Today Owosso is in the very heart of the Michigan vacationland. Running practically through the very center of the city is the smooth flowing Shiawassee river, better known as “Sparkling Waters.”
Although Owosso has grown in population from eight to fifteen thousand since Jim Curwood’s birth and boyhood days, her people remain very much the same as they were then.
West Town! A haven for growing children and a headache for grownups. It was here in West Town that Jimmie Curwood grew up and also where he all but drove his very patient parents insane with his juvenile rascality.
With his chum, Charlie Miller, it seems that there was hardly anything the pair of them would not attempt to do. Stealing fruit and playing “hookey” from school were just a few among the many items that always kept the good citizens of Owosso on the constant alert.
They fished, hunted and trapped all along the banks of the Shiawassee, which flows through the city in a great sweeping bend (when they really should have been in school). The river is flanked on either side by some of the most perfectly shaped trees that man has ever looked upon.
Jimmie and Charlie often staged and executed raids upon the fruit stands of old Mike Gazzera. Then as they would run away with their plunder tucked safely beneath their dirty blouses they would glance back and see the grey-headed old Italian shaking his fist at them and threatening them with all types of punishment. Fortunately enough for both, old Mike thought far too much of them and never actually carried out his plans of chastisement.
Probably the one outstanding characteristic of Jim Curwood as a young boy was the fact that he was seldom if ever clean of face or clothing. Try as she might to keep her bewildering offspring clean, his dear old mother seldom succeeded for much more than an hour or two at a time. For immediately after having been thoroughly cleaned up young Jimmie would head for the nearest schoolboy fight or the dirtiest part of West Town and proceed to get himself dirty again. Indeed he was a child prodigy and therein lies the reason for the old saying, which is sad but true: “why mothers get gray.” It is indeed no wonder that the townspeople would oft-times shake their heads and sigh:
“Them two’ll never amount to a hill of beans.” But Jimmie and Charlie amazed and fooled them all.
At the rather seedy, uneventful and undecided age of five years, when a youngster wants to be everything from a minister of the gospel to heavyweight boxing champion of the world, both Jimmie’s and Charlie’s parents decided that their sons should embark upon some sort of careers. Before Jimmie was born, his parents had decided what their second son would do for his life’s work. They had chosen music and the classics for him; Charlie’s parents had chosen literature and the arts for him.
So for a short while Jimmie practiced his music lessons but soon gave them up as hopeless, as did his parents, for the lad hated music lessons at that age with an undying hatred. As far as Charlie’s future in the field of literature was concerned, he too abandoned his parents’ choice.
Many things enter into the course of a child’s life even as they do with a grown-up, and consequently the career of a musician for Jimmie did not materialize. Instead the lad developed into one of the world’s foremost authors and conservationists of his time. It was Charlie Miller who became quite adept as an accomplished musician.
With the surrender of Lord Cornwallis came a man of adventurous spirit and Dutch descent into the land of the Mohawks and the Oneidas. As he journeyed through this country making friends with the Indian tribes, he chanced upon and fell madly in love with a beautiful Mohawk princess from a little village near the head waters of the Canada river. As to her name, it has not been learned, but as to her beauty, all the men and women of those days readily vouched. For she was as tall and as slender as the most delicate reed. The tiny moccasins which covered her feet were the smallest ever seen by her tribe. Indeed, she was the pride and joy of that village of Mohawks and of all tribes who had seen her as she roamed the forests.
Jim Curwood’s mother very distinctly remembers seeing this wilderness beauty. At that time Mrs. Curwood was but a child of ten and the lovely Indian princess was well past her eightieth birthday.
Her beauty was indeed bewitching and all white men, as well as the redman who had set eyes upon her loveliness, fell in love with her. Her hair was long, black and radiantly glossy. The shoes she wore upon her feet were so small that Jim’s mother, then but ten years of age, could not have put her feet into them.
It was the adventurous Dutchman wandering through the Mohawk region shortly after the Cornwallis surrender who married the Indian princess. This man was Jim Curwood’s phlegmatic great grandfather, an adventurer of the old school who ended up by marrying an Indian chief’s daughter. It is little wonder that young Jimmie became such a carefree, vagabond lover of the deep forests. Indian blood flowed deep within his veins and throughout his entire life the forests, the streams and the lakes were his home despite the fact that he owned a mansion in the very heart of civilization.
Shortly after the blond Dutchman had wooed and won his princess, there was born in England a man who later became a great naval officer in the Queen’s navy and a world famous writer of sea tales. A man who delved deeply into his memories and imagination to spin yarns of thrilling adventure on the land as well as on the swelling sea. His name was Captain Frederick Marrayat. That famous personage turned out to be a great-uncle of Jim Curwood’s.
Several years later it was these same stories of adventure, gallant battles and of brave men, which caused a lad named James to run away to sea and come to America in search of adventure and thrills. When he left England, he never returned.
Upon landing in America young James fought in the Civil War, where fighting blood ran fast and free. Here was what he had been searching for and at last he had found it. Years later that man became the father of Jim Curwood.
The little house in which Jimmie Curwood first saw the light of day no longer stands. Some time ago the two-story frame building was razed and so far no other construction has been erected in its place. However, a marker has been placed there, showing that it was on this particular lot that James Oliver Curwood had been born many years ago.
As time went on the two youngsters, Jimmie and Charlie, still persisted in getting into more and more mischief. People were beginning to shake their heads in disapproval and consequently Mr. and Mrs. Curwood began wondering what they should do to curb their son’s mischievous habits. For hardly without fail when anyone saw Jimmie, son of a shoe repair man, and Charlie, son of a saloon keeper, he was almost always sure to see something happen.
Both boys always ran about barefooted (something which you seldom see today), with dirty faces, hands and clothing, with no crowns in their hats whatsoever. It is little wonder that Jimmie’s hair became bleached by the sun and his face gathered a harvest of freckles.
As youngsters most children have peculiar ambitions, but those of Jimmie Curwood’s as a lad of seven were outstanding among childhood desires. It seems that his ambitions were just one or two paces behind his vivid imagination. For some day he hoped that he might be wealthy enough to buy an entire stock of bananas at one time. Then and only then would he be fully able to get his complete fill of the fruit he loved so well. His second ambition was to ride astride the large bustle worn by Kate Russell to Sunday church. Miss Russell was a cook at the combination saloon-hotel which was operated and owned by Charlie Miller’s father.
Despite all the obstacles that confronted them, Mr. and Mrs. Curwood were perhaps two of the happiest people in all of Owosso. They had a fine family and Mr. Curwood was making a fairly comfortable living with his shoe-cobbling shop. They had no luxuries, for they could not afford them, but they did have all the necessities that made for a comfortable happy life.
Regardless of how honored and respected Mr. and Mrs. Curwood were in their home town, the townspeople still continued to frown upon the antics of the Curwood and Miller children. Was there ever to be an end to all of this childhood devilment? This was the thought that plagued the minds of the citizens of Owosso when the great change came about.
Business began to grow bad for Mr. Curwood at his cobbling shop and after