One of the first stores I remember in Pea Ridge was Kelly and Dona Armstrong’s Grocery and Feed Store, located at the west end of the downtown east/west street. The building still stands at that location, and has served many businesses since Kelly and Dona worked there in the 1930s and 1940s. Most recently, the Pea Ridge Outlet Store operated in the white frame building. Today, we call the east/west street Pickens Street, after Capt.
Cyrus Pickens, a Pea Ridge resident who served as an officer in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Back in the 1940s and 1950s we informally called the street our Main Street in town. I’m not even sure there were any official names for the streets in those days.
Pea Ridge, in the old days, often had two orthree grocery stores in the downtown, and often they sold both groceries and livestock feed. The Armstrong’s store sold both. Being a storekeeper in those days involved quite a bit of work. Not only did the storekeeper stock the shelves, but he or she would often take a customer’s order or shopping list and go back to the shelves to fill the order. But in the 1940s, the idea of self-service in stores was catching on, and as I recall, Kelly had several shelves where you could pick up your own groceries and carry them to the sales counter.
I’m not recalling a cash register in Kelly’s store. I may just not remember. But, before the 1950s, it was pretty common for stores to have only a hand-cranked adding machine with 40 or 50 buttons, combined with a cash box or a cash drawer.
Sometimes there was not even an adding machine.
Tickets were done by hand, and adding up the bill was a pencil and human brain operation. Many of the packets of sales tickets in those days came with carbon sheets which were used to make duplicates of the ticket. The storekeeper kept one copy, and the customer kept one copy. It still amazes me that today many stores have to shut down if the computer is “down.”
Early on, Kelly and Dona lived across the street from the store. At the time, they had a nice looking white frame house facing the store. Mr. and Mrs. Willie Jordan later lived there.
The property, in the early days, was like a very small farm, even though it was in the city. The front of the property later became part of Easley Hardware. I think the south part of the property now belongs to the city. Kelly kept and fed a few head of livestock there.
Sometime in the mid-tolate ’40s, Kelly and Dona were edging toward retirement, but they decided to open a cafe on the east side of the grocery store.
Kelly moved a small white frame building from across the street to the location, and for several years they operated Armstrong’s Cafe there. You could have a small hamburger with mashed potatoes and gravy for 25 cents. The little cafe building still stands on the site, but it has not been used as a business for many years now. After the Armstrong’s retired, Roy Taylor openedthe first Taylor’s Cafe in that little building. He later moved down the street to the location just east of Webb’s Feed & Seed, where Taylor’s Cafe really achieved its claim to fame.
Kelly and Dona Armstrong built their retirement home just south of town on the new Arkansas Hwy. 94. Today, the house stands on North Curtis Avenue across the street from the Pea Ridge Post Office, but when it was built, it was almost a half mile south of the city limits. The new stretch of highway had been formed in 1950, when State Hwy. 94 was relocated to its present route, and the new highway to Rogers was paved for the first time. Kelly and Dona built the first house on that new stretch of highway which extended from the Canning Plant south to Little Sugar Creek. Previously,the highway to Rogers had followed Ryan Road. Driving Ryan Road today is still much like driving to Rogers in the earlier days. Can you imagine a Pea Ridge in which Curtis Avenue ended at Collier Drug Store at the south edge of town?
I think of Kelly and Dona Armstrong and Jack and Joe Lasater as pioneers who started growing Pea Ridge southwards. Back then, we wondered why they were moving so far out of town!
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, 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.
The opinions of the writer are his own, and are not necessarily those of The Times.
Community, Pages 5 on 01/16/2013