Hammer returned, still in the family
I can remember when Uncle Toog had engaged Bill Rutherford from the Corinth district to build a barn on the 60-acre farm.
Uncle Toog’s sons, Clint and Hugh, helped in building the barn. I can remember riding on the wagon as Dad would haul lumber from the Charley Mahurin Sawmill near the Twelve Corners Church; it must have been 1924 or 1925. After the barn was built, Clint and Hugh painted it red. I remember Hugh saying that he was good at painting things red. The barn is still being used today, although it has to be nearly 100 years old. The barn is about half a mile north of the Buttram’s Chapel cemetery, and is owned by the daughter of the late Waldo Shell.
About 1910, Fred Buttram’s family was growing and he decided to remodel and build on to the tworoom house. He made a two-story house that had a living room on the south side and a parlor. Our father, Choc, was helping him build. One day when Choc came home for lunch he laid his hammer in the wall partition. After he had taken his daily nap he returned to work and found the framers had nailed his hammer in the wall.
Years later, Waldo Shell bought the farm and was having the house torn down to build a new one. When Mother Phebe heard about it, she sent word to Waldo that she wanted her husband’s hammer that was nailed in the wall. Waldo then started looking for the hammer and when he found it he made a special trip to Pea Ridge to return the hammer to Phebe. Waldo then told Mrs. Billie Jines the story and she wrote an article in the Pea Ridge Graphic. The hammer is still in the family somewhere. It hung on mother’s wall until she passed away in 1983. Then it was supposed to be passed around among the children. I think it is about time that Joe got the hammer for a spell.
My brother, Felix, was a coin collector and he obtained Waldo’s birthdate and presented him with a silver dollar with the date of Waldo’s birth on it. Waldo came to Joe’s house one day and said he was getting old and wanted one of the Pitts children to have the silver dollar. Joe still has the silver dollar in an old Pea Ridge post office box made into a piggy bank. Joe can remember one night that it was raining real hard and it was cold. The Pitts’ boys were hovered around the old King heater stove trying to keep warm.
We heard someone that sounded like a Webb hallooing the house. When Phebe went to the door, it was Hugh Webb on his horse. Hugh was somewhat inebriated and Phebe knew if he went home in that state, Aunt Ada would skin him alive. She got Hugh to come into the house, then she got some of her husband’s clothes and told Hugh to go into the bedroom and change so she could dry out his clothes. She hung the wet clothes on a chair by the stove.
While they were drying she put on a pot of strong coffee. Phebe started pouring the hot coffee into Hugh to sober him up. Hugh said, “I’ll never sleep a wink tonight with all of this black coffee.” Phebe told Hugh he should have thought of that before he started drinking the rotgut.
After his clothes were dry, he went into the bedroom to change. He came back and started putting on his socks and shoes. He said to Phebe, “I think all that hot, black coffee has made my feet grow!” Phebe said it wasn’t the coffee that made his feet grow, it was the fool riding his horse in a rainstorm who got his feet wet and when they dried out they were shrunk. After Hugh got dressed,
he thanked Phebe for her kindness and told her he would make it up somehow for her good deed. Phebe told Hugh the best way he could it up to her was to stay off the rotgut that got him in the mess. I don’t think it did any good because Hugh continued his drinking.
When Joe was 4 or 5 years old, his mother would let him go to the neighbor’s house. The neighbor was Bertha Troy, and she had three daughters still at home. The daughters were Madge Reed, Ula Troy and Winton Troy. Ula and Winton would dress Joe in the finest satin and lace that they had and Joe would be their baby doll. Joe doesn’t remember whether he liked it or not, but he kept going back for more. One day Joe walked on by Bertha’s house and went to the Hart house. He was playing house with Mildred and Beatrice when his mother showed up. That day Joe got his tail switched all the way home.
Joe can remember that on the Fourth of July, the family would sit in the yard and see the fireworks being set off by the cave in Bella Vista. They were actually set off over the lake next to the dance pavilion. It was a short distance from the cave. The dance floor was said to be a half mile from the entrance to the cave. Some people said that you could enter the cave in Arkansas and dance in Missouri. Joe can only remember being that far back in the cave one time. That was several years later and after the cave was no longer being used.
Joe had a little cousin, Mary Jo Buttram, who lived across the apple orchard. Joe liked playing with Mary Jo. One day while Aunt Ula and Faye were washing clothes, little Mary Jo fell into a pot of boiling water. Joe remembers his mother taking him to see Mary Jo. She was covered in a yellowish salve that smelled like sulfur. Little Mary Jo died from the burns.
Her obituary read: Mary Josephine Buttram; The sweet little daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Buttram of Pea Ridge, is missed by all of her playmates and friends. On the 13th of February, 1925, the school children had a Valentine party at the public school and they stopped to show little Mary Jo, as they affectionately called her, their valentines. Filled with glee she ran into the kitchen to show them to her mother and father and accidentally stumbled over the boiler of hot water that had just been taken off the stove, and received burns that caused her death. March 1st, on Monday afternoon at Buttram’s Chapel, where she was a faithful little Sunday School pupil, many friends and relatives gathered to show their love for Mary Jo. The S.S. Supt. Mr. Giles told of how faithful and loving the little Mary Jo was in her Sunday School Class.
James and Ula Buttram had a son, James, who was born Oct. 12, 1916, and on July 2, 1920. was kicked in the head by a horse and died instantly. James Buttram died the next year after Mary Jo’s death.