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 5, 2001.
Now school’s started, football’s started, the overworked air conditioners are given a little respite (not a whole lot), all’s well in Bradley County.
Folks hereabouts like to “go out to eat!”
They’ve got a new mecca now at Hermitage called “L.A.” which means “Lower Arkansas”.
Friend of ours consumed a steak here the other night and came away raving over it.
More adventuresome friends of ours made their way down across the John Lipton Bridge for a 45-minute drive to El Dorado to try and much-praised two-year old restaurant there called FayRays.
FayRays is on the north side of the newly-restored courtsquare in the onetime oil capital of Arkansas.
It’s located in an unobtrusive storefront; proprietors, one of whom was the owner of the given name, “Ray”, decided to name the establishment for the blonde and imperiled. Fay Wray target of the unsolicited affection of the giant ape, King Kong, in the movie of the early thirties.
You recall the kids’ rhyme of the thirties: “Shave and a haircut, six bits. Who was the barber, Tom Mix? Who did he marry, Fay Wray? How as their baby, okay”?
Well, at FayRays at El Dorado, Union County, Arkansas, you can get the most-stylish meal we’ve had since spending too much money at an eatin’ joint at Johnson, Arkansas, between Fayetteville and Springdale, called James at the Mill.
Presentation, service, food quality…all were highly superior at Fay Rays.
You can join their little private club if libatory thrusts interests you.
It’s all delightful…including being only 45 minutes away from our particular center of refinement and charm.
They don’t take reservations.
But there are plenty of tables; there were vacant ones the night we visited (a Friday).
We’ll be back.
Will we ever!
You need to try it: LA’s too, since it’s only 15 minutes or so down the Hermitage-Warren Glorious Lipton Turnpike.
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Two of our daughters favored us with a gift certificate to an eatin’ joint in Little Rock called “Brave New Restaurant”.
We’d dined there before when the facility was located in a onetime Toddle House at the foot of Cantrell Hill in Little Rock.
Since then, Owner/Chef Peter Brave has moved the place to one of those new office buildings that overlook the Arkansas River, upstream from downtown.
The restaurant is on the second floor of an office building: there’s not even a sign out front. We found our way there nonetheless; came away just as impressed as we were with FayRays of El Dorado.
There’s dining both inside and outside: being devotees of air conditioning, we chose the inside. Service was prompt, helpful. Food was just super. You’ll have to try it. Good luck findin’ the place. Just ask somebody in the neighborhood. We did.
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Praise continues to filter in for James Wallis Marsh, a member of the Prescott High School Band (trombone) in 1939 who has practiced medicine here half a century.
Maylon Rice, Fayetteville newspaperman, grew up in Warren: his mother is Mattie Brown Rice Clark, a licensed practical nurse; his grandfather was the late Levi Brown.
Writes Maylon: “Dr. Marsh often treated us as kids knowing full well my mother couldn’t pay the bill. My best Dr. Marsh story is that my grandfather, Levi, almost sliced his thumb off while installing a black plastic water line down a well, probably at my mother’s tiny house in their yard (Editor’s Note – Mattie, a widow, was mother to Maylon and his brother, Iry). Maylon continues: “My mother was an LPN in training and convinced my grandfather to go to the emergency room where Dr. Marsh was waiting to sew up the bloody thumb. Dr. Marsh looks at the thumb which is spurting blood with every heartbeat. The doctor then begins to fill a syringe with a numbing drug to be given before sewing the thumb up. Levi Brown says to Dr. Marsh: “I don’t need no shot.” Dr. Marsh lays down the syringe and begins to sew up the thumb. Stitch one, stitch two, stitch three. My grandfather Levi interrupts him: “I think I’ll take that shot now, Dr. Marsh”. Dr. Marsh never said a word: he just administered the shot now, Dr. Marsh”. Dr. Marsh Never said a word: he just administered the shot, let it take effect, and sewed up the damaged thumb. My grandfather wanted to pay for the procedure in the emergency room. He did so, in cash. No bill was ever sent. My grandfather left with his dignity intact; Dr. Marsh didn’t have to argue with an elderly man old enough to be his own daddy about needing a shot.
“I remember once getting a wasp stinger in my eye. I was taken to his office the next morning. My mother and his nurse were afraid they’d have to hog-tie me to the exam table to get the swollen eye open for the stinger to be taken out. But Dr. Marsh came in, leaned over me and whispered something into my ear. Only I heard him. I was perfectly still until the stinger was gone. He knew how to handle wiggly little boys. Girls, too.Memories DO bless and burn.
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Ran into Travis Martin Adams, the retired vice-president of Arkansas Tech University, and his wife in a Little Rock establishment.
Louanne Adams has been coping with health problems, but reports she’s doing well.
I told them I had discovered that her father, Noel Arch Van Dover of Plainview in Yell County, had gone to college at Hendrix.
They said Mr. Van Dover went down to Conway from Plainview with only enough money to enroll at the college and to buy his books.
Nothing extra.
Mr. Van Dover discovered the school textbooks could be checked out of the library, read, returned.
He saved his money; never bought the books.
Prof. Adams says his groups’ planning a reunion of the WHS Class of ’51 here in Warren this fall.
Says Carolyn Rose Fullerton, younger daughter of longtime Bradley Dry Kilns Foreman Blaine Fullerton, promises she’ll come. Others too.
