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Subject: [ARCLAY-L] "Looking Back at Knobel, Walnut Grove, Cache Lake and vicinity........"
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 16:06:48 EST

Taken from the Clay County Courier, Corning, Arkansas 1930's...........

this is the first time that we have known of, when this community has been
visited by a whole army of cutworms. They are traveling through the fields
and taking crops, clean as they go. they have done considerable damage to
young alfalfa, cotton and corn. You can find them as many as 20 cutworms to
one hole. they are stripping some of the alfalfa down to its stem and eating
cotton and corn, where these crops have been replanted. They eat the tender
sprouts before they grow through the ground. (Datto)

The new moon, a few evenings ago , furnished a basis for our local weather
prophets to make their usual predictions as to what we might soon expect.
First, the moon was lying on its back and, according to an old Indian adage,
it is a dry moon, because the Indian could hang his powder horn on the end of
the cresent. Dry or not, we had a mighty fine rain first of this week, and we
are still of the opinion that no man living can predict, with accuracy, what
the weather will be in a week or a month. There have been rain and sunshine
always and so it will be until the end of time, and no one knows when that
will be. (Success)

Lightning struck a cottonwood tree in Mrs. Ruby SMITHs door-yard on tuesday
afternoon of last week, during an electical storm, followed a clothesline
clear across the yard and ran down an oak tree into the ground. That same
afternoon, a herd of Reece SPINKS' hogs shocked by lightning, rolled down
into a ditch and laid quiet. When they finally got up, they bumped against
everything in their way. (New Hope News)

R. ADAMS, a food products man, now is making regular trips through Heelstring
settlement. Another food salesman from Moark went through here last week and
both say they are having reasonable good sales success. We farmers should not
worry, we sell the products and when we can't sell them, what then? Eat 'em.

White Community was settled many years ago, when deer could be shot by
persons standing inside the windows of their homes here. And 'coons used to
eat up their crops. Then the farmer at night took lanterns around their corn
fields and hunted them.
Mr. and Mrs. W.T. BENNETT came here in 1887, when it was two miles from their
home to the nearest house. they traveled in wagons from Newport, Indiana,
came through in two wagons, one drawn by horses and the other by cattle. they
spent several days at Fort Smith, then came through Corning which was very
small. Then he bought land at .50 cents an acre and built their home.He
felled trees and hauled them to Black River, rafted and ran the timber logs
to market. Mrs. BENNETT spent her mornings in the kitchen preparing dinner
for 12 or more, then she would get on a horse and take the food to them more
than as mile away. One day Mr. BENNETT sat down on a log and saw a deer. He
shot its hind legs and after it ran a long distance, he followed and shot it
again. He took its carcass home with him. He still has its head and antlers
on a wall of his home. Mr. BENNETT will be 79 on his next birthday
anniversary. Mrs. BENNETT was 71 on her most recent birthday anniversary.
they have a family of three children, 18 grandchildren and seven
great-grandchildren.

The following poem, written by J.M. OLIVER, Jr., uring people to raise and
use more cotton, appeared in The Courier in the early 1930's:
"We've raised a big cotton crop. (A plain lack of gumption).
Now its up to us to increase our consumption.
If girls would wear dresses a little bit longer.
I'm sure you would agree that the price would be stronger.
But who would wear dresses to cover the knee, in this land of the brave and
home of the free?
And then there's the petticoat, should it return.
The spinner would have to make midnight oil burn.
But the petticoat's gone, and tho's I should swear,
My wife would refuse to wear long underwear.
With styles so curtailed and Eve so perverse,
the grocers must rally or things will get worse.
So we must write you, jobber, a letter to say,
Don't pack things in jute, here's a better way.
Your cabbage and beans, every onion and spud,
Must come wrapped in cotton, or your name is mud.
the sugar the flour, the coffee and rice, must come wrapped in cotton
to keep up the price.
And may we be struck stone blind, deaf and mute,
If we'll accept anything done up in jute.
We grocers have rallied, The price will rebound.
And cotton will go up to two-bits a pound.
And business will flourish tho' times may be rotten
because you have wrapped all your groceries in cotton."

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