My aunt Della Pitts was an old maid who had never married. She lived with her mother all of her life. Aunt Della and Grandmother lived up a hill and across the railroad tracks south of Brightwater, Ark. The only job she ever had was working in the canning factory during the canning seasons. Grandfather had died of a heart attack in the fall of 1927, leaving Aunt Della as the only source of income for her and her mother. When not working she would go up and down the fence rows and gather wild fruit and berries to make jams and jellies to dispense to her brothers and sisters and their families.
She had the families save their colored flour and feed sacks for her. She would then make dresses and shirts for her nieces and nephews. She had only one pattern for the dresses and one for the shirts. She had a knack for knowing how to make them fit the individual child she was making it for.
In the spring of 1930, I was going to school in Pea Ridge in the Old College building. Our second and third grade class, taught by Miss Faye Smith was one of the last classes to have its picture taken in front of the college building. I was proudly wearing one of my Aunt Della shirts. I may have had a patched up pair of overalls, but my shirt was always good, thanks to Aunt Della.
Just as school was out that spring, the men of the community started razing the Old College building, under the direction of Joe Roulac. In about two weeks, they had the building razed and cleaned up and were ready to begin the construction of the new school building to house the entire 12 grades of the school.
William Thomas (W.T.) (Billy Tom) Patterson, the president of the Pea Ridge Bank, was the main force in getting the new building built. Although they had hired a supervisor to head the construction, Billy Tom relied on Joe Roulac to keep tabs on it and keep him informed of the progress.
They were endeavoring to build a new building in the deepest part of the Great Depression. The Pitts family was living on the Pace place, about a mile and a half south and east of Pea Ridge. My mother, Phebe Pitts, would send me to Pea Ridge every morning about 10 o'clock to see how the school project was getting along. If I had cream or eggs to sell, I would go first to Charlie Tetric produce and sell the produce. Then I would go to the Clint Mount store at Davis and Pickens Streets and leave my bucket. Then I would go across the street to see the new school house building and its progress.
At 10:30 every morning, Billy Tom Patterson would come out of the bank and come across the street to inspect the new building. If my mother heard me call him Billy Tom, she would have given me a whipping. To her, he was Mr. Patterson as he was her first school teacher in his first year of teaching in 1892, at Cross Lanes School. It was also a new school and the first public school in the area.
To be continued.
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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.