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 20, 2001.
The little house where Mr. Levi Brown and his family made their home is all but abandoned now: you can see it just before you drop off the last hill on Highway 63 North (“Lipton Lane” Monticello people call the impressive new access of Pine Bluff and points beyond for Southeast Arkansas people).
Mattie Brown Rice, the Brown daughter, returned to the home of her parents after her husband, Jack Rice, was killed in a traffic accident, bringing along her two tiny sons, Maylon and Iry.
Maylon, now comfortably middle-aged, approaching 46, now serves as a feature writer for the NORTHWEST ARKANSAS TIMES of Fayetteville.
He has two daughters, almost grown (one a college student) and a massive high school sophomore son named Isaac.
Unlike his dad, Isaac is a promising football lineman (Maylon was too busy workin’ at THE EAGLE DEOMCRAT when he was Isaac’s age).
Maylon still remembers his grandparents and how his grandmother would deal with Mr. Woodrow Wilson Burrow, who was in business back in those days on Main Street.
The aforementioned (and late) Mr. Burrow had something like what we used to call an “army and navy store” in which old uniforms, shoes, hats, etc., were marketed.
Wasn’t this activity located in the onetime home of the Bryant and Moseley Meat Market, where Mr. Walter Moseley, Alice Hill’s great grandfather, and his brother-in-law, Elzie Bryant, were in the retail meat business.
Mr. Moseley’s daughter, Mae, married Clyde Neely: their only daughter, Ann, long of the Haley and Claycomb law firm, was the mother of Alice Hill.
Maylon’s grandmother was a McClellan from Cleveland County, in the area around Emmaus and, further to the north, Macedonia.
She was a hard-working farm wife and sterling grandmother, as Maylon remembered in a recent column in the Fayetteville paper.
Maylon wrote about going into the post office at Fayetteville and hearing the sounds of baby chicks, in a perforated cardboard box, en route to some Washington County chicken-raiser.
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Some lucky soul in Washington County was getting a shipment of chickens.
Those sounds signaled to me that summer isn’t far behind and brought up memories of my grandmother receiving a catalogue from the Murray McMurry Hatchery, 609 Ohio Street, Webster City, Iowa, U.S.A., an event that sparked spring cleaning at her small home.
It wasn’t that Mary and Levi Brown couldn’t raise enough free-range chickens on their own- they did often. But my grandmother preferred to upgrade her flock of laying hens every year or so. She would retire the veterans, one every two weeks, to the Sunday dinner table, replacing tired adult egg layers with new chicks.
After much consideration and consultation of the tattered pages of The Ladies Birthday Almanac, Granny would take some of her egg-milk-and-butter money and send off for a shipment of baby chickens.
She carried the cash- mostly coions wrapped in a big wool sock- to the Warren Bank and Trust Co. there a faithful cashier and friend of the family, Margaret Scobey Thompson, or Pauline Hollingsworth, who oversaw the tellers, would assist with the transactions, cutting a long, fancy cashier’s check.
Then, my grandmother would stuff the check, an order from and a one-page handwritten letter testifying to the quality of Murray McMurry’s service and pullet stock into an over-sized manila envelope, and we marched down to the Warren post office.
Afterward, my grandmother, my younger brother and I would go to Grady Hughes’ Café for a juicy cheeseburger (each topped with a slice of white onion). Pawpaw, who stayed out of her milk-egg-and-butter business, joined us.
According to the McMurry catalogue, the chicks would arrive one week from the day a colorful postcard came with the expected arrival date circled in red. And as promised, the new chickens appeared at my grandmother’s door. The mail carrier delivered them in a sturdy cardboard container with plenty of air holes and “RUSH-LIVE POULTRY-RUSH” stenciled on all sides.
Today, things are done on a different scale. Every day in northwest Arkansas, a fleet of vehicles trek up and down country lanes delivering hundreds of thousands of baby chicks to a contract poultry growers.
Almost a million chickens are processed each day, completing a cycle begun anew every six to eight weeks.
The Brown homestead always had plenty of Single Combed Brown Leghorns, a breed recognized for its colorful plumage. My grandmother, however, purchased them for their heartiness rather than for their distinctive feathers.
I’ve seen an old Brown Leghorn hen back an invading possum into the corner of the chicken house with her strong wings and flailing spurs. Young farm boys, like me, were often chased out of the hen house by an overprotective hen while hunting eggs.
The family chickens were my grandmother’s to watch and tend, and she never failed to provide them food, water, and shelter. Even now, I can hear her softly singing snippets of old church hymns while spreading out store-bought feed or cracked shelled corn for her tiny flock.
Memories that bless- truly bless this Mother’s Day 2001.
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Maylon T. Rice is a features writer for the Times. He gathered eggs each afternoon for his grandmother for a shiny Buffalo nickel, even if the rooster chased him across the barn yard.
