Too Long in the Wind

October 2011

Together forever

[October 28-31]   It was in the spring of my seventeenth year that I first came to the bent cottonwood.

The tree, grown to fifty feet, was nestled in a crook of lower Ash Creek, in the bottomland between the round barn on the Bowman property and the land south of the Loving place. Even though we kids trespassed at will along the creek, I had never walked in this place and no one had ever spoken of it. Someone who had been here would have mentioned the tree. Aside from its twisted shape, the tree was marked by a lightning scar, a long pale scratch from high on the trunk down to my shoulder level, where the jolt had blown away a circle of the thick bark.

I was there to fish for bullheads in what looked like a deep hole, or at least as deep as I could find in our little creek. As I sat with my back to the tree, watching my bobber support a parade of dragonflies, I fiddled around in the sandy dirt at my side. It wasn't long before my finger caught on a fine chain, which I worked out of the ground and pulled up before my face.

At the bottom of the loop was a golden locket, in a heart shape maybe an inch wide.

I rubbed the dust off and pulled apart the clasp, working the reluctant lid back and forth until finally it opened. Inside was a photo, a black-and-white snapshot cut to fit the back of the locket. The girl in the picture was remarkable. She had a saucy face, full of verve and surrounded by shoulder-length dark hair; the eyes were luminescent and the mouth was, for lack of a better word, kissable.

Turning over and getting on my knees, I pulled out my pocketknife and opened the blade. I scraped it flat across the ground where I had found the locket, thinking there might be more. I graded up a nice pile of dust and sand before coming upon a strip of cloth, a tattered ghost of a ribbon tied in a bow. There was nothing else. I left the ribbon there, put the locket in the pocket of my yellow plaid shirt, and went back to fishing.

Walking home around suppertime, I thought of the girl and patted my pocket. Wouldn't it be great to have a girlfriend like her, I thought. Before I went to bed, I got our oldest Pawnee Rock yearbook -- the one with me in kindergarten -- out of the living room cabinet and took it to the couch. The best I could hope for was that the face in the locket belonged to a girl in high school in the early 1960s, because I knew she wasn't a recent student.

I also knew from helping with the yearbook at my own school that a sparkling girl like this would be pictured a dozen times, so she should be easy to spot.

She, however, wasn't in the pages. I should have expected that. She could have been from Radium or Larned or Great Bend, or maybe a crow stole the locket from a skinny-dipper's pile of clothing at the river and dropped it at the creek.

I put the locket in my bedside cabinet, and that's where I found it five years later when I was moving out of the house and heading off to my first job after college.

Just for kicks and hoping to wrap up one of my childhood's loose ends, I took the locket to the Larned library and asked for the collection of Pawnee Rock yearbooks. I started in the 1960s, page by page, then worked my way into the previous decade. 1959, 1958, 1957 -- and there, in the junior class, was my girl.

Her portrait was the brightest in the small class, her eyes glowing even on the old glossy and smudged page. "Evangeline Edwards," the caption said. Pages farther back showed her with a clarinet in band. She was a cheerleader, in the chorus, and on the yearbook staff.

Her face, as I knew it would, appeared frequently. Everyone wanted to be with her. And one fellow was, twice: Harrold Lile, with his hand in hers in one photo, and in the other standing in the basketball homecoming court looking across the floor at her while everyone else looked at the camera.

Even from where I was sitting, it was obvious that he was in love.

Lile was an old Pawnee Rock name, but our little town had no one by that name anymore. The librarian, prodded loose from the card catalog, said there was a Harrold Lile who lived on State Street.

"He's a sad old man," she said. "He comes in and, in fact, goes straight to the same yearbooks you did."

With the courage of a young man who was leaving town within a week, I parked late that afternoon in front of Mr. Lile's bungalow and knocked on the screen door. It was late May, hot already, and the wooden door behind the screen was open. A thin gray shape rose from an easy chair and padded across the floor.

"Mr. Lile, I found this," I said, opening the locket outside the screen and holding it up. "Can you tell me about it? Mr. Lile?"

"Good Lord," he said. "Evie."

He drilled into my eyes. "Why do you have this?"

I didn't answer right away. He blinked.

"Come inside," he said. "Who are you?"

He walked to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. "Sit," he said.

The sunlight from a window came in over his shoulders, leaving his features in shadow. A metal fan purred on the counter by the sink. The Formica-topped table had two ceramic roosters, salt and pepper, red and yellow. That was the only decoration, save for a picture framed on the wall next to the square electric clock. The picture was of Evangeline Edwards, the same image, the same dancing eyes.

"She was my sweetheart," Mr. Lile said. "Pretty girl, wasn't she?"

He smiled. He was kind of handsome himself, or at least he had been once a nice-looking guy. Something was missing.

"I found this along Ash Creek," I said. "There's an old cottonwood that got hit by lightning, and . . ."

"I hid that locket there," he said.

"Evie and I were going to be married," he said.

"What happened to her?" I said.

"She got killed by lightning," he said. "October 31, 1958."

"I saw that she was in the 1957-58 yearbook, but not 1958-59," I said. "The librarian said you look at the yearbook a lot."

"It's all those kids," he said. "You look in the 1958 yearbook, and you'll see that they're different from the year before. We all knew what happened, and I'm the one who has to live with it."

"Was anyone else hurt?" I said.

"Not like that," he said.

He took the locket and closed it. He turned it over in his hands, finally clasping it in his left fist.

"You're from Pawnee Rock, right?" he said. "Well, you must have heard about Evangeline's death. After it happened, no one would talk about it, but I figured that eventually somebody would, considering how much they hated me."

"I've never heard one word about any Evangeline Edwards or a lightning strike like that," I said. "I'm sorry to say it, but I had never heard of you, either."

Mr. Lile's shoulders sagged. It could have been in sadness, but I think it was in relief. He sat quietly, looking at his hands. When he next spoke, he started so quietly that I had to lean forward to hear.

"She and I were going to be married," he said. "She wore my class ring on a chain around her neck, because it was too big for her finger, and she gave me this locket on the first day of school our senior year. We had a grand plan to be married at the Methodist Church and live in Larned and have lots of kids.

"Things were different then," he said. "Sex, I mean. If anyone found out you were having it, you were ruined if you were a girl. Well, we had it and we loved it."

I nodded, as if I had some depth of understanding.

"Our church group planned a big Halloween party. Hay-wagon ride and all that, out there at the Bowmans' barn. A bunch of us snuck off from the squares" -- he rolled his eyes and smiled -- "and walked maybe a half-mile across the pasture down the creek. It was a warm night, warmer than it should have been, wind from the southwest. Must have been ten or twelve of us, all couples. All with one thing on our minds."

He stared over my shoulder, off into nothing.

We sat there.

"Mr. Lile?"

He startled.

"Us guys gathered some sticks," he said, "and Tom Schmidt built a little fire next to the tree by the creek. We were sitting there talking, just talking and looking into the fire, snuggling our girls and hoping it wouldn't start raining, and all of us a sudden there was this guy standing outside our circle. Scared the crap out of us."

Mr. Lile stood up. He paced by the stove, to the window and sink, and back. He wore tennis shoes.

"The stranger said he came over from the river after he heard our voices, and he gave us some story -- he called it a legend -- about true love and that very cottonwood tree. I don't know why we didn't throw burning sticks at him right then and there. He was the creepiest S.O.B. you ever saw, wispy beard and slicked-back hair and a greasy smile. I think we were all too polite, but we were also a little embarrassed because we had snuck off from the church group and even though we didn't know him, he might tell our parents or the minister."

Mr. Lile put his hand over his heart and shook his head. "Stupid kids," he said. "Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"So this skinny old S.O.B. walks around the outside of our circle, telling us about the tree and the miracles it has worked for love. He said it was a perfect night, with all of us there together and with a storm coming up.

"'Carve a heart in the bark and put your hands in the heart,'" he said. "'And if there's a flash of lightning while your hands are there, you'll be together forever, one with the stars in heaven.'

"While he's walking, I can see that he's checking out the girls," Mr. Lile said. "I guess the other guys saw the same thing, because we started to get up."

"Then the S.O.B. said, 'Tell you what. Why don't we see if the legend is true?' He pointed at Evie."

Mr. Lile stopped talking again. His breathing had speeded up, and his eyes were shut.

"I didn't want to, but Evie said, 'Oh, go ahead, Harrold. It'll be fun.'

"I used my pocketknife, the one my dad gave me, and carved the outline of a heart in the tree. It wasn't very good, because . . . you know cottonwood bark, and there was only the fire for light. But the S.O.B. said to make it big enough for my hand and Evie's hand, so I did. And then she came up and stood next to me in front of the tree, and that S.O.B. stands on her other side."

I interrupted. "Where were the other kids?"

"They were behind us, like a circle, and they started singing 'To Know Him Is to Love Him,' just having fun.

"Then the S.O.B. tells us to put our hands in the heart, if we want to be together until the end of time, and we do. My right hand is touching her left hand, and then that S.O.B. reaches in and puts his hand on top of Evie's hand. I told him to take it off, but he just laughed. Then she looked at me and started laughing. I looked around at the other kids, and they're laughing too."

"And all this time, the wind is coming up and it's starting to smell like a storm. The sparks from the fire are swirling around, and for some reason I started worrying that it might start a grass fire.

"I was really angry. I took my hands off the tree, and she did too," he said. "Then I reached behind Evie and pushed on that guy's shoulder. But he was tough and didn't move, and when I pushed I fell back."

Mr. Lile brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. The chain from the locket dangled from his fingers, and it rubbed on his nose. He looked around, almost as if he was surprised to find himself in his kitchen.

"That's when the lightning hit.

"We were all buzzed pretty hard, but not really burned. I think the worst part was that we went deaf because of the thunder. The people in the barn said we stumbled back in the dark, and our ears were bleeding."

I said, "What about Evie?"

"We got separated. She didn't come back with us and didn't show up at home. Nobody saw her afterward," he said.

He shook his head.

"There was a lot of talk the next day that I had done something with her, that maybe I had killed her. Murdered her! Can you imagine that?

"Her dad and cousins went out and walked up and down the creek and river, but no one ever found her. She never has shown up.

"Before my 'friends' stopped talking to me, I asked them about what had happened, about that stranger and his legend and the carved heart. You know what? Not one of them admitted remembering that S.O.B. Never heard of him. Every last one of the kids said we were all sitting around the fire when the lightning struck."

I said, "That's weird. Didn't anyone listen to you?"

"I told a few people what really happened, but they didn't believe me. Finally, no one would talk to me anymore. Right after I graduated, I came over here to Larned and got a job at the lumberyard. I haven't been back, and there aren't any more Liles in Pawnee Rock."

I prompted him. "The locket?"

He opened his fist and looked at it, talked to it.

"I did go back once, one year to the day after she gave me the locket, and I dug a little grave for it at the base of the tree. I put some flowers there on top. I just couldn't stay very long. There was evil in that tree."

I said, "Do you think the stranger's legend was true?"

"It has grieved me every day to know that my Evie and that S.O.B. are together forever. I can't look at the stars without thinking of them, that filthy man and my sweet lover. Forever."

I said, "Mr. Lile, I'm so sorry."

With sudden resolve, he looked at me.

"Don't feel sorry for me, young man," he said. "My friends were right. I did kill her."

"How?" I said. "Why?"

"I told you most of the truth already. When Evie and the others laughed at me, it hurt my feelings. I wanted to leave, but she didn't, so I grabbed her hand and pushed it back onto the tree next to his and shouted, 'Do it yourself! Be together forever!' And then I shoved that S.O.B. and fell down."

The thunder of 21 years filled the kitchen.

Mr. Harrold Lile shuffled to the table. He put his hands on the table to steady himself, then sat down unsurely. He leaned his head back. His arms sagged at his sides.

He breathed heavily three times and without another word expired.

I sat with Mr. Lile's corpse for half an hour, almost until dusk. When it was time to go, I walked around the table and knelt beside his left hand, removing the locket from his grasp and slipping it into my pocket. On the way back to Pawnee Rock, I cut south of town to the old Bowman farm, empty by then for a generation. I parked in the driveway at the round barn, climbed between the top and middle strands of the barbed-wire fence, and carefully walked through the nearly moonless night to the scarred cottonwood tree.

With my car key and fingers, I scraped out a hole between the roots close to where I had found the locket five years earlier. I kissed the locket for Harrold Lile, folded the golden chain back on itself, and laid to rest the memory of Miss Evangeline Edwards.

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Carl Immenschuh, of Pelican Press, dies

[October 26]   Carl Immenschuh, who with his wife founded the Pelican Press newspaper in Larned, died Saturday. He'll be buried Saturday at Peace Lutheran Church northwest of Pawnee Rock. (Obituary)

I never met Mr. Immenschuh, but I always intended to. I liked the Pelican Press, with its many get-to-know-Kansas-history articles and page-hopping columns about this and that. As far as I'm concerned, the Pelican Press was the true forerunner of the Kansas tourism publishing industry, much less glossy than Kansas magazine and a whole lot more useful. The more recent efforts to publicize Kansas' good parts all owe the Pelican Press a huge debt.

Mr. Immenschuh was born in April 1941 in Fellsburg, a tiny spot south of Lewis and Belpre in Edwards County. He was married to Vallene Oetken, a 1960 graduate of Pawnee Rock High School, in 1961 at Peace Lutheran.

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Examining a life in pictures

[October 26]   My sister, Cheryl Unruh, has written a touching column about our late dad, Elgie, for the Emporia Gazette. You can read it on her site.

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Rhonda (Deckert) Simmons dies

[October 25]   Rhonda Gayle Simmons, born in 1952 and a 1970 graduate of Pawnee Rock High School, died Saturday in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. She was the daughter of Dwayne and Janis Deckert and had grown up on the family farm northwest of Pawnee Rock. She was 59 years old.

Her obituary says that for 15 years she had been the owner of a wine-storage company and that she was skilled at interior decorating, cooking and entertaining. Her adopted hometown is a golf-intensive suburb of Palm Beach, on the easternmost bump of Florida's coast.

Ms. Simmons is survived by her parents and by her sister, Sondra of Bolivar, Missouri. Services will be held later in Kansas. (Obituary)

The photo is Rhonda's high school senior portrait.

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Six girls then five boys

[October 21]   Barb Schmidt rewards us again, this time with a bundle of cuteness from the Samuel J. Schmidt family. The photo of these six sisters dates to 1916 or 1918, Barb estimates.

Here's the story from Barb:

Of the many Schmidt family photos I inherited, this is the only one that does NOT picture one of my direct ancestors, aunts, uncles or cousins!

It's a photo -- taken probably in about 1916-1918 -- of the 6 daughters of Samuel J. Schmidt, who lived on a farm in Pawnee Rock Township. And before going any further, here is a disclaimer: Some of the first names provided below for these people may be misspelled because I've run across different spellings in different records. For example, was Samuel J. Schmidt called Sammy or Sammie or Samie ? Was his wife Kathryn or Catherine or Kathrina?

Back to the photo: Their daughters were (oldest to youngest) Esther/Ester, Lena, Selma, Mary, Elizabeth & Caroline/Carrie. Not pictured are their younger brothers Harold, Jacob, Robert, Roland, & Samuel Jr. (the last 2 or 3 of which were probably not yet born when this photo was taken).

Yes, that means Mr. & Mrs. Samuel J. Schmidt had 6 daughters and THEN had 5 sons! Some of your readers could tell you much, much more about this family -- maybe even share a photo of the 5 younger brothers?

But at least I can report the following from the 1920/25/30 federal & state census records for Pawnee Rock Township:

At various times between 1920 and 1930, this family's neighbors on the surrounding area's farms included the families of Elmer & Buelah Wolverton, Barney & Martha Schmidt, Charles & Maria/Maude Reeder, Peter J. & Susie Deckert, Joseph & Hattie Unruh, Roy & Ada Sherpy, Raymond & Nellie Baird, Cliff & Elizabeth Bauer, John & Vida Mull, Carl & Lizzie Rudiger, Herman & Lorena Kliewer, William (Sr.) & Anna Mull, Samuel P. & Elizabeth Schultz, Will (Jr.) & Alvena Mull, Henry & Eva Schultz and Peter & Bertha Dirks. If anyone reading this has any old photos of any of these families and/or their farms, please share with Leon so that we can all enjoy.

And the census reports also tell us that Esther, Selma & Carrie Schmidt eventually became school teachers. Does anyone have any old photos of any of the one-room schoolhouses that were in the Pawnee Rock area? For example, if someone could please show us a photo of the old District 48 schoolhouse, I would feel like Christmas had arrived early!!!

By the way, many census reports, along with tons of other genealogical records and family history materials, are available online FREE through the magnificent Family History Library in Salt Lake City (the "world's largest repository of genealogical resources") at www.familysearch.org -- click on "Sign In" and then "Create New Account" to set up a FREE user's account. (Another great online resource -- totally unrelated to the Family History Library -- is www.ancestry.com, although it requires a paid subscription.)

More later --

Barb

[From Leon: The District 48 schoolhouse may be in a photo on this Gallery page. Also, in 1916 the Schmidts owned a half-section a mile east of the current location of the Mennonite Church and an 80-acre plot in the northwest corner directly across the road east of the Rock House, where Harold and Sheila Schmidt would eventually live. (See the 1916 plat.)]

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Gospel Sings is at BCCC

[October 21]   Reminder: The annual gospel music show, Gospel Sings, is tonight and Saturday night in the Fine Art Building at Barton County Community College.

See the details here.

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Pawnee Rock to be mentioned on TV

[October 20]   It's always a treat to hear from Charles White, son of Reford and Beulah White. Here, he writes with news that we can hear a discussion of custom cutters in the Pawnee Rock area on a TV program tonight.

Here's his message:

Leon,

Well, it's been some time since I sent you an Email.

I have a cousin that lives in Mount Airy, Maryland. Her mother was my mother's sister, and is buried in the Pawnee Rock cemetery with my parents and brother. She comes back to Kansas and always considers it home.

She called last night to tell me about a series on the History Channel called "Harvest." It is a series that follows three custom cutter teams through their harvest (mis)adventures. She told me that the program that aired on Thursday evening (Oct. 13th) at 9 PM Central time called "Two Steps Back" was made in the Pawnee Rock area. I haven't seen the program but the custom cutters must have been cutting in the Pawnee Rock area, because she said that they mention Pawnee Rock.

I had an uncle (one of my Dad's brothers) who was a custom cutter and they started in Texas and finished in Canada each season. I want to see the program for both reasons, I guess.

I checked the program schedule on the website www.history.com and found out that the "Two Steps Back" program will be shown again with another program in the series 'Scorched' on Thursday the 20th starting at 7 PM Central.

I don't know how much Pawnee Rock is mentioned, but I thought that I should pass this along for your website. It is not often that Pawnee Rock gets air time!

Thanks,
Charlie

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Hello, country bumpkin

[October 19]   Anybody who tuned in to Cal Smith on the radio in 1974 knows what follows "Hello, country bumpkin."

What brings this to mind -- not that "Hello, country bumpkin" is ever very far from my thoughts -- is a story in this morning's Hutch News advising Kansans that they're going to be scraping their windshields. By evening, all across the plains, hookers in bars are going to cast cynical glances at wide-eyed guys in seed caps and ask:

"How's the frost out on the pumpkin?"

Here in Fairbanks, the home of Alaska's ag college, we like the area's farmish heritage. My son Nik celebrated the season by carving a pinch-faced jack-o'lantern and leaving it on the porch, and yesterday we too had a little chill.

Now central Kansas dudes can dig out their sweatshirts and insulated caps, all their finest clothing for hitting on the ladies at the Back Door.

"I've seen some sights but, man, you're somethin'
Where'd ya come from, country bumpkin?"

Safeway. Thanks for asking.

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Santa Fe Trail Center rain day

[October 17]   Elaine Mull writes to encourage folks who were put off by the rainy weather a week ago to attend the Tired Iron event next Friday -- October 21 -- at the Santa Fe Trail Center, west of Larned.

She wrote:

Neither RAIN, nor snow, nor sleet or snow totally can put an end to some of the activities of the Tired Iron Show.

A Rain Make-Up Day has been scheduled on Friday, Oct 21, for Sawmilling, Log Cabin Construction, Wheat Threshing, Corn Shelling and the Kid's Corn Coin Hunt.

Plan to attend these FREE demonstrations on the grounds of the Santa Fe Trail Center.

For more details, go to the Trail Center's website calendar and click on the October 21 entry. (www.santafetrailcenter.org/events.php)

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Remembering the Daniels family

[October 14]   Remember the Daniels family? They remember Pawnee Rock. The following note came Thursday from Pam Daniels.

"Just found out about your blog, and was surprised, happy to see a "memory" of my dad -- also the partial obit of my great-grandmother, and the pics from the Pawnee Rock Cemetery -- that made my day, since dad has been gone for over 25 years now, and people still remember. I have many memories of Pawnee Rock. The Daniels name can be found on the Rock in several places. The last time I in was in the Methodist Church, the hymnals being used were donated by my great Uncle/Aunt Guy and Ann Daniels. Keep those memories coming!! (Pete Daniels and Mrs. H. Daniels' obituary) [The photo here is of Guy Daniels when he graduated from high school in Pawnee Rock in 1916.]

"Another tidbit people may not know -- my grandfather, Vernon (Pete) Sr., married Thelma Williams (also of Pawnee Rock - they lived across the street from each other). Thelma's brother John married Pete's sister Dulcie Ann -- so they were "double" in (or out) laws!!. Dad's sister Jean Seltman is still in Larned, and Scott Seltman is still at the farm where I spent a large part of my childhood."

-- Pam Daniels

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Gospel Sings scheduled for Oct. 21-22

[October 3]   My cousin Mary Chestnut has announced the lineup for the seventh annual Fall Gospel Sings Concert in Great Bend.

The concert will be on October 21 and 22, a Friday and Saturday, in the Fine Art Auditorium at Barton County Community College. The Friday concert begins at 7 p.m., and the Saturday event runs from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Friday's show will feature the Todd Allen Family of Branson, Missouri.

Saturday's show will feature 4 Told of Russell; Ed Huffman of Maize; The Toneys of Gallatin, Missouri; Lamb Watchers Ministries of Fairbury, Nebraska; Joyful Noyz of Galesburg, Illinois; Dave Aramith of Topeka; and the Torres Family of Haysville.

Admission is free, although a freewill offering will be received. Refreshments will be available, and there will be door prizes.

For more information, call 620-792-7664.

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