Guarding the Border: The Military Memoirs of the Ward Schrantz, 1912-1917

Back to the Border—As a Civilian

by April I was restive enough that I determined to take a month off from work and wander about. I had always wanted to travel on a Mississippi River steamer and learning that there were some commercial lines still running, I went to Memphis, intending to go by water to New Orleans. However there were no through boats farther than Vicksburg, so I engaged passage on the “John Lee” of the Lee lines for that city and went aboard. The river water-front was all new and strange to me. As I wandered about there was a pistol shot from a group of Negroes nearby. The blacks scattered in all directions, and one Negro with raised revolver backed up the railway embankment, menacing the dissipating crowd, then at the top of the bank lowered his weapon and ran. I walked over to the scene of the disturbance. Two Negroes were supporting a burly third, shot through the chest. He seemed able to walk, and the two half led and half carried him away. No white man other than myself had evinced any visible interest in the affair. I mentioned this later to the first mate of the John Lee. “Oh these niggers are always killing one another,” he said. “No one pays any attention.” As the John Lee wound leisurely around the tortuous channel of the Mississippi two or three days on its way to Vicksburg, stopping to unload passengers and freight at any obscure landings not reached by railway, I found many things to interest me, and among them were the colored roustabouts who handled the freight. Nothing disturbed their good humor long and they mixed their work with non-interfering horseplay, such 7 Back to the Border—As a Civilian 88 Chapter 7 as cramming their old felt hats upside down on their heads as they trotted back and forth unloading cargo. The mate, whom they called “Mistah Mike” and who they apparently regarded with a mixture of fear, respect and liking, drove them to their best effort with forceful threat and direct expletive, yet without sign of rancor and I suspect with underlying affection despite the violence of word and tone. And the Negroes sprang with quick obedience at his word but without sign of resentment and with grins undisturbed. “‘Bird’s-Nest,’ you black S.O.B.,” he would shout, as a sample, “If I come down and bend this bar over your head you will move,” where at “Bird’s-Nest” moved with alacrity but with a smile. The Negro called “Birds-Nest” was completely bald—not a hair on this head. The custom of the roustabouts when they wanted a drink was to lean overside and scoop up a greasy hatful of muddy river water to quench their thirst. But if Birds-Nest was about they always borrowed his hat, perhaps considering it a sanitary drinking cup because of his hairless cranium. Other nicknames I recall were “Burley,” “General,” and “Monkey-Head,” and there was one man who even the mate cursed as “Mister Brown.” The roustabouts apparently were heroes to the colored girls along the river as at every small landing a dusky feminine group was on hand to ex[c]hange badinage with them. There were a good many colored passengers going from one landing to another, they being carried up on the hurricane deck. There was an occasional white man, billeted like myself in a state room, but most of the state rooms remained empty. With these white passengers and with the ships officers I talked concerning the river, the interest of which to me lay in the Civil War atmosphere in which my reading had placed it, and I learned something of river life. They showed me the steamer City of St. Joseph hard aground near Luna Landing, Ark., waiting for higher water to float her off. And one passenger had been aboard the steamer Ben Hur when she struck a stump a short distance above Vicksburg a week or two earlier, listing and going down immediately in shallow water but deep enough that one woman was drowned in her stateroom and most of the cabin passengers, including my informant, had had experiences with water. Back to the Border—As a Civilian 89 A courtly elderly gentleman, familiar with Vicksburg and knowing many of the people there, talked to me at length, as elderly people will to a...