The year 1937 was a good one for the Pitts family

When we moved into the house on Ganns Ridge, it was a house that hadn't been built long. The only two rooms that had been finished were the kitchen and the front bedroom. Baylor had told Dad that if he would finish the house it would go as a year's rent. Mom hired Chester Beaman to finish the house. They didn't make sheet rock as they do today. They would use wood or a wall board. Chester told Mom that the best and cheapest that he found was a three-quarter inch wall board that was made out of broomcorn in Hutchinson, Kan. Mom had him figure how much it would take and they ordered it through the lumber yard in Pea Ridge.

After Chester had finished the ceilings and walls, Mom hired Chester's father, Homer Beaman, to paper the ceilings. I will never forget what Homer had said. He said that you could paste the first sheet of paper and then wad it up and throw it away because you could never get it hung. After Homer had papered the ceiling, he showed me how to hang wallpaper. Mother and I papered the house. I have hung a lot of paper since.

While I was carrying the mail in Mission, Kan., for 10 years, I would carry the mail route and then hang paper for a house builder in the evenings. I never attempted to hang a ceiling.

The farm had a good barn and two chicken houses. David and Mother had agreed to go into the egg business. David tore down one of the chicken houses and used the lumber to seal up tight the other. They then ordered 100 Ancona baby chickens, a breed that was better layers. David did a good job of tending to the brooder taking care of the chickens until school was out for the summer. He then went to work for Leland Gann.

He would pump gas at the filling station and help Forest Gann milk the cows morning and night. The cows were on a place that Homer Mahurin lived on and the cows were milked in the barn. Now Homer had a very pretty daughter and David became very fond of her. After working for Leland and visiting Homer's family, David didn't have time to tend to his chickens.

He offered to sell his interest in the chickens to Mother and she bought him out. Mother and I, through Enoch Taylor, had contracted five acres of green beans to the Springdale Canning Company. The beans came on real well and we had a good crop. Mother had sold her milk cows because I had to get up early in the morning to walk the six miles to school.

(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. This column was first published Nov. 9, 2005, in the Pea Ridge TIMES.