Growing Up in Rural Arkansas

My Childhood

Things get a little blurry viewed from a distance of 50 or 60 years and I don’t remember that many details but I will list some of the memories of living on the farm in the Owl City Community.

Dad and Mother bought about 80 acres of land in 1946-47 partly with money they had saved from his military service during World War II. The first memories of my childhood are of moving to that farm in the Owl City or the Pugh Community as some called it, just south of Hoxie, Arkansas. I have memory glimpses of the time we lived in the Lunsford Community in Craighead County, Arkansas, but I cannot say for sure if they are memories or stories I have heard. I remember a big truck filled with farm equipment and horses driving up and people walking around the truck looking at the horses and worrying about them being hurt. The house was somewhat of a disappointment to mother but dad was excited and explaining that it needed lots of work but it was ours. The idea of owning a farm and making a living on it was, I am sure, one of dad's dreams. The war was over, things were looking up and country life where you knew your neighbors and plenty of room to raise a family was a thought near and dear to many of the returning service men.

The house was a small wood frame and tar paper covered building with a kind of lean-to kitchen and no chimney in the front room. We had to run the stovepipe for the wood stove out the window until a more permanent arrangement could be built. I remember a front porch, not the ordinary kind but a square platform of boards. I think it served as a place to wipe the mud from your shoes before you entered the house and little else. The kitchen was very small and in it we had a wood cook stove, an old icebox, a meal chest and a home made table and chairs. On one side of the table was a long stool. The icebox was just that, not a refrigerator, we did not have electricity. The meal chest was a long rectangular box divided into two compartments and standing on four legs It was where mother kept her bread making material. On one side there was flour and the other side corn meal, baking powder, baking soda and dough roller. A dough board sits just above of the flour and meal boxes, kind of a sliding work board where she rolled the dough for biscuits and pies and made the corn bread.

We had a log barn out back for the livestock, which at that time was the horses and a milk cow or two, a few hogs and some chickens. This was farm life as they had known it and the whole family set in to make it work. I was about 4 or 5 years old at the time and not big enough to understand what was going on but I am sure the challenge of all this must have been overwhelming at times.


While mother set in to make the house livable, dad and my older brothers Donald, Bobby and Delbert set in to make the farm habitable, with Donald, the oldest being in charge of us younger ones. In order to have livestock they must have a place out of the bad weather, something to eat and a good supply of water. It must have been a huge task. The thing I remember most was cutting wood, a chore that was never ending. I won’t take credit for this during the first years, I was the little guy that sat on the log to keep it from moving in the saw horse, while they used a cross cut saw to cut it into lengths that fit the stove. This changed gradually as I grew older and the chores I was able to handle were increased.

Water

Water is a subject you seldom think about, you just turn on the left knob for hot and the right for cold and keeping a little water to prime the pump is not thought of. The reality of farm life was quite different. Using only a muscle driven pitcher pump, it does not take long to figure out that a family of 5, and growing, can use a lot of water. Add to this a couple of very large work horses, a few cows and hogs not to mention the chickens, dogs and other critters hanging around a farm. The only thing you can do to increase the water output other than pumping faster is to, keep the leather gasket in good working order and weld on a longer handle. The water supply is also critical and for people who have not seen the old hand pumps or seen a pump pipe hand driven a word of explanation may be in order. Driving a new pump is an expense that is best put off until all other remedies have been tried. Driving a pump today can cost anywhere from $500 up if you do all the work. One of the things I remember dad doing was called “shooting the pump”. Now here was a thing I could agree with him on. During the very long hours of pumping I had day dreamed all the dreams a young child who had never been anywhere but to a country church and a few trips into town, could dream. After all the dreaming a slow hatred builds up and all my thoughts were on the pump. I had never shot dad's gun but I was willing to learn on the pump.

I am sure dad thought long and hard and talked to his friends and neighbors before shooting the pump. When a pump is driven, the part that penetrates the ground is a sharp pointed and hollow cone shaped cylinder called a drive point. The old drive points were usually brass or galvanized steel with small slits in the sides to allow the water to seep into the pipe. The galvanized steel points were known to rust and clog up and not allow the water to enter the pipe. Using a 22 rifle to shoot the point and loosen the rust would sometimes open the slits and allow the water to flow into the pipe from the under ground aquifer. If you used too large a caliber bullet the end of the drive point could be blown off and the pump was worthless and hauling all the water to keep a farm going was not possible. Using his Remington 22 rifle and with all the children standing well back from the danger, dad successfully shot the pump.