Cedartown sits beside a great highway which was once a buffalo
trail. If you start in one direction on the highway--and travel
far enough--you will come to the effete east. If you start in the
opposite direction--and travel a few hundred miles farther--you
will come to the distinctive west. Cedartown is neither effete nor
distinctive, nor is it even particularly pleasing to the passing
tourist. It is beautiful only in the eyes of those who live here
and in the memories of the Nebraska-born whose dwelling in far
places has given them moments of homesickness for the low rolling
hills, the swell and dip of the ripening wheat, the fields of
sinuously waving corn and the elusively fragrant odor of alfalfa.
There are weeks when drifting snow and sullen sleet hold the
Cedartown community in their bitter grasp. There are times when
hot winds come out of the southwest and parch it with their
feverish breath. There are periods of monotonous drouth and
periods of dreary rain; but between these onslaughts there are days
so perfect, so filled with clover odors and the rich, pungent smell
of newly turned loam, so sumac-laden and apple-burdened, that to
the prairie-born there are no others as lovely by mountain or lake
or sea.
The paved streets of Cedartown lie primly parallel over the
obliterated tracks of the buffalo. The substantial buildings of
Cedartown stand smartly over the dead ashes of Indian campfires.
There are very few people left now in the community who have seen
the transition,--who have witnessed the westward trek of the last
buffalo, the flicker of the last burnt-out ember.
Old Abbie Deal was one of these.
Just outside the corporate limits of Cedartown stands the old Deal
home. It was once a farm-house, but the acreage around it has been
sold, and Cedartown has grown out to meet it, so that a newcomer
could not know where the town ceased and the country began.
The house stands well back from the road in a big yard with a long
double row of cedars connecting the formal parlor entrance and the
small front gate. However, in the days when the Deals lived there,
scarcely any one used the little gate, or walked up the grassy path
between the cedars. All comers chose to enter by the wide carriage-
gate standing hospitably open and beckoning a welcome to the lane
road which runs past a row of Lombardy poplars to the sitting-room
porch.
The house itself is without distinction. There were no architects
in the community when the first of its rooms were built. "We'll
have the living-room there and the kitchen here," one told old Asy
Drumm. And old Asy, with few comments and much tobacco-chewing,
placed the living-room there and the kitchen here. The result was
weatherproof, sturdy and artless. When the country was new, homes,
like dresses, were constructed more for wearing qualities than
beauty.
