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 22, 2001.
We are back from “The Redneck Riviera”, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama, and their 20 or so miles of white-sand, salt-like beaches.
T’was our first visit in two years; the place(s) have grown again, but this time, somebody’s put in a “bypass” from Foley, Alabama, that takes away the old drill of stop-and-go driving for the last eight or ten miles into one of the little towns.
The Rev. Buck Thomson, who once labored over the Presbyterians here, came to Warren from a Gulf Shores pastorate: he loved the place, particularly the phletora of restaurants (the Rev. Mr. Thomson was a gourmand).
Gulf Shores is eight to nine hours, 450 miles, to the southeast.
They’ll charge you perhaps $150 a day for a modest, two-bedroom, two-bath beachfront apartment.
Ours would have provided sleeping spaces for eight or more without anybody having to sack out on the floor.
Apartment was, well, a little weary from well-being.
We’ll go back during the fall to one next door and stay another week: cost will be about the same or less but it’s one of those elegant enough to be bringing $250 per night now.
Prices go down quickly “when school starts”; all of a sudden, that’s the middle of August.
We’d walk half an hour up the beach in the morning and half an hour in the other direction in the cool of the evening.
This exercise apparently worked on the onetime country editor, since he gained only two pounds in a week of sampling forbidden fruit (for our diet) like ice cream, cookies, et al.
The two pounds came off quickly, but the rural scribe still finds himself “hung up” at 190 or so…30 pounds gone since the year began.
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The Lumberjacks and the Hermits are hitting the field for the hardest work one can imagine…pre-season football drills.
What makes this so tough in modern day is that the work is done in August, the year’s hottest month.
Our single adventure in high school football took place in the fall of 1944: the war was on but Warren continued to field a team (Crossett and Dumas has given up football “for the duration”, about which more later).
Back then, you didn’t play the first game until late in September: final game was on Thanksgiving Day, played either here or at Monticello.
Now the “regular season” is all over three or four weeks before that.
At any rate, I was a hopeful lineman back then: our star halfback, Billy Lee Denton, stepped on my hand, leaving a lasting scar, of which I have always been privately proud.
Equipment was “helter-skelter”.
We discovered after a fortnight of drills that the Rev. Dr. Paul Stockemer (a Baptist replate in later life) and I were sharing two pairs of shoes…he had one of one size, one of the other, as did I.
No wonder our feet hurt.
Dr. Stockemer, was an all-state tailback at Alma in Northwest Arkansas, later an all-conference player at that Mecca of Southern Baptist, Baylor University.
Ralph Stockemer was named for Dr. Stockemer’s brother, who played football at Ouachita and who died in World War II.
Well, Warren got rolling in football after the war, beating Crossett, 83-6, and Dumas, 92-6 on successive weekends.
All that came down to earth when Lamar Dingler’s Lake Village club pounced on the locals, 44-0, with the likes of Geno Mazzanti, Buddy Rogers, Philip Reginelli, and the like.
Live and learn…
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Ned Moseley, who had Fordyce beginnings, replaced Charles Ray Baker as ‘Jack coach: he later became superintendent both at McGehee and Stuttgart (Clarendon, too?).
Isn’t Mr. Moseley’s son, Charles, the new coach at Dermott? He coached last year (Charles did) at Clinton in Van Buren County but had a heart attack early in the season and had to give up his coaching duties for the campaign.
Interesting: latest enrollment figures would throw both Eudora and Dermott into Class AA athletics next year, taking out two members of the old 8AAA in which Warren currently labors.
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Start of school reminds an old timer of classes at “Miss Dot’s school” on the site of the new Warren Post Office, where we matriculated in the fall of 1935.
Miss Dorothea Martin was principal; she also taught the first grade, conducting morning classes for one group, afternoon classes for another.
“Miss Dot” was a daughter of Charles Nicklin Martin, MD, who in turn was a son of Dr. John Wilson Martin, pioneer physician, bank founder, and owner of the residence in Central Warren now used as a museum.
There was no school lunch back then, of course, since we’d just walk home noonish and not go back in the afternoon.
Basement of the building was a survivor from the first Warren High School, built there before World War I.
That building burned and the wooden one on Seminary Street was erected as a “temporary” high school, people like the late Elbert Frazer, the late Lovett M. Reaves, and others graduating there.
In that basement, art classes were conducted by Miss Eloise McKimmey, whose family resided in the house where Drs. Bryant now conduct their chiropractic practices.
Somebody had built a “log cabin” south of the school building, toward the residence of the V.C. Ford at Pine and Main.
Us kids’d play around there at recess, occasionally finding evidence of illicit nocturnal romance around (we were so sheltered and backward in those pre-TV days we didn’t know what we’d found…for some reason we were not particularly interested.)
If somebody misbehaved on the playground, the punishment was to go and sit next to “Miss Dot” or somebody on the schoolyard steps.
One of our prime activities (boys at least) was “getting up a a gang” and running around the yard pretending we were Lash LaRue or Tom Mix or Buck Jones or Gene Autry or Bob Steel or somebody, our cowboy heroes from Saturday afternoon Westerns at the Pastime or The Avalon.
I was not age six until late September of that year.
Retrospectively, I wish my parents had “held me out” for a year before starting school: once more retrospectively, I know now I was not mature-enough for any of the 12 public school grades nor four at Hendrix College.
But my mother had followed the lead of Faye Holt and Corinne Donegan who had taught their sons, Feddie and Harvey, to read.
So, my mother sat me down with a little primer and taught me. And at age five.
Don’t guess it was wasted effort.
