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 June 6, 2001.
The good news is that longtime West Manager J.W. Clark, mentioned last week, is not in nursing facility: he’s still coping with cancer, but remains at his home in Northern Louisiana.
Mr. Clark is the surviving member of the building committee of First Baptist Church: the committee, that is, that had the present church structure erected almost half a century ago in the early ‘fifties.
Mr. Clark is a widower: his wife, Geneva, died suddenly a year or two ago.
Mr. Clark has two grown sons, and of course is continuing being a good churchman and good citizen in the Bayou State.
Don’t I remember the Clarks resided on Van Street here in town (or was it Catherine?), and that Mr. Clark was active in the Y’s Men’s Clubs?
J.W. Clark was/is a classy kind of fellow…
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Time passes department…
THE SHOPPERS GUIDE, that humble little publication produced by Eagle Publishing each weekend, is age 26 this month.
That’s the same age as some of the young men and women getting degrees as physicians from the UA Med Center these days.
“The Shopper” got started in the middle 1970’s: it was a duplication of such a publication produced then at Crossett, later Monticello.
People at “The Eagle” thought about it for several weeks; there were those in fervid opposition because they remembered a time when they to put out a weekly paper for the town of Wilmot in Ashley County at the same time they produced THE EAGLE DEMOCRAT.
Lotsa work, in other words.
But we started it anyway; it’s mailed to folks outside Warren allover Bradley County and in the south half of Cleveland County, up Woodlawn way.
Here in town, it’s “thrown” Sabbath afternoons by an old friend, Jackie Jarratt.
It has its fans: one of them was the late Helen Key Richmond, who just didn’t want to do without her shoppers’ guide on Sunday afternoons.
…she didn’t do without it, either.
The fellers who were puttin’ it out would place hers on her back porch…in easy reach.
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We have more fun watching the tee-vee commercials for “Broadway Satellite” in the Little Rock area plus the activities of Willie Price and his son, Ricky Price, operators of the concern.
The Prices, father and son, seem to be doing all right.
There’s this about it: those tiny dish receivers are springing from many a residence in just about all the rural areas you visit these days.
We’ve had one at our house for six or seven years.
Friend Randy Funderburg, the electrician, installed it, assisted by his teenage assistant of the time, Chad Sledge (who almost got into pharmacy school this year…getting into pharmacy school is akin to getting into heaven these days, particularly since Northeast of Monroe no longer takes Arkansas folk).
We don’t watch many programs brought in on the dish, tho’ we listen lots to the music channels, which come in, as James O. Young, our valued old friend, used to insist “absolutely perfect”.
The “satellite” producing all this wonderful stuff hovers over the equator, as we understand it, moving around the earth as it spins, staying in the same place.
We don’t quite understand how this happens, but when you are approaching 72, you don’t NEED to know that kinda stuff (unless you are “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?).
We just listen and enjoy and watch Pater Willie and son in action.
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My valued friend in Benton, Jann Woodard, tells me she is a niece of another old friend, Austin Williams, plus his late wife, who was a member of the Crook family in Cleveland County.
Mr. Williams had two adorable daughters: Donna and Brenda.
Brenda an her husband have been on a lengthy program of restoration of the “Davis House”, next door to their dad’s home on North Myrtle.
“Davis House” was the home of a Dr. S.M. Davis, who had a drugstore here and who was the father of Aubert Davis and of Zina Davis Adams (her husband was the owner/operator of “Adams Cash Grocery” on the current location of “Holidays” on Main Street.).
There was another daughter of Dr. Davis: she was the mother of Miss Mary Florence Scobey, who worked at Adams Grocery and who later had a lengthy career in Little Rock.
Jann Woodard seems to be one of Arkansas’ best historian/hobbyists.
She owns with her late husband the home of the late Dr. W.J. Hunt across from what used to be the W&OV Station (now it’s the W&SR Station).
The Woodards are restoring it.
The Buddy McCaskills reside next door.
On the other side is the brick house Dr. Hunt built for his daughter, Patsy, when she married Ambers Leon Green of Rison.
Funny how, at age 71, you can remember names from the ‘fifties perfectly but can’t remember what happened last week.
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Wanta feel elderly? We hear the Rev. Michael Clayton, pastor of the First Methodist Church in Texarkana, is entering retirement.
Pastor Clayton, a wild-armed and gifted portside quarterback for the Lumberjacks of 1954, should be about age 62.
His father, the courtly Rev. Ralph Clayton, was pastor of the Methodist Church here at the time.
Mr. Clayton succumbed recently and at a ripe old age.
There is a Michael Clayton who is the new Buick-Pontiac dealer in Malvern: we’ve wondered if there is any connection?
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The Good Book says there are things that are like “apples of gold in pictures of silver”.
The following applies.
It’s the portion of a note received from the elder of two daughters from the 1958-1979 marriage of the onetime rural editor.
Through the good offices of the late Ardelia Potter Womack, at Arkansas Social Services, this little girl was given to us in the fall of ’67.
She was nine weeks old.
Later this summer, she will be 34: she has a son and two daughters and a lawyer husband; they split their time between a home in Dallas and a place in the country near Como, Texas (about five miles down the sunlight pipe).
In the note, she addressed my best friend, the lady who drives me around and who came into our lives when this daughter was age 13. She writes: “I am so glad you came into our lives and I am glad you are there with Dad to keep him both happy and healthy”. (Maybe she was talking about our year-long reduction program).
And she wrote to me: We can never say enough about how much you mean to us. We are proud of you and of your accomplishments. There are things I remember in my young childhood: I try to pattern my own parenting after those memories. Thanks for the time and money invested in me!”
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I could say to her, and do: “Twas both time, effort, and money well spent”.
“The pleasure was ours…”
“…still is.”
