I had plowed up the barn lot and planted it in green beans. This patch of beans come on so heavy that I could pick 200 pounds of beans before breakfast. We hired Rosie Tillman, her boys, and her sister to pick beans for us. Enoch would pick up the beans about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Rosie and her crew would come early in the morning and pick beans until Enoch arrived. Enoch would weigh the sacks of beans then pay Mom for them. Then Mom would pay Rosie and her crew their due. We did real well with our beans that year.
Brother David was playing baseball with a team at Gateway. When I had time, I would play with them. As a rule, I was kept pretty busy on the farm. About once a month, I would spend three or four days with the Baylors in Rogers. I would hoe and weed their garden and mow their lawn. I felt that I was getting up in the world as I would eat three meals a day in the restaurant.
When I would get done, Vera Key would ask if I could hoe and weed her garden patch. It wasn't very big and I could tend to it in one day.
Steve Webb married a Vansandt. I think her name was Stella. She was a sister of our neighbor, Edna Beaman. Steve and his wife lived in Tulsa and would come visit Edna then they would always go by and see Mother. They were both raised up with Mother. Being a Webb, when Steve hollered, you could hear him for a mile. When they were on their way to visit Mother, I was picking blackberries in the fence row beside the road.
Steve hollered at me and said, "Where is your marijuana patch?" I looked up marijuana in the dictionary when I got to the house.
Uncle Tug and Ada Patterson Webb had 12 children and I knew all of them. When school started that fall, I was walking six miles to Garfield again. Now I had company; Tommy Woods, a neighbor, would walk with me. Tommy had gone through the ninth grade at Bayless and was now in the 10th grade at Garfield. I talked Tommy into going out for basketball because when we had a game, Tommy would drive his father's Model A Ford, and I would have a ride home. In bad weather, they would let Tommy drive the car and that was a big help to me. I don't ever remember having a snow day; we went to school in all kinds of weather.
All in all, 1937 was a good year for the Pitts family. Hugh, Sam and Helen had to walk about a mile to the Corinth School. There was a lady close to the school who always had a cup of chocolate waiting for them when they went by.
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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.