James Oliver Curwood, Disciple of the Wilds

by Hobart Donald Swiggett

Looking back a few minutes later Jimmie saw his boyhood chum standing in the middle of the dusty road waving frantically at him. Skinny was standing just where Jimmie had left him when he had climbed aboard the wagon. Further back on the road in front of the old house stood the Fisher family. There they were, Jeanne and her parents all waving their last goodbyes. A great lump came into Jimmie’s throat as the wagon rounded a bend in the road and his friends faded from sight.

When the Curwood family moved into Wakeman its population consisted of somewhere around one thousand other inhabitants. It was a trading center for a huge farming belt, and it was also a freight center. The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern railroad lines passed through the little community. Wakeman had but one main street and this was a beehive of activity on Saturdays.

There were two large general stores where one could buy anything from soup to nuts and from ploughs to jackasses. Wakeman also housed three nice grocery stores, one blacksmith shop, one poolroom and one small hotel. Therefore it was a very prosperous city for its size.

Wakeman also boasted of a cooperage in which thousands of apple barrels were manufactured daily for consumption by most of the midwest and northwestern states. Despite the number of years that have passed, this cooperage still stands today with the usual output.

Typical of all mid-western cities and villages, Wakeman was always converted into a thriving metropolis on Saturdays. On this day all the farmers from miles around would manage to come into town. They would gather about and talk about their crops, weather conditions, national affairs and always those jokes which simply must be told. They would purchase what they were going to need during the coming week and load their buggies and wagons with their supplies and then head back for the farms around nine-thirty or ten o’clock.

Wakeman had its rows upon rows of hitching rails and posts to which the farmers tied their horses and teams. Today most of those historic relics have vanished.

The first few days in Wakeman proved to be quite different from what Jimmie had expected. He knew the farm people and their ways, but he did not know the townsfolk and their standards and traditions. In fact it was in Wakeman that he attended his first party where the boys and girls were really dressed up in their finest. The boys were of an entirely different type from what he had been used to associating with. Somehow Jimmie managed to become accustomed to them and their mannerisms. It seems that Jimmie possessed that certain quality that enabled him to adapt himself to almost any type of environment.

It was at this first party that he learned many new and startling facts. He heard of how his new friends had been as far away as New York and Cleveland. Jimmie stood with mouth wide open in amazement as they spoke about their travels and adventures. He hardly dared believe them even as they were told, yet he knew they spoke the truth.

As the party went on and the conversation continued Jimmie spoke of his travels and of how he was lost on Lake Erie during a terrible storm. This increased his prestige among the younger set. As the talk continued, it finally drifted onto the subject of books and the best reading on the market. This was more along Jimmie Curwood’s line and so he listened attentively as some young lady led the discussion. At long last he had the opportunity he had been seeking. So he told of his career in writing thus far, and how he so wanted to develop his talent into an advanced study. Many of the others wanted to write but hardly knew how to get started. Jimmie explained in a modest manner his eagerness to write great works some day, too.

It was at this party that Jimmie acquired his new name. He was no longer called Jimmie, but just “Jim.” It was here, also, that the young man attempted to learn to dance with the aid of a very charming little lady. He later admitted that although he felt clumsy and ill at ease, he enjoyed it all immensely. Throughout his later life, however, Jim Curwood had little time for dancing.