SONS OF DEWITT COLONY TEXAS The McKeehan Story | J.W. McKeehan Family MCKEEHAN
FAMILY TALES Axe and Saw | Flying Ginny | Sulphur River Holiday World's Strongest Man | Santa Plays No Favorites Uncle Howard's
Farm Old Highway 67 (Canant's Stations) Cass County, the South Pacific and Importance of an Education The Double-Bit Axe and Crosscut Saw There were never two tools as handy to those in the wilderness country of southeast Miller County, Arkansas when the McKeehan family arrived in the area in the 1870's. These two tools were man's best friends. As far back as I remember, Papa Jim cleared land by hand, cutting timber, piling the brush in large piles and then burning them prior to bringing in the plow. A plot of cleared land would last a few years and then more had to be cleared. During the winter months, birds of all kinds roosted in the brush piles. The young people created a way of having fun after all the hard work. On dark nights they would light pine resin torches and make a circle around the brush piles. Someone would shake the brush while others stood by as the startled birds came out confused and blinded. It was easy to knock the birds down with a broom and catch them. Among the birds were quail, doves and big fat black birds. When cleaned, we kept only the breasts for the next meal. The axes and saw producted new ground to plow providing food and fun for the whole family.
In the lull between planting and harvesting in northeast Cass County, Papa Jim McKeehan would stop everything and talked neighboring farmers into getting a wagon train of people for overnight fishing trips to Watson where the Kansas City Southern railroad crossed the Sulfur River. There were children from just walking to age twenty and everyone was eager to go. The place was only ten or twelve miles from the farm so leaving early in the morning there was still left plenty of time to catch fish, clean and fry them and just have a neighborly picnic and good time. There was other trimmings that the ladies had prepared and brought along. Charlie Clements had a large net and the river was teeming with fish. One big run with the net brought in plenty. Along with the group was the old story teller, Foster Hinton. Someone played a French harp, the kids played and Foster spun tales. When they tired, the campfire got low, the women prepared sleeping places in the wagons for themselves and children and the men slept on the ground under them. About midnight everyone woke to the terrible rattling of horse chains and gear in the camp with someone hollering "Whoa, Whoa, Whoaaaa!" Everyone jumped up thinking the worst, the horses had broken loose, or either some ghost stampede was coming through. Finally a lantern or two revealed old Foster Hinton stumping up and down in the middle of the camp with horse chains wound around him and yelling "Whoa." Foster Hinton was not only a teller of tall tales, but a prankster to boot. Who knows if everyone forgot that scare or still are trying to get back at him even though most are long gone to another place.
In the pre-teen years, sisters Marge and Deen and I were in the same age group with common interest and close buddies which included a strong belief enhanced by Papa and Momma in Santa Claus. According to custom, we hung stockings up on the fireplace mantle hoping that Santa would leave us something as he came down the chimney during the night. It never crossed our minds to question why Papa Jim insisted that on Christmas eve after hanging the stockings we sleep out in a small house away from the main house which was equipped with a fireplace and bedding. He warned us to not come into the main house before sunrise otherwise we might disturb the jolly old elf and receive nothing. As many a child of the same age, it was hard to sleep, Marge especially could not contain her anxiety and about three AM persuaded us to go take a look. We sneaked into the main house to find Papa Jim just crawling back into bed. He scolded us telling us to get back to bed out in the yardhouse until sunrise. We went back out, but not before I got a glimpse of the stockings just enough to tell that they were not empty. The rest of the night was spent tossing and turning waiting for the sunrise that seemed like an eternity. Finally at sunrise we rushed in to see what Santa had brought. Each of us got an orange, an apple and some nuts. All three got a simple toy, mine was a pocket knife, theirs some simple homemade toy for girls. The simple gifts paled beside those of some of the neighbors who got bicycles, wagons, bowie knives, rifles and beautiful dolls. We were thrilled with the joy that Santa had not forgotten us and Papa Jim's strong assurance when the topic arose that Santa was not partial. In his hurry to visit all the children of the world, Santa had no time to look for and select items in his bag according to who he was visiting. Gifts were distributed randomly, at the neighbors house he happened to grab a bicycle and the beautiful dolls, at ours the pocket knife, fruits and nuts.
Uncle Howard was unwavering in his Bible-based personal philosophy and ethics which guided his approach to life as well as his love for the Cass County rural area and farm culture from which he solely made his living as a farmer in his early life. A prototype of the evolution of agriculture in America away from the small family farm to agri-business, uncle Howard maintained his link to the land by first small-scale farming and part-time work at a lumberyard in nearby Atlanta, then to full time work as farming became a hobby, albeit a productive one to the end. Through the years his farm until his death was a retreat and link to the rural Cass County roots for numerous descendants and consequently the source of many experiences that survive in memory over the day to day happenings in faster pace town and city life. The farm was home and peaceful rural setting to grandpa James W. McKeehan for the last years of his life after death of his wife Josie in 1950. He and Robert Franklin Lee enjoyed many hours sitting beside the white dusty road talking about the old days until both died in 1956.
The Old Two-Seater. What an adventure, or should we say terror for a young boy of 6 or so, not all that citified, but not used to trekking through that narrow trail bordered by black-eyed pea vines to the old two-seater with just a moon, maybe in later years a flashlight, to guide the way. All kinds of gremlins and creepy creatures were hiding in those vines at night come up from the fields as close as possible to the house just to leap out and grab you as you made your way to take care of serious business. Even more terrifying was climbing up on that two-seater not knowing even what worse horrible creatures lay down there feeding in that horrible stench, only abated by Uncle Howard throwing a rusty coffee can full of lime in the hole from time to time, not a few feet from your naked bottom was the worst hell a young boys mind could conjure. Enough to cause a rush, quick use of sheets off the Sears and Roebuck, never daring to try the remains of Uncle Howard's corn crop sitting on the other side in a 3 gallon bucket. Maybe things would have been better with a companion on the ole two-seater to divert attention to more important worldly problems. Rain on a Hot Tin Roof. Between Cypress Creek and the house, housing mule and mare that tilled the soil that provided the bread and lime, was the old barn, small now, but to less than a ten year old a house of wonder and pleasure, A Small, Small World topping anything that Disney can create. On the one side the crib full of unshucked, then unshelled corn in fall, on the other side the rough-hewn slats that separated the mule and mare from the corn. A boy who would shuck a few ears and toss them over into the grateful pair had two true-blue friends. Stacked hay bales provided the ladder to the room with floor and walls of hay just under the tin roof where boys lay, staring at the patterns on the rusty roof with legs crossed, dreaming of god-knows-what as the lightning and thunder brought raindrops larger than M&M's pounding on the roof. The room was hot, dry, secure----no worries, no broken hearts, no stress, no depression, no sickness, no crazy kids and grandkids. Like Father, Like Son. Like father, like son, for years a cousin had one suit of clothes, changed weekly, to be sure that was the uniform of the Cass County gravel hauler, familiar striped, loose fitting, designer overalls with the round metal buttons stamped "Lee," a technique copied later by the Calvin Klein, Gucchi set and whoever thought up those little green Gators. To be sure that Cass County uniform was comfortable, and cool, sometimes the heat and humidity was so oppressive that the only way to keep cool was to convert those overalls to "overnothings" and just enjoy the cool breeze rafting up from below that made balloons out of those loose fitting legs. Well, Uncle Howard's corn was attractive to Cass County rats whose size was only exceeded by Australian kangaroos, when those thieves were caught and started, they headed for the nearest darkness and protection they could find which on one hot summer day was those dark balloon-like tubes in which our cousin happened to be standing. Uncle Howard was started from his midday nap before heading to the fields by the wildest, panicky scream heard in the piney woods in midday for a long time. "Help, I've got him, I've got him, help me, somebody!" came from the old barn. "Got what, boy! Calm down, what's the matter" says Uncle Howard as he comes out with his old 22 caliber ready for war. There standing rigid as a telephone post, not moving a muscle was cousin with both hands held down tight on the left leg of those Cass County designer slacks holding that giant thief tight caught midway between ankle and waist, headed in the upward direction for parts unknown. How the two of them did it with Uncle Howard still getting a shot off that ended that thief's thieving as he headed back to the barn and how cousin got out of those Cass County designer slacks in three seconds time is lost to history, but will rival anything that Houdini accomplished. Nor was he embarrassed to be standing there in his "nothings" without those designer "Lees" as he raced to Cypress Creek and plunged into those healing waters, despite leeches and all.
Old Highway 67 from
Texarkana to Dallas
I believe the way opened in 1923, we opened a little store and stores at Bassett, Texas in 1924 and have been on said highway 47 years. It was a narrow road and part of it had not been asphalted in 1924. I furnished gravel trucks to said road between Bassett and Sulphur River. When I first opened up they were Model T Fords mostly and carried 1 1/4 yard [of gravel]. There was a plank bridge over Sulphur River at that time. The bridge caught fire one weekend one time and the traffic had to turn at Maud and go by Douglassville and back to Naples. It was a good highway and a way of earning a living for lots of little merchants which is a thing of the past now. I had $500 to go into business with and am enclosing a picture of my first store. Cars were just coming in style and my wife and I had all the business we could take care of. We had the only service store between Maud and Naples. Mr. W.O. Bryan put me in a little 5 gallon pump and a 3 barrel Lubestir and gave me credit for 250 gallons of gas and 30 gallons of oil and told me when he comes back with more gas for me to have the money. He was a fine man and gave me some sound advice. Also Mr. Bob Cargile had a wholesale grocery in Mt. Pleasant and also at Naples, he gave me credit for $50 in groceries. He was a fine man and I bought from him as long as he was in business.
The Peddler's Wagon. During the depression starting with the stock market crash in 1929, the task of feeding one's family became difficult. Although we made it better than many, Dad and Mom used every means at their command to keep the store from going under. Most of the customers had little or no money, competition was tough, profit margin almost non-existent, and losses on credit accounts were staggering. Then, in the early and mid 1930's, the peddler's wagon came into being again. It certainly wasn't a new idea, having existed here and in Europe for several hundred years. It was called a wagon (a hold over from earlier times when horse drawn wagons were used) but was, in fact, a small store built on an early 30's flat bed Ford truck. Dad built it himself.. It was stocked with the most frequently used essential items that people needed--flour, coffee, sugar, salt, lard, thread, needles, can goods and a sack or two of feed. The chicken coop tied to the back and the egg box inside were for barter payments--the same as at the store. A regular route was established along all the country roads from Simms to near Dekalb and New Boston, usually following the mail routes. Two or three days a week, we took the wagon and left early, stopping at every house. We took orders for the next trip for anything we didn't have. My brother Boyce did a lot of the driving, with Mom and I along. Dad sometimes went with the rest of us at the store. I was the chief chicken catcher and egg-counter. Lloyd Canant (Lloyd grew up in the combination store and home on highway 67 shown in the above photo). Cass
County, the South Pacific and Importance of an Education The brilliant and beautiful constellations sweeping across the deep South Pacific night were incongruent for the warriors sleeping below, who daily faced the ugliness of war. The heat, the insects, the distant thunder of fighting made it difficult for Howard Hazel to sleep in his sweltering tent on Leyte Island. His ears were also attuned to the most minute sounds that might be out of place, subtle warnings of danger. As he attempted to sleep, he reflected on his 23 years on earth. He was a long way from the poverty of his youth, but the harsh realities of war with the 239th Combat Engineers in the U.S. Army almost made him miss it. He didn't miss the acres of dusty land he plowed alongside his father, Alfred "Alphie," since he was old enough to walk, or the bare two-room, tin-roofed shotgun house he grew up in near Bright Star, Ark. He didn't miss the home's "running water:" "... run to the well, fill up the water bucket, run back to the house." He didn't miss eating opossum and coon, although in comparison to army food it wasn't that bad. He missed his mother, Estelle, who died of typhoid fever when he was 5 years old. He missed his younger brother, James, and sister, Helen Louise, who went to live with their grandmother while he stayed with his father after their mother died. He missed his stepmother, Glen McKeehan, whom his father married in 1929. The couple spent their wedding night in the Hazel house, little Howard sleeping in the kitchen. When they woke the next morning, Glen noticed Howard limping about and asked him what was wrong. He explained that he had stepped on a nail and the heel of his foot was full of pus. She somehow convinced him to let her lance it. It was awfully painful, he said, but the infection went away, right away. He said he "fell for her pretty quick" after that and was very close to "Miss Glen" the rest of her life. He didn't miss school, although he knew he should have. Being a farm boy who had to help the family scratch out a living, no one encouraged him to get an education and he only attended intermittently. He did pass through the first two grades in a one-room schoolhouse, but he never made it through the third grade despite many attempts. He finally gave up at age 16, when he was almost as big and tall as he is today (6 feet 2 inches) and still attending third-grade classes. He was so embarrassed to be in the class, he gave up for good and resigned himself to never learning how to read, a decision that would haunt him thousands of times through the rest of his life. The family was so poor; they didn't notice the Great Depression. They didn't even know what a stock market was. One good thing that came from the Depression was something called the "Double R" plan, which provided a government load to farmers who qualified, and the Hazel family did. It allowed the senior Hazel to buy a cow, a pair of mules, a wagon and plow tools, and enough cash to plant a crop. They planted their first crop in 1939 on a few acres of farmland in the Black Diamond community a few miles east of Bright Star. "We got going pretty good then," Howard said. "For the first time in my life, we had plenty to eat, good crops and feed. After we got the crop laid by, we worked for other folks around the area. I remember helping build the concrete bridge over the drain ditch coming up from the bottoms north of Doddridge on Highway 71 for 35 cents an hour." For a farm boy who had never been more than a few miles from home, Howard's life changed dramatically when he joined the U.S. Army on Nov. 9, 1942. During a 29-day voyage on a Dutch freighter into the South Pacific with the 239th Combat Engineers, he wondered if he was any better off than before. The food was so bad he lost 40 pounds during the trek. The best part about being in the service was learning how to operate heavy equipment. He trained how to run a V8 caterpillar, which he operated most of the time he was in the army and during the combat engineer's five major invasions in the South Pacific. They also taught him how to run a grader, a pull grader and a motor grader. He learned how to build roads and build pontoons across rivers. They were doing road work on Leyte Island when Howard was trying to sleep in his tent that fateful moonlit night. There were other tents nearby and most of the men heard the flutter of propellers on an aircraft coasting on idle as it glided toward them. It sounded very suspicious, so that perked Howard's ears up and he sat up. Then he heard the most awful sound he would ever hear in his life: the raucous screeching of metal as the Zero's bomb rack mechanism released a bomb. He would later call it "a death sound." He quickly grabbed his steel helmet and scrambled out of the tent, just as the bomb exploded against the top of the coconut tree 40 feet above him. The bomb hitting the tree top saved his life, but he almost killed himself trying to get away. As he threw himself away from the tent, his helmet caught against the ground at an odd angle and wrenched his head around so forcefully it almost broke his neck. The explosion almost deafened him and he could not hear anything for a long time after. But he was lucky. Several other soldiers around his perimeter were severely hurt. Howard spent almost three years in the South Pacific, finally returning state-side on Christmas Eve in 1945. Discharged on Jan. 4, 1946, he couldn't wait to get back to Black Diamond, where one of his daddy's plows and mule teams awaited him. He farmed in the area until 1951, when he landed a job working in a warehouse at Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant, making more money than he had ever made in his life: $1.08 an hour. He had to take a slight pay cut after he was laid off at the ammunition plant and started working for the Arkansas Highway Department in 1956. But it was a job suited for him, operating a front end loader. "They had me cutting brush for six months at 85 cents an hour," he recalls. "Then they put me on a front end loader because of my experience driving a V8 caterpillar during the war. I worked my way up to crew leader and ran a 10-man crew. We build roads all over Miller County, and I drove to Texarkana every morning and back every evening for 22 years, working out in the county during the day." Howard said one of his life's goals has been to impress on young people the importance of an education, especially learning how to read. He said he is reminded every day of this shortcoming. "There was one embarrassing time when we were having a meeting with highway department supervisors in Hope, Ark.," Howard said. "At the end of the meeting they handed out a stack of papers for us to fill out and sign. I just as well been looking at the back as well as the front, and I had to ask a friend of mine to help me because I couldn't read. He had no idea I couldn't read." Every time he goes into a restaurant and his wife isn't around to help, he has to ask the waiter or waitress to tell him what's on the menu. He's often ordered food he did not particularly want so he wouldn't have to admit he couldn't read the menu. Although he's a whiz at math and can count money perfectly well, he can't write a check; although he has the wisdom of experience and age, he's been called "illiterate" and "dumb." "When you haven't got an education, you experience things that dig at you bad," he said. "I just can't understand young people today who want to go through life without an education, without learning to read." He said he's always had to work harder than anybody else to make up for his lack of education. Although he has had a successful career and marriage (and has four children and several grandchildren), he feels he could have had so much more. "When I worked for the highway department, I would do everything and anything nobody else could do or would do. There was nothing I couldn't do except push a pencil. I could have made foreman or higher if I had an education." He married Bertha "Totsie" Carter in 1947, and to this day they still live directly across the highway from the preacher's home they were married in less than a mile north of Doddridge on Highway 160. In 1978, Howard retired from the highway department according to physician orders with 100-percent disability because of complications from varicose veins in his left leg. Howard joined Doddridge Masonic Lodge No. 556 in 1952, and today is Junior Warden in Olive Branch Lodge No. 136 in Bright Star. He recently received his 50-year pin in a ceremony at the lodge. [Howard Hazel was one of three children Howard, James Alfred and Helen Louise of Alfred and Estelle Hazel. He was raised by stepmother Glenn Marie McKeehan and Alfred Hazel. Howard died in 2009.] SONS OF DEWITT COLONY TEXAS |
While we were in the
Red River Valley where the menfolks and all the family at flood time were working
themselves near to death, Papa creatively responded to the need for kids to have fun. Papa
sawed a nearby tree of about 6 inches in diameter off about 30 inches from the ground. He
bored a hole in the top and cut another tree of about 4 inches in diameter placing it
across the stump. He then drove a spike long enough to go through the crosspole upon which
two or more kids could ride on each end while another pushed it around. When the pole
dried out, it made a loud screeching sound that excited all the kids. However, the impact
on the nearby cottonfield and Pink Jackson who was plowing it with a mule was not the same
as that on the kids. The closer the mule would get to the screeching of the flying Ginny,
the more unruly he got until finally he bolted. That is when I heard the most cussing
thought possible for a human being to do. Pink Jackson (son of Mark Jackson and Martha L.
Gray, daughter of 
About the time the Jim McKeehan
family moved to east Cass County, the town of Bloomburg was a booming trading post. The
cotton gins were processing product hauled all the way from the Red River Valley, Texas to
east of Doddridge, Arkansas. People were coming in from diverse areas and there were
audiences for a variety of would-be entertainers or the likes. The town was full of
boasters and much talk about who was the strongest, the best fiddler, the best axeman.
There was so much talk that it was agreed that to settle the question of who was the
strongest man, a wrestling match would be held, it would go until one of the contestants
gave up. Out of all the talkers, only two men in the whole crowd agreed to wrestle. Many
agreed that Rural McKelvy would surely win. Others felt that 
The Rock Springs
School was located just south of the crossover of current Farm Roads 3129 NE from
Bloomburg and 251 NW of Atlanta about 4 miles NE of Bloomburg and 8 miles NW of Atlanta.
It was where several of my generation went to school. I last visited the site on a cold
December evening several years ago and stood near the springs from which the school got
its name. There was nothing left that would catch the attention of a passing stranger. The
building decayed or was removed many years ago, the schoolyard is covered with shrubs, the
spring grown over with weeds. There was nothing but the wind in the trees and brush. As I
started to leave, the curtain of time was pulled away for a moment. There they were in the
1920-1930s, Masters Bob Lee, Roy Glass and others molding the minds of the generation. I
heard the bouncing of basketballs on dirt courts and Roy Glass shouting encouragement to
the country boys Wayne Davis, O.B. Davis, the Pugh boys, Bill Webb, Jay Harrist, Guy Price
and myself as he tried to mold them into a team that would take the honors at the Cass
County meet. There was the girls team, Imogene and Eleanor Harrist, Florence, Marjorie and
Deen McKeehan and Susan, Dolly and Eunice Griffin, to name a few, also ready to meet the
competition. Viola Griffin, Farrah Boone, Christina Patterson and others were also
offering their best in the classroom and as coaches on the basketball court.
The school was a center of
community activity. The end of the winter and coming of spring and summer was signaled by
the end of the school term. The event was usually celebrated by a day of fellowship and
feasting, usually a fish fry which was carried out in a big iron pot. If fish was not
available, then we had a big stew in the same type of pot followed by every kind of
sweets--candies, cakes, pies imaginable. If they had been recorded, many volumes of
almanacs could be assembled from the ideas discussed at one of those gatherings. Many
marriages began there as well as deals and other exchanges. Consolidation ended the
independence of the old Rock Springs School concurrent with expansion of the size and
complication of the world of those in the small regional community and the fourth
generation of the McKeehan family members of the area.
Uncle Howard Lee, husband of 
Forty seven years brings about lots
of changes. I have sold lots of new tires for $5 each and many gallons of gas for 13
cents. It is lonesome for me now. I had lots of people from Dallas and Little Rock that
came by once a month to once a year and always stopped with us. We always had big crowds
over the holidays. But all good things come to an end some time. I just thank the good
Lord that it lasted until my children were educated and my pension was started.