A New Start in a Small Town                                                                        December 28, 2019

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“Our town was so small, the “Welcome” and “Leaving” signs were on the same post.”

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“Our town was so small, the town gossip talked to herself.”

 

“Our town was so small that when people said they were going to walk around town, it only took five minutes.”

 

With my kids having grown up mostly in Kihei, Hawaii, they think Maui is a small town. My grandkids have never known a small town since they have lived in Dallas, Kansas City, Newport News, and Springfield, MO. Well, I guess Springfield would count as the smallest of the towns. (Springfield, 2017 population 167,376 + our twin Great Grandsons.) (Contact me for pictures.)

Peach Orchard, Arkansas, was (is) a small town. You could do a census count in an afternoon. 

We moved to a new town, Peach Orchard, because Pop had been called to pastor the First Baptist Church. I’m not sure why it was called “First Baptist” because there was no Second or any other Baptist. 

 

For me, it was a new start because until then, I had not been aware of much more than school, home and church. But now I became aware of how different things are in various towns.

 

This was Mom’s hometown.  Grandma Goings still lived there. Uncle Paul’s family was there. With cousins close by, I didn’t have to make new friends.

 

The little town was divided down the middle by the railroad but passenger trains did not stop so you had to go to other little towns five miles away in either directions to catch a train.

 

On one side of the railroad was the main street that was about three blocks long. 

 

At one end of the street was the cotton gin. This was the heart and life for the farming community. Cotton was king. It was the livelihood. The work in the cotton patches was done manually. Hired hands would come and go depending on “choppin” or “pickin” season. The green and yellow John Deere tractor could be used to disk up the ground and to drill (plant) the seeds, but hoeing the cockleburrs and other weeds was a back breaking job. Picking meant dragging a large white bag with a strap that cut into your shoulder as you bent down to get the low bolls. The sun bore down as you pricked your fingers with the pointed ends protecting the cotton in the husk. When full, the sacks were dragged to the weight wagon. The foreman wrote down the weight in his little book. You dumped your hard plucked cotton into the wagon to be hauled to the gin. Then you headed back to your row to fill it up again.

 

Cotton and weather were the top conversations. In “cotton pickin” time, the John Deeres, pulling their large mesh wire trailers, would be lined up around the gin and down the street. Trains would pull onto the siding by the gin to drop off empty cars and pick up ones loaded with bales of cotton. Loose bits of cotton would cover the sides of the roads and blow through town as its own form of snow.

 

At the other end of Main Street was the Baptist Church. There must have been only one church building designer who traveled through Arkansas (and most of the South), with only one design and one color, white. Sometimes he would make it larger and sometimes smaller but they all looked the same. They had a porch with steps going up to double doors which opened into the center aisle. In some of the churches, the men sat on one side and the women on the other. No, there was not a theological reason for this. They just did. The “central heat” was usually one or two kerosene stoves that could barely break the chill on a cold winter morning so coats were normal wear during the services. There was always a Lord’s Supper table at the front inscribed with “This Do in Remembrance of Me”. Usually a large Bible was on the table and women brought flowers to beautify the table with a handmade crocheted cover. The pulpit was on a raised platform. It was usually a large piece of furniture big enough to hold the pastor’s Bible and notes. Most of the time the Bible was in the preacher’s hand and the notes were being blown onto the floor. The pulpit did provide the place for the pastor to slap his hand down to reinforce his point. The choir loft varied according to the size of the church, anywhere from 10 to 30 seats, with a modesty rail in front. To one side at the front was a changeable board for announcing the attendance in Sunday School and the amount of offerings given while the other side had a board announcing the hymn page numbers for the service. 

 

In the middle of Main Street was the general store. The name fit because it generally had everything you would need. It provided the food for the community as well as some bolts of cloth for the sewing women. There was a small hardware section so you could get the nuts and bolts need for minor repairs on the house and farm equipment. It had most of the other items needed to run a house but with a very limited selection. Never mind 15 choices of soap. The building was large with room at the back for old guys to play checkers and tell tales. On warm days they would move to the cane-bottom chairs out front and lean back against the wall to whittle and share their often told tales. Credit cards? No, but  Mr. Brown, the owner, would provide credit to those he could trust. He wrote it all down in a little spiral notebook and could flip back to the charge made last week and add the new charge to it. He expected everything to be paid in full by the end of the “pickin” season. He would treat children with a red liquorice twist or peppermint stick. When Mom would send me to the store to get something, Mr. Brown would get it for me, write in his little book, give me a treat, and send me on my way.

 

Across the tracks were a couple of more streets with better homes lining them. I figured the people living there must be wealthy because one of them had the only phone in the town. If they came to your house to let you know there was a call, you knew it was bad news.

 

Grandma lived half way down that main street. It was a short walk from our house and we did it often. There was always cookies, cake, or a pie calling for us through their inviting smell. Her house was small with two bedrooms, a living room and a large kitchen and dining area. Most of the activities took place in that kitchen where meals were prepared over the wood cook stove and then served on the old oak table. The toilet was a short distance from the back door and was a two holer. Her garden in front of the house provided fresh corn-on-the-cob, okra, turnip greens, snap beans, tomatoes and more than any vegan could ask for. What was not eaten fresh was canned in Mason jars and stored in the storm cellar under the house. 

 

We lived around the corner from the General store, between the blacksmith and the doctor’s office. 

 

Our house was two bedrooms and a path. The path was to the outhouse. Mom provided it with a Sears and Roebuck catalogue.  We learned to wrinkle the pages to make them a little softer. The path was okay during the day but we sure didn’t like to walk on it at night with our imagination creating snakes and weird monsters to jump out of the dark. To avoid the walk in the dark, we had a pot beside the bed that we had to empty every morning as one of our chores.

 

Mom cooked on a wood stove which served to heat most of the house, warm her iron for pressing clothes and prepare water for the Saturday night bath. The aroma of wood in the stove filled the house and was welcome except when the flue would not draw and smoke would demand opening the doors and windows.

 

We had running water, that is, as long as you stood at the pump and moved the handle up and down, the water ran. The pump was right at the edge of the porch. Often, if no one drew water for a day or so, the pump would lose its prime.  Early I learned to prime the pump by taking the Mason jar of water sitting next to it, and pouring water through the top, then pumping, not too fast and hard but steady until water began to flow. The first water out of the pump must refill the jar, making it ready for the next time .

 

Saturday night was bath night. We would pump buckets of water and pour them into a number two galvanized oval tub. In the summer we bathed on the back porch but in winter we were next to the cooking stove. Mom would heat water because, summer or winter, the water from the well was cold. We would play with our little boats or ducks until Mom would complain about splashed water on the floor and then she would scrub us and dig into our ears to remove the weekly accumulation of dirt. Why our ears were so dirty and why it was so difficult to remove, I’ll never know.  When finished, we’d jump out, grab the towel from Mom and rotate in front of the warm stove to dry off.

 

We felt like we had made a step forward when Pop bought a plug in electric water heater.  We would watch the bubbles form from the oval metal object as it heated the water. It actually was a slower process than the wood stove. I guess it was okay that it burned out quickly and we were back to the stove. How we could get in that water with the heater going and not get electrocuted I still don’t know. Such a device would never be approved today, even if there were warning labels running the entire length of the cord. 

 

The one room school had closed down a couple of years before we arrived and I had to go to the Delaplane Consolidated School about five miles away. Mom got a job teaching the fifth grade. The first day of school we arrived early so she could set up her classroom. She took me to my room and left me there. The second grade teacher had not arrived, I was the only one in the room. No teacher. No students. I sat there for a few minutes all alone. We had moved toward the end of summer and I had not made any acquaintance with kids my age, even at church.

 

Here I was in a strange setting, with no friends and no family. I was overwhelmed with the isolation. I put my head down on my brown desk and began to cry. I had never felt this lonely before. As I cried, I thought, “I’m by myself. I don’t have any friends. I don’t know anyone. Mom can’t help me. I’m all alone. What can I do?”

 

Through my tears, I began to reason, “It is up to me to make friends. They don’t want a crybaby for a friend. So stop crying.” 

I raised my head, wiped my tears on my sleeves, swallowed hard, and started to smile. I determined to make friends.I would talk to the first student that arrived. I would be glad to see him or her. Maybe they would be as lonely as I am. 

 

Something happened in that short time. I have never felt lonely again.

 

A small town is great when you have family and friends.

 

Hebrews 13:5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.