We lost another of our town's long-time patriarchs this week. Those of us who remember Pea Ridge from the 1940s and onward have never known a Pea Ridge without Fred McKinney. For many years, certainly all of my own lifetime, Fred has been in the thick middle of the business life, the civic life, the community life and the political life of our town and county.
I first came to know Fred at Webb's Feed and Seed in the mid-1940s. He was often the man who sold us bags of feed for our cows and chickens. We didn't have a truck back then, and Fred would roll the bags out, stacked on a stout old dolly, load the feed into the trunk of our car, talk with Dad for awhile, and then we would be on our way home. I think the company still has some of those old dollies for rolling bags of feed about, probably the very same ones they were using 70 years ago. Back then, much of our feed came in 100-pound bags. The dairy cow feed was in brown burlap bags, and the feed for the chickens was in patterned cotton bags. The burlap bags could be used over and over, either on the farm when we ground some of our own feed, or returned to the store to be filled again. The cotton sacks were made of good material that farm wives could use in making dresses, curtains for the house or bed sheets. None of the throw-away bags that feed often comes in today.
Fred was also much involved in the Webb's Hatchery, which was in a nearby building, across the alley to the east from today's City Hall. After the hatchery closed in later years, I think the building served briefly as a youth center, then as a popular restaurant. Webb's Feed and Seed often took in eggs which would be carried down to the hatchery. My own grandfather, Scott Nichols, became the hatchery man in the late 1940s, and worked there until he retired in the 1950s. Fred told me recently that they used to run egg routes around the area, even including the New Home community north of Bentonville. So they were bringing in eggs from all over. We ourselves in those days were keeping about 200 laying hens. Our eggs were not for the grocery store, they were hatching eggs, usually producing hybrid broilers as part of the rapidly growing northwest Arkansas poultry industry. I give great credit to such leaders as Fred McKinney, Hugh and Hoss Webb, and others who were part of Webb's Feed and Seed and Webb's Hatchery, for helping develop one of the stronger economic industries in our area.
The apple orchards had been the money industry for years, from the late 1800s to about 1930, but apple production faded fast after that. It was poultry and cattle, including dairy and beef cattle, that became the major farm products which enabled our area to move forward economically during World War II and following. Fred told me an egg story that occurred on his wedding day. He and Mabel were to be married in the afternoon, and Fred was hurrying to get as much of his work done as possible at the feed store that morning. My Granddad Scott Nichols had dropped off a basket of eggs at the store. Fred says he came bounding out from the sales room down onto the level where the store is now, and stepped down right into the middle of Grandpa's basket of eggs. Needless to say, that slowed down his preparations to get married that day. (Webb's sales room used to occupy the building to the west, which later was a cabinet shop.)
Fred was always good to work with us young boys growing up, when we were in 4-H, or in vocational agriculture in High School. When I was a young teenager, Fred often kept a young calf in a pen in the store, and challenged us young farm boys to grow our calves faster than he could grow his. As I recall, Fred always won, but it was a great competition. When I was 14 years old, in 1954, Fred put together a busload of Agri boys from Pea Ridge High School, and took us to St. Louis for a tour of the Ralston-Purina Mills, and a visit to the Purina Experimental Farm, where Purina Feeds were tested and developed. As I remember, Tom O'Dell drove Marvin Dean's new Chevy school bus to take us there. I was amazed that the bus could do 70 with such a load. The six-cylinder engine was really singing on that trip. We stayed in rooms on the 10th floor of the hotel, quite a walk if the elevators weren't available, or if we just wanted to prove that we could make the climb without getting winded. One night, there was a great banquet with a lot of fun entertainment and inspirational talks, including a talk by Mr. Danforth, the head man at Ralston-Purina. At the experimental farm, I was surprised that our main presenter was a Pea Ridger himself, Daryle Greene, son of Howard and Mildred Greene, and a 1949 graduate of Pea Ridge High School. Daryle was married to my wife's sister, Peggy Patterson, so we became brothers-in-law when Nancy and I married in 1961. Daryle had a long career with Ralston Purina, eventually becoming the head of their poultry nutrition department.
To be continued:
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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 09/02/2015