made a see-saw on a goblet for my girl and Gladys'. Of course, the board slipped off the glass and the girls got a fall. I pretended that mine had have a wheel-chair and I made one with a hairpin for the axle.

While we played in the playhouse, the fast mail trains went through the middle of town--two of them-- just before noon. The whistle could be heard 'way off to warn us and it was "fast Mail, Front Gate", and away we went. The race was on; the goal--to get to the front gate before the engine got behind the depot.

Do you wonder where we got so many paperdolls? Mama took the Delineator magazine and she had catalogs from Nugents' and Barrs' in St. Louis. When the magazines came, while they were still new, we would put our names beside the dolls and have them already divided when the magazines were given to us to cut.