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Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORMA
Circumstarces of Interview
"7 New York
NAME OF WORKER Earl Bowman
ADDRESS
86 W. 12th St. New York City
DATE November 9* 1938
SUBJECT MEDICINE SHOW TALES$ *THE ARKANSAS 'SHAKES'."
1. Date and time of interview
2. Place of interview
Interviewed in my quarters* 86 W. 12th 84. New York
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
3. Name and address of informant William D. Naylor
Sec *Medioine Show* (Sept 19.0ot. 5th) for information on
Wm. D. Naylor.
4. Name and address of person, if any, wno put you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
STATE
NAME aF roaKER
ADMESS
DA1F
SUUJECT
1. Ancestry
FO -2N
Pellional ht.:tory of inforwant
UN YOU
NM Bain
$6 Nest Uth Street, Nee Yo*
No'somber 9, INS
NiDICINE 1311Ar TAM 1ZMANUS SHAHS.
1111ima D. 1100Ar
imprison; probably Irish dosoont
2. Place and date of birth
Now YOrk 72 year& old
O. Family
Apparently has none
4. Places live( in 'Aith date::
Could not learn
5. Education, with Wes
Booms to be prinoipally in the "'shoot of hard knoOks*
6. 03cupations and accomplichment,F, with dat
Carnival. Midioino Show and *pitshomlas
7. Special skills and interests
Nomo that I know
8. Community and religious activitles
Unknow
U. Description of informant
FOLKLORE
NF',1, YORK
Kr. Naylor is aria; will preserved, 72 years of ago,, smooth.,
shames. 'might about 14$ pounds (Pfe). *its gray but not bald.
Other Poinifft41110.4041111111thenha bit waist' facial expression. Rather serious
but an oviolomso of honor and sessehat reprosao44 His oyes are a
light brown.. In personal appearanso as to dross he is neat although
it is obvious him suit has doss serviee for a long U. Be. report
of Ostober 20th for further details.
FORM C
TcAt of Interview
STATE New York
NANT OF MAKER. Karl Bowman
ADDRESS BO W. 12th S. New York City
DATE' November 9, 1938
cried 1. -Le
SUBJECT MEDICINE SHOW TALES: "THE ARKANSAS 'SHAKES I."
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
"One of Doe. Porter's most powerful and popular Kiokapoo
Indian medicines* that we used to sell when I was with his medicine
show* was his Chill and Ague Eliminator.' It was put up in a square
pint bottle and Doo guaranteed that two bottles would drive out the
worst case of chills on the market. Whether it would or not I don'
know. But I do know it was mighty potent and...;bitter.
"I think it was probably a straight "emulsion" of quinine
and whiskey and the directions told the 'patient' to take enough of
it before his chill started to make him go to sleep.
"Doe's theory was* no doubt* that if a person about to have
a chill could be gotten drunk enough to go to sleep he'd sleep through
his chill period and if he did have one in his sleep* he'd never know
he had it when he waked up and naturally think he had missed it entirely
and was ouredl
"Doe's medicine was strong but it wouldn't have worked on the
kind of chills pimple got down in the Osark country of Arkansas* South
Missouri and over in the Indian Territory where I spent a lot of time
In the carnival business and eihibiting 'dancing turkeys' and other
things at country fairs.
"Down in that country people didn't call chills and ague,
'Chills and ague; they called it the 'shakes.' And that was the
right name. For when a man withe the 'shake.' started to *hake, he
*hook! He oouldn't stop shaking till the chill was over.
"There were two kinds, the everywother-day shakes,' and
the 'everyday shakes.' I had both kinds. They started on me as the
every.-other.day kind and after a week (wino turned into the every -day
kind, then switched back and forth that way, first one sort and then
the other till I finally got rid of them.
"The 'shakes' Were **cannon in the Ozark country along back
in the 18900s, about the time the Star Gong was being busted up in
the Indian Territory and Al Jennings was holding up the M. K. T
trtins„ that practically everybody would have them some time or other,
"And people would talk about their "shakes" with a sort of
pride, something like a lot of people like to talk in these later days
of theirtoperatione after they've been to the hospital and had something
cut out. The herder a man shook when he had the fahakes' the prouder
he seemed to 1)01
"That 'vanity of affliction*" you might say, brought about
one of the queerest contests that was ever pulled off, I suppose. To
me, and I saw it, it had frogftumping matches, horntoadr aces, cock -roach
fights, and all that stuff beaten a mile.
"It was out in the Arkansas River bottom.lands country not
far from Van Buren, during the fall of 1897 or 1898, If I remember
right. Anyhow, I know it was in the fall for two reasons, first
because Abe fall vas when people had most of their 'shakes,' and
the pecans were ripe. Pecans, you know grow naturally an the river
bottom lands down in that country and the harvest of nuts adds quite
a bit to the incomes of the natives who shake them down out of the
trees and sell them.
*There were a couple of brother...dm...laws had married sisters,
who lived on adjoining farms and like is sometimes the case among
country people they suffered from a sort of mutual jealousy. Their
names were Toliver Green and Hank Breckenridge. Each thought his
hound dogs were better than the other's hound dogs; that his hogs
grew faster and fatter, his cow gave more milk, his mule could kick
harder, or he could *hoot a squirrel out of a taller tree with a
single ball rifles or 0=011 in some other way —end the result was
a continual boasting when together.
*They both happened to get the 'shakes' at the same time
and it happened too, that their chills ran on the same hourly schedule
and would hit them at about the same tine each day.
*Toliver Green vowed that the chills he had were the hardest
chills any man in Arkansas ever had or ever could have; Breckenridge
had the same opinion and made the same boast about his own Ithakes.'
*The result was that they agreed to match 'shakes' and Orson
challenged Breckenridge to "shake' it out in a pecan treel
Each was to climb a poem tree just as his chill was about
due to start and see which shook the tree cleanest of pecans before
it was over...
*The 'shaking match' took place in Tolivar Green's pasture
in the Arkansas River bottoms. It was well advertised and a big
crowd of natives came to see it. An old Justice of the Peach. (I
don't recall his name) was to judge the contest.
MI,
a'ata.
"Although it was my 'chill day' too* I went out to see it
and itwas one of the queerest contests I ever witmuised.
°Green and Breckenridge picked out a couple of good tall
pecan trees; each clidbed his tree* straddled a ling,* wrapped his
legs around the trunk of the tree and started to shakel,..,and after
each started he couldn't stop till his chill had run its course.
*Well* at first those darned pecans began to sort of dribble
down out of the trees* like glow rain or hail* then as the chills
got to work in earnest and speeded up Green and Breckenridge's
'shakes' the pecans were coming down in a regular machine-gun tett*
as they hit the ground.
lasted for an hour rnd then each climbed down...and there
wasn't pecan left on either tree! So* the old Justioe of the Peace
declared it a draw...and that's they way it ended. It was kind of
funny seeing those two leatherft.cheeked farmers up in those pecan trees
with the 'shakes', the pecans raining down on the ground...I was sort
of glad Doc. Porter's 'Eliminator' wasn't too all.fired potent. in
Arkansas.'