Connecting the Now and the Then

Sometimes we older people are described as hating change, as resisting change, or as living in the past. I think that idea is quite wrong, because so many of the older people I know have gone through a tremendous amount of change across the years; they really have lived a whole lifetime of adapting to new things. Our friend Joe Lasater was of the 1920s generation, which means that he was a boy when the Model T Ford was in its heyday, and the new and fledgling era of automobiles was just getting started. When Joe was a boy, it would still have been common to see horses and buggies and farm wagons and freight wagons and horse-drawn carts on the streets of Pea Ridge, along with a few cars, most of them built in the "19-teen" years.

It is interesting to me how Joe Lasater's life tied together the era of horses and the era of automobiles. Unlike my own Grandfather Burton Clement, who was always uncomfortable around motor vehicles, Joe became very comfortable and knowledgeable with automobiles, and for many years traded and sold used cars in Pea Ridge. But all the while, he retained a love for horses and riding. To me, to see Joe riding tall in the saddle, decked out in a western shirt and cowboy hat, he looked the part of a natural horseman. But he was also a natural in his easy-going way of talking with you while you persuaded yourself that you needed to buy the car he was showing you.

Joe's birthplace is a reminder that even the streets of Pea Ridge have radically changed across the years. Joe was born in a house at the northeast edge of town, on a street which no longer runs through as it once did. Our Pea Ridge Intermediate School was built a few years ago, straddling the east side of the original school grounds and the old Lloyd Miller farm to the east side. The street, which we know now as Davis Street, no longer runs between the two properties. It only goes up to the front doors of the Intermediate School. In the old days, the street ran on through north, all the way to the north line of the school property. Then it made a corner to the right, running eastward and downhill, passing where Utah and Mary Smith's house now stands, crossing the creek on a bridge which no longer exists, and angling up the hillside northeastward, then turned left onto the north road which today we call Patterson Road. The old Pea Ridge Christian Church stood at the street corner just north of the school property, and just a short distance east of the church house was the old Lasater home where Joe was born.

Joe's father, known to most everyone as "Jim" Lasater, operated a barber shop in Pea Ridge for many years. Joe's mother was Abby Mount Lasater. Abby graduated from the Pea Ridge Masonic College in 1913, a member of one of the last classes to graduate from the great old school before it finally closed in 1916. Both the Mounts and the Lasaters were already long-time Pea Ridge families. Jim and Abby Lasater had three boys, Jack, Joe and Jene. Joe lived the longest, almost reaching the age of 93.

Joe graduated from Pea Ridge High School in 1940, along with other well-known Pea Ridgers like Fred McKinney. After serving in the Air Force during World War II, Joe married Mary Ann Murphy, the daughter of T.O.C. Murphy and Pearl Deason Murphy. The Murphy family was a prominent apple orchard family well into the 20th century, even after many of the once widespread orchards of our county had faded away. The Murphy's lived in what I like to call the Oakley Chapel community, which in the old days was a country community halfway between Bentonville and Rogers.

Today, Oakley Chapel is at the west edge of Rogers at 40th Street and West Walnut. The Murphy Orchard Farm was located at today's intersection of Bentonville's Moberly Lane and Walton Boulevard, where the Cracker Barrell Restaurant and other nearby businesses now stand. My wife Nancy and I actually lived on the Murphy Farm from 1961 to 1962. We moved there just after our son Jeff was born, and we left there when I entered the ministry and became pastor of two small-town churches south of Morrilton, Ark.

A number of years ago, Joe and Mary Ann built their new home on Pea Ridge's east side, where they raised their family and have continued to reside through the years. Their daughter Janice, their first child, now makes her home in Bella Vista. Their son John and his wife Sandy live in Pea Ridge; and daughter Donna also lives at Bella Vista.

Our community has seen major changes across the years, the coming of cars, of electricity, of city water, major wars, telephones, television, space travel, computers, cell phones and smart phones. Change has been everywhere around us over the past 75 years, especially in the last 25 years. I think it is knowing steady, reliable people like the Lasaters who help us feel stability in our community, and who help make the community's progress real progress.

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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.

Editorial on 04/22/2015