Now & Then: New things in Pea Ridge, 60 years ago

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

— Sometimes as we think back on life in Pea Ridge 60 years ago, we tend to remember it as a stable little town that never changed much. But, new things could come in flurries, even then.

When I started to Pea Ridge School in 1946, the building was crowded, and expansion was soon to begin. The buildings on campus then were the school house itself, the lunch room immediately behind the west end of the school, and the gymnasium, located at the west side of the campus where today's North Curtis Avenue ends at Pike Street.

Our lunch room, now the S.E.E.K. building, was the oldest building on campus.

Many of us called it the "hot lunch room." The hot-lunch program was still new in those years. The gymnasium had been built between 1931 and 1934. The red brick schoolhouse was built in1930, replacing the old 1880 two-story Pea Ridge Academy building. From 1930 to 1947, the red-brick building housed the entire school.

Buildings seem to have gone up in spurts in Pea Ridge. The business buildings along the east stretch of old downtown, including today's City Hall, Webb's Feed and Seed, Community Library and Sanders Computers, appear to have been built early in the 1900s.

The library building, which originally housed the Bank of Pea Ridge, was built soon after the bank was organized in 1911. The west stretch of buildings, which most recently housed the Village Hardware, previously Easley's, was built in 1928 and following. In the late 1940s, the period I am focusing on in this article, there was another building surge.

Two business buildings I can recall from that time were C.H. Mount's Grocery and Feed and Charles Hardy's Garage.

The Mount Store is on West Pickens, across from Village Hardware. The Hardy Garage later became part of Easley's Lumber.

That late 1940s' Pea Ridge building surge was a time progress and growth. When I started first grade in 1946, I was in Louise Beard's room, the front room at the west end of the school building. In 1946 there were two west rooms. Going down the hall and out the north door took us near the lunch room door. But when I started school the next year, 1947, a new wing had been added on the northwest corner, and Faye Price was teaching first grade there.

Our second grade class was divided between two rooms; half of us in Mabel Hardy's third-grade room, and the others in Faye Price's first-grade room. A similar wing was opened on the school's northeast corner. These north wings added two new classrooms, the two indoor restrooms and a principal's office. The old outdoor restrooms had been out by the softball field, some distance from the school house.

Also in 1947 the new Presbyterian Church was being built up the street south of the school grounds. I remember seeing the bare rafters high in the air, ready for the roof.

The new church building was built just behind the old one, then the old frame two-story churchhouse was taken down.

This 1947 series of new buildings illustrates how differently building materials were handled in those days. When the old Presbyterian Church building was taken down, it was disassembled. Back then, older buildings were not smashed and crunched, they were taken apart to preserve the salvageable building materials for other uses. For example, the upper floor timbers of the old church building were used to build the upper story floor supports for the new Masonic Lodge Hall, completed in 1948. The Lodge Hall later became known as the E.H.

Building. It now houses the Pea Ridge Historical Museum at 1451 N. Curtis Ave.

In 1947, the barracks and other structures were being removed from the Camp Crowder Army training base at Neosho, Mo., and Pea Ridgers took full advantage of the availablematerials. The windows and roof truss material for the new Lodge Hall came from Camp Crowder. Also, Camp Crowder provided "the little white building," which was placed just off the northeast corner of our school building. It became our first separate Pea Ridge elementary school building. My fourth-grade class met in the little white building in 1948-49. The 1947 tornado destroyed most of the town of Brightwater, including the Methodist Church. Interestingly, the church people were able to acquire the former chapel building from Camp Crowder. The chapel building was reassembled on U.S. Highway 62 just across Little Sugar Creek north of Avoca. The year 1947 was quite a year of change for our area.

Contact Jerry Nichols by email at [email protected], or call 479-621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 09/23/2009