Newspapers: James R. Lytle; LaSalle, Louisiana Submitted by Jack Willis Date: 11 Oct 2004 Source: From the Jena Times - Olla Tullos Signal, Woodlands And Waterways Echoes Date: October 2004 ************************************************ Submitted to the LAGenWeb Archives ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** *********************************************** James R. Lytle As a lad growing up in what was then considered North Jena a familiar figure I would always notice walking across the Humphries property, up the street from where I lived, in the early mornings and late evenings was Mr. Jim Lytle. He always wore a high-peaked locomotive engineer's cap and his customary attire was a blue chambray shirt and overalls, but the most outstanding characteristic was that he always walked with a noticeable limp, with one leg obviously shorter that the other. And there was a good reason for this affliction we'll get into later. In the early 40's times were hard, even during World War II and a host of people walked to town, especially on Saturdays when every one congregated to purchase their bills of groceries and visit. On the contrary, Mr. Jim Lytle walked to town to the Louisiana & Arkansas maintenance shed six days a week oblivious to weather. On inclement days with it raining straight down, his familiar slicker suit clad figure could always be seen trudging to and fro from his house to the railroad tracks. His home was located just north of the present site of Jena High School. The L & A maintenance shed was located next to the railroads tracks at the end of Jena's only boulevard at the time, two blocks directly behind Dr. T.H. Gaharan's clinic. Mr. Jim spent most of his time around the tool shed pulling maintenance on the locomotives that plied the rail line from Packton to Vidalia. Another of his duties was to keep the huge water tank stationed beside the tracks, about halfway between the maintenance shed and Hemp's Creek, full of water for the steam engines when they came through and in need of a refill. There was a centrifugal pump sitting on a ledge on the bank of the creek, with its gasoline engine having to be primed and started at least twice a day. And it was a almost a half-mile to the pumping site, so Mr. Lytle didn't have very much idle time working for the L & A. James Rudolph Lytle was born in Harrisonburg, LA on March 10th, 1884, the son of a Baptist Circuit rider minister, James Obadiah Lytle and the former Martha Aaron of Harrisonburg. The couple's other children were Tom, Phillip and Mary. When the siblings were very young the children's mother died, so the distraught father carried them along the ministry circuit giving the children to whoever would promise to care for them until adulthood. Jim had the misfortune to land in with a widow who had a farm on the east bank of the Ouachita River at Harrisonburg, with her making it so rough on him, he ran away in 1896 to the western edge of what was then Catahoula Parish. The Forsyth Gelvin family in the area known as Big Bend, on Trout Creek, near the Eden community took him in until he was 17 years of age and able to find employment on his own. He remained grateful all his life to the Gelvin family for adopting him. James Lytle relocated to Jena in 1907 just as the Trout and Good pine mills were getting up a full head of steam an went to work for the Louisiana & Arkansas Railroad and took unto himself a wife on April 22, 1909 when he married Misses Melissa Eloise McCollum. He remained in the employ of the L &A and Louisiana Midland rail lines most of his life with a couple of exceptions when he went to West Carroll Parish to try his hand at farming. Jim Lytle's work description was Locomotive Maintenance Engineer and he had a natural bent towards keeping the huge engines in perfect mechanical and running order whether they burned coal or wood. As a farmer he was not so adept, although he worked long hours at this alternative occupation. He was very interested in growing a multitude of varied flora that he sought out to cultivate and making monumental efforts at turning his brown thumb into a green one. His hobbies were hunting and fishing and making wine. Anytime you sighted Mr. Jim, he would be wearing the familiar blue-striped railroad cap, which earned him the nickname of "Cap". In 1917 Mr. Jim was involved in a freakish accident concerning a load of logs the L& A train transporting to the Good Pine mill. One account says he was operating the locomotive and had stopped to "water up" on Brushley Bayou east of Rhinehart, LA. Somehow, as the account goes, a binder on a flat car holding a pyramid of logs came loose and one of the errant logs rolled on Mr. Jim's leg, as he happened to be passing by. He was rushed to the company doctor's office where a miserable job of setting the leg took place, which left one leg shorter than the other and grotesquely curved, which would plague him for the rest of his days. The crippled leg never seemed to bother him because he was always happy, full of fun, and loved to tease his wife Melissa to get her "riled up" so she would "light into him and give him the dickens." He would then sit back and watch and listen to her, his eyes would gleam with mirth, and he would take the occasion to duck out the back door if things got too rough. On one occasion he told her, "You're gonna be sorry one day when I'm buried and gone from you and I want you to write on my tombstone, "not dead, but asleep". She then replied, "I'll do that very thing and underneath it, I'll add: For God's sake, don't wake him up!" After James Rudolph Lytle passed away on May 13th, 1961, he was buried in the Lytle Family plot beside his wife in the Nolley Memorial Methodist Church Cemetery in Jena, LA. In his belongings was found a yellowed newspaper clipping from a Natchez, Mississippi newspaper containing the obituary of his father, James Obadiah Lytle. It was dated January 27th, 1920 and tells of his father's death in Vidalia. The article simply stated that James O. was born in New Orleans and that he lived a good part of his life in Catahoula and Concordia Parishes. James Rudolph Lytle did too. W&WE (10-04) JMW