THE RAPE OF
HOWELL AND HAMBURG, MISSOURI
(An American Tragedy)
by
Donald
K. Muschany
COPYRIGHT © 1978 BY DONALD K. MUSCHANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
[Letter 2, undated]
Dear Cousin, “Doc”:
I truly believe that I have successfully
passed through the Age of Wisdom into the Age of Appreciation. How’s that for
an erudite thought?
True, Henry David Thoreau had his Walden,
FDR had Shangri La; J.F.K. his Hyannisport; H.S.T., Key West, and
What’s-his-Name has San Clemente, not to mention Jerry’s Vail, Colorado. Well,
I’ve had Howell, Missouri. True, it only exists in the mind, but this way it
can always remain the same beautiful, exciting, refreshing, memorable place.
At the tender and somewhat innocent age of
six, I began the long and tedious process known as education. For the next
eight years, I would be getting my Three R’s, plus a fourth R for
Responsibility, in a one-room school house, complete with an outside facility
for plumbing and basic nature study. All of this realm was presided over by one
teacher; her specialty was everything.
It’s true. All eight grades were taught in
one room by one teacher. When we think of a teacher being proficient today—we
had it then and didn’t know it.
That long bench in front of the school
room was a magic place because it was the spot where recitations were
expected—not excuses, written or otherwise. Near the center of the room, a
Charter Oak wood stove stood rather majestically, as if it knew it was in
command of comfort. (Who needed thermostats?) That stove needn’t have been so
proud as it only provided surface warmth; friendship, mutual interest, and
appreciation for another gave off a glow that made up the difference.
My teachers cannot be forgotten. My very
first teacher was Elsie Knippenberg, 1921-1923; then Hazel Worley, 1924;
Eugenia Nahm, 1925; Viola Mades, 1926; and, last but not least, was Martha
Cunningham, 1927-1929. The people were not only teachers, but friends,
counselors, confessors, nurses, and you name it. Each of these people left a
carbon copy of their characters indelibly stamped on me in my tiny world of
Howell.
Recess meant competition; tag, marbles,
jumping—even pole vaulting, if someone had brought a pole from a new roll of
linoleum, or even a tree branch. Whoever said, “Necessity is the mother of
invention” must have visited Howell. Incidentally, I caught it from my father
for appropriating a few bamboo poles from his linoleum rolls at the family
store.
Basketball was a big sport; mainly because
we were too small a community to staff sports calling for multitudes and for
equipment, and there also was a factor called “money.” We worked on
Zero-budget, long before the economists thought up the idea, though we didn’t
know it. We had no gym, but the old ground basketball court worked just fine,
rain or shine. Rusty Cunningham and Clyde Koelling, Landon “Fats” Schlueter,
Ralph Portwood, and Ralph Sutton were our hot-shot players. The games never
lacked spirit, especially if we were losing. We were playing the Augusta High
School team, with six men on their side (the referee was from Augusta) and when
it became obvious that we couldn’t win, some of our rooters took the opposing
team’s clothing and dumped them into tubs of water. The rhubarb that followed
was better by far than the game. Again Mother Invention created Fun.
Baseball was always played, and maybe Grantland
Rice was right when he said, “It matters not who won or lost but how you played
the game.” No truer words have been spoken. What really counts is how you play
the game.
Remember the four-room Francis Howell High
School? We didn’t know it at the time, but this was college prep. I happily
realized this fact in Central Methodist College at Fayette, Missouri as I’m
sure you did in college, at Westminster at Fulton, Missouri and Med School.
Today, Doc, schools have to have this or that credential or association
sponsorship, but are rated lower academically than was Old Francis Howell High
School. Our counselors were called teachers and parents in those happy days.
Remember?
I referred to a few leprechauns in my last
letter, but now I want to add another possibility, the Welsh background of the
Howells. Doc, Mary Jayne and I have done a lot of traveling in the last number
of years, and I can say without the slightest hesitation that I am not aware of
a happier, more congenial, humorous group than the people in Wales. They have
little earthly goods, save for their open pit mines, but they’ll offer you some
of everything, especially themselves. This is the spirit the Howells brought to
the town of Mechanicsville. The name “Mechanicsville” was changed at a later
date to “Howell.” The reason for the change was more than justified.
Strength, bravery, and fortitude were
prime essentials, of course, but without the ability to laugh a bit at
adversity, I feel they would have moved on to less dangerous and more fruitful
locations. They stayed and taught the French “farmers” what real farming was
all about.
All Americans are familiar with Daniel
Boone, but how many know that the Howells were set up pretty well before Dan’l
became our most famous resident? It certainly isn’t my purpose to downgrade
such a man as Old Dan’l, nor to rewrite Missouri history, but only to allow as
how there were other hardy folks out Howell-way.
Doc, you are truly living out the most
obvious tradition, by being a medical doctor, as the Howell story tells it. The
Howell men went to what is now Mizzou for medical school, while the women
learned to make and keep a household after their men constructed it. They had
to have 36-hour days in those times for the women to do what they did. Women’s
Lib would have had everyone in court or jail . . . every man, that is.
The young unmarried women seemed to do one
main thing; think about getting married. I have read some of the letters of the
day (and felt guilty, but convinced myself that this was research), and I must
say I now know what Emily Dickinson was talking about. Each letter was a lone
poem, an outpouring of natural young womanhood. In those days, out our way, a
psychiatrist would have starved to death in a week or less. Every girl had a
cousin/correspondent on whom she could unburden herself, and it was mutual. A
lovely time of life! . . . it makes me feel
like writing a poem, but I’ll subjugate that desire in order to keep your
valued friendship.
I am about to get into the doings and
undoings of our boyhood days and if I get you into any malpractice suits, I’m
sorry. Of course, when you were about five years old you were practicing medicine
with the stethoscope on man and beast with or without their permission.
More
later, Doc,
[signed:
Don K.]
Special Note to Keith
and Donna:
My dear son and daughter, please don’t
feel that these meanderings pertain only to “Doc” and me. I am only trying to
give you a feeling of what it was like in what you call “the olden days” (I
wince every time you use that geriatric term).
I have said to Norman that Howell,
Missouri, of late memory, was my Walden Pond, etc., and I want to show you that
kids did have fun without being called “teenagers” in a derogatory tone by some
tight-lipped “older” person. Sure, we had Christmas, but the accent was on the
religiosity of the festival. We did have one “BIG’’ present plus a lot of
stocking-stuffers, such as candy, fruit and maybe a harmonica or a bubble pipe.
Occasionally, a miniature Stutz Bearcat car would be there. You see, we used to
see such things on their way to California on the Boonslick Road, the daddy of
Highway 40 in our area. As you know, Dan’l Boone’s house was nearby as were
many relics of his handiwork, not to mention descendants.
We looked forward to Hallowe’en, and we
did do those crazy things mentioned in the great book about our neighbor, Ralph
Sutton, in “Piano Man.” Taking apart a surrey, or a spring wagon, only to
reconstruct them on top of the grade school or Francis Howell High School, or
making sure every outhouse was turned over was Hallowe’en fun. This was, by the
way, a national rural pastime, indigenous to no particular geographical locale.
And was it work!!! A boy usually only spent a year or two in this phase of his
skullduggery life.
(I think that nostalgia is like a Grammar
lesson: We find the present tense and the past perfect.)
So, bear with me as we brave the wilds of
Howell.
Dad
(Old)
