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 August 1, 2001.
We were lounging around in front of Warren Floral on Myrtle Street waiting for the tomato festival parade to come by: a fellow came walking along who was the spitting image of Charles Ross Adams of the WHS Class of ’46. He had on dark glasses and we started to speak but didn’t. we figured that could not be Adams, since he resides in Los Angeles. Well, out comes THE EAGLE reporting that Adams was in town for a reunion of his WHS Class of ’46. Moral: when in doubt about who somebody is, just speak anyway. Worst thing they can do is give you a good cussin’.
But Ross Adams wouldn’t have done that…
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The Hendrix Reunion festivities gave us a chance to re-connect with old friends including a fellow from Hope named Martin Crow.
Son of a State Senator, Martin was a good guy who went to Hendrix briefly, then transferred to Henderson.
Now he’s a retired plastic surgeon in the Kansas City area: he found a plastic surgery practice there that now has five specialists whackin up on people in spite of the fact that old Martin’s retired.
He remains a clinical professor at the University of Missouri.
This is the Kansas City branch, not the main one in Columbia.
People like Jane Atkins and the late Evelyn Wilkinson of Warren went to Christian College for women at Columbia (as did Sue S. Martin, Warren, and Mary Hurley Gray Lee, Estherville, Iowa).
Almost went to school at Columbia myself, having been accepted into the graduate program in journalism in 1954. But things changed; I didn’t go. Had I done so, I might have been residing in some center of refinement like Snit City, Kansas or Deadmule Vista, South Dakota.
Things have a way of workin’ out.
This was at the University of Missouri, of course, alma mater of the aforementioned Ross Adams, surely Paul G. Gray. Mary Lee’s first husband and Alice Gray Appleton’s brother.
Little things change things for people.
You just never quite know what the little things are, to wit, like the action of District Superintendent John Butler Hays of the United Methodist Church arranging for his friends, the Bob Regniers, to be sent to the Warren church of Methodists a quarter of a century ago, and their acquaintance with a fine lady, a widow, with two teenage daughters, in Pine Bluff.
My good fortune…
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Sad note: noted one of the little trees planted in the downtown improvement deal has already succumbed and Gone Home to Glory.
This is the one at what we used to call the “M&P Bank Corner”.
Surely there’ll be restitution.
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We hear the son of Dr. Jim Davis Russell, Blytheville physician (and greatest Lumberjack linebacker, ever) is about to join the venerable Pine Bluff law firm headed by Louis Ramsay.
The son’s name is Jarrod.
Attorney Ramsay married Miss Joy Bond, Warren, only daughter of Dr. Joe Bond and his wife, Jimmie Waller Bond.
Was Louis Ramsay, who later played for the Razorbacks, ere being an officer in World War II, on the field for the Fordyce Redbugs when R.C. (Popeye) Wisener hauled back the kickoff in 1935 or so, leading the locals to their first win over the Redbugs in nine tries?
“Popeye” was the uncle of Bill Wisener, Warren banker.
If Attorney Ramsay isn’t the classiest guy in Pine Bluff, I’d like to meet his superior.
“He always knows you” observed one of the coffee club crowd the other morning.
Some of those Pine Bluff types give one the impression they sense a bad small and that it might be (probably be) you.
Attorney Ramsay’s law partner, the late Jeff Starling, served on a State Board with us long ago. The onetime Vanderbilt halfback and Marine officer was some kind of fine guy, rather like Louis Ramsay.
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We were talking about the Old Days in Warren recently.
Back then, the sawmills, Bradley and Southern, operated 7-6 weekdays and 7-12 on Saturdays. Most of the workmen rushed home and then “came downtown” where uncounted legions of people would flood the sidewalks from noonish until well after sundown.
Most of the stores stayed open until nine: Mr. Kenneth B. (Shorty) Montgomery’s barber shop often stayed open until midnight to engage in tonsorial processes on the gentlemen who came in.
Lots of folks would come downtown and get favored parkin’ places so they could watch the crowds: a favorite place for the late Pearl and Milburn Mobley was diagonally across from Warren Bank and Trust’s current quarters at Cypress and Main.
It was in the shade and gave easy viewing in several directions.
Milburn Mobley was one of Southeast Arkansas’ finest house-builders and remodelers.
He gave us a turn-key job on our place on East Shields almost a third of a century ago for $20,o0o.
He was building a house for Nathan and Mary Barrett at the same time.
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Hendrix reunion provided a reconnection with Dr. Crow, who started to college with us in 1947. He wrote he was in graduate school at Fayetteville with the late James Leslie Davis, a friend of my youth.
I had to tell him James rests in Oakland Cemetery, Warren.
He lost his health while serving as chief offshore geologist for Texaco, New Orleans.
James was the brother of the late Katherine Russell, who worked many years at Martins’.
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Quick test for oldtimers (people over 70):
Remember where you were when you heard:
The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.
President Roosevelt had succumbed.
John Kennedy had been shot.
The lads landed on the moon.
For me:
With my father in 1941 looking for a musical group to appear at the annual dinner of the YMCA.
Our neighbor, Mabel Meek Derby called and told my mother the awful news about the President.
I was stitching football programs for the Warren and Lake Village game in the back shop of EAGLE PUBLISHING.
I was in a wading pool with a girl, under age 2, now the mother of three and involved in work for a masters degree.
See, time DOES go by when you’re having fun, tho’ in these occasions, save for the last, there was little mirth, here and elsewhere.
