Introduction
After World War II, my mother married Lyonell Lee Halbrook, who was born and raised in Cleveland, Arkansas, in the north end of Conway County. He probably remembers everything that has happened in Conway County for the past 100 years. When I told him that I planned to introduce the stories this way, he said that he would have to have something to 'jog' his memory to be able to remember everthing! Then he started telling more stories.

Some of the stories are about family events, some about interesting things that happened in the community, and a few seem to be 'urban legends'.

The Halbrooks would help anyone in need and this first story illustrates that:

Ice for the Dying Baby
I was interested in the availability of ice early in the 1900's and asked if there was a regular delivery of ice out as far as Cleveland (20 miles from the county seat). He said that there was no regular delivery, but that men from the community who drove to town in trucks would sometimes buy a block or two of ice and bring it back to Cleveland. He said that they knew who usually would want ice and they chipped off chunks to re-sell. This reminded him of the baby. A couple named Swain, I believe, had a baby named Clyde, who was dying. He told me what house they lived in for the house is still there. The mother of the baby wanted ice to sooth its final hours and asked a friend (or relative) to bring some back from his trip to town. He expected the baby to be dead before he got back, so he didn't bother with the ice and he probably thought it wouldn't make much difference to the baby anyway. When my step-dad's father heard of it, he hitched up his team and wagon and made the daylong trip to town and brought ice back before the baby died. It didn't keep the baby from dying, but it brought lots of happiness to the family during those final hours.

Grandpa Rhodes and the Bushwhackers
This story is about my step-dad's mother's grandfather. After the Civil War, ruthless men, some of them civil war veterans, terrorized the South stealing and killing. Eventually any criminals were referred to as bushwhackers. Granpa Rhodes had a young mare and $100 in cash and three men came to his place to take the mare and the money. He refused to reveal the location of either so they led him away and he was never seen again. This story is usually told as we drive past the last place he was seen alive, a wooded ravine leading up into the mountains. Someone who lived there at the time said that they had seen him being lead up the ravine by the three men. Someone in the community, a distant relative or close friend, learned the identities of the bushwhackers and he went to "call them out" about it and shot them as they came to their doors. I think he only shot two and the third one left the community.

The Cruel Brother
We were reminiscing about Hi, the one-armed man in our community, a kind old fellow who loved to fish and hunt, and Daddy (my step-dad) said that Hi's brother Fred had a cruel streak. This incident probably occurred in the 1920's. A family had an old mule that was getting so feeble it needed to be put out of its misery. The father told the son to take a pistol and lead the mule out to a certain location in the woods and shoot it in just the right place so that it wouldn't suffer. The son loved the old family mule and didn't want to shoot it himself so he asked Fred and Hi to go help him. When they got to the right location in the woods, the son explained to Fred how the mule should be shot so that it wouldn't suffer and then said to wait until he could leave the area before they did it. The son had had only taken a couple of steps when Fred said, "How was I supposed to shoot him?" And then when the son turned to explain again, Fred shot the mule right in front of him.

The Urban Legend?
Daddy could mimic the accents and speech impediments of the people in the community. One older man had a halting speech impediment and Daddy told this story imitating his speech. The man's business was to pick up cattle from farmers in the country and haul them to sell at the cattle sales in town. This was when the larger cities were beginning to use one-way streets for traffic control. The old man was confused and turned the wrong way on a one-way street and was stopped by a policeman who said, "Say, old timer, don't you know you can't drive down the street this way?" The old man replied, "Well, if you'll get out of my way I'll show you I can." I have since heard this story told about other people in other locations, so it may be an early urban legend or it may have actually happened to someone somewhere and was passed on and on throughout the country.

The Smart-Aleck Cotton Farmer
Can you imagine a time when there were no automobiles on the roads, no noisy machinery around the farms, and no mechanically reproduced sound? This story is from that time. There was no TV, no radio, and no phone for keeping up with the news, but you could hear a team and wagon coming from a distance and walk to the road by the time it arrived at your place. Perhaps the traveler would stop for a few minutes to be sociable and exchange news. Andrew McCoy was known as a gruff smart aleck kind of fellow and one day when he hauled a bale of cotton to town, a resident along the road noticed that he had gone by toward town. As the Andrew returned from town that afternoon, the resident went out to the road to visit and asked, "Wha'd ya git for cotton?" The he didn't stop, but just said, "Goods last spring." (Meaning he had received enough to pay for the purchases he had made in the spring.) The resident said, "You're a smart-aleck, aren't you!" Andrew replied, "I've been told that!" The resident said, "Well, if you'll get out of that wagon I'll beat you up!" Andrew said, "Nah, I had a better deal back down the road. A man offered to pull me out of the wagon and beat me up!"

The Teacher with the Ax
In the old days, teachers not only disciplined the children, who sometimes were 19 to 20 years old, but also did chores around the school. A teacher had disciplined a man's older sons and the man was upset about it because he thought they were too old to be disciplined. He came to school the next morning to "call out" the teacher. The teacher was splitting fire wood for the school and was holding an ax. The father said, "If you didn't have that ax, I'd beat you up!" The teacher slung the ax about 30 feet away and replied, "Now I don't have one." The father said, "Well, there's no one here to pull me off of you and I'm afraid I'd kill you, so I'll let you go this time."

If you have heard similar stories in different settings let me know. The old fellows in our town loved to sit around the stove at the post office or store and exhange stories like this whether they were actual events or not. Here it is summertime and they are sitting on the porch.

The Halbrook Family in Arkansas in the 19th Century
The Halbrooks migrated to the Wolverton Mountain area of Conway County Arkansas in 1845. William Halbrook, his stepson, John Reynolds; and sons Jerry Halbrook and Joseph Erwin Halbrook made it to the area of the valley where East Point Remove Creek begins. William had been born in North Carolina in 1782 so he was 63 at the time. Joseph Erwin was about 35. John Reynolds was the son of Judith McGee Reynolds. She was a widow when she married William Halbrook. The story is that Judith stayed in Memphis because of Indian trouble and didn’t join the men until later.

Joseph Erwin Halbrook was the father of John Reynolds Halbrook from whom the Halbrooks of this story descended. Another of Joseph’s sons was Wiley, who is mentioned in a later story. John was born July 8, 1840, so he was only five when his grandfather William, his father, and his uncles made the trip into Arkansas. John must have stayed in Memphis with his mother and the other women and children.

John Reynolds Halbrook married a Huie woman and they had William Thomas Halbrook. She died during a subsequent childbirth and John then married Frances Driver. John and Francis had nine children: Allen, Paralee, Matthew, Judie, Prudie, Andrew, Minnie, Sallie, and James. Andrew Jackson Halbrook is the main subject of these stories. John had a $4.00 per month pension from the Civil War so he ‘had money.’

Sometime around 1880, John Halbrook and his family moved to Texas. The move was just before or just after Andrew was born in 1882. Andrew was just a little boy when they moved back to Arkansas. What Andrew remembers is based on what his father told him. The group had a goal of traveling ten miles per day. At a speed of two miles per hour, that would have meant five hours of travel each day. The rest of the day would have been spent preparing meals and making and breaking camp. In their travel through one area they cut down holly trees for the cattle to eat. Even though holly leaves have sharp points on them, the cattle loved them and came running when they heard the men cutting down the trees.

The distance from northeast Texas to northeast Conway County Arkansas is about 200 to 300 miles. At ten miles per day, it would have taken them nearly a month to make the trip. The trail took them through DeQueen, Arkansas. Some distant relatives had settled there and Andrew always wanted to go back and check on them when he grew up, but he never did. Not long after little Andrew and his family got back to Conway County, Hettie Rhodes was born. The family told Andrew that he now had a little girlfriend and he always claimed that she was his girlfriend. I guess they were boyfriend and girlfriend all her life.

The Newlyweds Win the Informal Cotton Picking Contest
My step-dad's parents were Andrew Jackson Halbrook and Hettie Rhodes. They got married in 1902 and for awhile lived with relatives. They got a job picking cotton with a family that farmed west of Wonderview High School where the road turns north toward Jerusalem and crosses the creek. One of Andrew's older brothers and his wife were also picking cotton. They got room and board with the farm family and wages for the cotton by weight. It was only natural that a rivalry would develop between the couples about who could pick the most cotton. It may not have been a spoken challenge, but each kept an eye on how the others were doing. Hettie and the other wife stayed just about even, but Andrew was a little faster than his brother and he and Hettie had picked the most by the time the crop was finished. It seems that it actually hurt the feelings of the older couple to be beaten by the newlyweds.

Setting Up Housekeeping
Andrew and Hettie took the money they had earned picking cotton and went to town to buy what they would need for their new home together. They bought a small cast iron cook stove, a can of kerosene, a box of matches, and some staples and had enough money left over to last the winter.

The Halbrooks' New Cabin
Andrew and Hettie had a piece of land to settle on and their relatives and friends came to help them build a cabin. Someone had a mule and used it to pull logs to the site. Two men would work a log to notch it for the walls. Part of the procedure was to cut the ends of the logs off even at the corners of the walls after the walls were up. Andrew was anxious to get it all roofed and ready to move into and told the helpers not to worry about the logs ends, he would cut them off later. Someone said, "I'll bet you a goose you'll never cut them off!" But he still wouldn't let them and he never did cut them off. The family has a sketch of the cabin made later from memory and it shows the uneven log ends. The sketch shows a "lean-to" behind the cabin with a floor at ground level. The family thinks that the lean-to was the kitchen with a dirt floor. This story came up when I asked about yard maintenance in the old days. The area around the homes was often bare dirt because the animals or chickens had eaten the grass. Some women actually scrapped the yards bare. I had asked if this might be because they were accustomed to keeping a dirt floor in the old cabins.

Andrew Gets A Job
There was a stave bolt mill in the area. It made wood boards for barrel heads. Blocks of wood were carried to a saw and the sawyer cut the short boards. The man who carried the blocks couldn't keep up and, periodically, the other workers had to stop and help him catch up. One of Andrew's relatives was aware of this and asked the owner if he would pay two men's wages for someone who could keep up. The owner promised he would. The relative told Andrew that he would lend him a mule and sled if he would take the job and bring the mule back for the relative to care for each night. Andrew took the job, and not only kept an adequate supply of blocks at the saw, but had time to do other jobs around the mill as well. The owner was very happy to pay $2 a day for such good help and the relative was happy that he could be of help to Andrew by lending him the use of the mule.

Hettie's Widowed Mother's Short Second Marriage
Hettie's mother married 'Phrony' Newton, but he was hard to get along with. He wouldn't let her sons, Ed and Elbert visit her. Actually they did get to visit sometimes, but he wouldn't feed them when they came. Finally she went over to Andrew and Hettie's and said she was going to leave Phrony and she wanted Andrew to go get her things. Andrew (who would have been Phrony's stepson-in-law) went over there and told Phrony why he came. Phrony said he didn't know she was leaving. Andrew said that if he had known Phrony didn't know, he would have brought her over to tell him herself. Phrony said just to go ahead and take her stuff anyway.

INCIDENTS WITH THE CHILDREN
Clyde was Andrew and Hettie's first child. He was born in 1904 and in those days the babies and little children went to the fields with their parents. Clyde was left on a pallet in the shade at one end of the rows and the family's little dog stayed with him. On day a young colt was allowed to follow its mother during the plowing, but it got bored walking up and down the rows so it started exploring. When Hettie went to check on Clyde, she found the colt nosing around the pallet with the little dog standing between it and Clyde to make it keep its distance.

Baby Rose and the Snake
A few years later they had Rose. Clyde now stayed at the pallet to watch Rose while his parents worked in the fields. One time they came to check on the children and found a large snake near the pallet. They asked Clyde, "What would you have done if the snake had crawled onto the pallet with Rose?" and he replied, "I would have dwagged her off!"

Crossing the Flooded Creek in a Wagon
My step-dad was about 15 years younger than Clyde. In the 1920s they still used wagons and mules around the farm. (Probably on into the 40s too.) Andrew owned several hundred acres down on the creek bottoms where Brock Creek and the west fork of Point Remove Creek join. Silt from occasional floods made rich farmland but, of course, the floods sometimes caused problems. When Daddy was about 5 or 6, he and his father, Andrew, were at the creek in a wagon pulled by mules with a riding horse tied to the wagon. The horse pulled loss and crossed the creek, which was flooding and almost too deep for the wagon. They crossed the creek in the wagon and caught the horse, but on the way back across, the bed of the wagon floated free of the wagon wheels and frame. Andrew braced his feet against the front of the wagon bed and held tightly to the lines so that the mules would pull the floating wagon bed along with the wheels and frame that rolled along the bottom of the creek.

The Runaway Wagon
One time Brock Creek flooded and washed a narrow ditch across the field to the West Fork of Point Remove Creek. Weeds had grown up head-high so the ditch was not visible. Andrew was standing in the front of the wagon bed to get a better view over the weeds and didn't see the ditch. Daddy was in the back of the bed. The ditch was narrow enough for the mules to step across, but when the front wheels of the wagon dropped into the ditch, Andrew was thrown onto the rigging behind the mules. That startled the mules and they began to run. Andrew fell under a front wheel of the wagon but held the lines as he was dragged along on his belly until he got the mules stopped, thus saving his little boy from a run-away. Daddy said his father had a 'whelp' across his back that stood out the size of a man's forearm.

The Misfortunes of Hettie's Brother Elbert
When Elbert was a little boy, his older brother Ed accidently shot him in the leg with a shotgun. The bone was too shattered to grow back but it wasn't bad enough to be amputated so he limped along on a limber leg for the rest of his life. Doc Coley helped Hettie get some silver 'nippers' to use to pick bone splinters out of Elbert's leg.

Elbert's Death
Hettie cared for her little brother, Elbert, who was dying of TB, during his last days. He was too weak to raise his head and spit the material he coughed up into a container . He would just spit over the side of his cot. They kept papers on the floor to keep the floor clean. Doc Coley came to check on him every day and he always had the latest newspaper under his arm. He would 'absentmindedly' leave the paper behind when he would leave. He knew that they couldn't afford to buy paper to put on the floor. Elbert was in his 20's when he died. When he died, Andrew took a large plank from a cattle trough in the barn to 'lay' Elbert 'out' on. Lyonell was sad that there wasn't anything better for his uncle to be 'laid out' on. Avuncular is the word for that special relationship of an uncle to his nephews and nieces, especially for the children of his sister.

Elbert's Bequest
Hettie was the family nurse and had nursed Elbert most of his life. Although he was married, Elbert made his insurance policy out to Hettie. They used the proceeds of the insurance to bury him and had about $300 left over. Hettie offered it to Elbert's wife but she said for Hettie to kept it for taking care of Elbert. But their relationship was a little strained after that. The wife got Elbert's new Model-T.

Give That Kid the Rifle and Get Him Out of the House!
When Lyonell was born, Clyde was about 15. He was too old to be hanging around the house during the birth; so, since he had not been allowed to go out hunting alone with the rifle before, he was given the rifle and told that he could go hunting. That kept him away until the baby came. Rose was about 12 years old and she probably took care of Opie, who was five.
At the time, they lived north of Cleveland on the west side of SH 95 and owned property on the east side where Mr. Gilkerson used to live. Hettie's mother, Grandma Rhodes, lived across the lane from the Harmston house. Apparently Grandma Rhodes was with Hettie during the birth.

Lyonell and Louise as Children
My mother's father was teaching school about that same time. They lived in a house near the middle of town. Momma and Lyonell were about five years old, but he remembers watching her from the barn as she walked from her house and through the field by the cotton gin to the schoolhouse to meet her father after school. Her family probably moved on before she started to school and by the time the consolidated high school was built in the 30s, she had been sent to school in Morrilton. So they were acquainted when they were young, but didn't really know each other until she was a widow after the war.

Bringing Grandpa to the Fish Fry
My step-dad, Lyonell, likes to get away from the house sometimes when someone is there to care for my mother. He usually asks me to drive him a few miles up the road to the area where much of his early life was spent. As we drove along one time talking about family, I mentioned to him the odd fact I’d noticed in my family line. My children never got to see their Grandfather Skipper because he was killed in WWII when I was small. I didn’t see my Grandfather Skipper because he died the year before I was born. My father was born after his Grandfather Skipper died and my Grandfather Skipper was born after his Grandfather Skipper died. Lyonell seemed to be affected a little by this and he told this story:
Andrew, the subject of most of these stories, was Lyonell’s father and John Reynolds Halbrook was Andrew’s father. Andrew didn’t do much fishing because of all the farm work he had to do, so when he did go, he took all the family along to have a big outing. Lyonell recalled a fishing trip they took around 1925 when he was about five years old and his Grandfather Halbrook was about 85. They loaded all the gear they needed for cooking and camping into a wagon and traveled the three miles from Cleveland to a small creek that ran between the Liberty Cemetery and John Halbrook’s home. Andrew's brother, Will, and several others had wagons there. Some of the men cut down a tree, hooked their horses to it, and dragged it through a ‘hole’ upstream to muddy the water and make the fish come to the surface. They got so many fish, including a very large trout (or bass) that they decided to bring Grandpa down to join in the fish fry.
Andrew had also brought the T-Model that he used for carrying the mail. Andrew's brother, Allen, offered to drive it to get Grandpa and they agreed that Lyonell could ride along. When his Grandpa got into the single bench seat, Lyonell crawled over the back of the seat and rode in the homemade mailbox. He leaned over the seatback to be between the men so that he could listen in on their conversation.
Lyonell said that when they got to the camp and his Grandpa saw the many big fish, his grandpa’s eyes just ‘danced’ and ‘flashed.’ He said that Grandpa’s eyes always did that when he was pleased and excited. Lyonell's Granpa Halbrook died within a year or so of that time.
I think Lyonell’s eyes ‘danced’ a little, too, at the memory of that long-ago event.

A Message in the Night
Many years earlier, before Lyonell was born, John Halbrook and his sons Andrew and Allen had gone to the creek not for from where John's brother, Wylie, lived to do some trotline fishing and camp overnight. The men had set out the trotline, prepared camp, and had gone to bed for the night. Late in the evening, Wylie's son, Clarence, made his way along the trail by the creek and up to the camp. He slipper into John's bedroll, crawled up close to his Uncle John, paused, took a deep breath, and whispered, “Uncle John! Uncle John, Daddy died!” John said, “Surely not!” But they knew Clarence wasn’t joking. They broke camp and went over to Wylie's house to comfort the family and lay out the body. They never went back for the trotline.

An Incident in Which One of Andrew’s Nephews Was Killed
This story took place in 1922. Even now, 80 years later there may still be some hard feelings so the names of the participants have been changed. The participants were a pregnant young wife; a teacher named Bill; Bill’s big brother, ‘Tiny’; and, of course, Andrew’s nephew. The incident happened at Henry Frazier’s mercantile store. The young wife’s sister was my Sunday School teacher when I was a little boy. The teacher’s widow was one of my high school teachers. Henry Frazier married my mother’s Aunt Kate a few years later.

The teacher lived on the west side of the road across from where the young wife lived. He taught in a school that was east of where they lived so he passed by the young wife’s house on his way to and from school. This photo shows the young wife’s house as it stands today 80 years after the incident. The fireplace has been removed and the well cover is gone, but the jonquils are still blooming in the front yard.

One day the young wife was out at the well when the teacher walked by on his way home from school. He apparently stopped to talk, because she later told that he had propositioned her. The storyteller didn’t tell whether the teacher disputed the charge. It was a scandalous thing in the community especially since she was about eight months pregnant.

Men of the town took sides on the issue and the fact that some men were moonshiners and other men were opposed to whiskey may have entered into the argument. Several men, including Bill, Tiny, and Andrew’s nephew had gathered in the road in front of Henry Frazier’s general store in Cleveland and the argument about this issue became so heated that some of the men decided that they should disarm Tiny and Andrew nephew. They took the rifle away from Andrew’s nephew, but Tiny managed to keep his. The men continued the argument inside Frazier’s store and Andrew’s nephew pulled a pistol and shot Bill in the hand. Andrew’s nephew then ran out the back door of the store and toward a relative’s house where he could retrieve his rifle. However, when the cry rang out “Bill’s been shot!” Tiny didn’t wait to see how badly Bill was hurt. He ran to the door and shot Andrew’s nephew in the back.

Tiny was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. A fraternal organization helped obtain his release after a short time. The families involved were very upset with each other for many years.

Thirty-five years later when my mother married Lyonell Halbrook and we moved to Cleveland, Henry Frazier still had a store and he and Aunt Kate lived beside the road to the school. I enjoyed stopping to visit her on the way home from school and it was a special treat to stop at his store for candy.

A TRUE STORY OF LOVE AND BETRAYAL IN EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY RURAL ARKANSAS.
The story spans most of the twentieth century, but begins in 1925 with the marriage of Stella, a beautiful, twenty-year-old woman. Stella and her husband soon had a baby boy, but not long after the baby was born, Stella came home to find her husband in bed with her sister. Naturally this created a big scandal in the family. Stella’s mother-in-law advised staying with the marriage. Perhaps she felt that Stella and her sister were as much at fault as her son was. Stella’s father-in-law told her to make her own decision and not listen to the family. Stella decided on a divorce and her husband and sister left the country to escape the censure of the community.

At that same time, an oil well was being drilled in the community. Two local men had been to the Oklahoma oil fields and had returned with a drilling rig and a plan to sell shares in an oil well venture. They brought a rich oilman with them and he courted and married Stella. When it became obvious that no oil would be found, the investors raised a ruckus and the oilmen went back to Oklahoma. When Stella and her little boy got to Oklahoma with her rich oil man, she found out that he already had a wife and family and wasn’t rich enough to support two. She immediately returned home to Arkansas.

By 1930, at the age of 25, Stella had been betrayed in two marriages and was back home caring for a five-year-old son. There in the same country was a man of 50 named Bill, who was at the height of his career in the field of secondary education. He had received an excellent education for that time and 1906 married Mary, a sweet young woman he had met in college. She taught school with him until the birth of their first child in 1913. She stopped teaching to care for their son and they soon had three more children. However, by about 1920 problems came into their happy family life. First a daughter’s eye was shot out by a little boy with a neighbor’s 22 rifle. Then Bill’s wife began to have spells and also had to have surgery for cancer. She was better for awhile, but the spells eventually returned. One day she came to Bill and said that something would have to be done with her. She had found herself with a butcher knife in her hand and an almost uncontrollable urge to kill the children. She was eventually committed to the State Hospital for the Mentally Ill. During this time Bill was out of work for several months as he recovered from several surgical operations. Then in 1933 his position in the school system was eliminated by a “re-actionary governor and legislature . . . [that] wreck[ed] the public school system.” as he said in his 1959 autobiography. Bill was able to get work doing research for the Works Progress Administration which helped tide him over.

Eventually Bill’s health and job situation improved and his wife was released from the hospital. They returned to the mountain country that they loved well and settled down to care for his invalid mother. Not long after they had returned, Mary was diagnosed with lung cancer and she died soon afterward.

The year was about 1945 and Bill was a widower of 65, retired and doing substitute teaching in the local high school. He also helped his two brothers in caring for their mother. Stella was now 40 years old and was trying to make a little extra money working as a cook in the high school cafeteria. Bill met her there and found out that she, too, was caring for elderly family members. As Bill wrote in his autobiography, his “second matrimonial venture was partly romantic and partly a matter of necessity.” Stella was a ‘widow’ with no income except what she could make helping neighbors and as the cafeteria cook. Bill and his brothers needed help with their blind mother, who was over 90 years old.

So Stella at 40 and Bill at 66 got married and lived happily ever after. Actually they didn’t live forever after; Bill died in 1975 at the ripe old age of 96 after 30 years of marriage to Stella. Stella lived another 26 years and died in 2001 also at the age of 96.

Andrew Makes a Little Profit on the Oil Well
In 1922 a couple of men returned to the community after a time in the oil fields of Oklahoma and began to sell shares in an oil well venture. They had the drilling equipment shipped in to Morrilton by rail and were paying $20.00 per load for local truckers to haul the parts out to the well site. Andrew was acquainted with the men and they asked him to haul a load. One of the men jumped into the cab with Andrew to get a ride out to the site. On the way, the man said, “Andrew, there’s enough money in this country to drill that well even if it comes up dry.” When they got the equipment unloaded, the man asked Andrew whether he wanted his pay in shares or cash. Andrew said he needed the cash now, but that he might consider shares later. He had made up his mind not to invest in the well when the man said what he did on the way. Andrew was the only man to make any profit from the well. The other truckers had accepted shares as their pay and the well turned out to be dry.

All the investors lost their money. A group of black investors went to the well site to get an accounting of their investment, but the oilmen shot one of the black men in the legs. The oilmen panicked and headed back toward town, but got stuck in one of the worst mud holes in the highway. The black folks found them there drunk and asleep in their vehicle but managed to get around them and go on their way with their wounded friend. That ended the oil well business in that part of the country.

STORIES ABOUT ARNOLD
Arnold Walls married Rose around 1925 and became the first family in-law. Arnold must have been a strong young man and a willing worker. He was a good hand to help with the Halbrook’s crops.

Arnold Tries to Ride 'Big Jim'
Arnold had been plowing all day with ‘Big Jim,’ the mule that Andrew had bought from his brother, Jim. Big Jim was good for plowing, but not for riding. At the end of the day, Arnold was tired and wanted to ride to the house. He thought maybe Big Jim was tired out too and since the road was muddy, maybe Jim couldn’t get away from him. After Arnold and Andrew got the harness loose and had Big Jim out in the muddy road, Arnold said, “I believe I can ride him to the house if you'll get a twist on his nose and hold him while I get on.”
Andrew put a loop of rope around Big Jim’s nose and tightened it with a stick.
Arnold started to get on Big Jim and Andrew said, “Hurry, Arnold, the twist is about to come off!” And when the twist came off, Arnold came off!

Arnold’s All-Night Ride
Andrew was building houses in the county seat 20 miles from home and sent word that he needed more lumber. It was in the afternoon and Arnold was out in the field plowing when the word came. He hooked up a team to the wagon and went to the sawmill just south of town to pick up the lumber. Rose had fixed him a sack supper and he headed on to the county seat before dark. He probably got to the county seat by midnight. Perhaps there was another wagon ready for his return trip or they may have quickly unloaded the wagon he drove in. Arnold was a good horse man and his team was in good shape, so after some feed and water they were ready for the return trip. The horses knew the way home, so Arnold was able to nap along the way.
By morning he was back home and out in the field plowing.
Andrew had the record of being the first man to make the round-trip to the county seat in one day. He started early and got home late. It would have taken about 14 hours travel time and a little time for business.

Arnold Shows His Dad How to Pull a Log
Arnold had a good team and had experience pulling logs. He was over at his father, George Walls,’ place and his father was trying to pull a big log out of the woods. George had his team lined up for a straight pull and they couldn’t budge the tree. Arnold told his Dad, “If you’ll take your team loose, I’ll pull it out for you.” George was really mad that his son thought that he could do a better job pulling logs, but took his team loose to let him prove it.
George said that, as soon as he saw how Arnold had hooked up the team, he knew he was going to be able to pull the log and that made George even madder than ever!
Arnold knew to hook up a team for a pull at a slight angle; the log would make a slight roll to the side and once it started moving, the team could keep up the momentum and pull it on out.

Not much manual labor is required in logging nowadays. They don’t even saw down the trees. A big hydraulically powered scissors snips the trunks off at the ground. A hydraulically operated arm is used to maneuver the downed trees. The trees are then put through a stripping machine and the limbs are stripped off. The arm then loads the trunks onto a truck. We saw about a dozen trucks go by the other day while we were back home in Arkansas for a visit. Each truck was loaded with 15 to 20 logs about 20 to 30 feet long. They were headed to the paper mill. Save a tree; don’t print this page! Just joking! Print it if you want to.

Arnold eventual bought a truck and quit farming. He then bought another and had a trucking business going. He and Rose had two children and then Rose died of cancer. Arnold remarried and became the police chief at Morrilton. He maintained a close relationship with the Halbrooks so that his children would have the heritage of their mother’s ancestors.

Andrew and Hettie's Baby Girls
Andrew and Hettie moved on into the north edge of Cleveland in a house just north of the gin and west of the school. Hettie’s brother, Elbert, died there and her daughter, Reva Dale, was born there in 1924. The land in front of the gin was a swamp and State Highway 95 was not an improved road. Andrew kept a team ready to pull folks out when they got stuck in the road.
After a few years they moved a couple of miles west of Cleveland to a place on the south side of what is now called Copelin Cave Road. They then moved back to the west edge of town and lived in a house on the little hill on the south side of Copelin Cave Road not far from where the Methodist Church building is now located. They were building a nice new house on the north side of the road and it was completed in time for Hettie Mae to be born there in 1929.

When the time for Hettie Mae’s birth had come, they sent Clyde to take 5-year old Reva Dale to stay at Rose’s. After the baby was born, Clyde went back and brought Reva Dale home. He told her that the doctor had brought her a new baby sister. She had a hissy fit and insisted that they tell the doctor to take the baby back. Hettie had ‘the milk leg’ after Hettie Mae was born and was confined to the bed for several weeks. Doc Coley came to check on her every day and Reva Dale had such a fit whenever he was there that they had to have Rose come to control her when the doctor made his visit.

An Outhouse Too Far (skip this one if you are easily offended)
People didn’t have indoor plumbing back in those days and there are many jokes about outhouses. This one is supposed to be true. Andrew’s mother didn’t have indoor plumbing, of course, and their outhouse was way out in the field. It was hard to get the children to go out that far to use it. There was an ash hopper at the back of the house where it could collect the rain runoff from the roof and the corner it formed with the side of the house made a good private place for the little children to ‘be excused.’ The adults kept getting onto them because of the smell so near the house. One day Jim, one of Andrew’s brothers, was visiting at their mother's and, sure enough, someone found a fresh pile behind the ash hopper. The adults questioned the kids and the kids blamed Irene, Jim’s favorite daughter. He said, “Well, that’s all right. Her ___ don’t stink.” Could he have originated that phrase? Did he just use a phrase he had heard before as a bit of humor to ease the embarrassing situation? Or did later storytellers create the entire story to explain why that phrase was applied to Irene throughout her youth? Irene died in February 2002 at the age of 89.

Funeral Arrangements
Funeral homes were getting started in Conway County during the 1920s. Frank Reid helped get his undertaking business going by selling burial insurance policies. He had agents out in the country selling policies to farmers. Hettie’s brother, Jim Rhodes, bartered 10 gallons of cane syrup for a family burial policy and paid one gallon down. Not long after that his teenaged daughter, Mamie, pinched a pimple on her face and got an infection. The infection got so bad that she was taken to the hospital and she died.

The Reid Funeral Home honored the burial policy even though only one gallon of syrup had been paid. Mamie’s funeral was one of the first done by a funeral parlor way out in the north end of the county and Mr. Reid himself was probably there to see that it was done in style. The many people who attended the funeral were so impressed by the funeral arrangements that Mr. Reid could hardly get the grave filled for writing burial insurance!

Before funeral homes started handling all the burials, family and friends took care of most of the dead. The blacksmith shop in Cleveland kept a supply of wood and hardware for caskets and the stores stocked coarse cloth to cover the wood. Hettie’s son, Lyonell, remembers how pretty the white-headed carpet tacks looked on the caskets where they had been place along the edges to hold the cloth in place. Family members and friends dug the holes and sometimes thin leather ‘lines’ from the wagon harnesses would be used to lower the casket into the grave because they were thin enough to pull back out.

I have a receipt that shows that my Great-grandmother Skipper was buried by an upholstery shop from the county seat for $37. My Grandfather Maxwell wanted to be buried in one of the old cloth covered wood caskets the way his parents were. He had a burial policy with a ‘gold’ certificate at the bottom for a $100 funeral. Lyonell was my stepfather then and he believed in burial policies. (Jim Rhodes was his maternal uncle you see). Lyonell found out that he could by a policy for my mother’s parents without telling them about it so he did. He knew that the $100 certificate would no longer be adequate.

When my grandmother died, Grandpa and Momma went to the funeral home to make the final arrangements and he insisted that they would get the old fashioned wood casket with his policy. Momma convinced him that there weren’t any old caskets anymore and that $100 wasn’t adequate for a funeral. Finally she told him that there was another policy to cover the expense. He was a little upset about it but finally agreed that they had to get Grandma buried. But he took the policy and said, “Well, I can pay for my own funeral!” and he took the policy and arranged to start making the payments himself.