Throughout the years I labored within the governor’s workplace, journeys to Clay County on the Fourth of July had been a should. Annual picnics at Corning and Piggott attracted former residents from throughout the nation. And people individuals anticipated the governor to be a part of the celebration.
I used to be reminded of visits to Clay County with Gov. Mike Huckabee whereas studying “I Grew Up in a Small City,” a brand new e book by Corning native David Wilson. The 1980 graduate of Corning Excessive Faculty was my classmate at Ouachita Baptist College. He went on to obtain a doctorate in instructional administration on the College of Missouri. Wilson labored in training for 27 years in Missouri earlier than shifting to Springdale in 2016.
Although Wilson’s e book is basically a love letter to small-town life, he consists of the unhealthy with the great on this 140-page quantity.
“Individuals have a notion of what small-town life is like, even those that aren’t from a small city,” he writes. “Understanding small cities is part of understanding the nation’s tradition, and it has all the time been a reasonably accessible idea. The small-town setting has been chronicled in America’s historical past, literature and media, and for metropolis dwellers who nonetheless do not totally grasp it, there’s all the time the template of ‘The Andy Griffith Present’ and the fictional city of Mayberry.
“Corning, nevertheless, is not Mayberry. However, if one understands Mayberry, then she or he might start to grasp Corning. Based on a number of individuals who bear in mind Corning’s previous, she resembled Mayberry within the space of native legislation enforcement. Mayberry had Andy Taylor. Corning had Snide. That was a nickname for police officer Dewey Snider, and he just about took care of all of the police duties within the city for a lot of his tenure.”
Wilson says there wasn’t a lot crime in Corning throughout the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties when about 2,000 individuals lived there. Corning had a inhabitants of three,227 within the 2020 census.
“Snide’s fundamental priorities concerned coping with mischievous youngsters or with locking up the occasional one that succumbed to alcohol and made a nuisance of himself,” Wilson writes. “Dick Partitions stated that within the pool corridor you may inform if an individual had just lately gotten drunk after which bought in bother with Snide.”
“They’d a knot on their head,” Partitions advised Wilson.
Wilson says a typical Saturday night time crowd in Corning–made up in a part of tenant farmers and sharecroppers who labored on space farms–“was there to buy, get provides, have supper or watch motion pictures.”
“From modest beginnings in 1944, the homecoming and Independence Day celebration in Wynn Park has grow to be one of many ties that bind former residents to their hometown,” Franklin Cochran writes for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “The celebration is sponsored by the native chamber of commerce and run by residents for the good thing about civic organizations. … This occasion is a well-liked time for varsity reunions. Throughout election years, many political candidates marketing campaign at Wynn Park.”
Wilson remembers being house from school in the summertime of 1982.
“I used to be on Second Avenue in entrance of the courthouse, preparing for the morning parade,” he writes. “Actually, I used to be serving to put an indication on a automobile that was a parade entry. A couple of block to the north, I noticed one among Arkansas’ politicians. His face was acquainted as a result of I had seen it on tv many instances. He was mingling with the gang earlier than the parade began, shaking fingers and fascinating individuals in dialog.
“I continued to place the ending touches on the automobile. Once I turned again round, I discovered myself nose to nose with the aforementioned candidate. He prolonged his hand to shake mine.”
It was Invoice Clinton, who had been defeated two years earlier by Frank White in Clinton’s re-election marketing campaign for governor. Clinton was in search of to unseat White in 1982 and would achieve success in that endeavor.
“For years, any severe candidate for a county or statewide workplace made a degree to be in Corning and Piggott in Clay County and Portia in Lawrence County on the Fourth of July,” Wilson writes. “Every place had a assured crowd who welcomed a speech that was each political and patriotic. Clinton was one of many politicians who made a number of visits to Corning on the Fourth of July.
“One yr there was an issue about whether or not Arkansas would provide water to Texas. James Leonard’s sister lived in Texas however was again on the town. She walked proper as much as Clinton, advised him she was from Texas and stated, ‘In case you do not give us the water, we’re not going to present you any extra oil.'”
Large crowds turned out for Corning’s one hundredth birthday in 1973 and for the nation’s two hundredth birthday in 1976. The July 1976 challenge of Ford Instances, printed by Ford Motor Co. in these years, had a function on the Fourth of July in Corning.
“Second Avenue, the principle drag of Corning, is abandoned on Independence Day,” the article famous. “The American flags that stand irregularly alongside the way in which cling limp within the 95-degree warmth. … The motion is a couple of mile away, at Wynn Park. It is sizzling there, too, regardless of a cover of shady oak bushes and an occasional breeze drifting in from the soybean fields close by.
“However Wynn Park is jammed with individuals, because it has been each Fourth of July however two for the reason that Forties when the custom started. These two had been rained out. Regardless of the climate, the Independence Day reunion is so firmly ingrained within the little children of Clay County, within the excessive northeast nook of Arkansas, that they maintain coming again, yr after yr, as if in response to some inherent homing intuition.”
Senior Editor Rex Nelson’s column seems usually within the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He is additionally the writer of the Southern Fried weblog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Comments (0)