I don't remember a time during my growing up years when I wasn't thinking often about "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Of course, that's not all I had on my mind, but it was often there. Mostly, for many years, I was thinking in terms of becoming a farmer like my Dad. Probably some of my ideas would not have worked out in a practical way, but I was often imagining myself as running a farm, with livestock, mostly dairy cattle, and maybe having some chickens.
My Dad had begun farming in the 1930s during the Great Depression. I think our family was fortunate in that they had farm properties that were not vulnerable to bankruptcy or foreclosure, and they could engage in the earlier way of life in which most of the living was based on growing and producing crops, milk, eggs and garden goods on the farm. To live that way did not require great sums of money. In fact, one could be comfortably well off without having much money. Your wealth was in your land, livestock and adequate house and home, not so much in money.
My parents began farming in the days when most of our northwest Arkansas farms still relied on horses to pull the farm implements. We had a two-horse team, to handle a 100 acre farm. That was quite a bit for old Pat and Mike to handle, but they did very well. We got our first farm tractor when I was 8 years old in 1948. The tractor was able to take over the heaviest of the farm work, like the plowing, tilling, discing, harrowing and cultivating, but the horses were still busy with jobs like raking hay, pulling the hay wagon, cultivating the garden, and so on. I learned to operate the tractor at an early age, earlier than I would have been comfortable with letting my own son on it by himself. I remember plowing a field when I was 10 years old. So, while I was working on our family farm I was imagining myself running my own farm some day.
My imaginary farming as a young boy included starting small, as my Dad had done, only rather than starting with a team of horses I was going to start with a small tractor, maybe a Farmall Cub, and work up gradually to a larger tractor and implements. My imagining did change about from time to time, however, as things on our farm changed, or as we took on new projects. I became interested in carpentry from being there and "helping" when we were building farm buildings.
Early on, the main project was the big hay barn. That was 1943, and I was too little to do much; although there is a story about my "helping" my Dad by laying out the big nails for him to nail together parts of the barn. That story goes that I got the nails arranged and decided to go to the creek and sit in the water. That led to some anxious searching on the part of my disturbed Mom and concerned Dad. I guess their anxiety quieted when they found me safely playing in the creek, because they went to the house and got the camera and took a picture of me sitting in the creek.
Another farm building project that I "watched" was the completing of our brooder house. The brooder house was for the purpose of starting little chicks, keeping them warm and fed and watered, and protected from danger. I remember being fascinated with the waterers, because you would fill a half-gallon jar with water, put the waterer thing on it, and turn it over. The water would fill the little rim where the chicks would drink, but wouldn't spill over. It was about the vacuum inside the jar that held the water in, since no new air could come in until the chicks drank enough to lower the water level in the little trough. With that, a bubble of air would come into the jar and a little water would meter down into the drinking trough. That was an interesting physics lesson for me as a young boy.
By the time I became a school boy, I was noticing other occupations among the people we knew. For example, our neighbor Mr. O.R. Morrison, who lived on the farm near town which is now the Pea Ridge City Park, was our school bus driver. That was part-time work for him, but I was fascinating with the skill of driving. I nearly always sat just behind Mr. Morrison in the bus and watched every move he made in driving the bus. Soon, even as a youngster, I was imagining that if Mr. Morrison became unable to complete the bus route, I could step in, take the driver's seat, and drive the bus for the rest of the route. Of course I never got that chance, but a fellow can imagine. I had a pretty strong imagination.
Pretty soon I had many other role models to consider as I moved into the teenage years. There was the preacher at church, the teachers at school, the basketball coach, our filling station man Floyd Hall, our car care people Jack and Joe Lasater, our doctor, first Dr. Greene in Pea Ridge and then Dr. R.M. Atkinson in Bentonville, our radio musicians, the news people on the radio and then on TV, the car dealer Carl Burger and the mechanics like Ralph Patterson and the parts manager like Junior Fortner. Then there was the milk haulers who picked up our milk in 10-gallon cans, delivered them to the Carnation Milk Plant near the railroad in Rogers, and brought back our clean cans for the next days milking. I remember haulers like the Dean brothers, Carroll Hall, Lee Otis Hall, and others in the 1940s and into the mid-1950s.
Sometimes I imagined myself as a store-keeper. We knew several of the storekeepers in Pea Ridge, some of them in church with us. For example, there was Luther Martin, who had the grocery store at the southwest corner of the main Pea Ridge intersection, where the T.H. Rogers Hardware is now; also Kelly Armstrong, who had a grocery and feed store at the top of the hill just before you come to Greene Street. The building is still there today, one of the oldest store buildings in Pea Ridge.
Also, just eastward from the Armstrong Store was the C.H. Mount Grocery and Feed Store. Mr. Mount built a new store there where the old Harve Ricketts Blacksmith Shop had stood for long years, close by the Pea Ridge Day Service Station on the northwest corner of the main intersection. I sometimes had my store set up in our living room, with imaginary customers, and I would count out their change and tell them thank you for your business.
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Editor's note: This column was originally published Feb. 20, 2008. 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 joe369@ centurytel.net , or call 621-1621.