Down the lane from the house, then down the road a bit, then up a lane lived Uncle Miller Rice.
There were Uncle Miller and his wife, Sally, and daughter, Minnie, an old maid. Uncle Miller wasn't really an uncle, but he was such a close friend of the boys that they all called him that. Uncle Miller had an early peach tree in his fence row across the road from his house. In the hot weather people would sit outside until the house had cooled off before going in to bed. Felix and Charles were playing in the yard and decided that they would enjoy some of Uncle Miller's early peaches. They slipped down to the road, then up Miller's lane to the fence row.
When they found the peach tree, Felix told Charles to stay on the ground and he would climb the peach tree. Charles got tired of waiting for Felix and started climbing the tree himself. A branch broke and Charles fell to the ground. Charles gave a yelp and woke up Miller's dog. The dog started barking and that woke up Miller. Miller lit his lantern and the dog led him to the peach tree. Miller had to investigate.
As he was going up the fence row, he saw Charles' blue eyes shining in the fence row. He walked by Charles and turned around and asked him where Felix was. Charles said, "He is around here somewhere." Miller told them to get some peaches, but next time they were to ask him before they were to climb the peach tree.
Charles was the sleep walker of the family. One evening we were playing in the yard and most of us had fallen asleep. Charles had gone to sleep, he then got up and walked through the orchard to Uncle Jim Buttram's. When he was walking back, he hit the orchard fence and this woke him up. He started crying and mother went to get him.
The Pitts family had a neighbor, Jim Shell, who also had a large family. He had some beautiful redheaded young daughters. One day Felix and Lon Foster decided to visit the John Shell family. When they started down the lane they looked back and Bob was tagging along behind them. They tried to get Bob to go back, but he wasn't about to do that. They then got Bob and walked him to the Miller Rice home. They coaxed Bob into the chicken house and locked the door. Then they went on to John Shell's house. Bob started to make a big ruckus and Minnie Rice heard him. Minnie went to the chicken house and asked Bob how he got into the chicken house. Bob told her that Felix and Lon had locked him in and left. Minnie let Bob out and took him back home.
Back then the boys would take two baking powder cans, a ball of good kite string and some bees wax and make what they called a Tic–Tack. By punching small holes in the cans and then putting the string through the holes and tying knots in the string at whatever length you wanted. Then by waxing the string really good and stretching it real tight you could hear someone talking into the can like a telephone.
One night the neighbor boys got together and decided to Tic–Tack our good neighbor, Miller Rice. The neighbor boys were: Donnan, Glen and Lon Foster; Fred and Morgan Skaggs; Casey and Spike Jones; and Felix and Charles Pitts. After Miller had blown out the lamp and gone to bed, the boys slipped up and fastened one of the cans to his bedroom window. They then stretched the string out to his fence row where they hid. Donnan was the one appointed to talk into the can. Then Donnan started talking to Miller. Evidently Miller had been Tic–Tacked before, because all he did was get up, get his shot gun, walk out the back door and shoot up into the air. The boys became quiet, then Lon got worried and crawled to where Donnan was hidden. He patted Donnan on the shoulder and asked, "Donnan are you all right?" Miller got the best of the boys that night.
Family history
Thomas Frederick (Fred) Buttram was born on March 7, 1874. He was the last child born to Mike and Sarah Miser Buttram in the log house on the Mike Buttram Farm. Fred had attended the subscription school at Buttram's Chapel and the Pea Ridge Academy. While attending the University of Arkansas he met and married Georgia Williams, the daughter of Thomas L. and Lucy Ann (Smith) Williams from Camden, Ark. Fred's father told Mike that if he was old enough to get married, he was old enough to make his own way. Fred and Georgia moved into the small house that was built by Prof. John R. Roberts.
Later that year, Fred's father, Grandfather Michael Farmer Buttram, was killed by a falling tree just north of the house that Fred was living in. The next year, Sarah deeded Fred 60 acres in the northwest corner of the Sunny Slopes Orchard Farm. To Fred and Georgia were born, in the small house, Gladys Buttram, Nov. 23, 1900; Charles Frederick Buttram on July 21, 1902; Bryan Buttram on Dec. 12, 1905; and Lydia Buttram on Jan. 3, 1908.
In 1915, Georgia divorced Fred and moved back to Camden. Fred then married Grace Gilmore, the widow of the Rev. Y.A. Gilmore, who was the last pastor serving the church at Buttram's Chapel. Rev. Y.A. Gilmore died in 1910 and in 1912 the church voted to move its membership to the Brightwater Church. In 1918, Grace divorced Fred and moved to Rochester, N.Y., to be near a sister. Somehow she thought that Fred was spending excessive time visiting his children in Camden.
Fred then sold the 60 acre farm to Aus Webb. Aus then traded farms with his father, Tolbert (Toog) Webb. Uncle Toog and Ada Patterson Webb became our favorite neighbors. In the summertime, each evening Uncle Toog would call on our family and sit on the front porch and give each child a turn at "riding the horse," as he would jump them up and down on his knee. Some evening he would bring his fiddle and serenade the family with his old time tunes. Aunt Grace was a favorite friend of my mother as she was the wife of her pastor for years. She then married mother's brother and they exchanged writing letters to each other the rest of their lives.
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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.