Hard Times No. 2 - October 11, 2013

As published in the White River Current - Thursday October 11, 2013 “Hey, Bill. Did you hear that John broke his leg this morning?” “No, I hadn’t heard that. How did it happen?” “Well, he fell out of the persimmon tree while he was eating breakfast.” I don’t know whether I should call this a humorous tale or not but I heard it repeated many times back in the depression years of the “thirties.” I had several comments on my last article about “Hard Times” so I thought I might continue with more stories about my early years. Some of this I may have written about before. Anyway, I was born in Calico Rock in the early thirties, in the small house across the street from the present library/city hall. In small towns (and sometime in larger towns), houses have names referring to present or past residents. Examples of this are the Mixon house or the Judge Hammett house. Anyway, I was born in the Copp house. When I was about six months old, we moved to a two-story frame house at the top of the hill on West First Street known as the Dr. Matthews house. This house was next door (West) to the Dr. Smith house and we lived there about a year then moved to the William Wayland house, a large two-store yellow house that was located on the corner of what is now Park Street and Highway 56. Hold your place here while I explain that in 1969 I purchased this house from the owners, Frank and Verneice, and moved my drug store from Main Street into a new building that I had built after moving the house (which Frank had converted to a single story home) to a location in East Calico Rock. OK, after a year or so in the Wayland house, we moved back to West First Street into a house that was next door and East of the Dr. Smith house. I remember a lot about this house. This was close to downtown and the railroad and we had hobos quite often come to the back door and ask for food. I mentioned this in the last article. I have heard that the hobos had a system of notifying other hungry travelers who were riding the rails about where they could get something to eat. There were several young children, about my age who lived nearby so I had a lot of playmates. The Marchants lived across the street and their youngest son, Wade, was closest to my age so we played together along with Max and Billy Charles. Very early every morning, Mr. Marchant could be seen leading his milk cow down the hill and over to the Rand pasture where she would graze until late afternoon when he would bring her back to the house to milk, an everyday routine. He worked long days as part of the section gang on the railroad, replacing old crossties and otherwise keeping the trains safely moving to their destination. Joe was a part of the citizenry of our country referred to as the “common people” but are anything but common. I prefer to call them the “Salt of the Earth.” Hard Times. During the day, Wade sometime would visit and sit on the front porch with his elderly neighbor, Aunt Sally. Their conversation might go like this: Someone would occasionally drive or walk down the street in front of the house and Aunt Sally would lean forward in her rocking chair and say “Well, who are we?” Wade, in the other rocking chair, would answer “Well, you’re Sally and I’m Wade.” Believe me, this was funny, so maybe you can conjure up a mental picture of it. I wrote about the Hagars in a previous article. To refresh your memory, the youngest daughter, Johnnie Fay, was about my age. We spent many hours sitting on the floor in front of her mother while she taught us our ABCs and numbers. I could read and do some simple math when I entered the first grade. Sometime the girls and boys would gather in our yard and play games such as tag, annie over, drop the handkerchief and “ring around the rosie.” If these were hard times, we kids didn’t know it. Great memories of our house on West First Street but after a couple of years, we moved to the rock house on Red Lane. I was five years old. We’ll continue the saga when I see you in two weeks. Bye for now!