As I write about the Pastimes of my memories, there is only the Pastime and the Warren Drive In. But a lot of chatter has erupted on ‘the other’ downtown movie hour or picture show as the folks in Warren and Bradley County called the “Avalon.” The Avalon was located on the West side of…
In this Pastime, I dare say there will be only a few, if any, Big Chief tablets and Blue Horse Notebooks present on the opening day of school in Warren this year. They were all the rage back then as the last few humid days of August, turned into school days long ago. The Big…
As one of those many Bradley Countians, calling home someplace other than the sandy loam soil in Southeast Arkansas – I gravitate to the ‘Warren Welcome Center,” upon each and every visit back home. Once, for generations before me, it was a place called Glasgow’s Soda Fountain on the West Side of Main Street, across…
The awfully oppressive heat always reminds me of the large forest fires on record in Bradley County, especially two remembered by a few as the “Vick Burn.” This week, Bradley County is in the “moderate” category for fires, according to the Arkansas Forestry Service. The “first” forest fire in the vicinity of the Vick community…
Somehow a recent Arkansas History Listserv discussion aimed at home-made drawers – especially those of printed feed sacks revived a Pastime for me. The historians we snickering about the girls (and some boys, too, I wager) were wearing cotton undergarments often with the imprinted words of “sweet and pure,” imprinted on their backsides. Sweet and…
Marsha’s Pastime and Friends, 202 W. Cypress St , held a ribbon-cutting ceremony sponsored by Bradley County Chamber of Commerce Friday. Owner Marsha Berry said the store will be open from 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. It features 10 vendors with sweets and breads, baby items, home decor, painted furniture and…
NORTH LITTLE ROCK – The Arkansas Choral Directors Association (ArkCDA) Hall of Fame induction will be Wednesday, July 13, at the Wyndham Riverfront Hotel in North Little Rock. The late Mary Lou Martin, former ArkCDA member, will be one of nine inductees in the Hall of Fame, according to Terri Whitworth of the ArkCDA. Mrs.…
This is a most delicious Pastime – even if it is bereft of a good sized, vine-ripened Bradley tomato – a rare, almost mythical delicacy craved far beyond the border of my home town with the red brick streets – Warren. But sitting here some 250 miles northwest of Warren and thinking about all things…
This is the wonderful time of the year when once upon a time a tradition of the Sixth Grade at Eastside Elementary School loaded up on two to three school buses for a day-long excursion to Arkansas A&M College. What a day trip that was. It was talked up for weeks. I mean weeks ahead…
Oddly enough, it was a reply from a friend, whom I daily rode the yellow school bus with up on Highway 15 to East Side Elementary that came up with this Pastime. Jo Ann Castleberry Pyle, now an El Dorado businesswoman, came up with a mention about these reading primer subjects, “Alice and Jerry and…
Recently when all the cyber talk on various Warren Facebook pages was humming about Wayne’s Confectionary, someone out of the blue, recited the phone number for Wayne’s. The questioner, I presume, got it correct. That number, sadly, has been reassigned since Wayne’s is no longer in business. But I knew, when the person who posted…
As promised here is a more insightful look into the cast, their lines, actions and some hijinks of the Junior Play in the spring of 1972. The Junior Play for the Class of 1973 was done in the Spring of 1972. Ms. Eloise McFarland, the sponsor for both the Pine Cone (yearbook) and newspaper (The…
Mark Scobey, 67, Warren native, long time Hog ticket manager, dies The headlines, if there were still old-style newspapers, like those past generations have known, would be carrying such a bold pronouncement of the sudden and unexpected death of a really, fine ambassador of this state who died this week. Mark Scobey, 67. quietly yet very…
Author’s note: To adequately do this Pastime correctly, I have divided the event into two separate stories. Part 2 will appear in a week to 10 days after this Part 1 in the Saline River Chronicle: As March nears its end each year, I reflect back upon one of the most enjoyable activities of senior…
Now it’s been more than 50 years since I was tasked into working in the tomatoes – or ‘maters as my childhood friends will say back in Bradley County. But each of us, whether there now or a thousand miles away at other work – can and will attest that the work in the tomato…
As the New Year continues, I miss those big and I mean “big” wall calendars that the Potlatch Corporation once passed out around town for businesses. Potlatch was not the only firm having giant sized wall calendars with many small month-by-month pages against the backdrop of a large photograph. All the barber shops along Main…
Somewhere around my junior year at Warren High School, the Singing Valentine’s craze took off. The exact year escapes me. I have tried to glance back at the Goggle of calendar pages past, but that didn’t help my recollection. It was a fundraising mechanism of a couple of the school clubs, not sure if it…
A real treat often came between Christmas and New Year’s was when Warren businesses handed out calendars for the year ahead. Almost every drugstore in downtown Main Street gave away some sort of free calendar to be public back in the day. The most popular was the mass produced Cardui Calendar – a flimsy newspaper-like…
These cold, gray January days (and nights) have renewed my memories about the wintertime shows at the Pastime in downtown Warren. There was more than just availability – perhaps a little Sid Wharton smarts in offering up summertime movies to the viewing public when it was cold, gray and chilly in Warren and Bradley County.…
This Christmas Day, one of the shortest and saddest messages of this very unusual year, was “pinged’ into my electronic phone device in the lazy, ultra-warm afternoon of this holiday. Jim White, you see, was a friend, a real friend across the last nearly six decades, had suddenly passed away at his home in McGehee.…
The scribbler of these Pastime memories sometimes, like all of us, get a little bit “down” as this pandemic continues; as the holiday season approaches; and we start seeing more names we know on a personal first-name basis in the obituary columns across this state. The last couple of weeks have been an emotional roller-coaster…
