Now & Then | Fred McKinney influenced a generation

Some time ago we were hearing controversy over whether it takes a village to raise a child, or if it mainly takes a family. I didn’t join in the controversy, but I would have to say that as I grew up I was influenced by many people, many of them being people we knew in church and in business. Right now I am thinking of Fred McKinney.

Fred and Mabel McKinney recently celebrated 70 years in business with Webb’s Feed and Seed in Pea Ridge. Since I was born in early 1940, I have never known Pea Ridge or Webb’s Feed and Seed without Fred and Mabel.

Fred was an employee at first. He went to work for Hugh Webb, Mabel’s father, in 1940, soon after graduating from Pea Ridge High School. I heard Fred say once that his first assignment was to unload a full truckload of feed. Back then, most cattle feed came in 100-pound burlap bags.

Most chicken feed came in 100-pound cotton cloth bags.

Last Friday, at the 70th year party for Fred and Mabel, Fred remarked how in those early days they stacked the bags of feed all the way to the ceiling. I remember that to unload the bags from a truck, they would back the truck into an inside loading area. The truck actually backed into a pit, bringing the truck bed level with the floor. I used to admire how Fred and others could heft those 100-pound bags, stacking them on dollies, rolling them about and hand lifting each one onto a stack.

Later I was right proud when I got big enough to heft those 100-pound feed sacks at home on the farm.

But I never had to unload a whole truckload of them.

Back in the early 1950s, Fred used to keep a live dairy calf in a pen in the store. He challenged all the farm boys like me, most of us 4-H’rs, to see if we could grow our calves faster than his. I had several calves during those years, and a time or two I thought maybe a calf of mine would beat Fred’s, but we never quite did it. Fred always beat me.

In those days, like today, Webb’s Feed and Seed had several members of the family working, plus other employees. In addition to Hugh Webb, Fred’s fatherin-law, I remember Wilson Webb. Many of us called him Hoss Webb. I also remember Darrell Green as a field man for Webb’s. Darrell would come out to the farms to take feed orders.

He always drove an old red Ford panel van. When the company first got the old panel, driving it in summertime was pretty miserable; the red paint absorbed the sun’s heat Darrell said it made a world of difference when they painted the top with aluminum paint.

Many of us used to sell hatching eggs to Webb’s Hatchery, where my Grandpa Scott worked.

The chicks became the broilers on the broiler farms springing up around Pea Ridge in the 1940s and 1950s. Broilers become a major source of farm income. On our farm, we always had 200 or so laying hens, producing hatching eggs. Since Dad was a small producer, he took the eggs to town in buckets.

One day, I think it was the day that Fred and Mabel were to be married, Fred was working the early part of the day, hurrying to try to finish some tasks before he left for his wedding.

My dad left his bucket of eggs just inside the door at the feed store. Fred came rushing through, trying to finish his last-minute jobs, and crashed into that bucket of eggs. Needless to say, it was a mess!

Through most of theiryears in business, Webb’s Feed and Seed has featured Ralston Purina feeds. Fred McKinney seems always to have had an interest in doing good for the young people, and in 1954 he did a right courageous thing that benefited many of us agriculture boys in high school.

Mr. Danforth, the head of Ralston Purina, was also very interested in inspiring young people to high achievements. Mr. Danforth invited feed dealers in communities like Pea Ridge to bring their high school agri classes for a big rally at the company’s headquarters in St. Louis. Fred McKinney gathered a bus-load of boys from Pea Ridge and took us on a great adventure to St. Louis.

We stayed in a skyscraper hotel, toured Purina Mills and Research Farm, had a tremendous banquet in the evening with comic actors, singers and great fun all around. I went to the restroom, got lost riding the elevator and took forever finding my way back to the banquet.

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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 05/19/2010