1930 SMALL TOWNS IN SEVIER

COUNTY ON SATURDAYS

If you walked down the main street of De Queen, or any of the other small towns in Sevier County Arkansas, on Saturday, afternoon, you won’t find much going on now days. It’s not one of the busy evenings, these days.

However, if you had walked down the town street back in the 1920's, 30"s or 40's, on Saturday afternoon you would likely have found lots of goings on. Saturday was when rural folks came to town to sell their produce, replenish their supplies and just plain old country visiting. At that time Saturday was called tight shoe day, because everyone put on their best shoes and clothes and away they went. Everyone looked forward to going to town on Saturday morning and staying until after dark.

Although I never got to go to any of the other towns in Sevier County on Saturday I am sure they were just as crowded as De Queen. There were several small towns in Sevier County prior to 1950.

In downtown De Queen where I grew up, things started hopping early on Saturday. One of the first things you would see was probably two or three men that were blind or with some other disability sitting on the sidewalk playing guitar and begging for money. At that era there wasn’t any such thing as social security. Social Security wasn’t started until 1936. Some of the older people could draw an old age pension check. It usual was never more than $15.00. In fact there was an old Country Western song back in those days about the old age Pension Check comes to your door.

The stores were open early as merchants cleaned, polished and filled their grocery shelves with fresh supplies. They had their stores cooled somewhat. Most had a foyer at the entrance with an overhead fan. They also had overhead fans in use in side of the building. Keeping it warm in the winter was much easier and simpler.

The meat in the market was fresh on Saturday. The butcher in a couple of the stores butchered their own livestock. One I remember was George Kite. At one time he had his meat market in Lewis grocery. H. H. Martin also had a meat market. Chester Craig started his butchering career in their store. I think the MSystem Store and Henderson Grocery also had meat markets in their store. The local bakery always had plenty of day old bread that they had baked that morning which you could buy for a nickel loaf. (just the way business is)

There were four drug stores in the city of De Queen in the 30’s and 40’s. Three was located around the court Square. They were Brookes Drug, Huskins Drug and Palace drug. There was also one just south of where Wilkerson Funeral Parlor is now. I think there is a flower shop there now. A Mr. White was the operator. His daughter taught school at De Queen when I was attending Junior High School. The druggist in those days had to compound most of the prescriptions. The stores had over the counter medicine, such as aspirin, cough syrups etc.

Some of the medicines were Groves Chill Tonic. It tasted like it had the cork stopper ground up in it. And for coughs we used Juniper Tar. You got a spoon half full of sugar and put 6 drops of the medicine in it and swallow. But the miracle drug of the times was quinine. It was prescribed for almost everything. It sure was bitter and made your ears ring.

The young people now days would have a hard time imagining how many people were in the city of De Queen on Saturday. I am sure that all the other towns in Sevier County did the same thing. I have seen it when all of the sidewalks around the Courthouse square and across the streets were just packed. There were stores all around the court square. You had to just shoulder your way through the people. The strange thing is that most of the crowd knew each other.

Around the Court Square there was several benches for the spit and whittle club to sit. They also told a few tall tales. On Saturday they were always full and some of the men would sit around on the grass and exchange lies.

However some of them good ole boys would get to sipping a little to heavy and their stay in town lasted a little longer than they had planned. At that time De Queen had a city jail. It was located were the present day Fire Station is. It was at sidewalk level and the door was only about three feet from the sidewalk. You could just go to the door and talk to the prisoners any time. Best I recall it didn't have a window. Usually had 3 inches of dirt on the floor. If you stayed in the jail more than a day they would feed you. The menu was one hamburger a day. Water and no coffee. Really wasn’t a good place to spend a Sunday. The city Marshal in the 1940’s and 50’s was Bill Dyer.

At that time De Queen had a town Marshal and one officer that received part of his salary from the merchants. His major job was walking around town after closing time and shaking the doors to make sure the merchants had locked them. There wasn’t a highway patrol because about 75% of the people didn’t own a car. The first sheriff I remember was Jim Sutton. When I first remember wildcat whiskey was the most abused law. Many people depended on it to feed their family.

The farmers were a unique group of people. At crop planting time they borrowed enough to plant a crop. Then when they harvested at the end of the season their farm animals used a 1/3 of the crop for food. The crows, Coon and other animals swiped a 1/3 of it. Then the banker got a 1/3 and the poor ole farmer was rat back where he started. Saturday was also some time called butter and egg day because that was the day the local farmers brought in the week's accumulation of eggs (sometimes later in the day you could buy some of the eggs for as little as a dime a dozen. They also brought cream, chickens, and other farm produce. These produce items were their weekly cash flow for provisions and other necessities. The farmers' wives then proceeded to do their weekly shopping while the men folks gathered on the sidewalk or street corners to exchange the latest news (lies, or gossip), whichever the case might be. They would trade, or sell their products and then shop. I know my father has many times bought potatoes from the Farmers for $1.00 per hundred pounds. The farmers could then visit with his friends and neighbors in the evening. The women mostly were shopping for material to make clothing. They also shopped for groceries that couldn't be produced on the farm, such as soda, baking powders, flour, etc. The women would buy flour in 48 pounds sacks. These sack were what was called print material. The women tried to buy sacks that matched sack, which they had bought previously. Then they would make dresses, shirts and other clothing from the sacks. I remember the Shawnee Milling Company had the slogan on their trucks that read, “EAT THE FLOUR WEAR THE SACK: IF NOT SATISFIED YOUR MONEY BACK.” As soon as the women finished their shopping, they, too, gathered about to exchange news and views or just plain visit. Money was in short supply so there was more visiting than shopping. By 1940 the war was getting cranked up pretty good. The U. S. wasn't in the war yet, but is was creating more jobs. This meant that some of us kids could go to see a movie on Saturday. We would stay in the movie as long as we could because in the summer it was nice and cool in the building. There were two movie houses in De Queen at the time. One was the Gem and the other was the Grand. The Gem was open on Friday night Saturday and Sunday. It showed the newest westerns that were out. Some of the western actors I remember was Johnny Mac Brown, Bob Steele, Tim Holt, Tom Mix and Buck Jones. We had this farmer that wasn't to bright come in to town one Saturday. We all called him Pork Chop. He sold some of his farm products and got enough money to buy himself a new pair of overalls and a shirt. On the way home he had to cross a creek called Hurricane Creek. Well ole Pork Chop decided that he would take a bath in the creek, put on his new clothes and surprise his wife when he got home. Well he took off his clothes that he had worn every day last year and just tossed them in the creek. He watched them as they floated out of sight. He then took his bath and went over to the wagon to get his new clothes. Well you guessed it: some one had taken them or he had lost them off his wagon. He stood there in his birthday suit trying to figure what he should do. Then he says to himself, "Well I'll just go on home and surprise my wife anyway." We almost always got home by 8:00 PM. By that time the crowd had thinned out as rural people went home. By midnight the town was quite and started cleaning up and preparing for next Saturday. Just a few of the people leaving the very late movie was all the action. Well when we got home everyone was worn-out. We always had a special treat for night meal on Saturday night. We had baloney sandwiches. To us that was a treat because it was a welcome break from beans and taters.