St. Francis River, steady as she flows.....
Jul 16, 06:21 PM by Darryl Crum
Along the northeastern edge of Arkansas, the St. Francis River takes her twists and turns, cutting though land and time, giving only subtle evidence of the events she’s witnessed, of the role she’s played in the history of this land.
Bordering the woods, fields, and pastures, across the countryside and through the small towns, past well-manicured mansions and dilapidated shotgun shacks, she continues her journey with no fanfare, no mention of her in great literary pieces, and little, if any, recognition. But I recognize her! To me, as a child, she was the soul of the land, the mother of nature. She was the caretaker, the provider, a shelter to man and beast, and to fish and foul.
For anyone who has become accustomed to the hurried flight of everyday do-nothing business, it would be easy to skip over this river, to jump over her from bank to bank on one of the few concrete bridges built in the last half of the 20th Century. If anyone is in that much of a hurry, it is their loss because a hurried glance is simply not enough. To understand the St. Francis, to see her subtle beauty, to see the depth of character that flows constant between her wooded banks, it is necessary to surrender and let her become a part of you.
My history with her began as a very young child and while the years have taken me away from her, she remains central in my childhood memories. And this post, all that is in it, is here because of her involvement in my life and the life of those who came before me.
Pearl buttons for the ladies...
My father had just come home from the TB Sanatorium in Booneville, Arkansas on one of his few ‘leaves’ that freckle my childhood memory of him. He, still almost a stranger to me, my mother, and my three older brothers were in our back yard, circled around an old cast iron pot filled with boiling water and muscles. My mother and older brothers had dug the muscles from the mud along the deep bank of the St. Francis where the water runs slower.
The smell of the boiling muscles was almost enough to get the better of my curiosity. It filled the air, permeated everything, weaving its way into even the clothes we were wearing. The smell was strong, more than anything I had known, a mixture of muscles and boiling muddy water; but it was not strong enough to run me away from watching my father, the obvious boss of the brothers who had been my boss in his absence, and not strong enough to overcome my nosiness at to just what the ‘grownups’ were doing. When it comes to curiosity, sometimes kids are worse than kittens.
They sat there on blocks of wood and rickety old chairs surrounded by burlaps bags filled with muscles still to be boiled, buckets of boiled muscle meat to be fed to the pigs, and burlap bags filled with the emptied muscle shells. It was a hard way to make a living – sitting around a pot of boiling water under the heat a scorching delta sun, prying open the muscles, scooping out the meat just to get an empty shell.
When they had finished shelling the muscles, they took the bags of shells to the button factory in Parkin where the shells were drilled to make mother of pearl buttons. A lot of work, for a little pay – but maybe enough to buy a bag of flour (PurAsSnow), some sugar, or a piece of salt meat. There are times when it pays to be the baby of the family.
Several years ago, my mother and I were driving back from Bay Village to West Memphis, a route took us through Parkin. We decided to stop by the old button factory even though it is out of business and had been for quite a while. I found where they had discarded the drilled shells and worked my way down the bank until I found a small cache. I got a couple dozen and brought them back up the bank where my mother was waiting. It seemed like a long arc to travel for such a short distance – 50 years from that back yard as a child back to the button factory on the bank of the St. Francis.
Back when 42 pounds was a pretty big catfish…
