T H E
Paper YOUR WEEKLY
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Escondido San Marcos Vista Carlsbad Oceanside Valley Center
FR
SERVING
NEWS MAGAZINE
September 14, 2023
Volume 53 - No. 37
Across the River and Into the Trees
By Tom Morrow This is a short, albeit true story with a bit of fiction thrown in to make it interesting. As a Hollywood director once said, “If you have the choice of telling fact over fiction, print the fiction … it’s always more interesting.” “Across the river and into the trees.” It was a memorable quote by some Confederate general (said
to have been “Stonewall” Thomas Jackson) directing his troops as they escaped the pursuing Yankee Army during the Civil War: One bright, sunny spring Iowa morning three young college students corralled Hiram Scott at a country store in Lone Tree, Iowa. The old pioneer sat peacefully whittling on a chunk of wood. They were history students at Knox College, down the road from Carthage in Illinois where a tragic
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event took place. Hiram wasn’t a witness on that fateful night. He was across town playing cards, but he knew a few folks who were there. “Some thirty-five or so years after the fact some of those who stood witness remember that night as if it were yesterday,” Hiram said. He answered as he took a chaw of tobacco cut from a plug he drew from inside of his jacket. The old man negotiated the maneuver as he
peered off into the distance, seemingly not noticing a hawk gliding lazily, circling along in front of the backdrop of a clear blue Iowa sky. “It was a heinous crime and a terrible death. I remember it well. No one deserves death by an angry mob.” The storyteller carefully put the tobacco plug back into his jacket, apparently finding a lapel pocket. Such was the fate of Joseph
River
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