January 27, 2013. We made better progress today than expected. As the sun set, we found ourselves in Jonesboro, AR, the town in which I was born and where my parents lived and died. Of course, I was raised in Trumann, 15 miles southeast toward Memphis on Highway 63. We drove around Trumann in route so I could show Annie, for the umpteenth time, where I grew up. Tomorrow, we will drive by 1811 Greenwood, the home my parents owned after moving to Jonesboro.
Bill Teague was the Hart's Bread delivery man when I was a youngster. Melvin Robins helped Bill every weekend by getting up at 3:30 AM and running Bill's route as a helper. Often I would go along, stacking loaves of bread on shelves in stores in Trumann and in the surrounding area. Bill worked hard and saved his money. His dream was to own his own store someday. The first picture is Teague's Market, Bill's dream. His store is small and Bill supplements his grocery sales by barbecuing on the side. Bill would be in his mid-seventies now.
The second picture is the Maxie Theater, one of two "picture shows" in Trumann in the fifties. Tuesday night was Dime Night. You could see a movie, have a soda and a bag of popcorn for a quarter. In the fifties, movie theaters ran serials, a five to ten-minute continuing series which ended each week with a cliffhanger. You'd have to go back each week to find out how your hero escaped certain death. The bricked up door on the side of the theater is the entry to the balcony where black Americans were forced to sit. They were not allowed to sit downstairs with white Americans. Separate public facilities were the norm in the south in the fifties.
The WWII Memorial contains my father's name and the name of Uncle Rex. Both were extremely proud of their service to the country. However, neither talked about the war in my presence. The light brick building in the background is the elementary school I attended through the sixth grade. The church is the building in which I was baptised as a boy. It was then the First Baptist Church of Trumann. The final picture is today's First Baptist Church.
The yellow house belonged to my Aunt Laurene. Someone has rescued it. At her death, the house was terribly run down. I did not believe it was salvageable. Aunt Laurene was a hoarder. Every room in the house was completely filled with stuff she could not discard. There was a path from the kitchen, to the living room, to the bathroom and to the bedroom. The house remains in a deteriorating neighborhood, but it looks 100 times better than it did.
The Community Center was built by the Singer company - Trumann was a Singer Company town. It was the site of boxing matches, wrestling, basketball games, dances and every other community activity. Of the the two houses you see, one is where my Uncle Rex and his family lived until he got a little more prosperous. The second is where my boyhood best friend, Melvin, lived. The brick house was built on the lot where I was raised. Dad rented the house after we moved and the tenants ransacked it to the point of worthlessness. So, Dad gave the house and two lots to the church. The house was razed and a parsonage was built in its place. The large trees you see are the same trees that shaded me when I mowed the grass behind a manual push mower during the sweltering Arkansas summers.
The final house is typical of those built by Singer for its employees. It is what remains of a three-room shotgun shack, called that because you could fire a shotgun through the front door and blow the contents of the house out the back door. This one has an add-on at the rear. The addition was constructed after the house was purchased from Singer. There were hundreds of these houses in Trumann in the fifties. Workers who made $28 per week building sewing machine cabinets would pay Singer $8 a week to rent one of these.
So, there you have it. A quick tour of the town that made Malachi Farkley. I hope you enjoyed it. Annie didn't.
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