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 21, 2001.
We repair down the crookedy road through Johnsville to Crossett periodically to see our youngest of four daughters, her lawyer husband, and their kids, a son, six and a daughter approaching age two.
Usual portion of our activities in this western portion of Ashley County is lunch at a chain restaurant called Western Sizzler which, at Crossett, is both good and inexpensive (these being major virtues to retired gourmands like us).
We were down there the other day when a handsome woman and her husband, a large and impressive man sat down at a nearby table.
At the end of their meal, the big man at that table arose and introduced himself. Well, re-introduced is a good word: he was the Rev. David Layton Wiggins, onetime pastor of the First Assembly of God Church here in town.
Pastor Wiggins and his lovely wife, Sue, a Morrilton native, now serve a church at Crossett: Warren friends say they were associated with the work of the PTL Club for a season.
Mr. Wiggins was here through much of the first half of the ‘seventies, leaving Warren for a Little Rock pastorate.
This column has observed before that First Assembly of Warren has had some really outstanding ministers: Mr. Wiggins was just one of them.
Surely another is our valued new neighbor, the Rev. Jim Bales, who bought the Fred Holt residences from the Charles Ezells.
Mr. Wiggins is a native of the Houston, Texas, suburb called Splendora.
We’d predict success for him at Crossett, a place that is, to a great degree, unknown to most Arkansas people.
Established when a group of Iowa investors bought thousands of acres of virgin timberland 100 years ago, Crossett progressed from being a “company town” with a single retail store into an interesting metropolis whose population figures are deceiving.
The city of Crossett only counts 6,000 people, but there are another 3,000 or so in “West Crossett” and 3,000 more in “North Crossett”, a development helped along by the late Attorney Ovid T. Switzer.
That makes Crossett a place of at least 12,000 people.
…and that big old paper mill keeps rolling 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
(The paper mill was made possibly in the ‘thirties when Crossett’s owners mortgaged their timberland to the Reconstruction Finance Administration to build it: smart move, retrospectively).
Dr. Robert C. Milton, formerly of Warren, a dentist, is just one of our folks who prospered there: the late Dr. Bud Ripley was another, the late Jeweler Charles Kinard a third.
And, of course, a favorite, onetime Hermitage Coach Teodis Ingram, now occupies the same position at Crossett High.
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Kids nowawdays seem to spend the summer months riding around in pickup trucks or in divers all types of rolling gear.
Things were different over half a century ago.
World War II was winding down when, at age 15, we reported to duty at Southern Lumber Company for the princely wage of 40 cents per hour.
A bunch of us worked at the dry kilns where the late Clifton Brown was foreman: James R. Taylor supervised the planning mill, Kyle Taylor the sawmill. Ernest J. Gibbs had been brought in from Lufkin, Texas, as superintendent of the plant.
Most of our work at Southern consisted of “stackin’ shorts” pine boards six feet long and less that had been pulled from the dry kilns by a little electric machine operated by George Littleton of Wilmar, assisted by his longtime colleague, Walter Walker.
Occasionally, we’d stack hardwood shorts.
Southern had a number of women doing manual labor back then: most of the young men were in the Service, fighting World War II.
My weekly check was something less than $16, with “the deducts”.
I had a Lipton tea can (square, about four by four by four) into which I would put the cash, secreting it on the top shelf of the bathroom closet in my mother’s house at 305 West Pine.
Then I’d “live on that cash” through much of the coming winter.
I’d ride a bike to work, parking it inside a lumber shed that used to stand across from what used to be the company office.
The Southern “company store” had been closed by that time, but some of the fellows would sneak off to Mr. Bert Green’s store behind what once was the “Southern Store” for a candy bar or something.
Seems like Mr. Wolfe Penister also sold candy and tobacco at the plant itself.
Mr. and Mrs. Green operated the store in that location several years: she was the former Christine Martin, a granddaughter of the Warren pioneer (and bank founder) Dr. John Wilson Martin, who had come to our area after finishing medical school at Tulane.
The little house in which the Green’s raised two daughters, Anne and Betty, was on North Martin: now it’s been moved to Wise Street to make more room for the Cathey family’s automotive business on this busy Warren thoroughfare.
Mrs. Green later worked for years at Weiss Jewelers, a business founded by the St. Louis native, Arthur Weiss. Mr. Weiss, as a young man, had an offer from a jewelry store in Duluth, Minn. He detrained at Duluth and noted the temperature was 50 below. Doing a u-turn, he got back on the train and took his second career offer…one to come to Warren.
Mr. Weiss married Sue Belle Turner: their home was on Central, on the site of one of the fast-food places that have sprung up along there. Their son was Dr. Albert T. Weiss, an optometrist but, prior to that, an engineering graduate of Fayetteville, like his cousin, Charles Turner, who prospered in highway construction at Forrest City.
The summer after the Southern Lumber Company esperience, we joined the late Richard Neely plus Misses Mary Eberle and Jane Hurley as lifeguards at the new YMCA swimming pool.
Didn’t make much money but got to see Mary in a bathing suit: that was a fringe valued indeed.
Summer of ’47 found us at the Bradley Lumber Company working for Mr. Gordon Harrison: we spent most of our time in the oak flooring pre-finish area, where heat lamps were used to dry the varnish. The Bible says Shadrach and friends got in a furnace “seven times hotter than hot”.
That summer, I learned about that.
All about it.
