One thing I recall with some embar-
rassment was an activity my father,
Donald Herren, took me to.
Paragould used to have beauty pa-
geants on the scale of state pageants
and everyone went. Programs in
book-form were even printed. This
particular pageant was in 1949. I was10 years old and Daddy even bought me a program.
I'll never forget. Mary Frances
Johnson did a singing-dancing routine
from "Annie, Get Your Gun." She
sang the song, "I Didn't Know the
Gun Was Loaded," and she won, the
best I can remember.
From then on, for a few years, I
couldn't decide if I was going to try to become "Miss America" or the first woman president, as some of my
friends remind me every now and then to keep me humble.
Donna Louise Wells
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Paragould' s 'Pest House'
I remember many people of Para-gould talking about the "pest house"
in the early 1900's. It was located where the City Power and Light Plant
has a work shed between 14th Street and Hwy. 49 across from Linwood
Cemetery.
The "pest house" was a place to care for people having contagious
diseases such as small pox or adult measles. The sexton of the Linwood
Cemetery, Mr. Yarbrough, and his wife prepared meals in their home for
residents of the house. Mr. Yar-brough would take the meals to the front
porch each day and leave them. Those quarantined would eat in seclusion
in their rooms. Folks lived there until their diseases subsided and then
returned to their families.
The house had four white posts on the front porch with separate
rooms for each occupant.
I lived at this time in a house on 15th Street which was full of
gullies and served as a playground for child-ren. All the kids talked
about the "pest house" as they played together in the gullies.
Lanette Rogers Gregory
Additional Articles Related
to the Pest House ~Poor Farm
City Plumbing Co., no matter its other merits, had a very photogenic
delivery wagon. Established in the early 1900s, the firm was owned by
A.G. Thompson. It serviced heating as well as plumbing needs and carried
"a full line of plumbing supplies, pipe and pipe fittings." It is
thought that the full line carried on the wagon below was intended as a
comical entry in a local parade. The business's location is not certain
but its phone number was 391.
Photos courtesy: :The Big Picture files
=====================================================
| I remember: Mainshore's Beauty Mainshore Township was unbelieve- ably beautiful when I first saw it some 53 years ago. From aged 3 until 1937-38, I lived in that area. Coffman Road snaked along the St. Francis River, sometimes one-half to three-fourths mile from the woods and occasionally through the woods. The river was less than a mile away. At times, heron and other exotic fowl could be sighted round the large cyprus trees growing in the late. An eagle rookery was said to have existed behind the Baldwin homesite on Coffman Road. I started to school at Miller when I was 6 years old. The school, which is now Mulberry Church of Christ, was a large, two story building. The rooms upstairs were used largely by fraternal orders, Woodmen of the World, Masons, etc. Mozelle Blackwood and Rupert Blaylock were teaching the year I started, which I believe was a short summer session. I studied from a chart on a large stand at the front of |
the room about "Baby Ray." This was called the
Chart Class. Our lunches were biscuits and sausage or biscuits and butter and jelly wrapped in the Soliphone. Without exception, all feet were bare in summer and some of the bright-eyed scholars may have been as old as 16. This was Chart Class through the eighth grade. We always remember the pleasant things of life -- something pretty, tasting good or smelling good. I remember the beautiful lilac bushes growing in the Dixon Day yard, the brilliant colors of the cannas in Aunt Susie Hopkins' many flower beds, a tub of blooming moss growing outside the door of Alice Higgins Smith, and orange day lily with a cyprus tree as a backdrop. I remember potato light bread made by Goldie Day and my mother's wilted lettuce, new English peas cooked with small new potatoes in a white sauce, fried chicken, coconut pie, a white linen table cloth on which bright yellow dishes glistened. I remember Daddy making repairs to the corn crib and a 40 or 50-pound pig climbed in and began to eat the corn. He threw a hammer and killed it. He |
I was born and raised in Paragould
Where your friends and neighbors
aren't fooled
Where in the summer we're warmed
and in the winter we're cooled.
There's no place on earth like Paragould.
Paragould, oh, Paragould.
I'll come back to you someday.
How I love my Paragould, Arkansas,
Most beautiful spot that you ever saw.
Between the outlaws and the inlaws
it's nearly a draw.
Oh, you'll like Paragould, Arkansas.
My heart will always be in Paragould
Where folks are happy and free
and the will of the people has always
ruled.
Yes, it's there I will ever be and
when you're away, every day of the
week, for Paragould you'll yearn
and if you wade in the waters of Eight-Mile Creek
Then it's sure you'll return.
Now it's the only town in the 50 states
Where the people all live by the golden rule and St. Peter will open
those pearly
gates when you say,
"I'm from Paragould."
Written by Grace M. Mitchell
Submitted by Joan Huffine
===========================
had to dress it out quickly and parcel it out to the neighbors
because it could not be preserved in the summer. Sharing a beef, fish,
etc., was a way of life.
I remember seeing Buck Lawrence walk down through Uncle George
Parson's cotton patch with a cougar that he had killed along Eight-Mile
Ditch slung over his shoulder. Buck Lawrence was easily as tall as my
six-foot father and the cougar's nose, bleeding, touched the ground ever
so slightly. Its eyes stared vacantly.
I remember parts of names and blurred faces of children. With them,
I confided childish confidences, shared my lunch (or traded parts of
it), went to meet the peddlar's truck to spend a penny for a GUESS WHAT
or a nickel for a Baby Ruth, spent the night and told ghost stores until
their mothers straightened up the bed and threatened us with a spanking
if we didn't settle down. These children are now grandparents, possibly
great-grand-parents. But to me, they are small, childish ghosts of the
past.
Some of us are linked by common bloodline. All of us are linked to
Greene County and the heritage of Mainshore.
Betty Key
Memphis, Tenn.