In the fall of 1927, the Liberty School hired Miss Ollie Eubanks to be the new teacher. This was the first year of teaching for Ollie and the last year of the school at Liberty.
The area was split up three ways, the eastern part going to Garfield, the northern part going to Corinth and the southwestern part going to Central. Miss Ollie was well thought of and a welcome sight after Mr. Cornell. I didn't realize it, but Mother told Miss Ollie to let Joe take the first grade over. With the addition of Billy Ward, Mac Clark Ruddick, Jesse Paul Wilhite and Margaret Broahm, there were now five in the first grade. I had it much easier as I had the class before.
In the wintertime, Felix would still go and build a good fire in the school house, but he didn't have to unhitch the horse as Miss Ollie drove a Model T Ford. On cold days, Felix and Barney O'Neal would drain the radiator and block of Miss Ollie's Model T, to keep it from freezing up and bursting. In the afternoon, they would heat water on the stove to pour in the radiator so Miss Ollie could get home. After the crops had been gathered in the fall of 1927, grandfather Bob Pitts became sick for several days. The sons took turns sitting up with him during the nights. One morning Bob said that he was feeling much better and wanted to get up. He stood up and after several seconds he fell back on the bed. A few minutes later, he passed away. He was buried in the Tucks Chapel Cemetery.
The farm we were living on was a part of the old Benjamin Ruddick place. It was now owned by a family by the name of Gardner, so Choc referred to it as the Gardner Place. Choc had rented what he called the Bird Troy place. C.W. Wilkerson now owns the place.
The Cross Lanes School was built on two acres of land that were part of the place.
In 1928, we moved to the Bird Troy place. It was unusually cold that year. The house was an old log house with a huge fireplace. We would build a big fire in the fireplace and you still had to warm one side and then turn around and warm the other. Joe remembers that there was ice on all of the trees and all the trees around the log house were maple trees. When the limbs would break off the maple trees, the boys would cut them up and burn them in the fireplace. It seemed to have taken a lot of wood for the fireplace.
We were now back in the Cross Lanes School. Our teacher's name was Jefferson. Joe doesn't remember his first name. His sister had taught at Cross Lanes some time before. He was a good teacher and everyone liked him. He would play baseball with the boys at the noon break. When the bell rang he was all business.
He had a peculiar way of teaching. In the morning he would teach reading, writing and history. After the noon break, it was all math. He would put everyone at the front of the school and start with the two youngest at the blackboard. He would give them simple problems and then progress upward. As long as you got the right answer, you stayed at the board. When one would get set down, he would put the next oldest at the board and go from there. Joe and Lula Mae Shell were the youngest and would always start the session. When Joe went home from school he would get his mother to coach him and he could stay at the board longer. It may have been an odd way of teaching, but everyone learned math. By the time Joe got out of first grade, he was doing fifth- and sixth-grade math.
He was the teacher the next year and when we got out of second grade, Joe was doing high school math. From that day on he never had any problems with math. Joe's younger brother, Sam Gene, was born on the fifth day of May that year. Joe can remember that when Sam was born there was 16 inches of snow on the ground. Felix caught Kit, the mare, and took Joe to school across the field. The teacher said there would not be any school that day so he would teach the boys how to hunt rabbits. The teacher and the older boys killed 150 rabbits that day.
The girls who came to the school that day stayed at the school and had a picnic. The teacher and the boys gutted the rabbits and took them to the Charley Tetric Produce in Pea Ridge and sold them. They got a nickel for the smaller ones and a dime for the larger ones. They then bought baseball equipment for the boys and dolls and such for the girls. That year Felix chose to go to school at Brightwater because his old friend and first teacher Hunter Patterson was there. Hunter Patterson was a friend of Dad's and in the year Felix was to start school, Hunter would stop and talk to him. He would always tell Felix, "When you get to school, I want you to know your ABCs."
The morning Felix was to start school, he told dad. "I don't know my ABCs, what shall I tell Hunter?"
We don't know what Dad told Felix, but when Hunter asked him he answered, "Hell no, I've only been here 10 minutes!" Felix only lived a quarter of a mile from the school but he chose to walk the three miles to Brightwater to go to school with Hunter.
After Grandfather Bob Pitts died, Choc went to Harrison, Ark., and was hired as a train brakeman on the North Arkansas and Missouri Railroad. He worked two round trips from Harrison to Seligman, Mo., one week and one the next. That meant he worked two long days one week and four long days the next. The railroad did this to give more people work during the depression that had already started. He was able to be home four days one week and three the next.
In May of 1928, Grandmother Oma Pitts had a farm sale to sell her husband's stock and farm implements. They had arranged it so it would fall on a week that Dad had four days off. On the day of the sale, Dad and Felix caught up the team and harnessed them to the wagon. Dad, Mother, Felix and the two youngest, Hugh and Sam, the baby, went to the sale. That left Charles, Bob, Joe and David at home.
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Editor's note: Joe Pitts (1920-2008) was a native of Pea Ridge and regular columnist for the newspaper. He began writing a column for The Times in 2000 initially entitled "Things Happen" by Joe "Pea Patch" Pitts.