Please, Fill in the Memories?

Ann Shannon Snodgrass

I’d like some help in fleshing out some memories, folks.

In reading on-line about the current Democratic primaries, I began to think about election time in Searcy when I was a child. I can barely remember watching a man climb a ladder and chalk results on a tote board, mounted in front of the Searcy Daily Citizen office and across the street from the Coca-Cola plant. I remember my Dad’s hurrying me down the street, past Sowell’s Furniture store, after a group (almost a knot) of men got into a shoving match in front of the tote board. At this point in my life, I’m assuming it was a shoving match, but all I actually recall was the grating sound of their shoes on the brick street and my Dad’s sense of urgency.

I also remember a cakewalk, a large circle with numbered sections, painted on the street between the courthouse and Snowden’s Variety store. Did it cost a nickel to walk? Was music played, or did someone sing?

Was it at election time that Smiley Burnett entertained the crowd, also in the location of the cakewalk? Somewhere, I have a photo of me with Smiley. Don’t know that I want to find that, though.

Thanks!

Tom Pry

C’mon folks. This ran 2/13/04 the first time, and I don’t recall getting nary a response to it. Quick: retrieve the memory before it slides off your brain permanently.