Stubborn as a Mule
After the mules came Italy • Into a hurricane • From mules back to hobby horses.
In 1928 Missouri was known as the Mule Capital of the world. It was estimated the mule population was more than 500,000. The state’s rugged mules were stubborn and in demand by the Spanish Army and the French Foreign Legion. The Barnet Mule company in East St. Louis did a thriving business of buying mules and selling them to those military bodies. They made five or six trips a year to Europe. The mules required care-takers. It became “the thing” for recent college graduates to sign on to tend mules on the long trip across the Atlantic.
My college roommate, Roy Basler and I, were planning career changes in June when we heard about a trip starting from East St. Louis on July 1. The following weekend we were at my parent’s home in Boonville talking with Lilburn, who was a visitor. Things were going well at Fairview. The live-in-housekeeper/cook was seeing to his parents’ needs. Neither was experiencing serious health problems. The farm foreman was experienced and competent. Lilburn’s office secretary could look after his insurance business. Our excitement about the trip was contagious. Lilburn caught our enthusiasm and called Barnet. They were delighted to have him because of his experience working with mules.
Lilburn was then 43 years of age. He was not a handsome man but had an engaging personality. He was about six feet tall with reddish- brown wavy hair. He looked directly at you with bright, blue eyes. His friendly smile reached out and drew you to him. His handclasp was firm and dry. He spoke with a bit of a drawl that aroused interest and held attention. Physically, he was in excellent shape. The farmwork he did was enough to keep his muscles firm and his body trim. Perhaps the following excerpts from an unpublished Lilburn manuscript, based on the diary he kept will enlighten you as to just how stubborn a mule can be! Today (1998) you’ll probably be unable to find one in the once “Mule Capital.”
Three dozen young men were hired to tend the mules on the 21-day trip from Norfolk to Barcelona. I was the oldest of the group. Most were recent college graduates and had never done a day’s work at hard labor in their lives. But they were lured by the promise of free transportation and $1 per day on the outbound voyage. They were yearning for adventure on the ocean and the romance of Spain’s sunny towns and black-eyed senoritas. When we assembled for briefing in the Mule Company’s offices, disillusionment began to set in.
It came in the person of Tobe Malone, a red-headed Irishman, powerfully robust, like a heavyweight boxer. He was dressed in a blue shirt, and moleskin britches. A heavy hickory cane hung over his arm. Red, as we called him, looked tough; he talked tough and we soon found he was as tough as his looks and talk. He briefed us on the responsibilities we had for our passengers. He had breezed in to where we were assembled and proclaimed: “Boys, this ain’t goin’ be no picnic we’re embarkin’ on. Work’s goin’ to be hard. When we get out to sea and have to get feed out of the hold, it’s goin’ to be hottern’ hell. Your food’s goin’ to be plain, not what you’re used to at home perhaps, but you won’t starve to death. I’ve been over 23 times and ain’t dead yet. Look at me!”
What we saw was a specimen of red-blooded manhood, two hundred and twenty pounds of it, hard as nails and not an ounce misplaced. Red’s keen, blue eyes bespoke vigor; his jaw, determination.
“You’ll have wooden bunks with straw mattresses and cotton blankets,” he resumed. “Clean when you get ‘em and comfortable, if not homelike. Ev’ry man’s got to do his work, sick or well. Jus’ cause you get seasick ain’t no sign your mules is goin’ hungry. I want you to get that good.” He paused while his steady eyes swung over the group, impaling the edict into our consciousness.
“Any questions?” Red asked. One brave soul wondered, “When do we see the mules?”
Red grinned malevolently, and said, “Follow me.” He gave a sweeping come-on sign with his right arm, turned and led us from the company meeting room onto the building’s veranda. From there we looked out on the vast expanse of the East St. Louis stockyards. On a long siding, crowded into each of the 50 boxcars were 24 long-eared tail-switching, foot-stomping (mare-jackass progeny) Missouri mules. There were 1200 and it was a breathtaking, staggering sight.
With that, a buzz of questions were thrown at Red. “What do mules eat?” “How on earth do you feed a mule?” “Do mules bite?” “Do mules get seasick?” “How do you keep from getting kicked?” “What do you do with mule shit?” etc., etc., until Red beat on the veranda floor with his big, corked-handled cane and shouted “Silence!” You’ll get your answers as we go along. Now I’ll show you where you park your asses on the train.”
Red led us to the long, impressive train parked in the nearby railroad siding. At the front were two huge diesel locomotives. Hooked behind were 50 bright red stock cars, each with its 24 mules. Then came a day coach, a diner, a Pullman, and a caboose. And who was to occupy the day coach? You’re right, it was we “Muleteers” as we soon came to call ourselves. We dumped our knapsacks and duffel bags on the day coach seats and tried to reconcile ourselves to our lot. More than one muleteer wished he had never left home.
The long haul to Norfolk, while speedy, seemed endless. The engines shrieked through towns whose inhabitants gaped or waved at our speeding special which had right-of-way over all other traffic.
One unusual incident of the rail trip remains embedded in my mind. The train halted sometime after midnight to take on water at a tank in the vastness of the Tennessee Mountains. The silence after hours of pounding the rails was intense, unbroken even by the chirp of a cricket. Suddenly, from one of the stock cars came a loud bray - a roisterous “hee haw, hee haw, hee haw!” Whereupon 1199 other mules joined in the chorus of a stock-car prison song which reverberated from peak to peak. It was eerie and the sound rolled and echoed on and on. Never had I heard anything like it. I quivered all over.
Finally, the iron rails led the long train into a Norfolk warehouse at the wharf at which was moored a huge freighter, hungry for a cargo of mules. This was the Italian tramp steamer, Monarco. She was a dirty old tramp from putting into the bottom hold thousands of tons of coal destined for Italy.
The joint ceremony of loading the mules, and initiating us into the mysteries of the Order of Muleteers, began at 5 p.m. on a broiling hot July 4th afternoon. We found loading 1200 mules on that old tub no Fourth of July picnic. A humidity of nearly 100 degrees didn’t help.
As the first mules were run through a long narrow chute extending from boxcar to ship, they were haltered by hands which never before had touched a hard-tail and driven onward and upward over a long brow to the boat deck. From there, they were driven down other brows inside the ship and through long aisles to stalls where other green and tender hands grasped halter ropes and tied the beasts to breastboards.
The progress of the mules was hurried by a score of husky, half-naked sweaty black stevedores stationed along the chutes and aisles. They prodded the animals vigorously. They yelled and swore vociferously at every manifestation of stubbornness. Clatter of hooves on steel floors, shouts and curses of the stevedores and noisy commands of bosses filled the air. The beasts in their stalls, perplexed by strange sights and sounds, brayed and lambasted each other and rumpboards with their hooves. It was utter bedlam.
We had to work in semi-darkness down on the mule decks, as we fastened halter latches, tied ropes to breastboards, and dodged nipping teeth of spiteful mules. The decks, with no circulation of air, seemed like inferno; the night, endless.
Seventeen hours after the first mule had been prodded up the runway, the last one was tied up. Then the ship blasted its departure whistle, the lines were cast off, the tug boats nudged the ship from the pier and guided it through Hampton Roads and past Cape Henry’s lightship out to the open sea.
We clambered down the stairs into our bunk room and fell wearily into our wooden bunks with their lumpy straw mattresses. Several hours later, into our deep sleep of exhaustion came a growing awareness we were not the only bunk occupants. Something was biting and the bites caused intense itching. After a half hour or so of continuous scratching, some of us took our blankets up on deck, examined them closely with our flashlights to make sure they were free of bedbugs, and spread them out on the piled high bales of hay. There we slept until dawn, when Red aroused us for the day’s work. First he gave us instructions in the use of the articles he gave each of us.
“This hand-axe is for cuttin’ wire on hay bales and for general purposes,” he said. “The bucket is for measurin’ feed for the mules, for carrying water, for washin’ yourself and your clothing, and, if the occasion arises, for bailin’ urine and manure out the stalls in the hold. Each of you’d better put a mark on it so you will know it. Your mules are thirsty. Hook your trough over the breastboard as you work along the aisle and run water in with the hose line. Give ‘em plenty, boys. Then fill up the aisles with hay. I’m countin’ on you handlin’ these mules like you would your own property, for better or worse ‘til Barcelona do you part.”
The decks below were stifling with animal heat. Sweat seemed to pour from every pore of my body. In a few minutes every thread of my clothes was wet. My feet squashed in my shoes, as if I had been wading in puddles. In desperation, I lifted the hose line from the trough and held it up so the water would pour down over my head and down my back. It was more than two hours before I had watered all my mules, broken hay out into the aisles and wearily clambered up to the deck for air. I was one of the first to emerge and hunt out the pump to wash my dirty, grimy body.
At six o’clock every morning the ship provided strangely flavored tea and hard tack for breakfast. But thanks to the generosity of the Spanish Don importing many of the mules, this was augmented by corned beef or pork and beans, scrambled eggs, canned fruit, crackers and imitation jelly - delicacies designed to maintain our energy and sustain our morale. Happier muleteers, happier mules, was the idea.
At 11 a.m. the mess boy served the midday meal consisting of macaroni with a tomato-olive dressing, beef and potatoes or beans and sliced onions with spaghetti. Codfish (which the cook laid dry upon a slab of iron and beat vigorously with a heavy sledge hammer before putting the carcass to soak) was dished out to us on Tuesdays and Fridays.
The evening meal at 5 p.m. was a repetition of the noon menu with the addition of soup, which usually contained rice, bits of macaroni, and tripe. It was heavily flavored with garlic. Ancient hard tack with pinhole eyes veiled with cobwebs was plentiful. Often a man and a worm surprised one another sharpening their teeth on the same disk of whetstone bread.
Each of us was given a tin pie pan, a metal cup, a knife, fork and spoon for service at meal time. The bread line filed past the mess boy, who served rations from dishpans in the mess hall. When our food was dished out, Warren, Roy and I usually hunted out a bale of hay to sit for 15 or 20 minutes and compare indignities endured.
As the days passed, stiff, sore muscles, and blistered hands were the ripe “fruits of labor.” The sun took its toll of tender skin. Groups gathered on the hay to share their complaints. We compared bruises on body and blows to pride. We shared our reactions to the sameness of the garlicky food, dirtiness of the ship, behavior of the mules and sadism of our bosses. Some of the language used was pungently profane. There was talk of mutiny but two of the group who had made previous trips on the Monarco speedily quelled it.
“Did you ever hear about the time the kid from New York refused to take a feedin’ order and the boss smacked his face off?” asked one.
“Yes, And once I seen Red beat a feller in the face for a full half hour for sassin’ him,” replied the other.
“Did he go back to work then?” inquired the muleteer.
“You better believe it. And with one eye swoll clean shut for a couple of days. Meek as a lamb after that! Don’t you guys think for a moment Red ain’t man enough to handle you. Lord knows what he could do with that hickory cane.”
Shifting the conversation to tragic happenings, the first veteran inquired, “Can you ever forget the trip when the feller got kicked in the head and killed by the so-called gentle mule?”
“God no!” replied the other. “He sure stepped on the gas and went to Kingdom Come in a hurry. It was ter’ble. Pulsatin’ life one minute, cold death the next! But talk about horrors! Remember that God-awful storm? A wave that looked a hundred feet high washed across the open deck and knocked down all the hospital stalls like they’re building up here now for mules. Some of the mules were killed outright. Some was washed overboard. A feller named Sim got caught ‘neath the wreckage. He was mashed up fearful and after a day of horrible suffern’ that poor devil’s light just flickered out.”
“What do they do with the dead on this boat?” asked the curious muleteer.
Red’s assistant, who had joined us, answered: “Put ‘em overboard, of course. There ain’t nothing else to do with ‘em. I’ve helped put four over myself.”
“God!” gasped one of the youngest, pale-faced and shuddering. “That’s terrible! I’d sure hate to see anything like that.”
“Hell!” ejaculated the second boss. “Ain’t nobody enjoys it, but I tell you there ain’t nothin’ else to do.”
“Do you have any kind of funeral service?” another asked.
“Sure,” rejoined the boss. “First we take the body and wrap it up good in a tarpaulin and tie weights to the head and feet, then lay it right up there on that cabin. The ship’s engine stops. They bring out the little book and read a verse. Then we just shove the corpse off and splash, it’s all over. The ship don’t stop. It just keeps on driftin’. The reason they puts weights on is to make the body sink, though it won’t go clean to the bottom. If they didn’t put weights on the corpse it would float around on top of the water and look right neglectful.”
The Monarco traveled the Southern route to better escape storms. It had no air-conditioning. The only fresh air to reach the lower decks came through two wind-sails hung in the rigging above the fore and aft deck hatch openings. The heavy canvas sails were about 10 feet in diameter. Attached to each sail was a canvas tube - 24 inches in diameter. The forward progress of the ship forced air down the tube into the lower decks. As the ocean air temperature was in the 90s, with high humidity, this provided little relief. The combination of the summer heat and mule body heat made the hold temperatures during the day well over 100 degrees.
This hot weather necessitated much extra labor. The heat produced ailing mules, which had to be moved from the over-heated decks to the hospital stalls constructed on the top deck. I was one of the muleteers chosen to spend the time between feedings at stall building. Others were ordered to prod, drag or drive the hybrids from the lower decks to the top deck.
It was usually a difficult and spectacular task to move a stubborn mule. The head boss, Red Malone, would slip a lariat over the mule’s head, grasp the rope in his powerful hands, and leverage the pulling force against the resistance of the beast. If the mule hesitated to move forward, Red hurled a crescendo of commands with the rapidity of a Gatling gun.
“Come here a lot of you fellers and swing onto the end of the lariat,” he bellowed. “Now! Pull her damn neck off! Get behind her Jones! Take my cane! Get behind ‘er and hit ‘er with the cane! Knock ‘er hind end off! Lay it on ‘er rump! Hit ‘er! Five dollars if you break the cane the next lick!”
Raining blow after blow on the rigid hindquarters of the obstinate mule, Jones made a supreme effort to win the money, but the cane held firm.
“Hit ‘er again!” roared Red. “Lay it on her fast! Faster! Watch out! She’s getting ready to kick. Don’t let ‘er kick you! Your folk’ll never see you again. Watch out, man! She nearly got you!” Jones ducked as the hoof whizzed within an inch of his head, and the mule took off down the aisle.
The weather cooled. In the stalls on the boat deck, several dozen mules with white noses deep in metal troughs hooked over breastboards in front of them, muzzled their oats contentedly.
During this period we were usually free for a couple of hours following lunch. Sometimes there were special assignments. All the water drunk by a mule doesn’t emerge as perspiration. There were scuppers in the decks back at the ship walls. They were supposed to carry off the urine. But by the time we had been at sea for about ten days, some of the scuppers clogged up with straw and manure. An ankle deep pool of liquid formed in a depression of the deck. We called it “Lake Urine.” The arising aroma would never be mistaken for Chanel #5!
Complaints from those working in that area caused Red to take action. He singled out the two muleteers he thought most sissified and gave them the onerous task of bailing Lake Urine. He sent them down to the mule deck with a couple of water buckets. Up on deck, he lowered a rope with a snap clasp at the end. One of the men standing ankle deep in urine would scoop up a bucket load, pass it to the other to snap into the clasp. Red then would pull it up, let one of us muleteers unsnap the bucket, carry it to the ship’s rail and empty it overboard while another moved to Red’s side. Occasionally, he would slop a little on us. I never heard him say “Pardon me.” On this first bucketful, though, the two boys below, stood there - their faces turning upwards as their eyes followed the bucket up. About two thirds of the way, Red’s grip on the rope slipped. He quickly pulled up on it and about half the bucket’s contents showered down on the bailer-outers. Red had a devilish look of pleasure on his face as he laughed down at them. To me, the urine-drenched hair and faces were a pathetic sight. Imposing such indignities, however, was to Red, a joyous pastime.
But we did have our pleasant moments. Most of us were crossing the ocean for the first time. It was a new and delightful experience to be sleeping on top of stacked bailed hay on deck with only a star-studded sky for cover, seemingly close enough to tuck under one, watching the sky and moody sea by day and at night watching the luminous of the waves ahead of the ship. We were amazed when a misdirected school of flying fish landed on the deck.
Mules or no mules, the ocean was wonderful when one had time to consider it. At times it was like a lady, sitting serenely with folded hands in a chair and rocking gently. Again, like one writhing in the throes of epilepsy, foaming at the lips. The day winds whipped up the spray and played rainbows with it. Little flying fishes glided like tiny silver planes, then flopped abruptly into the water, as if engine trouble had developed.
And there was always a peaceful satisfaction in the evening, knowing there would be no more work until morning. With the quiet disturbed only by the swish, swish of waves against the ship, it was wonderful to lay on your blanket on the timothy hay, looking up and watching the shooting stars, the flying fish of the heavens.
One thing learned in working with my 35 mules that I hadn’t discovered working with our farm mules was that each mule, like humans, is different. By the time our voyage ended, I was identifying characteristics in my mules which reminded me of people I knew. I named one mule Bob for a man in our church who was all smiles to your face, but loved to stab you in the back. His mule namesake opened his mouth smile-like but turn your back on him and he would nip you if he could. Another reddish colored mule I called Red for he seemed to snarl at me like our crew boss. I remember another that looked at me with soulful brown eyes like a girl I once went with named Virginia. This mule I called Ginger. She liked to have her head patted. I found myself telling my many frustrations to some of my more friendly animals. I thought sometimes I saw signs of sympathy.
So on we went, passing through the straits of Gibraltar and along the picturesque coast of Africa with its milk-white villages. A last feeding of corn and oats gave us a feeling of exultation not dampened by a squall of rain. Arching the sky, a marvelous rainbow reflected on the water and its brilliant colors reflected a circle, perfect except where the bow of the ship cut its circumference.
Oran, a great city of Algeria, was a gladsome sight as the ship glided into its harbor and was warped into its berth at the wharf. There, veiled white-robed women mingling with bronze-faced Algerian soldiers in dark blue jackets braided with red baggy trousers and red fezzes, gave color to an animated picture. There were hybrid costumes, the offspring of American and African fashions. Old horses drew dilapidated phaetons and stanhopes of styles which disappeared from America decades ago. There were big two-wheeled carts drawn by small donkeys hitched tandem. A flute player with little children dancing at his heels. Fresh, interesting sights to my eyes.
Brown-faced men in flowing burnooses, with stout hickory canes, now recognized as the badge of muleteers, soon came alongside the officially received two hundred mules which were bidden a glad God-speed as we helped run them off the ship.
Trotting briskly and turning their heads from side to side and braying at the strange sights of Africa, these four-legged Beau Gestes of Muledome disappeared over a hill to join the French Foreign Legion.
We were not permitted to go ashore, but the ship was swarmed upon by vendors with chocolates, luscious grapes, cakes, cigarettes, ice cream, wine and beer. After thousands of miles of travel deprived of such, we filled our bellies to near-bursting with tasty luxuries. We matched wits with Arabs in an improvised bazaar on deck until all of their delicacies were bought and the ship put to sea - headed for Barcelona.
Sportive porpoises had been leaping and racing ahead of the ship for several days. Ship-crew members had tried hard to spear one. Finally, one of the sailors, standing on an anchor at the bow, cast a harpoon successfully. His voice rose in an exultant cry. His fellow sailors ran forward excited, all talking at once. They grabbed the harpoon rope and swiftly hauled the big mammal up over the rail and onto the deck. It whistled its groans as the harpoon was cut from its body and flopped about until a sailor jumped astride its body and held it quiescent. He was loudly acclaimed as if his steed had been one of a sheik’s wildest Arabians. A carnival spirit spread through the crew. One of them drew a long knife and cut the throat of the animal. Its blood gushed out. With deft hands, the porpoise was butchered, its meat to be hung up and dried, its fat to produce valuable oil. Its opened body revealed a flopping baby porpoise which the sailors nonchalantly cast unharmed into the sea. We watched transfixed!
One of our muleteers was horrified. “They oughtn’t to have killed an expectant mother,” he proclaimed indignantly.
Another speculated, “Why would they kill a porpoise anyway?” It isn’t fit to eat and it’s the only friend a sailor has. Why, on an English boat, they’d mob a man who would harm a porpoise.”
“Why is it a sailor’s friend?” another wanted to know.
“Well, when a body is drowned at sea,” came the reply, “the porpoises keep nosing it along and nosing it along until it is tossed up on the beach.”
That was our last evening before Barcelona. Our ship was cutting its way through the front yard of one of the Balearic Island sisters. This daughter of Spain, Ivisa, with her chalky peaks dominating expanses of open spaces dotted with scrub pine, looked like a raw-boned peasant clad in a dingy brown dress with spots of mildew. She appeared wan-faced, unsmiling and dreaming.
I couldn’t help thinking the glories of the Mediterranean sky and water had been oversung by the poets. But as we watched the sun dip into the sea, the sky blazed with a marvel of indescribable colors. The sea shimmered with opalescent ripples as tiny as overlapping fish scales.
Ivisa, as if aware that strangers were within her gates, flushed with the excitement of choosing the most becoming gown in which to receive them. In the glow of sunset, one seemed to sense changes of expression and graceful movement as Ivisa mirrored herself in the sea and whimsically laid off draperies of pastel shades for those of smoke blue haze, which in turn were replaced with a robe of mauve. The raw-boned peasant stood transformed into a comely Spanish princess who graciously smiled a welcome to her country.
The sky smoked. The sea smiled. A muleteer smiled and said, “The whole blamed works has been so lovely I think I could just praise God and die, if Barcelona were not just over the horizon to the north.”
After the Mules in Italy
‘Lilburn Says’... a Boonville Daily News column published February 17, 1975 tells something of his experiences in Italy while the Monarco was in dry dock in Genoa for two weeks.
Rummaging in my archives the other day, I found a diary of my visits to Italy in 1938, the reward I enjoyed after nursing Missouri mules across the Atlantic to Spain.
From the diary addressed to a favorite “little bit of loveliness,” here are some excerpts:
How I yearned for you at Tivoli (a few miles outside of Rome). You would have been delighted to visit the beautiful old Villa d’Este with its magnificent old cypress trees which have never lost their slender lines, its terraces of fountains, hundreds of them, all playing. The Cardinals who lived there seemed to have had a flair for feminine figures in bronze with water sprouting from their breasts. One lady had 20 nipples, 16 of them functioning. There were water falls, swans in languid pools. And down the mountainside were grape arbors with luxurious leaves.
Renting a clip-clop [horse-drawn carriage] we drove through the little town of Tivoli and around the side and head of a canyon to the opposite side of it for a distant view of the fountains, waterfalls and vineyards. The tile stucco houses of Tivoli tinted pink, green, buff and azure crowned the mountain like a hat.
Near Tivoli are the ruins of Hadrian’s villa, a Roman emperor who lived in the years 78 to 138; its theaters, temples, baths, etc., still in a fair state of preservation. Its cypress trees showed no signs of the ravages of the ages. They whispered in sighs as the wind blew through them. I wished I could understand what tales they told.
In Florence we saw things at the art galleries until we were pop-eyed and our legs threatened to collapse. Among others in our party were maiden teachers, and an old man with a young bride who couldn’t understand why they didn’t have electric fans installed. Students pored over guidebooks, looked at the art, then pored some more.
A fat woman always lagged behind the group but would catch up just as the guide finished his explanation of a special piece of art. He had just told us of a marble figure with a funny head when she overtook us and inquired of him.
“Now, what does this big man represent?”
“Lady, he represents the river Nile and do you know what these little figures all around him mean?”
“Well,” she replied hesitantly, “let me see, they are - they are”
“Lady, I’ll help you, they represent the tributaries of the Nile.” She beamed and exclaimed, “Oh, how marvelous!”
A lot of people were listlessly herded on through the galleries, while others sat and said to the guide, “If there isn’t anything slightly special in the next gallery, I’ll stay here until you come back. The marble people around me here sure do look comfortable sitting or lying down in one place for awhile.”
Venice, too, had charms for us, from gondolas to pastries. We were directed to a pension (boarding house in the United States) under the clock tower facing St. Mark’s Square, the building dating back to 1495. From its balcony one looked down upon the Campaniles, Doges’ Palace at one end of the Square, and shops and cafes with people enjoying meals or refreshments outside along the sides and other end. And over all, thousands of pigeons circling in flight or being fed on the pavement by the people. It is advisable to carry an umbrella when you walk through the square.
Our pension was entered from what we would call an alley and required mounting a flight of 70 steps. It was conducted by Mrs. Smith. (The name made us feel at home.) She was English and had been there 44 years. She could switch gears and show speed in speaking many languages. We found ourselves among French, German and American tourists.
Dining country style at a long table, the last to get hold of a dish often got “leavings.” One day we had fish and one of us didn’t help himself to what was left, a head. Mrs. Smith noting that he had no fish, inquired, “Sir, don’t you like fish?” Our disgruntled member replied, “Yes, but don’t care especially for the head.” “Well, sir, I’ll see that you get a tail.” She rushed to the kitchen and returned with some of the middle too.
The bathroom was equipped with a long tub of tin with only cold water which felt like it had run over ice. None of us ever took more than one bath and then we wished we had kept our clothes on. The walls and ceiling of the room were decorated so beautifully you wouldn’t believe it.
We explored the canals of Venice a couple of hours on a moonlit night when gondola traffic was very heavy. There were small ones with only a young man serenading and loving his sweetheart. Other large ones were gaily decorated with flowers and torches and loaded to the guards with people as if it were a festive occasion with singing, stringed music and laughter. It was too romantic for us, so we disembarked at the Bridge of Sighs and wended our way back to Mrs. Smith’s.
Regarding the home voyage on the Monarco, Lilburn wrote in his diary that although devoid of creature comforts, the old freighter did afford opportunity to witness many God-made wonders. A few diary entries follow:
After the first day and there have been 12 since, the ocean has been marvelous, the Atlantic putting to shame the Mediterranean at its smoothest. Since leaving Gibraltar we have sighted no land and only one ship. Nothing but water and sky and the geyser of a mighty whale. The days have been bright with occasional fleecy clouds which serve as a canopy for shade. There is always a comfortable breeze.
While the long trek homeward is griping some of the boys with so much time on their hands, to me it is most enjoyable to spend some time without a single responsibility. I lounge in my steamer chair which I bought in Algiers and read among other things, the “Autobiography of Cellini” and “The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci,” each the artistic creator of so many beautiful things we saw in Italy.
Clouds have been wonderful today with their ever-changing shapes of animals, buildings and face profiles. The sea is calm except for a slight swell that rocks the ship as gently as if we were in a cradle. The sun is warm, the breeze balmy. Near noon as I stood at the rail, light was refracted by the water so I could look down at considerable depth and see schools of fish. Flying fish rise gracefully from the sea; some appear no bigger than a silver quarter and fly along like hydroplanes skimming the water until flop! they splash back as if their engines had stopped functioning.
Into a Hurricane
A belated ambition of mine was to cross the Atlantic on one of the great liners, the United States, the Queen Elizabeth or the Queen Mary in five days or less. But the nearest I ever came to it was to visit the Queen Elizabeth moored at the pier in New York.
I found myself thinking how different a trip in the lap of luxury would be from the one I took on a mule boat on which I spent 21 days going to Algiers, Spain and Italy and 18 days coming back without so much luxury as a bed sheet for my bunk. But instead of enjoyment of all the creature comforts devised by man on a liner, the old Italian freighter “Monarco” did afford us opportunity and time to witness many God-made wonders.
I kept a diary in which I recorded indelible impressions while sailing on this luxury-starved old freighter. Quoting:
It is mid-afternoon. I am sitting at the stern of the boat from where it looks like we are coming down an incline from the horizon. When I am on the prow it appears that we are sailing up a slight incline. In fact as I look around it seems we are in the middle of a huge saucer. We are making excellent time, the Captain tells us, and if we should have smooth sailing the rest of the way we may reach Norfolk sooner than anticipated. We have crossed south of the Azores in latitude about 33 and are headed directly toward the Bermudas where, we are told, we shall strike the Gulf Stream and sail northward with it to our port.
We ran into a shower this morning which didn’t amount to much but the resulting rainbow was spectacular. I had always seen an arch but in this instance there was a complete circle of colors broken only by the prow of our ship. For the first time in my life (and incidentally the last) I saw the ends of the rainbow coverage. If it had been true that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it would have been on our boat. There was none.
But we were not destined to arrive in Norfolk on time. About a day’s run from port, we ran into the disastrous hurricane which had devastated southern Florida and then turned back to sea. For a couple of days our men were all battened down in the hold. As the storm abated and we were allowed on deck, even then the sight of the raging ocean was terrible, awe-inspiring, humbling and yet magnificent.
When the sun came out we discovered we were headed out to sea. The Captain was playing for time, daring not to try to enter the rocky capes which guard Hampton roads.
But directions were righted and we were soon anchored in the harbor. The muleteers dispersed. Few goodbyes were said.
From Mules back to Hobby Horses
Lilburn, prior to his mule boat trip had, befriended young Charles van Ravenswaay, a son of the Billie Kingsbury’s good friends, Dr. and Mrs. Van Ravenswaay. Charles at this time was a student at Washington University in St. Louis. He had become attracted by Lilburn’s captivating personality, fascinating story-telling and insatiable interest in people, places and things.
Lilburn saw Charles as a precocious young man with a consuming curiosity about how things came to be what they were. Lilburn became a role model for Charles and they developed a relationship that continued until Lilburn’s death.
When Charles would return home to Boonville for weekends and vacations, he would frequently join Lilburn on his antique collecting rides. In between times Lilburn would inform Charles by letter of his antiqueing accomplishments. Excerpts from the first of more than 1000 Lilburn letters saved by Charles follow. Undated, probably written in 1930.
Dear Charles:
Yesterday I drove down to the Hollywood Cafe [in St. Charles] to take up goods that were stalled on the shelves there and to put in fresh stock. This time, I left selections which would appeal, as Miss Clara might say, to “cigarette smokers and liquor drinkers.” I had intended taking that corn bottle but forgot it, and now it is just as well since you have “fell” for it.
It was no fun driving down there and back. I determined the next time I go in winter, I shall take the “iron horse” or put on red flannel for motoring. Arriving at the Cafe I immediately ate the vegetable soup, as I was so cold. I visited with the waitresses for a couple of hours while we exchanged stocks, and I enjoyed one of them particularly because she resembled so strongly a girl I was very much in love with about 18 years ago. (I lost her through death after she married somebody else.)
I had to hurry back to sing with Herman Deck, a butcher in Boonville, and I didn’t want to sound all tired out against the freshness of his voice. On my return trip I stopped at Mr. Van Huffein’s drugstore in Wentzville to see if someone had left the grape pitcher I bargained for three weeks earlier. And then in Wright City I stopped to see the Sino-Lowestooft cream pitcher like the one in the museum, hoping I could overwhelm the old maid with a three or four dollar offer. But she’s one of the kind of persons who just make you mad. She “doesn’t want to commercialize her possessions” and if she ever did, not needing the money, would ask a good price. When backed against the wall for a price, she says, “Oh! 25 or 50 dollars.” She said at one time when she broke her leg she would have sold these things because she thought she was going to die, but now it is different. God forgive me the temptation not to trip her last night! I never expect to see her again though she is going to let me know if things get different with her.
I reiterate my appreciation of the evening in your home. I shouldn’t have liked anything quite so well as a visit with your Mother and Father and the “children.” And it was a wonderful dinner beautifully served.
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