Steprock, AR

A new restaurant has opened at 2315 W Beebe Capps Expressway on the West side of Searcy Arkansas. Lots of vehicles have been parked around it saying that Searcy is trying it out. Searcy is great about going to a new restaurant and giving it a try. Usually ONE try! If the food is not excellent, that's it! It's not going to be around very long.

I gave it a try the other day. Here's what I liked best of all. The decor will bowl you over when you walk in the door. There are boats hanging from the ceiling, bicycles perched on dividers, old uniforms hanging from the ceiling. It is like visiting a museum and stepping back in time. You can feast your eyes on all the old stuff.

And the one who provided the old stuff, free of charge and doing the work himself, is our very loved builder Steve Ghent who moves old houses and restores them, who respects and loves history. He has collected these items throughout the years and used them to give atmosphere to this restaurant.

My friend and I had a very pleasant meal so the food is good at this new restaurant. I hope it is here for a long time. And if you see Steve Ghent tell him how much you enjoy his decorating this building.

I am reblogging this for Don Thompson, one of my localism contributors who knows all about our Searcy and surrounding area. He tells a little about Steprock.

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Recently there was a postcard in the local paper showing a scene from the little farming community, Steprock, which is about 18 miles North of Searcy.

Steprock, circa 1910 A minister in a white shirt baptizes a young man as a woman watches
from the riverbank near the small White County community. The number of Arkansans who practice
religion has always been high, with most identifying themselves as Christian and Protestant.
The state's largest denomination is Baptist, including its Southern, Missionary, Free Will, Primitive
and other branches. Arkansas has been called "the buckle on the Bible belt."

My mother and stepfather, Boyce Bryant, had a farm in Steprock. I visited the farm when I was 9 by riding a bus which probably took over an hour to travel the 18 miles. Up the hill from the farm was a chicken farm owned by K.K. King who also ran our movie theater, the Rialto.

In the 40s, the farm had outhouses and a well for water. I remember hauling up one of those narrow shaft well buckets--also sometimes called "bullet buckets" or "torpedo buckets" and emptying the water into a communal water container. We used a dipper to get a drink. I remember the water had lots of strange particles but we just ignored them and gulped down the water without further thought.

In the North, city buses are everywhere and each person knows how to read the bus schedule. Southern people are lost with buses like that. (I may be speaking only of myself, dumb as dirt about mass transit.)

In the South the buses ran from small town to small town, stopping at each one for passengers to get off. It might be a 15 mile ride or a 4 hour ride. On the 4 hour ride you'd probably need to exit the bus for a drink or to use the facilities.

This old picture of a bus stopping at a bus stop in Searcy AR is a reminder. People crawled off to go inside. And the bus picked up more passengers. This was also taken by Paula, who did her 4H project in photography. Paula, where is this bus stop?