Tag: Personal Storytellers

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I have mentioned this is passing before, but here is the whole story about Ma getting running water.  In those days, and I am thinking around 1964 or 1965, the City of Hackett decided to start a central water supply.

That was a BIG deal for lots of folks in my little town, and Ma was typical.  Before we get into the details, let us see how she lived before running water.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Today, my father would have been 93 years old.  He lived to be 85, which is not bad.  His dad lived to be 91 (passing away in 1968 or 1969), so I have some pretty good genes in my paternal line.  My maternal grandfather died at about 55 from heart disease, but my maternal grandmum lived to 101 and a half, lucid until the almost the end.

Roy Willard Smith, my father, was born on this date in 1919.  That year is also know for the first year that Ford offered an electric starter as an option for the Model “T”.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Uncle Richard was my father’s eldest brother.  He was born in 1900, whilst my dad was born in 1919 (and he was NOT the baby).  You can see right away that my grandfather’s family was really spread out over the years.

They lived in Illinois, so I did not see them really often, but they did come to visit enough that I got to know them fairly well.  Uncle Richard was a bit talker and a big drinker, whilst Aunt Bess was quiet and dignified.  My mum really liked Aunt Bess, and they were close as could be in the early 1960s with expensive long distance and no internet.  They communicated mostly by letter, and postage at the time was around 6 cents.  

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

When I was a lad there were two general stores in town, the one that Gene and Katy Pittman ran and the one up the street that Mr. and Mrs. Rutledge owned.  Gene and Katy had the smaller one, and it was literally a mom and pop outfit.  The Rutledge’s store was quite a bit larger and had a greater variety of things, like clothes, than the other one.

The Rutledges employed Mr. Hall as a butcher.  Mr. Hall was at the time around 60 or so.  They lived only a few blocks from my grandmum, and Mrs. Hall was the classic stay at home spouse, but she did teach piano lessons in her home.  They were really nice people, and Mr. Hall was into radio in a big way.  I was also interested in radio, so we would sit in his shop and he would show me how to repair them.  He did that as a sideline business and he also collected antique radios.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Writing this series is a continuous learning experience.  Last time I posted some email traffic that I had had with descendents of Ben Boggs, and they took me to task, properly, for not portraying him as they knew him.  Amongst other things, he held the Purple Heart.  I honor him for serving our Nation in time of war.

This weekend I received a long email from his daughter, Jenny, whom I knew well with even more information.  Here is what she sent me, her words exactly copied and pasted in blockquote, and my responses to her words in plain text.

Ben taught his children manners.  There is no doubt about it.  I could not have come up with a better topic for tonight than to give the side of the story that I never realized.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

This piece is mostly about two old rock buildings near Hackett.  One of them was the “old schoolhouse” to which my mum and dad met each other as first graders.  Their story was actually a love at first sight one, and that is actually, literally true.  My dad fell in love with my mum immediately, and their love affair continued to produce two sons, me being one of them, several grandchildren, and a circle of friends that still continue, although most of them are now gone.

The secondary story is about the consequences of posting about people.  I got a very irate email from the granddaughter of one of the men that I described months ago, just day before yesterday.  She was upset about the way I described him, and rightly so.  We communicated further, and became friends.  I shall show everyone what she said, my responses, and the consensus that we finally came to that resolved the issue.  I plan to continue this series, but will be a bit more considerate in future.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I started the eighth grade at Saint Anne’s High School in Fort Smith, Arkansas when I was 13 years old.  I sort of skipped the seventh grade, and the sisters at Saint Anne’s thought that I was OK to go directly to the eighth grade from the sixth.

I flourished there, and still have several of my friends there in contact.  My very best male friend was from there, and we converse almost every night.  We love each other as brothers do, and he is actually more of a brother to me than my own brother is in some respects.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I was not sure that I would be able to post tonight because I crashed my system doing something stupid night before last, but I finally got it going again.  I had to take the radical step of completely wiping my hard drive, reloading Windows, and then restoring all of the files that I had archived onto a USB hard drive.  I NEVER will make the mistake of trying to tweak my OS again!  I really like that external hard drive and will make backups of my critical files monthly.  I think that I will take it to my neighbors’ house when not using it in case of fire or somesuch.

In any event, I am here and tonight we shall discuss the railroad tracks that ran just south of my house.  It was operated by Midland Valley Lines, out of Muskogee, Oklahoma.  Mostly the branch by my house hauled coal, because Hackett coal was in high demand for making coke for the steel mills when I was a lad.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

There is tremendous betwixt how children were raised 50 years ago and now, whether in a little town or a large city.  Tonight we shall contrast how I was raised to how children today are.  I am not talking so much about the cultural evolution as I am the technology available, but the two are quite entangled.

This is going to be sort of a stream of consciousness set of recollections about how we did things back when I was little and how it is done now.  Most of the topics are everyday activities that families do routinely.  

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Last time we talked about some cars that I helped my father restore either for resale or for keeping.  Cars seem to be a popular topic here, so we shall continue this theme about cars that were mine back in the day when I was growing up.

I have also decided to define my “growing up” period from birth to when I was 20 years old.  I have chosen this somewhat arbitrarily, but since I married at 20 it seems to be a pretty good choice.  Realistically, I do not think that anyone is grown up at 20, but I have to make some sort of demarcation.