MISCELLANEOUS MEMORIES

(Originally run 3/13/04 on our old site)

Harold Gene Sullivan

My brain sipped another cog (I wonder how many cogs I have left before they’re all gone?). I know who Dorothy Dillinger is, but don’t know now why I said she was the librarian at the White County library.

Now for another rambling memory.

When we bought our house in Searcy, at 1212 West Race, in 1941, it was at the edge of town. In fact, we had more than a city block, and raised chickens and hogs, plus we had milk cows. Later on, I raised white rabbits and sold them. I got to where I could skin and clean one in no time and deliver it on my bike.

I remember that Mom would always have to go down to Kelso’s Feed Store with Dad to get feed, because she had to pick out the pattern on the feed sacks. She used to make me shirts out of them, plus make a lot of other things. My, how times have changed. I told my son about this and he couldn’t believe I wore feed sack shirts.

Sometime in the early 40’s, we had the house rocked. Dad, after selling Pepsi all day, would go out and collect rocks in the fields he had spotted during the day. We would stop and ask the farmer if we could pick them up and most of them were just glad to get rid of the rocks. The guy who did the rock work was one-armed; I guess that was why he wasn’t away in the war. I remember being amazed what he could do with just one arm, chipping a rock to size and carrying it up the ladder to place it, all with just one arm.

Tom Pry

Harold, I wish you and your dad had come out to our place for your rock-gathering. My grandfather (Tom Edwards) always referred to having bought “..148 acres of rocks ..” when he bought his farm. That this farm is now the rather tony Hillcrest Subdivision with its $100K+ homes is beside the point. We hauled one helluva lot of rocks out of those lower fields, putting what granddad later estimated to eventually be twelve feet of rocks into the road up to the house before they stopped settling.

As for feed sack fabric, that was reserved for my grandmother’s housedresses, plus the occasional tablecloth. It was colorful and durable and, being doubled around the grain, there was enough to make something useful in each 100 pound sack.

I’m trying to mentally picture a one-armed rock veneer specialist, and my usually-imaginative mind has failed me. Makes a one-armed paper-hanger seem downright meek.

Folks .. this piece from Harold illustrates the kind of thing we’d love to get from YOU. It’s not of earth-shaking importance, it was an experience NOT shared by most of our readers, but I found it fascinating, and a memory of earlier, simpler days that, frankly, probably are susceptible to the adage, “The best thing about the good old days is that, the older they get, the better they look.”

Still makes you yearn for that over-all simplicity of survival in those times sometimes, though.

Share your seemingly-inconsequential memories with us, will you? Trust me: they count, and you’re the only one who has them. When you’re gone, they’re gone .. unless you write them down NOW.