Now & Then Dad had farming in his blood

— I started very early in life helping my dad, but apparently early on my help didn’t help much. In 1941, my dad was in the midst of building a new barn on our farm. The time was too early for me to remember, but this was a story told on me and documented with pictures. Apparently my mom had left me with Dad while he was working on the new barn. I was to help him while he watched me.

So I was busy laying the nails out on the ground so he could nail the big boards in place. I guess I either finished my job or got tired of “working,” and I wandered away. When Dad looked up, I was gone.

My mom wasn’t very far away, and together she and Dad went searching for me.

In the meantime I had innocently strolled across the barn lot and down the path to the creek. They found me there, sitting in the shallow water, in my diaper and shirt, splashing the water and enjoying a good time.

Pretty soon (I was so cute) their consternation turned to smiles, and Mom went to the house to get the Kodak.

So through the years we have had a picture to use in telling the story about Jerry, Dad’s little helper.

I don’t think I got to help again at the barn, at least not for some time.

My dad had a high regard for Mr. Joe Roulhac, who was the Pea Ridge School principal in the early 1940s, and also a knowledgeable and skilled carpenter. Mr.

Roulhac had designed anddirected the construction of the new Pea Ridge School building in 1930.

Dad had Mr. Roulhac design and lay out our new barn, establish the roof profile and work out the bracing for the beams. Dad and Grandpa Scott Nichols and other neighbors joined in to do the actual construction. The barn still stands straight and true today after 70 years. To me it is a tribute to them all. The exterior is really showing its age right now, but the main structure, the inner framework, is still sound.

Dad also admired Clyde Ellis, a Pea Ridge College graduate who taught in the Garfield School when Dad attended there. Mr. Ellis later became a legislator.

Dad never taught school himself, but I learned quite a bit from him before I started to school. I used to sit in his lap in the evenings while he read the newspaper. I became a fan of the comic strips very early in life. I learned the ABCs and how to count to 100 before I started to school, mostly through reading the newspaper with Dad. My mom was the literature teacher.

She taught me the Mother Goose rhymes and other stories and songs. Dad also had a book of stories from his school days which was kept in a chest in a closetoff our living room. It got lost through the years, but I thought that was the finest book, especially because in it was the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack was my first hero. I probably came to like school because my folks would read Jack and the Beanstalk to me.

As a really young boy I remember trips to Siloam Springs for picnics on the campus of John Brown College. My dad was always interested in that school; and I think he may have wished he could have gone there to college. Because of the struggle to make it through the 1930’s Depression years, Dad was never able to go to college, but we would go there for picnics and for air shows at the school’sairport. At one point, my mom played piano for the Ezra Ricketts singing group, and they would sing over the radio at the John Brown campus radio station. Later in my life, when I was choosing a college, Iistry earlier if I had gone to college at John Brown.

My dad was a farmer.

Farming was part of his inner fiber. He enjoyed working with livestock and seeing things grow. When he sold the dairy herd in the mid-1980s he was already past 70, and could have retired then. But he went into the beef cattle business. I think he enjoyed that more than fishing, golfing, boating or any hobby. Even after he finally retired at age 90, he made a sizable garden every year, kept apple trees and peach trees and gave away much of what was produced. He had started planning a spring garden when he passed away.

◊◊◊

Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 03/10/2010