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 September 13, 2000.
We are back from a 450-mile, quick jaunt to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where the eldest of four daughters and her family now make their home.
Actually, they reside in a little town just outside Bowling Green.
We enjoyed the trip, being Natural Travelers, by nature.
Worst part of the venture was the interstate from Little Rock to Memphis: wish we had really counted all the big trucks on the route, rather than silently-stewing over them.
Surely this road must be America’s busiest as far as trucks are concerned.
Trip was made in our old German car, bought ten years ago this fall from an Oldsmobile dealer in Lubbock, Texas.
Car eventually moved into the elegant hands of the Rev. Dr. L.W. Latham, who sold it to us four years ago when he repaired to Tulsa and a new Southern Baptist Church assignment.
Venerable vehicle has almost 200,000 miles on the speedometer, but experts tell us the diesel engine that powers it will give us 500,000 miles if we take care of it.
Old car faithfully buzzes along at 70 or so, giving 32 or 33 miles to the gallon on diesel fuel.
________
Paige Ford Crane, Texarkana, is one of two surviving children of Vol Calhoun Ford, who came to Warren almost a century ago to operate a concern first-called “Ford’s Steam Laundry” across from the dual offices of Doctors Marsh and George on North Main.
Mrs. Crane’s brother is George Younse (Bill) Ford, nursing home resident here.
Mrs. Crane was in the WHS Class of ’44 as the youngest of the Ford kids: at Henderson State, she met the late Joe Paul Crane, whom she still terms “my sweetheart”.
Their sons now operate the family Lincoln-Mercury dealership in Texarkana.
Mrs. Crane remains a faithful reader of THE EAGLE DEMOCRAT; she generously recalls columns penned by the late Author of Reflections.
Paige sends along this portion of one of those columns, penned long ago on the breakfast table of the little house at 305 West Pine Street, across from Warren Junior High:
“In my good garden I would first plant five rows of peas; preparedness, promptness, perseverance, politeness, and prayer.
“Next to them I plant three rows of squash: squash gossip, squash criticism, squash indifference.
“Then I put in five rows of lettuce: Let us be faithful, Let us be unselfish, Let us be loyal, Let us be truthful, Let us love one another.
“No garden is complete without turnip, and mine would have: Turn up at church, Turn up with a smile, Turn up with a new idea, Turn up with real determination.”
________
Speaking of the junior high, here’s your weekly history lesson.
Warren had no high school in the first decade of the 20th century.
Businessmen and church leaders here established what they called the Presbyterian Training School, an arm of the Pine Bluff Presbytery of the denomination, erecting a building on the site of Warren Junior High to house it.
The Training School lasted, perhaps, ten years until a public high school was erected on the site of the new post office.
It was in use only three or four years but then burned (school district didn’t have enough insurance to rebuild).
(S.B. Meek, grandfather of John Frazer and Larry Derby, was one of the movers and shakers who established the training school).
Warren Schools, aided by Arkansas, Bradley, and Southern Lumber companies, then built a temporary high school that later became the elementary school long presided over by the late Allie Mae Colvin Temple on Seminary Street.
People like Lovett M. Reaves and Elbert A. Frazer went to high school there.
Presbyterian Training School building was purchased by the Warren schools and a junior high was established there with a young man being hired from Quitman and Cleburne County to come and be principal.
His name was R.L. Newton.
Old training school was used for years: Retha West Snider, who died last month at 92, told me once she had attended the school under the principalship of R.L. Newton.
A vestage of the old training school remains: the Warren School colors of orange and black.
One of the training school teacher, a young divine, got to choose the colors and he chose the ones of his alma mater, Princeton University.
________
Good to see that some of the local physicians are now going to an appointment system for patients. Back in the days when Merl Crow and three others took care of Warren folk, it was “go there and sit and wait”.
My mother, the Author of Reflections, loved to go to the doctor, not because she was a hypochondriac, but because she enjoyed sittin’ there and visiting with all the fellow sufferers in the waitin’ room.
Times have changed: for the better.
________
Small world department: ran into a handsome minority gentleman in a store at Hot Springs the other day. He learned we were from Warren and observed his sister, the late Thelma Booker, taught there for years.
Mrs. Booker and her brother were from a small community near Arkadelphia named Curtis.
Mrs. Booker’s husband was, at one time, pastor of the Power House Church of God in Christ on West Central.
________
First State Bank’s M&P Branch Bank is now on the site, but we remember when the late Rufus Moseley and his wife, who was a Wolfe from out around Goodhope, had a grocery store there.
The Moseleys had two successful sons, Carroll and James Waylan, who reside elsewhere.
Small grocery stores proliferated in Warren 50 years ago.
Another, at Elm and Martin, was operated by Ray Wheeler.
Wasn’t its phone number 2468?
