George's Heritage Chapters
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George Taylor's Heritage
The Malvern I Remember
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The Malvern, Arkansas of the 40s and 50s I Remember
Tidbits of my Memory, by George Evans Taylor, Jr.
For many years the Western Auto Store was located on the NW corner of the intersection of Highway 67 (Page Avenue) and Main Street. This was the only place in town I could buy new parts to keep my old car running, I also purchased tires there. (NAPA had a car parts store down by Robert Hill's Shoe Shop but they would not sell to individuals, only businesses.) Carl Spence and his brothers at Western Auto were good people to deal with.
There was Chamberlain's Drug Store on the west side of Main Street. This was where my dad, Evans Taylor, bought my school supplies before school started each year.
Nearby was the Bank of Malvern, the oldest chartered bank in Arkansas! My dad had an account there. I also did some business there with Mr. Paul Battles.
Miller's Drug Store was just across the street. I don't remember buying any medicine there but they had the best soda fountain in town!
Near McLeans 5 and 10 cent store was an old street car turned into a hamburger joint. You could go in, set on a stool, give your order and see it cooked right before your eyes! You could smell the tastety hamburgers within a block of the place. It was a one man greasy spoon operation, this was the 50's fast food!
Nearby was Phelps' Feed and Seed store, Murl Phelps was very helpful. Whatever the farmer needed could be found there. Also there were groceries for the family.
On the west side of the hill on Main Street there was The Working Man's Cafe, you could buy a large plate lunch for $.45. Here you could eat a good lunch and hear the juke box entertain you as long as someone would keep feeding it nickels.
Just past the cafe was the Builders Supply store at the bottom of the hill. This is where you could buy lumber, nails, roofing, etc.
There was an Oklahoma Tire and Supply Store on Main Street for many years, they gave the Western Auto Store some competition.
The Malvern Daily Record newspaper office was located on the east side of main street. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Arkansas.
Most "in-season" days you would see my Uncle Hillman Taylor on Pine Bluff Street knocking on doors and selling his fresh vegetables from his Model A Ford Coupe. In fact I helped him some by knocking on the doors of some of the nicest homes in Malvern! His farm was at the end of East Sullenburger Street where the Malvern Hospital now stands
Some times our family would visit Uncle Hillman's family and we kids would put on some old clothes and go swimming in the clay pit on past their house. I remember that the old clay buggy tracks ran down into the water and we would pull ourselves under water by "walking the tracks" upside down as we went under. What fun!
My wife's parents, Walter Scott Tillery and Mamie Lee Black Tillery lived for many years at 210 Edwards Street. Some of their neighbors were the Vaughns, the Otts, and the Tripps. The City Park was behind their house.
I was born on a hill a few blocks north of East Sullenburger Street on May 20, 1931. Shortly thereafter my family moved back to Dallas County.
The train depot was a good place for "a country boy come to town" to know. It had a rest room open to the public. The place fairly bustled with activity. The black monster engines would snort, let off steam, and blow their whistles. I could watch as the engine took on water, water plus heat=steam to power the wheel driving cylinders. On the platform there was the hustle/bustle of the baggage handlers pulling their four wheeled carts and passengers milling around trying to find their baggage.
Some trains did not stop at the depot but a hook in the mail car of the passenger train would grab the mail sack hanging from the frame near the track, that was a sight for this boy. Also I enjoyed the whistle blowing as the engine went by, it increasing in frequency as it approached and decreased in frequency as it rolled away (the Doppler Effect). Many long freight trains rolled through this town!
I always parked my car on the top of the hill just south of the depot but I had a good reason for doing so. My old car would not self-start so I would let it roll down the hill to start it! You see this worked good as I lived on a hill at Cooper and could do the same thing there!
The another public rest room in town was at the Bus Station. There was always activity around there, you could even get a hamburger if you had the money. The station was, at times, located at various places near the center of town. Once it was on the NE corner of the intersection of Highway 67 and Main Street. Another place was about a block north of there in the center of the block on the north side of the street.
About 1949 a new automobile was being introduced nationwide, it was the Tucker. On West Page Avenue (HW 67) near the swimming pool there was a vacant auto agency building and a demo Tucker was brought there for show. The city police blocked of Highway 67 for a few minutes so the driver could show what the car could do. It would run like a scolded dog! Man it was something. It was low and streamlined and had an opposed six cylinder bronze block engine in the rear. Only six had the prototype bronze block, the others had an aluminum alloy block. It had a headlight in between the regular headlights and it turned as you turned the steering wheel, the gear shift was sticking out of the dashboard and the doors opened into the roof as most cars do now. This was worth coming to town for! I picked up a brochure. Unfolded it was about thirty inches square, and I kept it for many years. A few years ago I donated it to the Tucker Museum. The Tucker company never got off the ground, I think less than one hundred were built. Mr Preston Tucker ended up in prison, other automobile companies said he infringed on their patents.
I remember the brick yard at Perla and the brick yard just off of Highway 67 west. These were mainstays of the local enconomy. The 555 Taxi and Wrecker Co was there on West Page Avenue. On out Highway 67 there was "Dead Man"s Curve", named so because of the many train/automobile fatal accidents in the curve. This was the main throughfare from Memphis to Texarkana and there were many vehicles on the road.
Near Dead Man's Curve there was , at one time, the Sturgis Flooring Mill. I worked many hard, long days there. On down the road was the A.B. Cook Flooring Mill. I also put in many hard, long days there. My father-in-law worked there for many years also.
Near the corner of Main and Pine Bluff Street there was a very nice old home called the Gatewood House. My sister (Pauline Candys Taylor Guyse) lived there for a period of time.
There was the Hardage and Owens used car lot on Pine Bluff Street about a block off of Main. Two men came from Hot Springs and set it up. I worked part time as their mechanic, Mr Ray Hobbs let me use his shop when I needed it.
The Malvern Hospital was on South Main Street, I remember it well due to having surgery there when I was eleven years old and again when I was twelve. Later a new hospital was built in the west part of town. Still later a new one was built at the east end of Sullenburger Street.
Nearby was the Clem Bottling Plant, they made some mighty good drinks in those days. My favorites were orange and strawberry. Some of my school mates worked there after school.
I attended the Malvern High School for several years. Mr. Baber was my FAA teacher, I enjoyed the time spent in the work shop. We even worked on his Model A Ford! Mr. Carl Brooks was my Physical Education teacher. Mrs Kilpatrick was the Principal. Some classmates were the Vaughn twins Alvin and Calvin and Jerry Cole. After school I had to wait on the bus for about forty-five minutes. As I lived out in the country in the Cooper community we were the second load for the bus each afternoon but the first each morning. This made for a long school day.
For a period of time my family attended the Assembly of God Church on South Main Street. It was built of dark brownish red brick. It had ceiling fans and open windows for cooling in the summer and wall mounted natural gas radiant heaters for heat in the winter. Years later I helped demolish it, a new church was built while Rev. John Proposki (sic) was the pastor. (My wife and I were married on May 16 1950 by Rev. O.M. Montgomery during the time he was the church pastor. For a while we rented an apartment a few blocks down East Pine Bluff Street.)
My cousin, Norvill Jones, and his mother lived on Sulfur Springs Road just a short distance from South Main Street. He went to Malvern High School each day driving his Model A Ford. Norvill ended up going to Washington DC and worked with Arkansas Senator Fulbright many years.On out Sulfur Springs Road a few miles there was a city dump, I would sometimes go out there to see what people had thrown away. At times I was able to retreive items, repair them then sell or trade them for something I needed.
On Main Street as you start up the hill to North Malvern there was the Clem House and pond on the east side and on the west side there was a spring where people came from all over to get the mineral water running out of the pipe on the side of the road.
In the area between Main Street, Babcock Street, the railroad tracks and North Malvern was the Van Veneer Company. I worked there several years, it was very hard work but it was my first "public job" and I had to make a go of it. My boss was Mr. James Van Duesen. Some of my co-workers were Levi Wedsted, Clomer Wallace, Ovelee Wallace and George Reed. Last year we visited George and his wife Helen. Some of the jobs I did were clipper machine operator, core hauler, hole breaker, table runner, peeled logs and piked logs. We had an hour off for lunch, without this time to rest we couldn't have made the day.
In the early 50s my wife (Betty Sue Tillery Taylor) and I lived at 905 Lowden Street in North Malvern and we both worked at the International Shoe Company's Textile Mill as did my dad for many years. I had a Radio/TV/Appliance shop in the back of the house and repaired hundreds of items there. Our house was heated with natural gas using individual room heaters. One winter night we were sleeping and as ususal had a small flame in the bed room heater. We were awakened by light and noise; a two foot high flame was burning from the heater. I turned the gas valve off and noticed lights on in the neighbor's houses. About this time I heard sirens, walked to the front yard and could see flames reflected from the night sky. Wife and I drove to the area of the flames, they were on Babcock Street just a few feet north of the railroad tracks. A Ford car had been headed west on the side road at the intersection with Babcock, it failed to stop. It crossed the street, hit a natural gas pressure reducing station, caught on fire and was completely burned up when we arrived. Flames were still shooting skyward due to the burning of high pressure gas from the reducing valve's impulse tube. At first it was thought someone burned up in the car but later it was determined the driver escaped.
North on Babcock Street there is a graveyard on the west side of the hill. On the east side of the street there was an unofficial city dump, many houses are built there now. What treasures lay beneath those homes?
There was a bridge over the Ouachita River on Highway 84 just west of Rockport. It was a fun place to visit. One time I saw the water so high it was lapping over the board roadway and I drove my car over it! That roadway is now closed. The oldest methodist church in Arkansas is located there in Rockport.
Down stream from the bridge was the gravel pit area and it stayed full of backwater from the river. Some times we would fish there. Also the state allowed you to seine the fish as long as you cleaned, cooked and ate them there. It was called Picnic Seining. Several families would get together and do this.
At Butterfield I remember the train station, many passengers used it. The Station Master drove a Buick automobile which seemed to be a block long! There were two or three passenger trains each day plus the freight trains, it was a busy place. There was a store building built of rocks, it still stands today. We bought gasoline ,bread, etc there.
There was much traffic through Butterfield as it was on the route from Malvern to Hot Springs. Also it was dangerous there due to the rail road tracks at the bottom of the hill.
At the intersection of the Butterfield road and the rail road tracks there was a hardwood flooring mill, I worked there a few years. After Betty and I married I built our first house mostly of under size kiln dried oak lumber purchased from the flooring mill. My dad and mom (George Evans Taylor and Gladys Aline Ennis Taylor) helped me build it. Also on saturdays my father-in-law, Walter Tillery helped me. The lumber was hard to drive nails into, we soaped them so they would drive easier. I built three rooms, more were added later. That house built of oak still stands as straight as ever. It is located on the Old Military Road just over the hill north of the intersection with the Butterfield Road.
When my family moved from Dallas County in 1939 we lived in an old house on the Butterfield Road. It was on the hill near the Old Military Road. Our nearest neighbor was Mr. Foster, a farmer. He had a son named Charles who became my friend. Charles became a school teacher. The Fletchers lived "in the woods" about a quarter mile south of the Fosters near a natural gas pipeline. Their sons (adopted) were Joe English Fletcher and Charles English Fletcher. Charles was older than I but he became my best friend.
A few years later dad built a house on the Old Military Road, on a rocky hill just north of the Butterfield Road intersection. This was in the Cooper Community. Neighbors were Aubrey Stacy and the Kimbrells. The family lived there for many years. (Later the Interstate highway came thru the middle of his farm, he then built a new house on the south side of the highway.) I would walk to Butterfield and thumb a ride into Malvern. Some times the driver would even ask me to drive so he could rest for a while. What trust!
At home we could set our clocks at noon each work day, the rock quarry at Butterfield blasted each day at that time. On the weekends we would sometimes go up there and go swimming in the pits. We had to be very careful due to the sharp rocks. Once I dove down to the bottom and cut my head, it bleed very much.
I have many memories of growing up in the Malvern area. I lived there from 1939 to 1957. I still think of Malvern and it�s people often and wish them well. Really it has not changed that much nor has the population increased greatly.
I have three sisters and many kin still living in Arkansas. Two sisters live in Hot Spring County; Dorothy Aline Taylor Hobbs and Wilma Taylor Huckelby. One sister lives in Dover; Pauline Candys Taylor Guyse.
My wife and I have lived in Alabama the past forty-one years. All of our children and grand-children are nearby therefore I now call this home. God has been good to me! My next home will be in Heaven, will I see you there? (Boast not thyself of tomorrow: for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Prov. 27:1) What more could a man ask for?
What will be written about Malvern fifty years from now?
By (9-1-1998):
George Evans Taylor, Jr.
209 Lakeshore Drive
Muscle Shoals, Alabama 35661-1029