Atlanta History Week 34

By Kate Stow

In the June 23, 1938 issue of the Citizens Journal we find this gem. A doctor from the turn of the century visited Atlanta and recounted many adventures from his time here. It’s very interesting that the writer took a paragraph to explain the doctors appearance – namely his long hair, which was not seen among civilized men in the 1930s.

Dr. D. H. Simmons of Ft. Worth was here Tuesday on his way to Toronto Medical University, Toronto, Canada. Dr. Simmons turned the calendar back and related that he was located and practiced medicine and surgery here and in Queen City, back in the days of 1893 to 1901.

Cass County then, was changing from a sawmill country to farming. The land was new and fertile, yielding large crops of everything planted. Eight miles north, was locality known as Alamo, where over a thousand thrifty colored people lived and had farms producing lots of cotton, yarns and a river of ribbon cane syrup. Grapes and muscadines grew wild and the people gathered them and made jugs and kegs of luscious wines and a glass of that wine would make the eyes sparkle and see double.

There were a few sorry, sandy or muddy roads in those days but I knew every cow path and pig trail in all this country, east, west and north to the Sulphur river. I went on horseback to see the sick for there were no automobiles then.

I vividly remember in August 1894, that two T&P cannonball passenger trains, one going north and the other going south had a head on collision at 1:40 p.m. at a curve near Springdale demolishing five or six cars of each train, killing 14 people and seriously wounding thirty more people. I was called and reached the scene of the awful disaster soon after it happened.

I shall never forget, and I still hear the moans, prayers, cries and screams of the mangled people. A liquor drummer was on one of the trains and his four big sample trunks were torn open in the crash and the kindhearted drummer brought me three arm loads of bottled high-grade whisky and brandy and I gave it liberally to the poor injured people and also shot medicine into their bodies and in a brief space of time everybody was easy and happy. I kept them free of pain and happy for three hours until the relief train and the Railroad Superintendent came and took them to the hospital at Marshall.

One night north of Bloomburg a panther chased me for a mile or more and when that cat would scream, the black stallion I was riding would go into violent spasms. Soon as I could get the horse still enough, I shot the ferocious feline with my .38 Colt.

When collection time came in the Fall of the year I would accept money, saddle horses, corn, potatoes, cattle, cotton seed, ribbon cane syrup, etc. At one time I had 105 head of cattle in Bill Allen’s big pasture near Springdale and had a car of cotton seed in Calvin Robert’s gin and two cars of seed in Lewis Kennedy’s gin at one time. Cotton seed then sold at $400 per ton. Dr. Simmons is a biologist and scientist for he has taken degrees and done research work in several leading Medical Universities of the country.

“It is natural to have long hair on the head,” he said. “Long hair:—long life,” the doctor continued.

He further stated that the worlds greatest thinkers, talented and most outstanding men of all generations wore long hair and gave the names of just a few: Hippocrates, the father of medicine, Sir Isaac Newton, George Washington, Ben Franklin, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Mozart, Michael Angelo, John Wesley, Henry Ward Beecher, William Jennings Bryan all wore long hair. Samson’s great physical strength lay in his having long hair, so the bible says. (Judges 16, chapter 17 to 20 verses.) Jesus of Nazareth wore long hair but the two thieves who were crucified with him wore short hair.

Dr. Simmons is quite a globe trotter in the last few years for he has been to the West India Islands, saw the big tobacco, sugar cane, pineapple, and banana plantations. While in Havana, Cuba, he went out in a motorboat and saw where the battleship, Maine, went down in 1898. He went through the Panama Canal and saw the great “locks and dams.”

Went to Central America and joined a group of scientists in the excavation of the ancient, buried cities of the long-lost tribe of the Mayas.

While here the doctor will go and view the surrounding developments of the oil and gas activities of Cass County and northwest Louisiana.