Horse and buggy travel at Canoe Station
As mentioned in earlier articles, R.W. Brooks was a prolific local writer who chronicled our area's history in a day and age when this region was only a generation removed from the pioneer settlers who laid the roads and railroad tracks through the long-leaf pines which blanketed the area.
Yet R.W. Brooks was also a minister and was pastor at several local churches during his time. Brooks came to the area as the boy clerk of the Evansville sawmill near present day Bowman Cemetery in Wawbeek.
In October 1873, Brooks and Martin Hare left home to attend the Bethlehem Association meeting at Belleville, Alabama on the following Saturday. Brooks documented the trip which details just what roads and local conditions were like in the 1870s. Below is Brooks in his own words:
"Martin Hare and I started out from our home in Florida, which was 5 miles south of Flomaton, to go to the meeting at Belleville on Saturday. There had been a drouth (sp.) for four or six weeks. We started off in an open buggy, with a long-bodied mare pulling it. Considering those horse and buggy days, we made good time, arriving at Burnt Corn that evening. We stopped at the home of Jack Oliver, and spent the night," stated Brooks.
Brooks' reference to '5 miles south of Flomaton' is most likely a reference to Bluff Springs, which is where he lived at the time and where he served as telegraph operator, justice of the peace, newspaper editor, and worked for the railroad. Brooks went on to tell about the troubles encountered that night;
"Before bedtime one of the Oliver boys came in and said our mare was sick with colic. The sick horse brought many neighbors and almost all of them had a remedy for sick horses. Most of the remedies were tried on the poor sick mare, but about ten o'clock she died. Whether all the medicine killed her or the colic I never knew, but one thing I did know, we were horseless!'
"My friend had to have something to pull his buggy back home, so he went to a mule dealer in Belleville, and bought a mouse colored mule, with zebra streaked legs. He gave a draft on Eppin-Bellas and Co. of Pensacola for $175.00. I thought then and still think it was too mych (sp), and before we got home with that mule I was sure a nickel with a hole in it that was about his value.'
"When we left Belleville, I took the mule's halter and was leading him behind the buggy, when he planted his front feet down and stopped dead still. The rope went through my hands so fast it almost caught fire. I got out and caught the rope, and made a half hitch around the buggy axle, as we started off again. He went nicely for half mile when the mule did the same things as before, lifting the men, buggy and all off the ground. The rope held this time, so he did not try it anymore, as it almost jerked his head a loose.'
"We finally got back to Oliver's, gave him his pony and hitched up the mule," stated Brooks.
Yet apparently the duo was in for more trouble with the wayward animal, "That was the most sociable mule I ever saw. When we came to a house he always went up to the gate and stopped, without consulting the driver. When we would approach a dwelling on the road, Mr. Hare would begin to pull off line, but the mule would stick out his tingue(sp.) and go right on to the house and stop. We would manage to get him away, and as luck would have it in those days; houses were few and far between," added Brooks.
The weather apparently turned from drought to flood overnight as the two men and the mule travelled in that Brooks references the raging Little Escambia Creek;
"After leaving Oliver's the rain stopped but when we got to Pollard, Little Escambia Creek was a raging torrent. George Bradley, whom we knew, said he would get us across the creek by putting the buggy on a "Billy", a thing made of poles spiked together, and float it across. Mr. Bradley said he would also swim the mule across. The gentleman was in the habit of getting drunk and at this time he was almost past going. After we got the buggy across, he got on the mule and began kicking him in the side. Finally, the mule made one long jump and landed in the middle of the creek, Mr. Bradley going down with him," noted Brooks.
Yet Mr. Bradley and the zebra stripped mule were not done for, as Brooks added, "The mule rose up on his hind legs and made on more jump to reach the shore. Mr. Bradley was a sober man as you ever saw at this time. I was young in those days and anything would start me laughing. Hare and I being safe, on the side of the creek towards home, we both just about busted our suspenders at Bradley's predicament. When we got to Big Escambia, the Ferry boat was washed down towards Ferry Pass. We left the mule with a Mr. Knowles, the Ferry Man, and walked 5 miles down the railroad to home. I never saw the mule but once more and that was enough for me," stated Brooks.
Travel was much different in the 1800s than our age of modern highways and automobiles.
Quote for the week: "Years have come and gone since my advent into the world, days of sorrow and days of pleasure have been mixed, not only in my life, but in the life of all, and when the hair is gray, steps are feeble, hearing is imperfect, eyes are dim and desire has failed, you can rest assured you are getting old, and the other shore is not far off, though the desire to live is still with the aged as with the young. In fact, the desire to live is in every normal human being, and will be till He gives us dying grace," R.W. Brooks-1939
Coming soon in 2018: "Shadows and Dust Volume III-All Things Southern" For more reading on this subject visit: http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/escambia/history.htm.
