The publishers of The Eagle Democrat have chosen to publish articles from the past Oldtimer’s Notebook in memory of Robert L. Newton. This article was first published May 17, 2000.
Periodically, we wander far out in Western Little Rock to a tonsorial establishment where the delightful younger daughter of T.V. Garner once engaged her artistic talents (she having removed now with her family to far-away Nebraska, where there is nothing between you and the north pole save fence posts).
We noted with pleasure that there is a fine-lookin’ new Baptist Church in that area called “West Rock Baptist Church” and that the pastor is a former Warren resident, the Rev. Dr. Frank Worley.
Dr. Worley served one of our largest churches here in town with caring distinction before moving elsewhere.
We had run into Dr. Worley’s former wife, Vera, at a football game in Fayetteville (she is the only person, we ever knew who grew up in Fouke, Miller County).
The Worleys had two fine sons who had the good sense to marry Warren girls.
Life goes on…
________
Sorry to hear about the death of our old friend, Lois Davis, the other day. Lois worked for Main Street pharmacy locations for years and was a special friend.
Jack Phillips, the muffler man and a longtime favorite, was her brother.
Lois and her husband, onetime Bradley County Sheriff Wess Davis, had a lovely, accomplished daughter, Pam Viguerie, whom we see at tomato festival time yearly.
They did a good job on an only child.
That isn’t particularly easy.
Pam and her family reside in Little Rock.
________
Well, we knew one other person from Fouke, Johnny Furqueron, who starred in basketball at El Dorado Junior College in the ‘thirties (yes there WAS such an institution) and who later played at Ouachita with Warren’s steller star, Deno Nichols.
________
As noted earlier, we are back from a fortnight’s season of kid sittin’ in far-away Wichita, Kansas.
Wichita’s daily newspaper has a distinctive and elegant name: “The Eagle.”
They should call it the “Sedgewick County Money Machine.”
Item: the Sunday paper had a total of 24 circulars included.
Say their circulation is 100,000 (should be, in a community of a third of a million). Then “The Eagle” for that Sunday collected $120,000 just for circular insertion!
Almost as good as being in the TeeVee business.
________
Wichita, like Little Rock, Pine Bluff, Memphis, Jackson, Atlanta, is seeing a perfervid flight to the suburbs.
In the central city, most of those left are the poor, the disadvantaged, the recent arrivals from Latin America.
No easy questions; no easy answers.
________
Our old Chevy van, with 208 thousand miles on the clock, puddled along faithfully at 70 or 75 on those Oklahoma and Kansas toll roads, only to succumb to the vicissitudes of age in the fuel pump the morning after our return.
It ran ‘til it got us home, then died.
The fellers came and got it going, someway, and took it away for a day’s restoration.
Take care of ‘em, change the oil, don’t go too fast and they’ll last just about forever.
Cars, that is.
________
State of Arkansas is REALLY having to rebuild section of I-40 between Little Rock and Fort Smith: there’s a section east of Clarksville where giant machines are tearing up miles of the westbound lane; there is work under way to rebuild it completely.
Giant trucks have all but destroyed the right hand lane of the roads from Little Rock to Fort Smith.
At least, this isn’t Kansas, where the State allows a total of THREE trailers to be pulled by one truck.
One of ‘em passed us at dark thirty the other morning and the driver cut it a little quickly: the whole thing got to wiggling like a conga line before it finally straightened out.
________
There is always a sense of the unfairness of life when you pass near the bustling city of Wellington, Kansas.
Wellington was the hometown of the wife of a valued old friend of ours, Dr. Jay Jones, a retired dentist who now divides his time between Kansas and Florida.
Jay and Betty Slinker married when both were pushing middle age. They had only a short time together until she, surprisingly, died.
Dr. Jones has never been quite the same.
Dr. Jones was the brother to Lorraine Turner, Warren.
Beverly Nason-Jones of Mississippi, his niece, is also his adopted daughter.
Wellington is one of these good Kansas towns, on the railroad, with about 10,000 people.
When onetime Arkansas Football Coach Jack Mitchell got “pushed out” as head coach at Kansas University, he bought the daily newspaper at Wellington.
It is operated now, we understand, by his son.
Jack Mitchell was a great football star at Oklahoma, and ere that at his hometown of Arkansas City, Kansas (and for those of you who haven’t been there, it is pronounced Ar-Kansas City).
________
Good to hear we’ll soon have a Subway store here in town: isn’t it on the onetime site of the office of Dr. W.J. Hunt, on South Main?
We’ve been impressed with the TeeVee testimony of the man who lost about 100 pounds, eatin’ Subway veggie sandwiches.
Sounds like a good way to delard oneself.
________
Advantages of a cell phone: We were buzzin’ along in north Oklahoma, an area bereft of both trees and people, when a couple of young guys sailed by us in a pickup.
Just after they got by, the left front tire on the pick-up exploded.
Just after they got by, the left front tire on the pick-up exploded.
They got the giant machine to astop without further mishap.
We stopped to offer help and they called their employer on our cell ‘phone.
Just that easy.
You wonder how the world got along without cell ‘phones don’t you?
