The years spent in and the state of Arkansas cover almost 1/3 of my life as I write this (the denominator yet to be established), and many are indelibly stamped upon my memory. In growing older one must acknowledge that indelible may become faded, and even perhaps inadvertent "rosy embellishments" occur. I pray that such errors herein are minimal, and essentially non-Freudian.
The town of Judsonia in its early years (nee "Prospect Bluff" was closely associated with settler Erasmus Gregory) and initially was a geographically attractive site because of the uppermost navigable waters of the Little Red river a tributary of the White and the Mississippi rivers, the early presence of a major north-south railroad ( the Missouri-Pacific, with an eastern branch (Bald Knob to Memphis) five miles to the north traversing across the delta, and some of foothill country to Memphis. It also intersected three miles to the south (at Kensett) the Missouri and North Arkansas railroad. The town also was was on the major north-south U.S. maintained highway (U.S. 67) which also split a branch to the east at Bald Knob (64E) to proceed to Memphis another branch (64W) at Beebe to providing access to Conway and NW Arkansas). Both the "railroad" and the "wagon" bridges across the Little Red at Judsonia were constructed to be enabled to be turned to allow passage for the steamboats that had plyed the river for years west.
As a child I recall seeing the appealing river boats on the Little Red River only on two or three occasions. As railroads and highways increased they were becoming unprofitable and commercially disappeared near the onset of the great depression.
The town's major agricultural income crop was strawberries thru the 1930's followed by cotton and soy beans, and a small amount of rice, especially to the east of town. During the 1920's and 1930's Judsonia and the town of Hammond, Louisiana vied for the title "Strawberry Capital of the World". Most of us at that time had inadequate knowledge of the world to be as certain whether or not that assertion represented a local interpretation with a Madison Avenue flavor, but we desired to and believed it. The schools (all public) convened in August (earlier than most schools elsewhere) and completed their educational year earlier in the spring to enable all hands, including children, to work with the berry harvest and generate "spending" money. This spring income also attracted tent theaters, carnivals and an occasional circus which lent a festival atmosphere to the town. Some entrepreneurs built picnic "stands" of lumber (mostly 2 x 4's), bedecked with red, white and blue bunting and sold everything from hamburgers, cotton candy, and novelties to games of chance and occasionally a dance floor,... active especially in the evenings after all hands had exited the strawberry patch for the day.
The strawberry harvest usually lasted between three and four weeks. When the "picking" and other harvesting opportunities were over, the job of cultivating all the involved acreage began and required intermittent attention throughout the year. By the time I was 13 or 14 my father would take me out to some of our farm property and put me with a plow behind a mule (or occasionally, a horse) and have me "middle-bust" several acres of strawberries. Some of the patches required up to three days to complete. The initiation of a novice to plowing with the blade striking a hidden boulder causing a plow-handle to gouge the flank or abdomen was a painful reintroduction each year to the reality of farm labor. After a few days off to rest the soil and dry the disrupted weeds I would be returned to further cultivate the same row middles with a harrow which served to break up the clods of dirt, separate roots from soil and partially rake the grass and weeds. This would end the activity requiring the animal assistance for awhile, but several of us would then proceed row by row through the patch weeding the berry plants by hoe and hand being careful to not damage them. Sometimes use of the hoe would prove to be unexpectedly fortuitous whenever we encountered a copperhead or rattle snake in the patch. In the late summer or fall we would mulch the rows with straw which served to protect the berries the following spring from undue abrasion by the sandy soil, and to lift them off it minimizing the tendency of the berries to bruise and rot on the area in contact with the ground.
PERSONAL HERITAGE
My father, the second of four sons, was born near Cave City, Arkansas on March 29, 1889 to Rev. Thomas Franklin Jefferson Felts (known as "uncle Bud" and one-time pastor of the First Baptist Church of Cave City) & Almira Perkey Felts. Raised on a farm with sisters (Nettie and Grace) and brothers (Charlie W., John T., and Luther ) I know few details of his youth. He graduated from high school in 1909 as valedictorian of his Cave City High School class, and while in high school was active in football and baseball. He was awarded two gold medals in oratory in his native Sharp County. After a brief stint at Arkansas State he matriculated in 1910 at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine in Memphis from which he graduated in 1914. The "Volunteer" year book of 1914 contained an entry : "Felts is the pride of M. H. M.C. (Memphis Hospital Medical College); Two medals he's won in an oratorical bee. His attendance is fine, He's always in line; A great healer he'll make, can't you see?"
To expand briefly upon this limited portion of the family tree: Charlie (918/1887-11/14/60) married Lulu Baxter and had three children ( Veda, Velma, and John Robert) and lived in Texas; Dr. Wylie R. (dad) (3/29/1889-11/7/5 married Willie E. Lewis, and had one son (me) and lived in Judsonia; John T. (7713/1890 - 8/76/54) married Winifred Marian Clark, and settled in Clarksville, Texas. Their two offspring were John Thomas, Jr. who was lost in an air downing during WWII in the South Pacific, and Marian Patricia Clark. Nettie (3/24/1893 - 12/3/27 married J. Austin Carpenter, from the Evening Shade area of Arkansas and had one child, Paul, who became an electrical engineer with Westinghouse for many years. Nettie's early death in 1927, I believe resulted from tuberculosis. I recall seeing her in the casket in the living room of the home in Batesville. Luther (7/14/96-6/13/55) married Tinnie White and their children were Alene, Alva Imogene, and Luther Leon and they lived in Sidney, Ark. Gracie (11/20/1897-5/19/79) married P.D. Carpenter who brought daughters Alta (then 4), now in Batesville, and Alma (then 6)-now in Paragould-from a previous marriage wherein his wife had died shortly after a childbirth in which the baby also succumbed. P. D. and Grace parented one daughter, Reba Wanda.
World War I started in Europe that year, and in 1917 under President Woodrow Wilson the U.S. became embroiled. Dad soon became a 1st Lieutenant in the Medical Corps and was sent to France with the AEF where he remained until after the Armistice in November 1918. Upon return "home", although offered an urban medical opportunity for specialization in otolaryngology, he elected family practice in a semi-rural environment and settled in Judsonia, and vowing he'd "rather be a big frog in a little puddle than a little frog in a big one".
Не associated in a professional partnership with Dr. W.H.L. (William Henry Lee) Woodyard in Judsonia. Their offices were located in a small frame building between the brick "J. C. Rhew Mercantile Store" on the north and a larger frame store on the south which soon became the Woodyard & Felts drug store, complete with two "whittling" benches in front, the at least one of which was adjacent on the south to the two story brick Farmers & Merchant Bank.
My mother, Willie Etidorpha Lewis, had worked as an assistant to the postmaster in the town during the WW I, and assisted my maternal grandmother (Mattie Elizabeth DeShong Lewis) with her boarding house, a popular site for some roomers and drummers in those days. "Miss Willie" had worked to perfect her skills in Spencerian penmanship in which she excelled, and was a renowned cook. At a very early age she also was an accomplished pianist and had doubled on the pump organ for Sunday School and Church at the First Baptist in Judsonia from her late childhood. She had a younger sister, Mona Mae and an even younger brother, Joseph Edgar, who also was nicknamed "Bud" .
I have a picture of mother dated March 27, 1918 in one photograph album, and note with pride she was a beautiful young woman. In another photo of both parents taken in Grandmothers' front yard labeled Thanksgiving Day 1917, Dad was in uniform. A news clipping noted that he was visiting on leave from Fort Riley, Kansas causing me to speculate it possibly represented his last leave before shipping out for France from Hampton Roads, Va.. Also in the album is a hand written Menu topped with French and American Ribbons from Armistice Day Nov. 11. 1918, which included an 1804 vin d'Alsase, presumably a souvenir of the armistice day celebration at or near "the front". I'm not clear when he was returned from France but believe it was probably in late 1918 or early 1919.
Grandmother Felts' background is somewhat obscure, and may have included rural poverty, for she declared she "had to work for her keep". An intelligent woman she was largely self-educated and obviously accustomed to hard work, although not always well versed in social skills. I never knew either of my grandfathers.
Mother and dad were married on January 29, 1920 by pastor Rev. W. B. O'Neal in the Judsonia First Baptist Church parsonage when he was 31 and she was 22. I arrived on the Judsonia scene on April 24, 1923, delivered by dad at home.
It was only in May 1995 thru an exchange of letters with first cousin Reba Wanda Carpenter (Benedetto) who was raised with half sisters Alma and Alta in Batesville, and with whom Grandmother Felts lived out her declining years that I was informed that Dad had been "secretly" married while in medical school to Addie Story (Sept. 1912, his age 23) . Reportedly, Addie died (from influenza or other form of respiratory infection only four months later (Jan. 1913), during an epidemic. According to Reba, grandmother Felts had discouraged the marriage "until dad finished medical school" but they didn't wait. Neither parent ever mentioned her to me, so I am uncertain of the extent of awareness of the brief union, including my mother.
Reba and her family currently reside in Kent, Ohio.
Presumably Cave City and Memphis comprised Dad's geographic environs at that time. To date I've made no effort to seek out additional information about Ms. Story-Felts.
"Home" was a frame house on the southeast corner of what were later named Jefferson and Jackson streets, about a block from the office and Woodyard & Felts Drug Store. Locale - 72081 following the introduction of postal zones.
A green lattice fence along the west boundary of the home lot provided a backdrop useful for stacking firewood as well as providing minimal separation from an alley and contributed passively to a vivid early memory. One morning as a youngster I wandered out to the fence and found a male neighbor who lived in a very small house on the lot just to our west on Jefferson laying dead with his right arm through the fence, the hand grasping a split piece of firewood for a "cook stove", and the left arm on the alley side holding three or four additional sticks with another couple on the ground beside him which apparently he had dropped when he fell dead. Rigor mortis had not yet become established. It was ruled that he had died from a heart attack while stealing our firewood plus a comment that "God had caught him red-handed." My parents noted that they had "been gradually missing and had largely ignored small amounts of the cook wood".
The northwest corner of the lot was occupied by a big red barn with a covered shed on the west side which was capable of sheltering either a buggy or Model T Ford, depending upon the year and season. The barn was a site to which I was allowed to make whatever modifications suited my fancy which resulted in a series of "club houses", and on one occasion housed a "Big Bertha" slingshot which I constructed and mounted in the upstairs open window from which I could shoot toward the south dried balls of clay with an acorn center a distance of one to one and a half city blocks, an exercise that ended abruptly one day when one of the missiles so-launched strayed a bit off course and shattered a rear window in a cleaning plant in the next block.
At various times Dad also kept a saddle horse and a milk cow in the lot and barn during my early years, which provided fresh milk which he loved and enabled him to make house calls into "the country" when the roads were unsuitable for vehicles.
The family "privy" was located east of the barn, complete with the last quarter's Sears Roebuck catalog, ... and an open sack of lime and a shingle with which to sprinkle it. A well with a covered shed was to the east-northeast of the house and was used regularly before "city water" became available in the 1930's. I also recall a square, four-sided sign for the kitchen window (also on the east) to be rotated to display a 10, 25, 35 or 50 to indicate to the "ice man" the number of pounds desired for delivery that day. The order would usually last three or four days other than in the worst heat of the summer, with the melted water draining into a pan beneath the ice box which required almost daily emptying.
Electricity initially was usually was represented by a string wire cord which suspended a single bulb, usually in the center of each room. I recall a Christmas in the early 1930's when mother, Aunt Mona Lewis North and Uncle Bud (J. Edgar Lewis) "went together" to have several rooms in grandmother Lewis' home similarly equipped as their holiday present to her. The telephone was a hand crank variety mounted on one wall in the living room, and a crank would ring and access the local operator who would then connect and ring the individual being called....day and night. Probably no more than a half-dozen farm homes in the surrounding rural area had phones; when a doctor needed to be summoned the farmer would ride his horse to the nearest establishment possessing one and place the call. A frontier spirit of cooperativeness pervaded. The operator, usually Miss Frona Huff or Mrs. Edmond Gaines would diligently locate "the doctor" to assist.
Roads were primitive...usually being either "dirt" and mud in wet weather or "gravel" with the latter present mostly on designated U. S. highways or county-maintained roads with relatively high usage. At some point during the 1930's the main street (Judson Ave.) was paved with concrete from Wood's Corner to the Elliot Hotel, and most remaining streets within the city limits were graveled, a major achievement, ridding the downtown merchants of most of the summer dust and winter mud, and cited as tangible evidence to the progressiveness of the town. However, installation of a stoplight was not believed to be warranted. A macadam surface followed the U. S. 67/64 route west from the hotel into Searcy, the county seat, and on south to the northern boundary of Pulaski County where another concrete surface led into Little Rock. And as a child transported in a model T and then model A, I nicknamed and referred to the latter as " the glass road."
Numerous items relating to the history of "early Judsonia" have been identified by random reviews of clippings of articles from the White County Record, usually written by W.E. "Skinny" Orr. Mr. Orr also authored a book "That's Judsonia" which depicts many early Judsonians as well as local history. Unfortunately, the volume is out of print, although excerpts have periodically been published in The Record in 1996-1998. The following was printed in the July 8, 1976 edition and was prompted by the death of Flavel Briggs, town mortician for many years. who died on July 3rd of that year.
"It bothers me to realize that I have not heard the words "emigrants and "Colony" used in Judsonia for some time, wrote Skinny. "This terminology belongs to a generation that is all gone now-- men and women who knew Judsonia when it was called "Prospect Bluff". They came to this county shortly after the civil war was over, and achieved the miracles of founding a college, changing the name of the village, making what had been a rather hard-drinking little river community into a dry town, starting the strawberry