The Mountain Grove Community
Mountain Grove Arkansas is a small community in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, just northeast of Alma, Arkansas. Divided into forty acre plots, the whole community was originally made up of small farms. In the late 1920s my grandparents, Leroy and Maud Pound, bought one of those forty acre farms. In the early 1950s, my family came to live with my grandparents on that same farm. Though it is very different today, in my mind, it always remains the way it was when we lived there as children. Every image, every smell, and every sound are as clear to me today as they were some sixty-five years ago.
Mountain Grove Road gradually winds north and east around the small farms like a ribbon of molasses on a cold morning. It rises from Highway 64 in Alma until it arrives at Ridge Road. To the east is Georgia Ridge and to the west and north is Dean Springs. Halfway up the mountain a small one lane dirt road runs north and south across an east and west section of Mountain Grove Road. Today this road is known as Edwards Road, but when I was a child it had no name. It was just the little dirt road that ran past my grandparents’ farm. These two roads crossed at the high point and very middle of Mountain Grove. It was also the middle of my childhood world. Though I was acquainted with many others who lived on the mountain and ran the small farms, my world consisted mainly of those who lived close to the intersection of these two roads.
The Burton peach farm was on the southwest corner of this intersection. Along the north edge of the Burton property just outside the fence under a huge oak tree there was a neat row of mailboxes lined up on the edge of Mountain Grove Road. The mailman did not venture onto any of the small, narrow side dirt roads that led to various farms. If you wanted your mail delivered, then you needed to have a mailbox along the main road. The farms along this intersection all had a box sitting on top of a flat cedar board that was nailed to several cedar posts. Mr. Bearden was the postman. He drove a long black car with a running board on the side. Sometimes, he would let me stand on the running board while he moved forward a few feet. I thought it was the grandest thing in the world.
The Burton’s mailbox was first because the boxes were lined up in alphabetical order.
Their forty-acre farm was divided between a peach farm and a pasture. They raised milk cows and chickens, and sold both milk and eggs. They were both very stocky, well-built people. My grandmother said they were German. The Burton’s house faced north toward Mountain Grove Road, but set at least a half-acre or more south down the little dirt road. The area between their house and Mountain Grove Road was a pasture for the cows. Behind their house was the peach orchard. The Burton’s house always smelled like sausage, but the back porch smelled delicious during peach season when the ripe fruit-filled baskets were lined up in the shade of the porch roof.
Mrs. Way was a widow and lived on the northwest corner of the intersection. She was a diminutive, bent over woman who seemed ancient to me at the time, though she was probably only in her late sixties, which doesn’t seem so old to me right now. She had broken her back at one time and had a huge hump between her shoulder blades. She was very wrinkled and dipped snuff which frequently leaked out of the corner of her mouth. I loved to visit with Mrs. Way. She could spit tobacco into a bucket as well as any saloon cowboy in a TV western. My grandmother had a matching set of clear, quilt patterned snuff glasses, compliments of Mrs. Way.
When we walked to the mailbox Mrs.Way was often sitting under a huge shade tree in her backyard dipping and spitting as she snapped beans or shelled peas. Sometimes, she did not have the most winning personality, though for some reason she took a liking to me. Most likely it was because I would always stop and visit with her father who lived in a cute little one room house behind her own house with pots of red geraniums on the small front porch. He was an invalid who stayed in bed all the time and loved visitors. It was probably the butterscotch and cinnamon candies that he kept in a dish by his bed that gave me the courage to visit. He was very generous and loved to talk. My sister and brother could never be persuaded to join me.
Mrs. Way also had a son and granddaughter who lived with her sometimes. Her granddaughter, Patsy, sometimes rode the school bus which we always caught under the big oak at the corner by the mailboxes. Mrs. Way was like the school bus police. She reported any suspected misbehavior straight to our grandmother via the four-party telephone line that she shared with my grandmother, the Benefields, and the Blevins. This meant any infraction was soon broadcast over the whole mountain. My grandmother usually did not take kindly to Mrs. Way’s complaints and often acted quite irritated if we did anything to embarrass her. I would sometimes hear her complain to Grandpa about Mrs. Way’s meddling, but of course, Mrs. Way was probably just reporting our sometimes less-than-perfect behavior. Mrs. Way’s fence line was only about fifteen to twenty feet from the side of my grandparents’ house which was built right on the southeast corner of their forty acres. We were not supposed to ever go on Way’s property, even though the pasture was grown up and covered with young sweet gum and maple saplings. I cannot say we always obeyed that rule, but that is story in itself, best left for another chapter.
Looking back, I am sure Mrs. Way worried about our safety because we used those sweetgum and maple saplings as launching pads to fly through the pasture.
Patsy Way graduated and moved away right after I started school. I remember she had long blond hair and sometimes put it up in a ponytail with a scarf tied around it. She wore beautiful clothes, and all the boys wanted to sit with her, but sometimes she would sit in the front of the bus and let me sit beside her. After she moved away, Mrs. Way would tell me how she was going to school, and then how she got married, but I did not ever get to see her again. I have always wondered what happened to Patsy.
Directly across from Mrs. Way’s house on the Northeast corner of the intersection was the Mountain Grove Missionary Baptist Church. The Ways, the Blevins, and a whole lot of the other community members attended services there. The Hall’s owned the farm on the northeast corner, but at one time someone had donated a half acre to build the church. Services at that little Baptist Church were quite enthusiastic compared to the First Presbyterian Church in town where my mother took us every Sunday. During revivals, which were frequent, the sounds of repenting and rejoicing could be heard all the way down the little dirt road. We often sat on the front porch on summer evenings and listened as sinners got the spirit and left their worldly ways behind. Years later Ray Steven released a song about a squirrel that went berserk during a Baptist revival. I wondered if he had ever visited Mountain Grove?
Across the road from the Baptist church on the southeast corner of the intersection, another half-acre had been designated for the one room Mountain Grove Schoolhouse. It was closed, but ruins of an old school building and an abandoned well were still there. The rest of that forty acres was wooded, and the family that owned it lived south down the dirt road. I don’t know if I ever knew their name. My grandfather had been the teacher there in the thirties and forties. Sometime after World War II, the school was closed and students were bused into town to the Alma Schools. By then, my grandfather had retired. We were so strongly warned not to go near the old school and the abandoned well that the very thought frightened me. The well was supposed to be full of water moccasins, deadly snakes, and likely to fall in any time. I would not even look in the direction of that well for fear a snake would see and come slithering after me.
The Halls owned the acreage north and east of the intersection. They raised cattle and had a very large garden. Mrs. Hall canned everything including green beans, peaches, pickles, and tomatoes. She had dozens of colorful jars lined up on shelves on a back porch behind her kitchen. Mr. Hall broke his back in an accident and could not work on the farm for over a year, so Mrs. Hall and her three children had to run the farm by themselves. They had a son and two daughters. The youngest daughter, Linda, was my age and we rode the bus together. They later left the farm and moved into town when Mr. Hall starting working for the Alma Post Office. The next family to live there were the Carmacks. They had a son two years older than my sister and a daughter two years older than me. They also had a younger son my brother’s age. The Carmacks also went to the First Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Carmack and my mother became very good friends and remained friends for the rest of their lives.
Just north of the Hall/Carmack farm on the east side of the dirt road was the Blevins farm. Their house was on the far northeast corner of their property and faced Mountain Grove Road where it had ran north and just before it turned east again. Dortha Blevins was Mrs. Way’s daughter and married Idus Blevins who drove a bulldozer and road grader. He was a very tall, lean, suntanned man who frequently graded the little dirt road on which we lived. Sometimes he gave us short rides on the grader which was a real treat, especially for my little brother. It seemed like Mrs. Blevins was always about to have a baby. They were a very happy couple and had somewhere around ten kids. I loved to walk across the pasture and play with the Blevins girls. They had a wonderful playhouse in their backyard, and there were so many of them that we could play all kinds of games and never run out of kids. One summer, I went with them to vacation Bible school at the Mountain Grove Baptist Church. It was quite unlike the very calm and formal Presbyterian Church I was used to attending. Even little kids were getting the spirit.
Mrs. Blevins and my mother were also friends, and on one occasion my mother took her to Dr. Thicksten’s clinic in Mulberry where he delivered babies. Mrs. Blevins came home from having her baby and stayed at our house for a week or so. My mother and grandmother took care of her, and we were not allowed to make any loud noises or bother her in any way. I do not remember her having a baby with her, and have wondered since I am older what happened. It was very like my mother and grandmother to take of others, especially people who were recovering from accidents or surgery. It seemed that my grandmother’s home was always a welcome place to those who needed help.
After the Blevins farm the road turned east again, and I did not know most of the folks who lived that direction. Of course, my grandparents’ farm was on the west side of the dirt road just north of Mrs. Way’s property. North of us was the Benefield farm. They raised cows and had chickens as well as a big garden. The Benefields were retired military people. Mrs. Benefield had been a nurse. She was one of the tallest women I had ever seen. She was very sturdy and imposing. Kersey was what everyone called Mr. Benefield. He went to town nearly every day and always stopped to see if we needed anything. He usually came up and sat down on the front porch for a short visit. I especially liked Kersey. He teased me and often brought back candy from town. When I broke my arm, he was the one who drove us to the hospital at Fort Chaffee. I will save the rest of the story about my broken arm for another chapter.
My grandparents’ farm was sandwiched between the Ways and Benefields. The house set in the southeast corner of the acreage and faced the dirt road. A long, covered porch ran across the entire front of the house. There was a porch swing on the south end of the porch, and a sidewalk ran from the steps in the middle of the porch nearly to the road. In the front yard, there was a very old, very big maple tree with a huge branch that stuck out in front of the house parallel with the road. It was a perfect branch for a tire swing. We spent a lot of time playing on that swing, but we were not allowed to climb that particular tree because it was so tall and had many diseased branches. It was like forbidden fruit to my brother who simply could not resist the temptation. It worried my Grandpa who was always scolding him and us for not stopping him.
My grandfather had a vegetable garden behind the house and also a row of Muscadine vines. There was also an old barn which was not really used much anymore. We had a milk cow for a while, but the Benefield’s cattle grazed in our pasture to keep it from growing up like Mrs. Way’s pasture had done. That meant that sometimes Benefield’s bull was there too. He was big, bad, and mean, almost as mean as grandma’s rooster with the sharp spurs on his legs. The rooster did not like anyone, but my grandmother. We gave them both plenty of distance.
Two creeks ran east and west across the little dirt road. One was about a third of the way between the Ways and our house. It was the forbidden creek, because it ran through Mrs. Way’s property. I was sure that trolls lived underneath it, not to mentions snakes and other evil creatures. Trees grew all along both sides, and it was shaded with a canopy of leaves and branches. On hot summer days, it was a relief to walk under the shade, but we did not linger near that creek. The other creek was about half way between our place and the Benefields. It had a little wooden bridge and lots of slick rocks for sliding. Where it crossed the road, the land had been cleared so that it was always out in the sunshine. It was this creek where we played for hours catching tadpoles and crawdads. I am sure this creek had snakes too, but I don’t ever remember seeing one. We probably scared them all away.
Our little world at Mountain Grove was a peaceful oasis in the midst of 1950s rural America. Today’s cynics say such “Leave It to Beaver” places were just a myth and simply the product of wishful or nostalgic thinking. However, Mountain Grove was a genuinely real place with genuinely real people, whose imperfect lives were intimately interwoven and interdependent. There were no cell phones, I-pads, video games, computers, or cable TV, but there was plenty of faith, hope, and love.