Many of the Rhine clan lived in Arkansas, to which the more adventurous members variously repaired when pursuit grew hot in other quarters. And so it was once, many years before, that George had come to the family seat in Paragould. It was then that he chanced one fine day to wander into the office of a local lumber yard. Engaging the owner in conversation, he soon had his full attention and admiration as he told of his years at running backwoods sawmills, and of his even earlier experiences as a "timber doodle" cruising the forests for large lumbering companies. (Timber doodles, for the unknowing, roam the ridges with high-pressure paint tanks on their backs, and "shoot" streams of marker paint high up onto the trunks of trees destined for later cutting. This requires not only considerable stamina, but a detailed knowledge of marketable timber...).

    Within the hour, the owner had hired George. (Perhaps my "woody" balsa log ploy of years later, had unknowingly touched a reminiscent vein in Old George...). He had not been long in the business before his new boss, greatly impressed with his skills, appointed him "Yard Foreman". The way was becoming clear for George W. Rhine. Now fully on his own, and unchecked by immediate superiors, George reorganized the work crews and their schedules and the yard routine in general. An important new activity was added: as the workers sorted the incoming boards from the mills, they were to pay particular attention for unusually good ones, knot- and shake-free, and lacking blue stain, "winds" (pronounce like in 'the road winds'), and other esoterica of timber classification.... All such prime boards were to go separately to the "George Rhine Pile". (Shades of No. 2 Hold...!)

    This pile grew daily. On weekends, George removed it himself to a new-bought lot he had acquired on the other side of town. Soon, he said, he had "... enough boards to build a house...". But a man can't build a house alone, not even George Rhine. But his genius soon suggested a way around this block.

    The next day he made a phone call to the Arkansas Department of Labor. Here, he got put through to an Office or Department which handled the affairs of the indigent and the handicapped. It was this latter Office's specific charter to

"...take the indigent persons of our fair state, be they blind, halt, widowed, immigrant, orphaned or whatnot - and provide for their welfare, and while so-doing, teach them a trade if at all possible - so they might earn their way in this world thereafter."

    (A phone is ringing on the desk of an Arkansas Bureaucrat)

    "Hello. State Labor Department (whatever). Jones speaking."

    "Yes, Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones ... this is George W. Rhine speaking. I think I might have a proposition for you!"

    "A proposition! A proposition about what, Mr. Rhine?"

    "Well, Mr. Jones... I am an expert in most industrial trades and arts, you see (pause to let this sink in). I am a card carrying member of the Electrical-, Plumbers-, Roofers-, Masons- and Building Trades Unions. (This was true. Further pause). Moreover, I am a former instructor in Manual Arts and Trades for the secondary school system in Kansas City (point or two stretched here...).

    (Continuing) "Now, Jones, see here - I am getting ready to build a house at such-and-such address and I thought - knowing how much you folks like to have your people learn trades and all - that maybe we could get together.

    "Mr. Rhine! You can't imagine how timely your call is, indeed! For we do have many such persons on standby right now....

    "Jones, that is splendid! (pause) Do you suppose they could be at the site tomorrow morning, say?

    "No problem at all, Mr. Rhine! We'll send them out by an old school bus. About eight a.m. be all right? Watch for the bus!

    (Genius to the fore). "That will be just fine, Mr. Jones. (Short pause) There remains just the matter of the "cost", Mr. Jones. I figure I can do this for you - for let's say - ten cents an hour you pay me for every worker that you send out..."

    (Moment's hesitation only) "Ten cents an hour? Why, why... I see nothing wrong with that! That will be just fine! Ten cents an hour per worker we will pay you. That's fine, Mr. Rhine. Just fine! Thank you very much!"

    Parties hang up.

    And so as George loved to recall, with boards he had 'liberated' and labor which was going to pay him for its endeavors, he was set to build the first of 27 such houses he restored or built throughout the Eastern States...

    At this point, the desk drawer might come open, rummaging would ensue, and out would come a tattered old scrapbook of photos - and George's stubby finger would trace the salient features of this chalet...

    The lot ran through from street level in front to the back line, which dropped off to the next street about 15 feet or so. George first designed a garage which you entered at street level on this back street. At the back of this garage, a tunnel was started and dug right under the level backyard all the way to the cellar of the main house. Where this tunnel crossed under the middle of the backyard, he dug a large lily pond with a plate glass bottom! In the muggy Arkansas summers, they used to leave the garage door open (the garage it being understood, opening on the back street and thus below grade) and also the tunnel door open, likewise. Long before air conditioning, he had the only 'air conditioned' home in Paragould, for cool, natural wind blew up this tunnel night and day and into the cellar and thence rose through the house cooling it naturally.

    For those coming and going to the garage via the tunnel, a large chamber had been dug out beneath the overhead glass-bottomed pool - with benches lining the circular walls, and niches with Roman garden statuary in them. You could, on hot summer days, repair to the 'pool chamber' and sit back on the cool stone benches, caressed by the tunnel breeze, and gaze upward through the lily pond overhead with its great bug-eyed goldfish staring back down at you.

    Cool. Way to go...

    In any event, his "workers" arrived on schedule the appointed morning, and George watched as they filed off the bus - the lame, the halt, and the blind. Soon they were sorted out, the "niftier" ones (George was most astute at picking out "nifties" in the crowd...) set to work sawing and climbing ladders, and the widows assigned kitchen duties on the assumption that all widows must perforce also be cooks, (George, as his son observed, liked nothing so much as to preside over a groaning board before his hungry and thankful workers...). And the blind and really handicapped would sort mixed nails, clean paintbrushes, and similar activities scaled to their abilities.

    This jolly venture in applied capitalism apparently endorsing wholeheartedly the communist credo of "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs..."

    His house rose majestically: at one side, in front, the eaves descended to about knee height above the ground, then swept aloft in a graceful curve to the ridge three stories above. Inside, walls were paneled in solid cherry, walnut, cypress. None of your latter-day veneers only - George had first pick on prime native hardwoods falling to the lumber man's axe...

    There were other details, but memory dims. Even now, I get some of the details of these earlier homes mixed up with the later ones upon which I worked. And George knew his hardwoods. He had great disdain, once, I remember for "pecky cypress" which was the rage in suburbia in the early '50's or so.

    "Why, Bernie, he used to say, "down home in Arkansas we never used pecky cypress for anything but pigpens. And up here they are paying a premium for it!"

    The House-That-George-Built... and got paid for! Ducks lined up for sure on that one. Human nature never more predictable - never more consistent.

    Of many other early-days adventures in Paragould, I recall only fragments. I've never been there myself. A couple of years ago, though, I drove through Arkansas, and one day a road sign flashed by announcing "Crowley's Ridge". I recognized this as a place much beloved by Chuck and where he had catfished and what all else (perhaps a little gigging, too?). And once, there was a raft the family built and launched on some river... a river with a Saint's name... St. Francis River or something like that. (Perhaps recourse to a map might help me here). But it matters little.

    This raft was quite an affair. It had a couple of stories and a kitchen and bedrooms and much living and storage space aboard. They used to raft up and down the river for days at a time, fishing and lazing in the sun. Ruthie, with her artistic bent, once took a blowtorch and went to work on the white, saw-lumber walls and burned into them a series of murals depicting history on the river ... perhaps legendary Mike Fink gouging out a fellow riverman's eyes or something like that. So striking were these, that others heard of them and came to see them and wonder at them, and the Rhine's floating raft became a curiosity of art and unusual doings known around every bend in the channel...

    Some folks just know how to live.

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