One of the many things I’m doing to pass the time is perusing old newspaper clippings to learn more about Hayslope and those who visited, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Oh, there were dances and parties and dinners and all manner of things! Not all of them good – a fire destroyed one of the “rustic cabins” and at another point Hugh Rogan was struck by lightning! He survived, of course.
Here’s one of my favorite stories. I’ve been wanting to write it up for a while, but I was trying to find out more about the story’s protagonists (or maybe antagonists?) to no avail. All I can tell you is that they were a young couple from Mississippi, apparently visiting with a number of other people from that state, for the summer of 1897. Their names were A.W. Cooper and Emma Hooper. Here’s what happened, according to the Knoxville Journal & Tribune:
It was a Tuesday, the newspaper said, July 20. A.W. and Emma apparently were unsatisfied “with the attractions of the resort where they were sojourning” and hit upon a stellar idea. They would take a ride on a freight train, like Weary Waggles or Henry Hobo, perched on a coal car.
So they trudged up the hill from Hayslope to the Russellville train depot to await their carriage. Coal carriage. Plenty of those on the tracks, since coal country was just up the way a bit and coal trains frequently made their way from West Virginia and Virginia down toward Knoxville and beyond.
Didn’t take long, the paper said, before said freight train pulled into the station and Emma and A.W. climbed aboard “one of the long string of coal cars,” intending to ride to Morristown.
“The rumble and jostle of the black diamond vestibule and the jerking and bumping of the cars was in striking contrast to riding in Pullman cars on highly upholstered seats, but to them variety was the spice of this life and in this case it was greatly enjoyed,” the Journal & Tribune reporter wrote.
But alas, before too long, one of the brakemen saw the trespassing couple and alerted conductor Charles Bailey.
“The idea of an elopement at once entered the mind of the man in charge of the train, but corporations having no soul cannot expect their employees to have any sentiment, and for this reason it became his painful duty to flag down the engineer and unload his precious human freight,” the article reads.
And so, with a “shrill blast from the whistle,” the train came to a stop and Bailey went to the coal car in question to tell A.W. and Emma that they must “come off” because it’s against the law, and besides, another train is coming along behind very shortly.
“Is this Morristown?” Emma asked.
No, Bailey told her, again insisting that they get off, but “all of his appeals had the same effect as that of whispering to a whirlwind.” The conductor eventually gave up and waved the engineer on, but not before telling our wayward Mississippians that when they arrived in Morristown, they would be arrested.
And so they were. At the Morristown depot, Emma was ushered into a waiting room while A.W. was taken to the office of the recorder, where fines were assessed and paid, while the “usual crowd of idle men and small boys” watched the denouement, amused. Once the fines were paid, “the young people from Mississippi departed a sadder but wiser couple.”
A Morristown man told the Journal & Tribune reporter that the police chief (Bartlett was his name) “and his men are death on tramps and people who steal rides on the trains.”
“Every freight train is searched, and woe be unto the tramps that find themselves discovered in Morristown,” the man said.
But, the fellow said, there was a question as to whether Chief Bartlett had the authority to arrest a pair of miscreants from Hayslope.
“Many people think he overstepped his authority and that they should have been released and saved the humiliation to which they were subjected,” he said.
Alas, too, I found no mention of this story in the Morristown papers … but doncha just wonder what A.W. and Emma had to say around the Hayslope dinner table that night?