About Searcy's Old Searcy Arkansas

Blogging makes one more aware of the city, the houses, the styles, and the popularity of house styles from the past. Driving around Searcy, one can't help noticing that at one time the big porch was the ultimate. Frame houses all had big porches and some that wrapped. These are examples of a style found often on the old streets of Searcy Arkansas, especially Center Street and Market Street.

Worth noting for sure is that each house has a sidewalk in the front. Kids could ride their bikes, play hop-scotch, and not worry about being run over by a vehicle. Parents could sit on the porch and watch.

And there were not so many vehicles then.

Fast forward to today and we find NO sidewalks in our new subdivisions in Searcy Arkansas. Perhaps that is one contributing factor to our kids preferring to stay inside and play computer games.

I vote for bringing back sidewalks!!

I'm reposting this blog from Don Thompson's blog with his permission.

Memories of WWII
I remember the Service Flag hanging in our window of the house on North Main across from the First Methodist Church. I lived with my grand parents and the flag represented their son, Alvin Graham. Then there was the terrible day a telegram arrived announcing that Alvin was missing in action. I can still hear my grandmother, Sadie Graham, breaking down and crying uncontrollably. We kept up hope that he would be found alive but eventually we learned he had died on the battlefield in France. Alvin had married just a short time before while on leave before heading to Europe. His bride would never see him again. There were so many similar stories at that terrible time.

Lorraine American Cemetary , France . A total of 10,489 of our military dead.

My uncle, Joseph Alvin Graham is buried there.




This was taken by Alvin's Sister-In-Law



Here's a piece his sister-in-law wrote:

Shortly after I graduated from Floyd High School in April 1944, my sister Loy "Dump" Benton and I hired in with Ford, Bacon & Davis at the Arkansas Ordnance Plant near Jacksonville, manufacturing fuses and detonators. She had just completed her junior year.

We rented rooms at Cabot to be near the plant. Our brother Merle H. Benton was a soldier fighting in Germany. Dump's sweetheart Alvin Graham was also in the Army, stationed in Puerto Rico.

We worked on the detonator line 3 and 4. She worked at night, and I had a daytime shift. They moved me to the 1500 line, where I ran an electric screwdriver on the fuse line. Then I was moved to the 1800 line, where we had to wear coveralls and have our hair tied up. I was put on an automatic machine to measure gunpowder. The detonators were already in the machine. It would stop long enough for me to scoop the powder and drop it into the detonator.

The powder box was about two and a half inches square with one post on each side with a rubber band across. I would get the powder, lift it up across the rubber band, smooth it off and drop it into the detonator. Then it would move on until the next detonator came up. It was dangerous work. A shield around the mechanism provided some protection for your body if the powder exploded. But the hand you had to put in the machine was always at risk, and one woman on our line lost a hand in an explosion.

Dump had a reaction to the petrol tablet that we used in producing the ammunition and had to have her tonsils removed. Otherwise, we made it through without a serious mishap. While we were working at the plant during the summer of 1944, Alvin came home to Floyd on leave and made a beeline for the Benton home to see Dump.

When he found no one at home, he hit the street looking for our daddy to determine where we were. Alvin finally found him and learned that we were working in Jacksonville. The next day, I found a note from
Dump saying "Alvin is home; I'll see you tomorrow."

But the day after that, I found another note telling me that they had gone to get married.

Our friend and future county judge Floyd Bradberry performed the ceremony on July 5, 1944. Alvin had his orders in his pocket when they were married, and he returned to service after a honeymoon of just one week.

Dump never saw him again. Just three months later, she received word that he was missing in action in France. We later learned that Alvin had been killed instantly by a bomb. Dump never quite got over it. She didn't go back to school for her senior year but went home to help our parents, and never married again.

I left the defense work that fall to enroll at Hendrix College in Conway but found it boring after working for the war effort, and soon returnedto the old production line. When we heard the war was over in 1945, they took this picture of all of us on the 1800 line.

My brother made it home from the war and with his wife Mabel visited Alvin's grave in France about six years ago. Dump died in 1997. Her husband Alvin's name is permanently engraved on the war memorial on Courthouse Square in Searcy. The Jacksonville Museum of Military History was established in one of the old ordnance buildings, and in 2001 I donated my scoop and a check stub. It showed we had earned 59 cents an hour.

Here's the local paper notice.

A recent newspaper article pointed out that cell phones have now surpassed the households opting for landlines. Fewer and fewer families are having landlines. They are dropping the landlines and choosing cellphones only. Verizon Communications Inc reported 39 million landline customers in March 2008 and 35 million a year later.

Over the same period Verizon's wireless customers grew from 67 million to 87 million! Some of those came from the company's acquisition of Alltel Crop. But the amazing thing is that many are going cell phone only. It saves money.

I hate that I can't go to the phone book and find old Joe Blow who lives at 800 Doe Street. How do we search for a cell phone?

And that brings up the picture above. The phone numbers for this Duncan New and Used Cars were on the sign. It says night phones 747 or 677 or something similar. Imagine! Three digit numbers! Most of the people here on this blog can't remember three digit numbers. In fact, neither can I because at my home we had NO phone!

The picture shows my husband and his father in front of the family car lot on Race Street in Searcy Arkansas. The business grew and grew and became Duncan's Chrysler Plymouth and Jeep until they sold the franchise in approximately 2004. It's a good thing they sold it when they did because they probably would have lost it this year when Chrysler decided to take away so many franchises.

Times change. Numbers change. We may not like it but it happens. We need to have a Treo and capture every phone number that we can because we can't go to the phone book and find it!

Here's another great old picture taken at Armstrong Springs, White County Arkansas. Armstrong Springs had a hotel where people came and stayed to drink the healing waters of the springs. Ruby Nell Woodson Moye loaned me the picture of this picture of the Armstrong family, Ruby's relatives on her mother's side. It is taken on the front steps of a house that still stands there.

Ruby said that her grandfather bottled and sold the water! Sounds like he was way ahead of his time in selling bottled water. He is the 4th from left, middle row. Armstrong Springs became Morris School and the road is now called Morris School Road.

This photograph of our old Smyrna Church on Highway 36 West taken in 1981 ? by one of the Armstrongs from Armstrong Springs was loaned to me by Ruby Nell Woodson Moye. She found it as she was cleaning out her desk and going through things long forgotten.

The church is now undergoing restoration. The photographer's composition is very nice. Most of us would have centered the church, wouldn't we? For another view and a little history of the church, click here. From this link you can find out a lot of White County history. Go for it!!