In the summer of 1960, I was fresh out of Arizona State University and had my military requirement completed after doing a hitch at basic with the Arizona Air National Guard in San Antonio. My partners Monty, Sumner Smith and I laid plans for Monty and I to come back to see about getting settled in Northwest Arkansas. We would need jobs to support this invasion, so with Sumner still to finish college and his military obligation, the two of us set out for the hills.
In Monty’s 1956 Ford pickup around the last of July, we took U.S. 62 out of Phoenix to Route 66 at Santa Rosa, N.M. Gas was about 27.9 cents a gallon, except out on 66 where it soared to 40.9 cents. We drove 24 hours and arrived in Fort Smith, actually Van Buren, Ark., the next morning. One slept, one drove and after breakfast, we came up 71 to Winslow. I noted the temperature had dropped significantly from the river valley. We were headed to the place the Smith Brothers bought the past January, our 714-acre ranch. We stopped exactly 1,252 miles from point A. At that time, the only turnpike was the Turner between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, and we didn’t use it that trip.
We found our place on the end of the rough road. That is the red barn on the right of I-540, before you cross the bridge north of Bobby Hopper Tunnel. The people we bought the farm from were still there. They were supposed to have put the roof back on the barn for their rent, a tornado had removed it the year before… but the tin was still stacked on the ground.
In 1960 Arkansas was desperate for school teachers. You could get a license to teach if you had a high school diploma. Because of the proximity of the University, Washington County was not that desperate. We met the County School Superintendent at the Fayetteville Court House, and he told us he didn’t need us.
Our plan was to teach school until we learned the ropes of the country. So we started out looking in a wider circle. A man offered us jobs at the Fort Smith Stockyards, but minimum wage then must have been a dollar an hour. I thought I had a job as a pea inspector at Campbell Soup, (then Swanson’s) but when the guy found I had a college education, he would not hire me. The job paid almost a hundred dollars a week. We were looking at teaching jobs that paid 300 bucks a month on a 9-month contract.
My decision was if I ever applied for a job like that again, I sure would not put my degree on it. One place we stopped was Huntsville, and we talked to the Superintendent, Mr. Flowers. He was interested in hiring me, but had no job for Monty. We told him without both of us working there, I couldn’t afford to take the job. His interest in me was the fact I had 24 hours of science courses on my transcript and the federal government would pay half my salary. We had about decided no one was going to hire us.
After a week of job hunting, we headed back to Arizona to build us a nest egg and come back the next spring. We were determined. I was at Monty’s folk’s house, when he got a phone call. We were all set to go see a steelyard that Monty knew well and said we could get on there. He came out of the house shouting. “We’re going to Arkansas. We have jobs at Huntsville teaching.”
One of our first stops in Arkansas was over at Green Forest, where we went by and saw our good friends, Ken and Madge Rose along with their teenage son Terry who later taught in Westville schools. This past weekend I was back at Sumner’s house down on the ranch and had a reunion with Terry and his wife, Monty and his wife, plus Sumner and his kids. Not to leave anyone else out, it was our 50 year reunion.
When we left Phoenix, there was a country D.J. on the local station. When he came on, he said, “I’m Long John Roller, I came from Arkansas, the Land of Opportunity. I got my opportunity one night and left.” Hope you’re getting some timely rains, till the next issue, may God bless you.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
