of Growing Up in NW Arkansas.
We grew up in White Rock Community, about 10 miles, as the Crow flies, North of Pleasant View School. My sister, Mary, graduated in 1956 and my older brother, Arnold, was a couple of years later. Mary went to college in Branson. We lived on a 360 acre farm. Didn’t farm much but grandpa raised a few things. I loved watching all the neighbors gather together in the fall and make Sorghum Molasses at the old Likens homestead on our farm. Grandpa raised the sugar cane. After it lay in the field following the cutting, grandpa would hitch the wagon and drive it down the rows. We kids would help load it full and then haul it over to the homestead where they had the horse/mule tied up to the pole where he walked around in circles and turned two drums. A man would feed the Cane into the rollers and catch the juice in a bucket below on the ground. It was dumped in a long shallow vat where a fire was stoked beneath the vat and began the process of cooking and skimming. I wrote about it in one of my blogs. It was a great show!
We rode the school bus to Pleasant view. Seemed like it took a while on that old dirt road, going around to all the farms and collecting the kids. Dad worked as a pipeline welder putting in miles of Natural Gas pipe across Arkansas. Also worked for a man down on Pettit Jean Mountain……I think he was a Rockefeller, as I recall. Grandpa died when I was about 7 and dad was gone a lot, working the pipeline. We kept the farm running during the week until dad came home on weekends. We milked cows, fed chickens and pigs and did all that stuff you do on a farm. We had a very large garden that required a lot of work to produce what we needed for the winter. Mom canned a few hundred quarts of everything she could so we could survive the winters.
We went into Ozark once a week or two to do business. The old man at our insurance company would always come over to us boys and say, “have you boys had your ice cream today?” Course, we never did, so he gave us each a dime for an ice cream cone. He was very nice to us. Mom and Dad would pick up grocery staples to get us by; flour by the big sack, sugar, etc. We would get to ride in the back of Dad’s pickup. It had a cattle rack on the bed and he would let us climb up and hold on going down the highway. He would probably get arrested doing that today! Ha!
I loved going to the Ice House in Ozark. Dad would buy a block of ice for our “ice box” at home to keep our meat and milk in. They would pack it in sawdust to help keep it from melting so quickly on way home.
We grew up poor, but we seemed to always have plenty to eat. We didn’t know we were poor….we were just like everyone else. As kids growing up, we didn’t have cars or horses to get around on. We usually walked everywhere when we wanted to visit our friends. Mom stayed home when Dad was away working. She didn’t have another car to go anywhere.
I will never forget the food! Fresh from the garden and fresh from the chicken coop! Ha! Ha! Fresh strawberries and watermelon were the best I've had. We would sit down in the Tomato row with a salt shaker and eat ripe tomatoes until we were full! We also sampled the sweet peas and corn quite regularly! We picked wild fruit, too: Blackberries, Plums, Muscadine Grapes, not to mention tart, green apples and Indian Peaches around old homesteads. What we didn’t just consume…Mom would make jam or jelly out of it.
We had no running water in our log house on the hill. We drew water from two wells and beat a path out by the barn to the outhouse. In late summer and early fall, we cut firewood and hauled to the house. We heated with a fireplace in each end of the house. Dad put in a coal burning stove when it got really cold and used the fireplace as the chimney. Mom would warm a brick, wrap it in newspaper or rags and put it at the foot of our feather bed so we could stay warm. Three of us boys slept together! That was a source of many squables!
For the most part, life was good, as I recall; lots of memories about that old place. I loved the smell after a rain. Watching the lightening and hearing the crack of thunder during a storm invigorated my blood. The wind was gentle. It whistled through the Pine trees at the edge of the pasture and swayed the Persimmon trees like they were waving hello. The sound of rain falling on our tin roof was comforting to me. I still like to hear it today! We were allowed to remove our shoes in April. I believe, for the most part, except for church and trips into town, we kept them off. By the end of summer our feet were tough as nails; we could walk on most anything without discomfort. I remember seeing the heavens as I’ve seen it in no other place! Millions of stars dotted the skies; the Milky Way was the brightest I have ever seen. Living on a hill with no pollution to block the view made all the difference.
We now live in Portland, Oregon. It’s much cooler here; lots of rain 10 months out of the year. The gray skies get depressing and damp cold often settles into my bones; Aleve is my best friend….not to mention the hot tub! Macular Degeneration is settling in so the stars are dim, or gone, during the couple of months we get to see them. Things change as we grow older. Now I pretty much keep my shoes on all summer!
