A Very Important Day - March 26, 2015

As published in the White River Current - Thursday March 26, 2015. (Brenda's Birthday)

It was one of those things that you never forget.  The date was March 25, 1955.   The place was unit 4, apartment 18 in the base housing located on the 577 acre campus of Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado.  Anita and I had been watching a program on the black-and-white 17-inch Admiral unit that we had purchased a few months earlier, when she became tired and went to bed.   Drafted into the army in 1953, I was only a few weeks from being discharged after a two year enlistment.  Anita and I had survived two winters, one mild and one severe, in the mile high Denver suburb and were excited about resuming civilian life in the beautiful Ozark community of Calico Rock, Arkansas.  I had received a direct assignment from the army basic training camp, Camp Pickett, Virginia (now Fort Pickett).  After a long train ride, interrupted by a two week delay-in-route in Calico Rock, Private Perryman reported for duty.  Thinking that I would be working in the hospital pharmacy, I was instead put to work in the medical laboratory, hematology division.  The sergeant in charge of my unit was from Hot Springs and he immediately nicknamed me “Arkie,” a moniker that I was stuck with for the duration.  I made PFC in a few weeks and several months later was promoted to Corporal.  My work in the hospital was more like a civilian job, an eight hour day, five days a week.  Every morning, my partner, Hugh Glissman, and I would take our little baskets of supplies out into the various wards to collect blood specimens that we would being back to the lab and perform the tests that were requested.  Pretty good duty.  We enjoyed our stay in Colorado and went up into the mountains often to admire the beautiful scenery.  The hospital facility was founded by the United States Army during World War I arising from the need to treat the large number of casualties from chemical weapons in Europe.  Denver’s reputation as a prime location for the treatment of tuberculosis led local citizens to lobby the Army on behalf of Denver as the site for the new hospital.  Army Hospital 21, as it was first called, was formally dedicated in the autumn of 1918.  In July 1920, the facility was formally renamed the Fitzsimons Army Hospital after Lt. William T. Fitzsimons, the first American medical officer killed in WWI.  A new main building, known as Building 500, was built in 1941.  At the time, it was the largest structure in Colorado.  The facility was used heavily during WWII to treat returning casualties and became one of the Army’s premier medical training centers.  In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower received treatment at the facility three separate times for his heart condition while he was president.  In an earlier Ramblings column, I wrote about one of his visits.  I was working in the urinalysis department at the lab when an orderly came by with this container of yellow liquid.  I almost did a double-take when I saw the name on the request slip but I recovered and performed the tests which were all normal.  I consider this my “claim to fame.”  Secretary of State John Kerry was born at Fitzsimons Hospital on December 11, 1943, while his father was receiving treatment for tuberculosis.  The facility was decommissioned and closed in 1999 and has been redeveloped for civilian use as the Anschutz Medical Campus, a part of the University of Colorado.  Anyway, Anita had gone to bed and, when I went to check on her, I found that she was having labor pains.  Did I say earlier that she was expecting?  She was, and we began to count the intervals between cramps.  At about 2 AM, we decided we had better go to the hospital, only two blocks away, but it was cold, 2 degrees above zero.  I warmed the car and we drove over, took the elevator up to the sixth floor where we checked into the delivery unit.  After an examination, Anita’s doctor requested that we walk around the halls for a couple of hours to help the dilation process and check back later.  She was admitted at 4 A.M.  They wouldn’t let me stay with her so I went back to the apartment.  When I called over at about 7:30, they reported that she had just delivered a little six pound baby girl.  I rushed over and got to hold my little daughter for the first time.  I was a father.  Now, today, March 26, 2015, BRENDA IS 60.        

Goodbye, winter. Hello, spring! - March 12, 2015

As published in the White River Current - Thursday March 12, 2015

“Oh, the weather outside is frightful.”  Throw another log onto the fire.  Thank goodness spring is just around the corner, next week as a matter of fact, and on my birthday of all things.  I’ll be so glad when the cold, snowy, sleety, icy weather is behind us for another year.  This has been a winter that orthopedic surgeons live for.  For a while, I thought that spring might come a little early this year.  Then came the middle of February and everything hit the skids.  Snow and ice, mainly slick, broken bone ice.  I gave up early trying to shovel my driveway.  I wish I had kept up with the number of times that I heard “whatever happened to Global Warming?”  And, “it could always be worse; you might be living in Boston.”  Remarks like that are supposed to pep you up, I guess.  We have already dismissed church on two Sundays this year because of the weather  .  Highly unusual, but necessary to lessen the opportunity of someone slipping and breaking an arm or leg or having a car accident.  When I was a boy, the unspoken rule in my family was that we went to church regardless of the weather.  Sometimes it was only us and the preacher, but we did our spiritual duty.  I don’t recall anyone falling and we always made it home safely.  Of course, you must remember that I was brought up in the days when we walked to school five miles, barefoot through eight inches of snow, uphill both ways (actually it was only four inches) so we were well prepared for facing the elements on Sunday morning.  Nowadays, with the accurate weather forecasts, phone trees, radio newscasts and internet service, out congregation can be advised well in advance about cancellations of church services or other meetings.  Maybe a little unusual winter, but things could, of course, be worse, and they have been.  For example, back in the winter of 1918, over three feet of snow covered North Arkansas and the White River froze over.  I have heard eyewitness accounts from my parents that things got so bad during a six week period mourners were unable to dig a grave to bury a loved one who had passed away.  I remember the winter of 1951 when the mercury descended to a minus 15.  I read somewhere that the all-time low for Arkansas is minus 22.  Sounds more like Fairbanks than Calico Rock. How about the ice storm of 2009.  We were still living in Missouri, but I heard things got pretty critical for a couple of weeks.  However, it has been a pretty rough winter, especially during February, which I heard was the coldest 28 days in over three decades.  Every thirty years is not too bad and it  does give us a little something different to talk about.  I have always had a hunch that the grocery store people are behind scaring us with these predictions of huge snow amounts.  Ever notice how milk and bread fly off the grocery shelves when the “s” word is mentioned?  I brought this up recently to the new Harp’s manager, Nate, and he didn’t deny it, so there just may be some truth to it.  The snowfall that we had last week was very beautiful and, thankfully, it was mostly gone in a few days.  I am enjoying these 60 degree days.  Let me transition here and go to next week and spring and my birthday.  Now I must insist, NO Gifts Please.  March is birthday month for several members of my family.  Very often I go into a deep depression for ten days after celebrating my birthday.  You see, for that ten day period, I’m as old as Harold Jeffery.  Scary, isn’t it?  Usually after March 30^th, I recover rapidly and everything returns to normal for another year.  Anyway, goodbye old man winter.  You were kinda hard on us this year so remember to treat us a little kinder when you return in December.  While I’m in a complaining mood, I find it very aggravating  to have to get out of bed at 2 AM twice a year to reset my clocks, one hour forward in the spring and one hour back in the fall.  It  messes up my metabolism and takes me about six months to settle things down when I have to go through it again.  We went for centuries without having to fool with changing the time and I think we can do it again.  What do you readers think?   

Small Town Life - February 26, 2015

As published in the White River Current - Thursday February 26, 2015

I was born in Calico Rock, a long time ago.  A lot of the Rambling’s columns have been about my growing up in a small town in the Ozarks, population about one thousand, more or less.  I’m too lazy to go back and read all the stories that have come to my mind while I am sitting at the computer, hammering out a page about my escapades while I was a youth.  Amazing to me, but very often someone still comes up to me and comments about my column.  A few even say that they enjoy it.  This is episode No. 76 and I hope to make it to No. 100 which may occur in early 2016.  Times have changed a lot over the last eight decades.  Small towns have many of the same problems that large cities do, except their problems may be, well, smaller.  Survival depends on how the communities adjust to the changes.  For instance, in Calico Rock employment opportunities are fewer, the average age of our citizens has increased, several businesses have closed, but, on the bright side, some new businesses have opened and the census is at an all-time high.  When I was in business, quite often I remarked that I enjoyed living in Calico Rock.  I liked the friendly people, I enjoyed my church, and, in many ways, it was the ideal community to raise a family; if only, I would continue to say, we were closer to a metropolitan area.  I have since become convinced that our location is just about right.  Almost fifteen years ago, Anita and I began spending most of our time in Ozark, Missouri, six miles south of Springfield, the third largest city in Missouri, behind Kansas City and St. Louis in population.  We sold our motor home and moved into my Aunt’s home when she was admitted to a nursing facility.  Eventually we built a new house in a small subdivision in Ozark, sold the Calico Rock home where we had resided for over 45 years and settled into life in Missouri.  We found a church and Sunday school and made many new friends.  We had great neighbors, all of which were young, working adults with small children. We were within five miles of three Wal-Mart Supercenters.  Battlefield Mall was a short distance away as were restaurants, theaters and a plethora of other places willing to supply their services and merchandise in exchange for an agreed upon amount of currency.  Life was good…for awhile.  After our last grandchild graduated from high school and left for college, we stopped, took a deep breath and took stock of our situation.  The enjoyment of attending the grandkids ball games, wrestling matches and family get-togethers had suddenly ceased.  We both decided the time had come to go “home.”  We sold our home in Ozark, took the money and built a new residence near the Calico Rock hospital and have happily settled in for the duration.  We both miss the friends and family that we left back in Missouri, especially the great-grandchildren that have come along since we were there.  We do not miss the heavy traffic, rude drivers and the general fast pace of life.  We are convinced we made the right decision.  We tried it, sorta liked it but like it better here.  We see new people move into our area quite often, coming from the North, South and other areas of the U.S.  I’ve often wondered why they decided to move to this small town in such a rural area, so I plan to ask some of them, and if they will give me permission I will report my findings in a future column.  A couple of weeks ago, Angelia Roberts, a Calico Rock HS graduate who is Executive Director of Ad/Ed for the Batesville Guard newspaper, posted a very well written column for her publication that she entitled “Pulling Together.”  The subjects of her article were Calico Rock residents, Gene and Reva Lockie.  The Lockies were married 68 years ago at the Little Brown Church in the Vale which is located about ten miles from Gene’s birthplace in Charles City, Iowa.  Angelia writes that during a trip to Calico Rock several years later the couple happened to visit Lover’s Leap where they watched the White River wind between the bluffs and the farmland below.  Reva turned to Gene and remarked that her dream was to someday see that view for the rest of her life.  That became a reality in 1987 when they purchased the bluff home that became their permanent residence a year later.  Two people from “off” that have helped make Calico Rock a better place to live.     

Music, music, music - February 12, 2015

As published in the White River Current - Thursday February 12, 2015

Put another nickel in; In the nickelodeon; All I want is having you and Music, Music, Music.  So went the million-seller hit recorded by Teresa Brewer in 1950.  Several of my articles have contained references about  music, so you readers should be aware that it has been a big part of my life.  I began taking piano lessons in the first grade and continued all the way through high school and the first year of college.  I think if I had continued with the lessons, I might be a good pianist; instead I am only a fair piano player.  Never-the-less, I have developed a great love for music.  All music, you know, is created from a combination of twelve musical sounds and tones (notes) played at different locations on the musical scale, from treble to bass. “Music is that elevated science that affects the passions by sound.  There are few who have not felt its charms and acknowledged its expressions to be intelligible to the heart.  It is a language of delightful sensations, far more eloquent than words.  It breathes to the ear the clearest intimations; it touches and gently agitates the agreeable and sublime passions; it wraps us in melancholy, elevates us in joy and melts us in tenderness.  Ah! Music, music, art divine; thou dost  move and stir the heart as nothing else can do.  Yet never canst thou sweet potency be better used than when it expresses praise and gratitude to the great God and Master of us all.”  The words between the quotations are a recitation that I gave at performances of the Drug Store Cowboys before we launched into a rousing medley of gospel songs to bring an end to our program.  I believe I have mentioned the Cowboys in earlier issues of the Ramblings column, but to refresh your memory, it was a country/western band composed of pharmacists mostly back in the 80s.  My good friend and faithful Ramblings reader, Don, and I were charter members of this group.  Don was the lead vocalist and I played (carried) the banjo and we both shared MC duties.  We played in the bandstand at the CR Riverside Festival one year.  The highlight of our career was playing a performance at a national pharmacy convention at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas.  The group has mainly disbanded but Don and two others (Bill and James) have continued to perform, primarily in the Little Rock area, as the Drug Store Cowboys Trio.  Don told me that they had four gigs lined up for this week (keep it up, guys).  Since we are on the subject of music and I mentioned piano lessons, maybe I should give a little space about my piano teachers.  My first teacher was Miss Ruby Kate Evans.  She was the daughter of Levi, one of the Evans brothers who owned the drug store.  She taught me all the basics such as the music staff, scales, key signatures, etc.  She was the church pianist and, after about three years of lessons, I began playing along with her on an old pump organ while she played the piano during the church services.  Miss Ruby Kate became ill and died when she was only 52 years old.  My next teacher was Mrs. Montgomery.  She taught me more of the fundamentals and the importance of timing.  My teacher for the next several years was Mrs. Gertrude Houck.  She taught me a love of the classics from composers like Chopin, Beethoven and other musical greats and had me playing pieces like “Minute Waltz,” “Moonlight Sonata” and other difficult selections plus fun things like boogie-woogie and ragtime numbers.  One of Mrs. Houck’s students from the early 50s, Bob Hudson, recently did a genealogy search and discovered that a German resident, Gertrude Fugmann, wed a WWI veteran, Alfred Houck, in New York, soon after crossing the Atlantic on the ship, SS St. Paul, on July 7, 1922.  The newlyweds left soon after and established their residence at Alfred’s ancestral home in or near Coffeyville, Kansas.  Our real interest begins when the Houcks moved to the Iuka community of Izard County, Arkansas, in the spring of 1942.  That fits my timetable because I became Mrs. Houck’s piano student in September, 1942 and studied with her for five years.  She was a concert pianist, a graduate of a conservatory in Germany.  She loved to perform.  At every recital, after the students had done their thing, she would explain that her pupils had asked her to play, so she did, in grand style.          

Ancient History - January 29, 2015

As published in the White River Current - Thursday January 29, 2015

Two weeks ago, after the newspaper was delivered to the subscribers, I began to receive questions and comments about the Rambling’s column, particularly about the incident when Jay Baker buzzed Calico Rock in his F-86 (?) fighter jet.  One of the readers (Gaye) notified me that she was related to Jay through the Matthews family. It seems like one thing always leads to another, particularly when you are sitting at your computer trying to beat the deadline for the next offering of your rambling thoughts.  Amazing what the old brain comes up with once you give it the opportunity.  Continuing with the thread that I started in the last column, Jay’s grandfather, Seth Matthews, was once the mayor of Calico Rock.  One of his granddaughters married Thomas Jones. (Note to self:  Self, ask Betty at bible study if Thomas and family still live in the Kansas City area).  Seth and family lived in the former VanWinkle house on the southwest corner of the old high school property, near where the present elementary school is located.  Mrs. VanWinkle, formerly Bethel Copp (sister of the doctor), was the high school math teacher.  She taught me everything that I needed to know about algebra (9^th grade) and geometry (10^th grade).  Perhaps I should mention some of my other teachers, Miss Hattie Croom, of course, was my first grade teacher (kindergarten hadn’t been invented yet).  She had been in the school system about forty years when I came along and she taught several more years afterward.  Mrs. Wilkerson taught the combined second and third grades.  She was a wonderful, kind person.  It was a giant leap from the third grade to the fourth grade where the teacher was Mrs. Maye Brumitt.  She was the former Maye Evans, youngest daughter of Leonard (Uncle Lynn) Evans, one of the brothers who owned the drug store.  She put the fear in us, scaring us with things like six-week tests, etc.  Thankfully she was about eight months pregnant and only stayed  a few weeks.  Very soon after her baby boy was born, she moved to California with her husband, Bud.  I don’t recall who the new teacher was.  My fifth grade teacher was Leola Perryman, wife of my cousin, Kenneth, who worked with his brother (Wm. Reed) and father (my uncle, J. Elbert) in the family hardware business.  Mrs. Tarkington was my sixth grade teacher.  Her husband was the high school principal.  All six grades were taught in rooms on the first floor of the old two-story school building.  By the way, there was no indoor plumbing in the building.  School offices and grades 7-12 were located on the building’s upper story which was accessed by two wide staircases.  The combination study hall/auditorium occupied about half of the upper story and was used as a classroom, also.  There were three other classrooms.  The agriculture and home economics buildings were located nearby.  The only surviving structure is the home-ec building which is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.  Teachers in the high school included John Rollo, M. T. Mason, Bethel VanWinkle, Opal Toothaker, Rosa Mae Warren, Fred Bryson, James Bell, Euel Story, Maude Story, Gertrude Houck and probably some I can’t recall.  Many of you readers have never heard of any of the above named individuals but each one has in some manner had an influence on my life.  Here in the twilight of my life, I have come to the conclusion that sometimes (maybe) things don’t just happen, but occur for a particular reason.  Too many things cannot be explained by coincidence. We may not realize it at the time, but looking back we begin to wonder.  I will discuss Mrs. Houck and maybe some of the others mentioned in a future article.  Today, I want to finish this column with an excerpt from an article that I read recently.  It seems the Dalai Lama was resting at a lodge, when a young waitress inquired if she might ask the Dalai Lama a question.  With complete seriousness, she spoke “What is the meaning of life?”  The Dalai Lama answered, “Easy question.  The meaning of life is happiness.  Hard question is what make happiness.  Money?  Big House?  Accomplishment?  Friends?  Or…” He paused.  “Compassion and good heart?  This is question all human beings must try to answer: What make TRUE happiness?”  Wow!  I wish I’d said that.       

In with the new - January 15, 2015

As published in the White River Current - Thursday January 15, 2015

Goodness gracious, as my mother would say, here it is the middle of January, we have already seen two Season 5 episodes of  Downton Abbey and this is the first chance that I have had the opportunity to say “Happy New Year” to all you faithful readers.  I don’t know about you, but I didn’t make any resolutions this year so I can truthfully answer to anyone who poses the question, “No, I haven’t broken any yet.”  Did you hear the mill whistle at midnight New Year’s Eve?  Bobby’s mom, Gloria, called me the next morning to ask if I had heard it.  Bobby made a trade with Mark and now owns the old steam whistle that used to inform the flooring mill employees, at 7 AM on weekday mornings, that it was time to start work. (they always had a couple of get-ready toots at five minutes til).  He had rigged the whistle up to an air tank.  No, I didn.t hear it.  I might have stayed up if I had only known.  I sang “Auld Lang Syne” at about 10:30; couldn’t even stay awake long enough to see the ball drop at Times Square.  I feel like the old codger with the long white beard that the cartoonists portray as the old year that is ending.  I got an e-mail from Don (one of my readers) who wrote “You know, we realized we were getting pretty old when the New Year’s Eve music changed from Guy Lombardo’s stylish arrangements to some guy yelling ‘Who Let the Dogs Out?’”  Anyway, hope you all have a Happy, Healthy and Safe 2015.  I drove by the shell of the old Hamon’s building last week.  Nothing left but the four concrete walls and memories.  I then drove across the wagon bridge to old town.  I had heard that Mark had done a lot of cleaning and hauling off the junk from around the old Magnolia Petroleum Oil Company office building.  When I was a boy, my dad was the representative (consignee) of the oil company, sold and delivered Mobil gas and oil and kerosene to service stations and other dealers in the area.  Cindy took a photo of the old building which is beyond repair and will probably soon disappear from the Calico Rock landscape.  Hard to believe now, but I have seen flood waters up into the office of this historic building.  I asked Cindy to include her photo in this issue if she has the space.  Over the next several columns, I intend to write about families and individuals that have had, in some small or sometime large way, an influence on my life.  Some of these people are still living, many are not.  Most, but not all, are local.  Many you have known or heard about, some you have not.  I’ve been thinking about this for some time and have no idea where it is going but I am going to give it a try.  Let me know your comments.  In my last column, I referred to Tom* as my close friend and mentor.  He had a great influence on my writing the Ramblings column.  Sadly, Tom* passed away in January last year.  I want to add two others to the “Hail and Farewell” list.  Back in 2001, Anita and I decided to sell our motor home.  We placed an ad in the classifieds of the Baxter Bulletin and right away received a phone call from a couple of Mountain Home residents who wanted to come down and see our RV.  They arrived soon and introductions were made:  “I’m Jay Baker and this is my wife, Kitty,” the man said.  Early one afternoon, about 45 years earlier, I was attending to something near the front of the store when all at once I heard this very loud noise that sounded as if the entire top of the store was exploding.  I rushed out the front door in time to see a fighter jet airplane travelling very fast, then pulling straight up in a corkscrew fashion for several hundred feet before levelling out and heading back west. “ Probably Jay Baker,” someone said.  “He buzzed the Seth Matthews house.  Seth is Jay’s granddad.”  Jay admitted that was him alright.  He said that after he woke up his granddad, he continued up the river, making a low pass over his Aunt Fern Norman’s farm, finally making a low run up Main Street in Mt. Home.  They didn’t buy my RV.  Kitty didn’t like the green upholstery.  I never saw them again.  Jay, a 1948 graduate of MH High School, died December 27 at the age of 84.  Joe Wyatt, a pharmacist and mayor of Mountain View at the same time I was mayor of Calico Rock, died last fall at the age of 90.  We were classmates in Pharmacy School.  There’s not many of us left.   


Note from Steve:
We were in Calico Rock on Saturday January 17 so I went by the old Magnolia Petroleum Oil Company office building that dad mentions in this article to take a picture.  This is what it looks like today.  Notice the concrete piers on the right of the picture where the fuel tanks were mounted.  

            

Out with the old - December 31, 2014

As published in the White River Current - Wednesday December 31, 2014

It should have occurred to me, when I signed off two weeks ago, that the Current would be available on Wednesday this week because of the New Year’s holiday tomorrow.  I was all set for a Ramblings article about resolutions, etc. and the year that is before us.  Instead I am offering some thoughts about the year that is just ending and am giving another look at Christmas, which isn’t really over until January 6^th (look up “epiphany”).  Remember the Ozarks version of The Twelve Days of Christmas:  “…and a possum up a gum tree?”  Many people skip this important part of the Christmas season.  They start putting up decorations soon after Thanksgiving and they come down right after December 25^th.  I feel certain that all you loyal readers have been nice and not naughty and that Santa was very generous when he visited your home a few days ago.  Our family will not be getting together until Friday, two days into the New Year, but still within the Christmas season.  When the children marry and have families of their own and are scattered, the logistics of finding a time for everyone to be together can be problematic to say the least.  As a philosopher once observed, “you just do what you have to do.”  The entire month of December has a lot of meaning for the Perryman family.  My sister was born on December 1^st.  She would have been 90 this year.  My mom and dad were married on December 23^rd and Dad’s birthday was on December 24^th.  I remember years ago when we would ring the church bell for several minutes, drivers would toot their car horns and the flooring mill whistle would all announce the arrival of the New Year.  Nowadays I do my best to stay awake until the ball drops at Times Square, then it’s off to dreamland.  PBS had several holiday specials again this year.  I particularly enjoyed the Bing Crosby, Tennessee Ernie and Mormon Tabernacle Choir specials.  I just remembered an exceptional New Year’s Eve, probably 1950, when the Ozarks Cavaliers orchestra played for the fireman’s ball in Harrison.  These outstanding  musicians were students at the College of the Ozarks, located in Clarksville, Arkansas.  Two of my roommates, Fred (trumpet) and Don (vocals), and I (piano) were members of this group.  Great times.  Anyway, one of my favorite TV programs is “CBS Sunday Morning” which was first aired on January 28, 1979, with Charles Kuralt as program host.  The weekly show has run continuously ever since, with Charles Osgood  replacing the retiring Kuralt in April, 1994.  A regular feature, usually run on the last Sunday of the year, is called “Hail, and Farewell,” in which attention is given to celebrities or other persons of national importance who have died during the year.  This feature was part of the program this past Sunday.  Among those highlighted were the following:  Tom Magliozzi, who, with brother, Ray, made up the team known as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, on the NPR show, “Car Talk,” on which they dispensed humor and advice about repairing cars; Movie stars Lauren Bacall, Robin Williams, Polly Bergen and James Garner; Stars from my childhood Mickey Rooney and Shirley Temple; Comedian Sid Caesar; singer/composer/political activist Pete Seeger; Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers Duo; and Paul Revere, leader of the Raiders.  All passed away this year.  Hail and Farewell.  We continue to mourn for those friends, relatives and area citizens that departed during the last twelve months.  I still greatly miss my friend and mentor, Tom* Johns, whose column appeared in this publication on alternate weeks with the Ramblings.  Also of mention is the loss of another Calico Rock Landmark.  The Hamon’s building, located in Pettersauce Alley, burned last week.  Back in the forties and Fifties, there were three grocery stores on lower Main Street, Floyd’s, Estes Brothers and Harris.  Ray and Audra Hamon erected and operated their business, selling groceries, dry goods, cattle feed and other supplies until their retirement, enduring several devastating floods, never giving up.  Both have been gone for several years but not forgotten.  Their granddaughter, Cindy, is editor of this newspaper.