Mildred Swanson stories

Robert Anderson Family

Posted on: 04.20.16 | by Mary

by: Mildred Swanson

Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Anderson moved into the community between 1900 and 1911. They were one of three minority families living in the area.

Mr. Anderson was a former slave and was very religious. He was about six feet tall and very robust. Mr. Anderson did labor work and farmed his small garden plot as well as was a general handy man. The Anderson home was on Broad Street (Reams Noodle site). He was able to make a comfortable living for those days. This gardening was a family affair. Mrs. Anderson would take her family on Saturday and Wednesday to “peddle” her garden produce in West Des Moines (Valley Junction). This would be an all-day chase.

At that time, the main source of energy was coal and there were several coal mines in the vicinity. There were no trucks in those days to haul the coal from the mines to the consumer and it was all delivered by horse and wagon or shipped by railroad. In the winter when his gardening was slack, Mr. Anderson drove a coal wagon. It was a dirty and cold job, as well as hard work. He put in long hours leaving home early in the morning in order to get in line at the mine and get loaded and get on his way to delivery.

He had a small stable which enabled him to have his own horses. (I can still see the old spring wagon they used in their delivery of vegetables). This was also used as the work shed where they cleaned and prepared their vegetables for delivery.

Mr. and Mrs. Anderson were the parents of two children. Leonard and Maxine. Both children attended Clive School. Leonard attended East High were he is in the Hall of Fame for outstanding sport participation. After graduation he attended Des Moines University where he studied engineering. He graduated around 1920. He moved to Kansas City to teach. He later furthered his education by attending the University of Iowa. After receiving his degree he went back to Kansas to teach in a colored college, where he taught until his death.

He always visited our town each summer. He was treated like one of us.

Maxine was several years younger. She attended Roosevelt High School, later graduating from Drake University. During World War II, she got into Government Welfare work and the Red Cross. She served in the Peace Corps and eventually went overseas. She was married to an Army Officer.

Our homes were close so we children grew up together and were friends for years.

Across the Street

Posted on: 04.20.16 | by Mary

by: Mildred Swanson

I walked across the street to the overgrown right-of-way that led to the railroad tracks, less enthused than I should have been. I perched on a pile of rusty rails overlooking the right-of-way. I wondered what this would be like in the next sixty years (the closing of our little depot and the abandonment of the track was only three months ago). Already it was making me ill but I knew I would be a fool to postpone this few minutes and journey into the past. Now I could invert my memory to the turn of the century when I was a barefoot “tyke” growing up with a railroad in my front yard.

I was young when we moved to this small town of Clive. As I grew older, I could see a monster with a big black tail roaring toward me. I remember how I would cup my hands over my ears and cringe. I remember it was the first train I had ever seen. The smoke traveled too fast for me to scamper out from under it. If I stood, it would crush me to a pulp, so I ran back to the porch and crouched down behind a barrel. The giant’s shadow disappeared, the ground quit shaking and the noise harried yonder. I was still alive. I emerged from my hiding place in time to see a funny box climb over the hill. I wasn’t afraid anymore!

I learned to love trains and to recognize a caboose. It was fun to wave at the engineers as the trains chugged up the steep grade. They always waved back at me. When I got big, I vowed I would like to ride up there with the engineer. I’d ring those bells and blow me plenty of whistles to echo through the night.

I remember my brother would run alongside a slow moving freight. He would try to catch a ladder but would lose his grip and tumble onto the gravel.

Mother warned him “stay ‘way from those trains! If you slip under the wheels and get smashed, I won’t have my little boy anymore”, but it wasn’t more than a week ‘til he tried again! This time he latched onto a lower bar all right, but couldn’t find anyplace for his feet, so he let go and got shinned on a pile or rock. Mother wouldn’t whip him in that condition. She was too softhearted. Besides, an only son was very special.

He kept working at it until he could snatch toe grab irons and hoist himself up where he could plant his feet. Then he would leap off just before he reached the crossing and land up-right like a cat.

I interrupted my reverie to raise up and look for the spot on the rails where my little dog was killed under a locomotive’s wheels after he decided that he couldn’t chase the train out of town. That was one sight that I wished I had been spared. Mother and I picked up his scattered remains that afternoon and buried them under a large stone near the accident. I looked around for that headstone but it was no place to be found.

Re-entering that narrow realm of yesteryear, tears blurred my eyes. I could not help wanting to break down and have a good cry.

As I turned to trudge back toward the house, I wandered where I had hid those pennies I had flattened on the rails. I thought I heard mother calling, “Mildred! Suppertime!” I was tempted to sprint across the street where I used to stumble in the mud. She would look me over in disgust. “I do declare! You’re a sight for sore eyes. Get that bucket off the back porch and wash up.”

Just then I thought I heard the five thirty out of Des Moines toot. I knew it was old number #729, a fast “passenger.” I could tell most of the engines by their whistles.

I closed my eyes and visualized pulling a gold “retirement watch” from my pocket. Snapping open the cover, I saw that it was time to return to the present.

I started to wade the weeds to cross the new paved street, back to my rose garden.

Wait—I thought I heard the sound of #729 returning down the track. I am sure I remembered the shrill whistle-only on #729. Perhaps I should wait and wave at my old friends.

I look back once more with a heavy heart at the poor simple ways of yesterday. How I wish I could reclaim them.

I am glad I took time to cross the street and find my place on this rusty rail and visit the past. What will another 60 years bring—taller weeds—less trains, deserted tracks, vanished rose garden and faded memories. What will our younger generation have to remember from all this?

What will I see if I should return sixty years from today?

Looking Glass

Posted on: 04.20.16 | by Mary

by: Mildred Swanson, 1981

My mind to me
Is a looking glass
Into which I can
At my own Pleasure
Reflect upon the Past
As if it were yesterday.
To retrace
The names, faces and Places
Of a yesteryear
Is as refreshing to be today
As it was then – anew.

Thank You, Uncle Ben

Posted on: 04.20.16 | by Mary

by: Mildred Swanson

You have been gone for a decade now, Uncle Ben, but you are among my earliest memories, and those memories are a bit of lagniappe bequeathed me, the spicy ingredient that has flavored my life.

I was fairly young when you left us, Uncle Ben. To know what you meant to me — too young, in fact, to realize you wouldn’t always be around. You loved your “white folks,” as you called us, and we loved you. I was so young that I thought things would always go on just the same.

Looking back, I see how you and the memories built around you have enriched our lives all the way through. Do you know this, Uncle Ben? I want to tell you, and I think you hear me. I believe hearts in tune never cease to communicate.

You were what the world calls illiterate, for black boys had little opportunity for an education when you were growing up. You had no book learning, but you possessed an innate wisdom common to your race and time. It was you who imparted to me the knowledge that many folks fritter away their time and worry about things that don’t mean anything at all.

You gave the lie to the Crow Sibbie that my mother used, to make me be quiet and good. That Crow Sibbie was a horrible, monstrous, cat-like creature with eyes like fire and a blood-red tongue. It crept in at night after I was in bed and the lights were out. It stood on its hind legs and leered at me and threatened to lunge down on me with those terrible long sharp claws.

But the Crow Sibbie stopped coming when I stopped expecting it, and it was you, Uncle Ben, who made me stop believing it it by telling me that Crow Sibbie was just something mother made up by persuading me “that Crow Sibbie ain’t nothing a tall.”

I believed you, Uncle Ben. How could I do anything but have the utmost confidence in one who showed so much affection and even took time to answer my questions when others shoved my away with, “You’re too young to understand — run along now.”

Your honesty and simplicity were as sparkling as a bubbling spring and as refreshing.

You still live in our hearts, Uncle Ben. You always will as long as our hearts shall beat.

What is there left to say?

One thing more. Thank you, Uncle Ben.

Ben Shepherd

Posted on: 04.20.16 | by Mary

by: Mildred Swanson

Mr. Ben Shepherd was a brother of Mrs. Robert Anderson. Having settled in Clive in the early 1900s. The house was located on the northwest corner of Harbach and 86th Street (Barr Bicycle Shop).

This was the showplace of Clive. The yard was fenced in and solid with flowers. This was his life and hobby. I can still see the old well built up about 3 feet with bricks and the old oak bucket which descended into the well. This was covered with vines and other greenery.

Mr. Shepherd was a bachelor. He was a slave. It is not known how the two or three families settled in this small community. He owned and farmed 10 acres south of the railroad tracks. (Now Westtown Lumber Co.) This plot of ground provided him with a comfortable living. It was planted in a truck garden and cornfield.

Mr. Shepherd was a monument in our community. He was something special to us as children growing up. It is a shame some of his memories were not put in writing for future history.

After Mr. Shepherd died in the 1930s, the house was sold many times. The physical appearance of the house and yard changed. Only the “old timers” will remember this showplace from the good days.

Editor – Much as also changed since Mildred wrote this article. Westtown Lumber is gone as are most of the old timers. 🙂

A Sledding Experience

Posted on: 04.19.16 | by Mary

by: Mildred Swanson

An elderly gentleman pause briefly in front of the local store and gazed longingly at an eight-foot bobsled on display leaning against the front of the building.

Addressing the public in general, and no one in particular, the old-timer looked approvingly at the glistening “Flexible Flyer” and advised, “Boy there’s a dandy. I sure would like to take that one for a ride. I used to ride ‘em, you bet.”

Then, wagging his grizzled head sorrowfully, he trudged on down the street, doubtfully with his mind spinning with memories of the good days.

And in those “good days,” sledding in winter was almost an art that has all but been forgotten in an era that sees everyone make intensive effort to remove every vestige of snow as soon as it falls, rather than to welcome it as once was the case.

The fact of the matter is, there was a time in our old farm neighborhood when a grown man used to haul water with horses and sled to dump the water on a favorite hill on top of the snow, so it would freeze into a glare of ice for sledding. It mattered little that the hill happened to be a heavily traveled gravel road, for in that kind of weather no one went anywhere anymore.

The sledding enthusiasts were forever attempting to create a speedier vehicle, and I had an older brother who once created a monster that nearly reduced the neighborhood population by three, so effective was his ingenuity at creating a racer. His inventive led him to take two small coaster sleds of a favorite brand (probably Flexible Flyer) and lock them together with a single-wide plank, making seating space for three or four people (the more weight, the more speed, of course). In his haste to construct the bobsled, he made a near fatal mistake, however, forgetting to attach the front sled on a swivel for steering purposes.

Finally came the great day when the big bobsled was ready for her maiden voyage. My brother enlisted the aid of another youth and the youth’s father — who considered it more of a privilege to go sledding then to shuck corn in a frozen snow-covered field — and they carried the monster sled to the largest and slickest available hill in the neighborhood — Kurtz Hill.

The exact seating positions on the sled have been lost in the dim recesses of the past, but it is believed the father — who should have been old enough to know better — took the lead position, and the trailing rider gave the razor a push and the trio glided away into prosperity – nearly into the railroad track.

Midway down the hill, it became obvious that my brother had exceeded even his fondest ambition of creating a prize-winning racer, for the big bobsled was virtually splitting the wind, bringing tears to the eyes of the riders as the sled kept gaining momentum under its heavy load.