The first thing noticeable about 73-year-old Tom Elliott, even at a distance, is his big white mustache.
He is tall and lean, his handshake is firm, and his hands are rough from hard work. The Texas native looks like a cowboy, he talks like a cowboy, and he basically is one.
He and his wife of 47 1/2 years, Cheryle, live on 345 acres in Van Buren County, east of Botkinburg. The Elliotts have been on the land for 42 years.
“We came up on vacation from Texas looking for land,” Elliott said. “We couldn’t afford land in Texas. It was cheap compared to Texas.”
He was a union iron worker in Texas and has been in real estate in Van Buren County for 40 years.
For the past 15 years or so, he’s been restoring farm wagons and chuck wagons. His large shop and barn have plenty of examples of his handiwork.
“I just always had a horse when I was a kid; I used to break horses,” he said. “I got interested in wagons.”
“I see this as preserving western history,” he said. “It’s preserving the history of wagons and chuck wagons.”
The first one he bought was a John Deere wagon, which he turned into a chuck wagon.
“Any farm wagon can be turned into a chuck wagon,” Elliott said. “You can have $15,000 in it, easy.”
He said it requires antique pieces, “as well as a lot of Dutch ovens.”
He has websites where the wagons are sold: springfieldwagon.com, and cowboycooking.com., which is also where the couple’s Bar E Ranch Chuck Wagon Cookbook is sold, along with antiques, cookware, old cowboy photographs and more.
Elliott said the Springfield Wagon Co. was moved from Missouri to Fayetteville in 1942 and went out of business in 1951 because of lack of demand for wagons. He bought the rights to the domain name about a year ago, he said.
One wagon, with the words “The Bain” painted on the side, sits in his shop. It’s from 1900, Elliott said, and he bought it from a man in Missouri.
“The box and floor were not any good,” he said.
He used an old advertisement for the wagon to replicate it, he said, showing before-and-after photos.
“Everything is put back authentic like the original,” he said.
“He’s a perfectionist,” Cheryle said. “I’m proud of him.”
He wants every part to be authentic — au-then-tic. Don’t even mention rubber wheels.
“They’re popular,” he said, but he uses steel.
Restoring a 100-year-old wagon isn’t something a person is born knowing how to do.
“You learn by doing,” Elliott said.
Chuck wagons — portable kitchens — were used on cattle drives and would go ahead of the riders, Elliott said.
“They fixed breakfast about daylight and would have supper,” he said.
The Elliotts, with their son, Cody, and daughter, Jamie Elliott, published the Bar E Ranch Chuckwagon Cookbook that has everything from Cheryle’s jalapeno bread recipe to instructions on how to blanch cactus. It contains old family recipes and a historical view of cooking in the Army of the Old West, along with pioneer recipes from early frontier days. It’s sprinkled with definitions of old cowboy words.
The chuck box was invented by Texan Charles Goodnight, an early pioneer trail rider, Elliott said.
“The Mexican people, they had a cart, like a two-wheeled cart, but it was too slow, and they couldn’t carry enough.”
Elliott is a walking encyclopedia of wagon knowledge.
His first wagon, the John Deere, didn’t have much paint on it when he got it. It was purchased locally, he said, from a man who bought it and had kept it in his barn.
“We think it’s late ’30s,” he said, adding that it was new when it was purchased at South Side Gin Co., south of Clinton.
Many wagons come to Elliott in poor shape because people don’t realize that if they sit in a barn, the wheels need to be on blocks, or the moisture will cause them to rot.
“I can’t stand to see a wagon sitting outdoors; it’ll cause it to rot,” he said.
Elliott pointed out the authentic characteristics of the chuck wagon he created: the “possum belly” underneath, which is a piece of cowhide to hold wood or buffalo chips for a fire; the water barrel on one side; the chuck box — the area in the back for food and cooking; the back boot, a place underneath the floor in the rear of the wagon for the Dutch ovens; a coffee grinder attached to the side; and a fold-down metal cooktop.
He rummaged around in wooden drawers, holding up vintage utensils, including an eggbeater and a rolling pin. He pulled out a metal spatula and sieve that he made in the blacksmith shop he uses.
Elliott has a friend with a blacksmith shop where Elliott can duplicate any metal part he needs, including hinges.
“It has to be authentic to that period,” he said of the equipment.
He’s meticulous — the screws are Phillips screws, he pointed out.
“Wagons didn’t have many hex-headed screws,” he said.
Rough-hewn lumber is cut and air dried; then he planes it to the size he needs — 7/8th inch planks for the floor, sideboards and seat.
An Amish man in Missouri is Elliott’s wheelwright. Elliott can’t pick up the phone and place an order to the Amish man because the Amish eschew electricity.
“You have to write him a letter,” Elliott said. Then it’s a three-hour drive to the man’s house from the Elliotts’ home.
One of Elliott’s friends who has a body shop spray-paints the boxes on the wagons. The boxes are usually made of pine, hickory or white oak because they are lighter woods. The spokes of the wheels are often white oak or hickory, “a real tough wood,” Elliott said.
The wagon tongues are made from ash.
“I’m probably the only place in the country that can build an authentic-built spring,” he said, pointing it out on the gear, or base, of a wagon. Again, he relies on his Amish connections.
He pointed out an orange-and-black wagon with the words “Rock Island” painted on the side.
“This is interesting. We’re 90 percent certain it was sold new at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas,” he said.
The Texas School Book Depository is the former name of the building from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy, and the site previously was owned by the Southern Rock Island Plow Co.
Elliott doesn’t just enjoy researching, building and restoring wagons; he rides them, hooking up his draft mules, Thelma and Louise.
One of his favorite things to do is participate in wagon trains with his son, Cody, 42. They camp on the trail with a group of people who have wagons and a similar love for the cowboy tradition.
“I did 100 miles on the Cherokee Trail,” Elliott said. He also went 200 miles on the Spanish trail in Colorado and New Mexico and 100 miles on a Kansas cattle drive.
Every October, he and Cody participate in the 80-mile Red Steagall wagon train in Texas. The Elliotts have a specially designed trailer that can hold his wagon and the mules. The trailer contains a small sleeping area, a bathroom and a kitchen.
“We’ll work them every day for two weeks to get their muscles built up,” he said of the mules.
Elliott built a jail wagon and took it on a Red Steagall ride three years ago, he said.
“Talk about something that attracted attention. Every time we stopped, somebody wanted to get in it,” he said.
They have to dress the part on these wagon trains, too — no ball caps or tennis shoes allowed — or rubber tires on the wagons.
Elliott said he and his son have driven wagons, counting the wagon trains, “probably 1,500 miles.”
Asked if he was born in the wrong time in history, Elliott laughed.
“Yeah, I was,” he said.
“He’s said that all his life,” Cheryle said. “He would have loved living back then.”
Instead, Elliott puts his passion for that period of history into each wagon he restores and each trail he rides.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.