Mystic Nights of the Wabash

Prologue

It’s gone now, the long-forgotten dance hall/speakeasy in the Wabash River bottoms, standing on poles to keep it out of the floodwaters. All that is left are the sycamores and cottonwoods that formed a cove that hid the grotesque structure from the law and all the shenanigans said to have gone on inside. It was a grand place back in Hell’s Neck during Prohibition and the Great Depression, known throughout the area for its debauchery and who knows what else. Mysterious people, sometimes by the busload, showed up there, and fancy cars, Duesenbergs and Packards, often populated the parking lot. It wasn’t hard to figure out how the Mystic Nights of the Wabash got its name.

But this wasn’t all that gave Hell’s Neck its notoriety. It had quite a history if you believe the stories handed down by my family progenitors from four generations ago. Fugitives from the law were said to hang out along the river and the Cypress Swamp, and down the Wabash stood the Grand Rapids Hotel and Resort where Capone’s henchmen were said to frequent. Below the government locks and dam lay some of the nation’s best pearl beds yielding gems that eventually worked their way to the Royal Family of England. And the Wabash, 500 miles long, once carried British Lieutenant General Henry Hamilton after he was captured by George Rogers Clark just up the river a few miles at Fort Sackville. They sent him, shackled and cuffed, down the river on a flatboat right past Hell’s Neck, to the Ohio River to be delivered to Thomas Jefferson in Virginia.

Now, to understand all that happened in Hell’s Neck during the Depression, you need to know something about the land. The Neck, as it was called, was formed by the confluence of the great Wabash and the White Rivers. Together they drained almost three-fourths of Indiana, and when it rained up north all that water came crashing down both rivers and flooded all the bottom land between. It happened so often the farmers kept row boats in their pastures to save their families from drowning. But also, just across the White River sat Lyles Junction, one of the oldest black settlements in the north, settled by freed slaves in 1837. If the white folks in Hell’s Neck had a tough time scraping through the abject poverty of the Great Depression, you need to add racial injustice to the list and see what the black folks had to endure. The KKK had its roots planted in Indiana state government back then, so the blacks not only had to put up with poverty, unemployment, and flooded farmland, but prejudice, inequity, and injustice, too.

That’s where my great grandfather came in. A country doctor and farmer, Doc Gentry ran and won a seat in the legislature to stop some of the injustice and corruption he saw going on. He paid the price too, with threats to his life and family, but that didn’t stop him. He fought the powerful and wealthy and the corrupt because he believed we were all equal in the eyes of God and deserved to be treated with dignity.

Mixing white with black wasn’t all that popular back then. Lynchings still took place, and black people were given the wrong end of the stick when it came to realizing the American Dream, separated in their own schools, churches, and social circles. It made Doc wonder how the races were ever going to get along if they didn’t get to know each other. It had to start somewhere, so Doc set the example: he started with his own family.

So, here is how it happened as it was handed down through four generations of family lore. I will caution you that time often frays the pages of history and the art of storytelling passing through the generations involves some risks of embellishment and lapses of memory. Therefore, I cannot guarantee the veracity of everything you will find here, for I only appear on the last page, however, knowing the integrity and egalitarian nature of my progenitors, I can attest to its authenticity.

Jonathon Gentry

Great-grandson of Doc Gentry

CHAPTER 1

1933

The rooster crows at five o’clock every morning, and Ward Gentry stirs. He doesn’t want to get up. Snug in his feather mattress, wool socks, long-johns, and stocking cap, he peeks out from under the wool blanket at the black sky. It will stay that way for two more hours. He reaches for the water glass next to his bed to take a drink, but a thin film of ice stops him. He looks down at the floor. Under the window he sees a fine line of snow that has blown in from the crack between his upstairs window and the sill. The radio last night reported storms coming in from the northeast and winds howling at fifteen miles an hour. His windows on the north and the one on the east are covered in frost.

A door opens at the bottom of the stairs, and he smells the bacon frying on the woodburning stove in the kitchen. That’s his sister Maddy letting him know it’s time to get moving. But it’s freezing out there and in here, too. He can see his breath. He pulls the cover up over his head once more and exhales, hoping it will keep him warm long enough to get dressed. He wants to stay there, but his bladder is telling him something else. Slowly, he rolls out the side of the bed and stands on the cold floor, thinking. He has options. The outhouse is down the stairs, out the back porch, and across the snow-packed back yard. He chooses the other one. Opening the window, he leans out to gage the wind. It is still. He opens the front flap of his long-johns and releases a long yellow stream down on the white snow fifteen feet below. His big brother Curtis told him never to pee upwind.

He wouldn’t do that if Doc was home. Not even his older brothers would do that, even though they did plenty of times when Doc was away at the legislature. Nobody messed with their father, nor did they want to disappoint him. When he laid down the law, it was gospel, and they, among others, were believers.

Ward pulled on a warm flannel shirt, then reached for his bib overalls hanging on a hook near the door. He sat on the bed while he put on his work shoes, wearing high toppers today because of the five inches of snow that was predicted to fall last night. When he came downstairs a blast of warm air hit him as he opened the door to the kitchen. Maddy had a roaring fire going in the wood stove, and the three doors to the kitchen were closed to keep in the warmth.

Morning, Sunshine! she said. Do you want your eggs scrambled or over-easy?

Maddy had taken over the household duties since their mother died five years ago. She was only fifteen when she became Ward’s surrogate mother and the domestic of the household of five children and a father, Doc, who was seldom home, either making house calls or up at the state legislature when it was in session. Her older sister and both brothers were off at college, leaving just Maddy and Ward at home.

Over-easy, Ward stretched and yawned. Is the toast done?

Check the oven. It should be. Did you get your homework done last night?

Yeah, kinda.

Good. I need you to read to Gilbert Roney, then help Sara Gilhooly with her math.

Although Ward was only eleven years old, he was way ahead of some of the older students in Maddy’s class. She taught all grades, 1 through 8, in Locks School No. 9, down in the bottoms of the Wabash River. Ward could have gone to School No. 1, a mile from home, but Maddy needed help, and Ward, who learned to read by the time he was four, was the best she could get.

Ward went over to the sink and pumped the handle, splashing water in the wash pan, and, after mixing it with boiling water from the kettle on the stove, washed and dried his hands and face. Then he opened the oven door and took out two slices of bread and slathered them with butter.

Maddy spooned the eggs out of the skillet and pushed them over on a plate. We’re going to have to get a move on this morning. Don’t know what the roads look like, and we have to get there in time to fire up the stove. It’ll be freezing in there.

Okay. Soon as I’m done here, I’ll gather the eggs and take care of Speck.

He sat down to eat. Did you forget something? Maddy asked.

Ward put down his fork, folded his hands, and gave a quick blessing. Just because Doc was gone didn’t mean he could forget his blessings. If they were going to eat three times a day, Doc always said, they were going to ask a blessing three times a day.

When Ward finished eating, he took a small bucket and dipped it into the pan of boiling water on the stove. Then he went to the corner, grabbed his coat, mittens, and a wool cap with earmuffs. A lantern sat on a shelf. He lit it, swung the back door open, and headed into the dark cold air. Stars were out and a half-moon hung over the barn, just bright enough he could see his frozen breath suspended in the air. He reached the gate to the barn lot and walked over to the horse trough. He tested the pump handle and saw it was frozen, so he poured in the boiling water to prime it. Three tries of the pump brought the water up.

Opening the barn door, he let Speck out. Speck neighed and shook his head as if to say thanks before heading over to the water trough. Ward patted him on the nose, went into the barn and dropped a pitchfork of hay into his stall. Speck, a nag, was the lone horse left from the stable full that had worked the farm before Doc bought a tractor, a 1928 Farmall, five years ago. The Great Depression arrived a year later when the stock market crashed, and then the bank took a big chunk of his farm and the need for horses vanished. Doc kept Speck on in retirement as a reward in his old age.

Once Ward was sure Speck was all set, he went to the chicken house, opened the door to let them out, and spread feed over the ground. They squawked and fluttered as they fought for a place at the table. He took a wicker basket from a hook on the wall and gathered the eggs. Then, out to the tool shed, he swung open the big doors, pushing against the newly fallen snow. The Model T Ford was cantankerous in cold weather, playing hard to start, so he grabbed a crank, inserted it into the crankcase and pulled it so hard his feet came off the ground, but nothing happened. He tried it two more times, and the second time it turned over and the motor sputtered. Ward quickly ran around, climbed in, and sat up on the edge of the seat so he could reach the pedals. When he pulled up to the house, Maddy was standing at the front door waiting. He handed her the basket of eggs, and she put them on a shelf in the cabinet. The car was still freezing cold when she climbed in. It had no heater.

Maddy had given up learning to drive after a harrowing experience when Curtis was teaching her. Upon seeing an approaching car on the narrow road, she panicked and got into some loose gravel, ending up through a fence and into McClain’s pasture. She hadn’t sat behind the wheel since. Out of necessity, Ward became a driver.

Locks School No. 9, the same one Doc taught in before getting his medical license, was fifteen miles away on the banks of the Wabash River. Locals called the area Hell’s Neck, the low bottom-land toe of Knox County where the Wabash and White Rivers come together. It had quite a history if you believe local lore. The story is that it was a place where fugitives from the law went to hide since it was so sparsely populated and offered plenty of cover for such itinerants. The murky Cypress Swamp and a few ramshackle fishing cabins hidden in the trees along the two rivers were far from the sheriff, some 25 miles to the north. Hell’s Neck was also a raw place to live; there was no electricity, no towns, no stores, no gas stations, no post office, and it had only one paved road. It did have a church, Calvary Chapel, and a doctor, Elmer Gentry, affectionately and reverentially known as Doc.

The gravel road had been plowed yesterday, but since new snow had fallen last night, drifts were deep. Up ahead was the levee, designed to stop the flooding in Hell’s Neck but ended short of its goal in the 1920’s when the money ran out. As they approached it Ward revved the engine for momentum and hoped no one was coming from the other side. The Model T stalled a bit at the top and then coasted down the other side.

Gaining speed now, they came to the Wabash River, and Ward felt a familiar tingle up his spine as they came to a gray, wooden structure sitting up on poles in a cove of sycamore trees on the river’s bank. As he always did, Ward slowed down to get a better look. Rising ten feet off the ground, the odd-looking building consisted of two stories beneath a tin roof and a covered porch that stretched around all four sides. A wooden stairway reached up to the front door, and another descended out the back. Ward wondered if that was an escape route in case the law came up the front stairs.

The strange building appeared empty, yet Ward knew that wasn’t always the case. He had passed it hundreds of times when the parking lot was full of cars, trucks, and even buses, each time wondering what all those people were doing in the remote bottoms of the Wabash River. Though its structure resembled something between a shanty and a chalet, it seemed more like a lodge. The mystery of it always awoke an uneasy fascination in him, both a need to find out and a fear of finding out. Something about this strange place was exhilarating, yet the eerie spectacle sent a chill up his spine. He figured its walls could tell a thousand stories.

Moving slowly as he passed by, Ward looked once more at the large wooden sign that hung from the eave of the porch roof. In red letters were the words Mystic Nights of the Wabash.

Once when Ward was little, his father drove the family past it on the way to the Mt. Carmel ferry, and he asked his father what the scary-looking building was. Doc said it wasn’t anything he needed to know, allowing as how he figured a lot of sin took place in there. He left it at that, and Ward did, too, figuring he would ask his big brother Edward later. When he did, Edward was also evasive saying, Whatever goes on there is probably illegal. You don’t want to go anywhere near there.

Do they get in trouble with the law?

There’s not much law down here, Edward said. He didn’t elaborate. Ward sat wondering why no one wanted to talk about the building.

The school, Locks School No. 9, was another five miles farther downriver. The one-room, white frame structure sat up on a wooded hill to protect it from floods and was surrounded by tall sycamore trees that lined both banks of the river. It was named after the government dam and locks located adjacent to it on the Wabash River.

The Model T labored up the hill, and Ward pulled into the front yard. The rising sun put an orange glow on the siding that had seen some harsh weather since its last painting. A steeple sat above the tin roof and housed the bell that called children in from recess. Out back there stood an outhouse, a duplex, Maddy called it, with His and Hers painted on the two doors. Beyond that, when the leaves had fallen from the trees in the winter, one could see the river all the way across to the Illinois side. Located on the highest hill in Hell’s Neck, the school stayed dry when the floods came, as they did nearly every spring. When the floods came and covered the low-lying bottoms for miles around, the only way to get to the school was by boat. Their scarcity meant school would be called off.

The schoolroom was cold and dark when they entered. Ward left his coat on because it was his job to haul in the wood and start a fire in the potbellied stove. He brought an armload of kindling in through the back door and took old newspapers left for that purpose and lit a match. Just before it burned his hand, he stuck it under the perfect teepee of wood he had stacked and watched the flame take hold.

Maddy busied herself setting up tables and writing on the chalkboard. Since she had all eight grades, she had to rely on some students to work on their own while she worked with others. That’s where Ward came in. He was technically in the sixth grade, but he could read better than anyone else in the class. The other twenty-one students ranged all over the spectrum when it came to skill and age. The youngest was five. The oldest was seventeen.

That was Jeremiah Jackson who looked out of place since he was the only student in the class who could shave. He passed up what would have been his fifth, sixth, and seventh grades to work in his uncle’s sawmill until he cut off his little finger and his uncle fired him. He tried to enlist in the Army, but they discovered the identification he gave them was fake. He then joined a circus that came through Purcell Station one summer and got as far as Fairfield, Illinois, when he got scared and hitched a ride back home. His father made him go back to school.

It was Ward’s job to read to the younger children and help them with their multiplication tables. When finished with that he helped Jeremiah, whose reading ability had leveled out at the third grade. Maddy figured he had quit school because he was embarrassed when younger children realized he couldn’t read. When he came back to school, to get him comfortable with that deficiency, Maddy astutely made him class captain and convinced him he was a leader responsible for maintaining order, meaning cleaning the chalkboard every day, arranging the furniture, and carrying out the trash. This he did with distinction.

Jeremiah liked Ward, even though Ward was six years younger, because Ward had an ability to teach Jeremiah without making it look like he was doing it. For one thing, Ward moved some cabinets around and made a partially hidden nook back in a corner where the two of them could get away in their own private space. Ward covered up the fact he was instructing by saying funny things that made Jeremiah laugh. Sometimes he brought comic books and read them while Jeremiah followed with the words and pictures. Eventually, they moved on to primers and then magazines about the outdoors and hunting. Those were a little above Jeremiah’s level, but Ward read each word out loud and made him follow. It seemed to work and made both of them happy, Jeremiah knowing he was learning to read without being embarrassed, and Ward knowing he had helped someone end each day with something he didn’t have when he arrived.

As for Ward’s own education, that came after he went home. Doc made sure his family was not going to miss out when it came to learning. His farmhouse had no running water, no electricity, no solid foundation, no bathroom, and no furnace. But it had a library, and this showed where Doc’s priorities lay. It was upstairs above the parlor and in front of a warm fireplace that Ward and his sisters and brothers spent every winter night doing their schoolwork by the light of kerosene lamps. In addition to some of the classics, books on history, religion, politics, government, literature, social and physical sciences, and college and high school textbooks lined the shelves. Doc had a rule that after each child finished a school year, he was to add his textbooks to the shelves in the library. This rule applied when they went to college, too.

The library was their own little classroom where Edward, the oldest boy, and Virginia, the oldest daughter, set the example. When Ward was just three and Edward and Virginia were fifteen and sixteen, he was given a small feather mattress on which he and Virginia would curl up on the floor by the warm fireplace, and she would read to him. It was here where he learned his ABC’s. Edward would sit at the table in the middle of the room working on his geometry while Maddy sat across doing her math. When she got stumped, Edward would reach across the table, look over her work, and show her how to solve the problem. The other brother, Curtis, worked on his science assignments at the end of the table. They all had their own favorite subjects, and Doc made sure they had all the books and resources they needed. They were expected to excel.

By late evening, the warm fire in the library and Virginia’s soothing voice would put Ward to sleep on the mattress. Edward would pick him up, carry him into the bedroom the boys all shared, and put him to bed. Then the others would stay up until around ten o’clock when Doc opened the stairwell door and yelled upstairs, Lights out! When Doc was home and not on a call or up at Indianapolis at the legislature, he would be downstairs in the front parlor, sitting by the fireplace reading the day’s newspapers or listening to news reports on the battery-powered radio. He was especially concerned with what was going on in Europe and the rise of Italian and German nationalism. Two names that kept popping up sounded ominous: Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

School ended at four o’clock, and Maddy and Ward started on the snowy road home. Wider, deeper ruts made by logging trucks during the day made the road easier to maneuver. These trucks hauled logs cut from the side of Tabor Hill along the White River near Purcell Station to a sawmill in Illinois by way of the Mt. Carmel ferry. The ferry was the only way to cross the Wabash in Hell’s Neck, so it carried plenty of traffic.

After they reached home around five o’clock, Maddy began supper while Ward took care of the car and Speck, putting them away for the night. He then went around to the chicken house, checked them into their roosts and closed the door, safe from any coyotes or foxes that might be wandering in the night. Finally, he checked the water trough in the pasture. That was the domain of Spike, the lone steer remaining from a herd that had been weeded out by butchering and sharing the beef with the needy families in Hell’s Neck. By six o’clock he and Maddy had finished supper and were in the library for the rest of the evening.

The house was quiet now. Gone were his big brothers and sister. Curtis was in his second year at Indiana State Normal in Terre Haute, seventy miles to the north. He chose the school because his tuition was only nine dollars a semester and he could share a room in a boarding house for fifty cents a week. He got his meals free by working every morning in a greasy spoon on Wabash Avenue, flipping eggs and frying bacon.

Ward missed Curtis. Once, when he and Curtis were just hanging around over at Jack Latimer’s horse farm, they were standing in the barn lot when Jack brought a mare out of the barn and had it nose up to another horse, a male Ward found out later. He watched as the horses began rearing up and neighing and jerking their heads around. Then Jack led the bigger one around behind the other one and helped put its hoofs on the rump of the other one. Ward asked Curtis what was going on, but he said to just watch, he’d tell him later. And when they got back home, Curtis explained a whole lot of stuff about the way animals procreated as he called it. It was only later that Ward put two and two together, culminating in his first lesson on sex education. It was a proud but sad day last fall when Ward went with Doc and Maddy to drop Curtis off at the train depot in Purcell Station to return to college.

Edward, the older brother at twenty-three, finished his undergraduate degree at Purdue and was working on a master’s in mathematics at the University of Michigan. He had a natural inclination for math, securing a scholarship that got him through Purdue without much hardship on the family.

Virginia, oldest at age twenty-four, attended junior college at Vincennes, the county seat only ten miles away, so she could live at home. After two years of studies students could get a teaching license, so she took a job teaching at a Christian mission in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Some suspected she may have been lured by a male acquaintance she met at college, but that had not been verified and she wasn’t talking.

Maddy, the youngest sister, followed Virginia at junior college and got her teaching license by the time she was twenty. She became Ward’s teacher last fall by talking him into switching schools to help her teach at Locks School No. 9. By January, when the state legislature was in session, until April, when it adjourned, she and Ward held down the fort and kept the home going.

It would all be different in the spring when the thaw came, and the farming started up. Doc would be home then, and Curtis would soon follow. Ward couldn’t wait.

CHAPTER 2

In early April Ward fired up the Model T and headed three miles east to Purcell Station, eager to see his father for the first time in three months. Doc had left in early January to try, in his words, to straighten out those muckety-mucks in Indianapolis who ran the legislative branch, and now his work was over for another year.

Ward arrived at the train station and while nervously standing on the platform talking to Taylor Barth, the stationmaster, he heard a whistle. The bells of a crossing guard clanged, alerting them the train was close. Soon a monstrous engine appeared, shaking the earth and belching a plume of black smoke. It slowed to a stop, and then sat hissing out a stream of white vapor. A porter stepped off a Pullman car and placed a small platform in front of an exit. Soon, down the steps, carrying a large, battered suitcase, came Doc Gentry, wearing his usual dark suit, white shirt, and tie. On his head sat his customary fedora.

Smiling, Ward moved toward him and reached for a hug. Doc let go of his baggage and gave Ward a warm embrace and pat on the back.

Hi, Dad. Glad you’re back, said Ward.

It’s good to be back in God’s country. I’m anxious to hear all about everything I’ve missed. How’s your sister doing?

She’s doing fine. A little too strict sometimes, but we get along okay. She can’t get on my wrong side since I drive her to school.

Well, it sounds like you have her over a barrel then, doesn’t it?

Doc picked up his baggage, and they headed over to the car. Taylor Barth, standing on the platform talking to the porter, gave them a little nod and yelled, Welcome back, Doc. Hope you got’em all straightened out up at the state house.

I tried, Taylor, but some of them I’m afraid are incorrigible. Maybe next year.

Doc placed his suitcase in the back of the car and climbed in the front as Taylor smiled and waved goodbye. Ward drove them back to the house where Maddy, wearing an apron and wiping sweat from her forehead, came out on the front porch and met Doc with a big smile and a hug.

We’ve missed you, Dad. We’ve worked on the house to get it ready for you, and I have your favorite dinner on the stove.

Doc embraced Maddy in his rigid posture and gave a tight-lipped smile. It was not his style to overindulge in pleasantries and emotional homecomings, but everyone knew how he felt deep in his heart. Expressing it was another matter.

Well, that’s nice, but you needn’t have gone to the trouble. I’m just glad to be home after living in a one-room cell the last three months, although I’m grateful considering all the homeless I saw sleeping in doorways and cardboard boxes.

Unlike the other legislators Doc passed up a room at the Claypool Hotel with its fancy lobby and dining room for a small room with a shared bath in The Walden, a boarding house occupied mostly by transients looking for work. He didn’t feel that public servants should be living extravagant lives when others were struggling and unemployed. The Walden was also several blocks from the state house, and Doc felt he needed the exercise the long walk would give him. He missed the physical labor that comes with working on the farm. He didn’t want to get soft.

Ward brought in his suitcase and carried it to Doc’s bedroom, the only bedroom downstairs in the eight-room house. Because it was still nippy for April, Ward had started a fire in the parlor fireplace. Doc disappeared into his room and could be heard opening and closing drawers in his bureau.

The parlor door to the kitchen was open, and the smell of ham and beans wafted through it. After a while Doc appeared in the kitchen just as Maddy took the cornbread out of the oven. Ward was setting the table in the dining room. They were not going to eat in the kitchen tonight. The dining room was saved for special occasions.

Doc took a seat at the head of the dining table just as Maddy brought in the large bowl of ham and beans. You look tired, Dad. Have you lost weight?

She had been concerned when she saw him on the front porch. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes sunken as if he had been up late too many nights in a row.

Doc slumped back in his chair. It’s the product of that dysfunctional legislative body I’ve been dealing with. They can’t seem to agree on anything. They argue and posture and can’t seem to figure out how to solve the sorry state we’re in.

Maddy sat down. She had heard this monologue before and decided to redirect the conversation. Maybe a little home cooking will help, she said. And I have your favorite dessert.

Doc agreed Maybe a little respite from the noise and crowds will help. I’m looking forward to a few weeks of Mother Nature: warm weather, clean air, open skies, and work in the fields.

Well, you came to the right place, she said, as long as it doesn’t rain.

When all was set, they bowed their heads and Doc gave the blessing and ended with an entreaty for good weather for the spring planting. Maddy then passed the cornbread and the bowl of beans. Doc took a major helping and passed it on to Ward.

So, how’s school? Doc asked, addressing nobody in particular.

It’s okay, considering who I have for a teacher, Ward gave a sideward glance at his sister.

Hey, I resent that, said Maddy. You must have a short memory. You could have stayed at No. 1 and had Miss Butler again, but you complained about how mean she was.

Doc managed a slight smile, "Well, are you learning anything or are you just giving your sister