The Seed and the Story Column: Garden Stories Book and McElroy House.

Wood sorrel from my grandmother's house.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

As the days grow (unseasonably) warmer, the wood sorrel in my front yard is beginning to bloom.  Often called false shamrocks, wood sorrel comes in hundreds of varieties and is sometimes considered a weed.  Sometimes referred to as Oxalis, the little pink or yellow flowers shoot up from the three-leaf clover-like base of the plant.  In the variety I have, the plants grow in fat, round clumps.  My plant comes from a cutting of a plant that once grew along the walkway leading to my grandparent’s house on Second Street in downtown Dardanelle.  After they died my mother dug up some of the roots and planted them in her yard.  After she died I dug some up and planted them in mine.  When I moved to Little Rock last year, I dug some up again and took them with us to our new home where they now grow along our walkway leading up to the red front porch.  Come to find out, as one of my cousins informed me this week, the plant originally grew in my great grandmother’s yard, long before I was ever born. And who knows.  Maybe she dug it up from her own mother’s yard in Cardon Bottoms. We invest so much memory and meaning in our plants.

For a few years now I’ve become increasingly interested in the way plants carry our stories, and I’m especially interested in how gardens play a role in this part of Arkansas.  Seeds passed down through families often bare the name of family members or geographical locations.  Recent immigrants bring with them seeds from home, their gardens a marriage between a former home and a new one.  And if you take a walk though just about any flower garden in the area, the gardener will likely tell you stories of friends or relatives who once gave them a cutting of the lilac bush or the four o’clocks which now cover their yard.   Last year I wrote a piece about my grandmother’s love for irises and soon discovered just how many other people had similar connections to the plant, family members treasuring both the bulbs and stories passed down through the years.  You can learn a lot about people, I’ve discovered, by asking them about their plants.

Along with the help of a few other people, I’m working toward the creation of the McElroy House: Center for Folklife, Oral History and Community Action, an intergenerational and inter-cultural organization working to document and discuss folklife and oral history in our region. Gardening is a tradition that’s alive and well in our area and it transcends racial, geographic, even linguistic, boundaries.  Our first project for the Center is putting together a publication about the stories behind plants and gardens in the river valley and Yell County areas.  Gardening knowledge is instrumental as is seed saving, and thankfully other groups and publications are filling this need.  What we hope to do with this project is focus on the stories behind the plants and the relationship between the gardener and their gardens. So, do you have a plant or plants that carry special meaning, perhaps a link to past generations?  If you’re new to the area, have you brought seeds or cuttings with you from your home state or home country?  Why are these plants important to you and what meaning does the garden hold for you? After all, gardening can be hard and is a labor of love. We’d like to hear why you love it and what brings you back to it year after year. It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned gardener or someone’s whose just started.  It’s your stories we want to hear.   Please help us spread the word.  If you know of a gardener who you think should be included in this book, please let us know.

The Seed and the Story for January 11, 2012: Chickalah Academy

Chickalah Methodist Cemetery. Click on photo to see full listing of graves in cemetery.

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend! And thanks for reading!

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I recently began doing some research on the history of Chickalah and have been reading two books which provide a great deal of information about this and other rural communities in the area.  Both Wayne Banks’ 1959 publication, A History of Yell County Arkansas, and Catherine Eikleberry Roger’s Readin’, ‘Ritin, and ‘Rithmetic, published in 1981, are filled with oral histories from community members who have long since passed away.  In addition to many of the stories I’ve heard over the years from family and friends, these books help shed light on this community which once boasted eight businesses and two hundred and fifty residents.

Today Chickalah is a small, rural community with a few churches, a community center, and a rural fire department.  In the late 1800s, however, Chickalah, often referred to as Chickalah Village, was located about a mile north of its present location and was home to the Chickalah Academy, a two story building which provided the first non-denominational educational opportunities in the area.  Prior to the Academy, all schools in the village were subscription based and conducted by the Methodist church on Harkey’s Valley road across from Little Chickalah Creek.  The Chickalah Academy, located near where the fire station stands today, was a two story building with four separate entrances.  The school boasted three departments: “Primary,” “Grammar” and “Academic,” and in addition to these regular classes students also had access to classes in vocal instruction, piano, organ, guitar, and violin. 

The Chickalah Academy burned sometime during the early 1900s, and although another two story building was constructed, the subsequent school appears to have only hired two teachers.  Eventually that building was torn down and replaced by the one-story, two room building that still operates today as the Chickalah Community Center.  As many readers may remember, beginning in the 1930s, the Chickalah School began a gradual process of consolidation with Dardanelle Public Schools.

To my knowledge there is no one living today who attended the Chickalah Academy, but some of you have probably heard stories about the school, and no doubt there are many readers who remember attending the later school before consolidation.  In my quest to understand more about Chickalah, I’m especially curious to learn more about the coming of Highway 27 and how this shifted the population from what is often referred to as Chicklaha Village to the Chicklah we know today.   I’m also curious to learn more about a shoe factory that may have once been located in the area.  Operated by the McCray family, the factory would have existed sometime in the mid 1800s.  I’d also love to learn as much as possible about the sawmills in the area and the role they played in the larger timber industry. Do you know anything about these topics?  I’d love to include this and any other information in our ongoing research at the community center I’m working to open, the McElroy House: Organization for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action.   As always, I’d love to hear your stories.  You can visit me online at www.boileddownjuice.com.  If you want to know more about the McElroy House and our goals, you can check us out online at www.mcelroyhouse.wordpress.com. Of course, I always love handwritten letters or phone calls as well!  Thanks so much for reading and sharing your stories.  I feel very thankful to be learning from you all.   

The Seed and the Story for November 30, 2011: Dardanelle Mural and Upcoming Christmas River Walk

Dardanelle Post Office Mural

The Seed and the Story is published every other week in the Post Dispatch and syndicated in the Courier.   Thanks so much for reading and don’t forget to support your local paper!

Just a bit of information for the web readers: This column was written for readers of the Yell County and River Valley area papers, but we hope there is something here for all readers wherever you live.  And we’d love to have you come visit the River Walk if you are going to be in the area!  Thanks to our wonderful volunteers we will have some homemade cookies and the mayor is providing cider and coffee.  Come out and say hello!

Last week art historian Dr. Gayle Seymour visited the Dardanelle Historical Society to discuss the history and importance of the Dardanelle Post Office Mural.   You may recall a previous column from August of this year explaining how the mural was created under the Percent for Art model, a Depression-era federal program that provided employment to out of work artists and brought art to highly-accessible public buildings.  The artist who created our mural was Ludwig Mactarian, an ethnic Armenian who escaped the Armenian Genocide and came to New York at the age of thirteen.  Our mural, which features workers in the cotton industry, is one of very few Percent for Art murals depicting African Americans.  Equally important,  the artist’s focus on the struggles of share croppers suggests a multi-layered social commentary, making our mural unique and important on both a local and national level.

Close up of man in center panel.

Thanks to the hard work of Dr. Seymour, the great folks at the Dardanelle Historical Society and many concerned citizens, there are plans in the works to call more attention to the mural and work toward its eventual restoration. 

You have probably heard about the upcoming downtown Dardanelle Christmas River Walk December 9^th from 5:00-8:00 P.M.  Organized by the wonderful folks at Renaissance Front Street Restoration, this event will feature area artists, carolers, music, and more.  To help draw attention to the mural and its importance in our community, the Dardanelle Historical Society will be serving refreshments and handing out information about the mural inside the post office lobby.  Be sure and drop by and check out this historic work and learn more about its history. 

I’ll be present at the Art Walk as well, sitting at the booth for the The McElroy House: Organization for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action.  We will be discussing various ways we can engage in research and public education programs centering on the mural and the history and themes it represents.  We’ll have some homemade treats on hand made by volunteers and information about documenting oral history in the area, especially cotton picking as depicted in the mural.  Did you grow up picking cotton in the area?  Did your grandparents?  We’d love to hear all about it.  One of our main goals of the McElroy House is to help document these community stories and preserve them for generations to come.  Please stop by and pick up a cookie and visit with us.  If you’ve got photos or other things you’d be willing to share, bring those too.  We’ll have a scanner on hand to scan in your old photos as well as other photos for people to view. If you want to know more about the McElroy House organization, visit us online at www.mcelroyhouse.wordpress.com. 

Thanks so much for reading and I look forward to seeing you at the Christmas Walk! 

McElroy House News: Presentation October 17th in Dardanelle

Just wanted to let folks know that if you live in the Yell/Pope County areas, I’ll be preseting about the McElroy House and our current and future work at the October meeting of the Dardanelle Historical Society.  Please come!   We’ll be talking about the garden book and would you to have you be involved!

Read all the information here:

http://mcelroyhouse.tumblr.com/post/11066108045/mcelroy-house-presentation-at-the-dardanelle-historical

Art Walk, Chicken Fry, a McElroy House booth in Dardanelle, Arkansas

Flyer from Front Street Renaissance Restoration

This coming Saturday in downtown Dardanelle, Arkansas two coinciding  events will be taking place:  The 63rd Annual Chicken Fry down by the river and the River Walk on Front Street up the hill from the river.  Both events are free and open to everyone.

If you unfamiliar with the Chicken Fry here’s an informative article from a few years ago about the event and the 150th anniversary celebration of the City of Dardanelle.  For years the event was held on Mount Nebo and has always attracted locals and state politicians.  The event is a nod to one of the region’s biggest employers, the chicken industry.   Events include music, games for kids, the annual Lil Miss Pullet and Mr. Rooster Pageant at 10 a.m.,  a chicken calling contest at 1 p.m. and the Lovely Legs contest at 1:30.   Chicken dinners are available from 11:00 a.m.—5:00  p.m. and cost 5.00 for adults and 3.oo for children.  To get all the details read the Courier’s recent article here.

Back in June we posted about the downtown Art Walk led by Renaissance Front Street Restoration.  These Art Walks have become so successful they’re now occurring on a regular basis.  This Art Walk, which is being called the River Walk, will take place from 1:00—4:00 during the middle of the Chicken Fry festivities.  If you’d like to see Front Street once again become an active, thriving location for the community, then be sure and check out the work of the Front Street Restoration project.  They’ve been organizing numerous events all geared toward bringing people back downtown.   In addition to the regular downtown events,  there’s also locally-owned restaurant Tarascos, the best Mexican food you can find anywhere (seriously),  Savannah’s with views of the river,  and the historic post office with WPA-era mural.    Thanks to the Front Street folks and so many others who are working hard to bring business back to the downtown.   There are still places for artists to be involved this weekend.  If you’re a regional artist or craftsperson and you’d like to get involved with the Art Walk call call (479) 229-03567, (479) 747-5938 or (479) 886-0817.

We’d also like to let folks know that the The McElroy House: Organization for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action will have a booth with a short slide show discussing our current projects and future plans.   We’re looking forward to hearing more from the community and perhaps picking up a few more volunteers for projects and future plans.   We’d love it if you came by and said hello!  And if you’re interested we’d love for you to come join us in our work and become involved in something that interests you.

Do you want to help document oral histories in the area?  Help sustain living community traditions?  Help with the flower or veggie garden?  Food preservation?  ESL classes? Spanish classes?  Are there other things you think we should be offering?  Whatever the case, whatever your age or regardless of how long you’ve called the river valley home, we want to hear from you.

Check us out online here.

McElroy House Booth at the Art Walk and Chicken Fry!

Just wanted to let everyone know that the McElroy House: Organization for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action will have a booth at the River Valley Art Walk this coming Saturday. The event will coincide with the annual Chicken Fry. More details to come. Please plan on coming by and saying hello! And don’t forget to visit the McElroy House’s page here.

McElroy House Update: EAST Lab at Dardanelle High School

Beginning this month the McElroy House: Organziation for Folklife, Oral History, and Community Action will be partnerning with the EAST Lab classes at Dardanelle High School on oral history and community research.

Click here to check out the McElroy House webpage for information! 

Great News, Technical difficulties, Center’s First Donation, and Crazy Days.

As you can see, something is wrong with the graphics on the site. Not sure what happened, but I hope to have them up and running again soon.

I also plan on giving the updated information on the McElroy House very soon, which I am happy to say was unanimously approved by the City Planning Commission. More details on that to come!!

I am a bit behind on just about everything because just two days after I presented before the City Planning Commission and the plans for the McElroy House were approved, my husband and I had twin boys!! They were born a tiny bit early, but are healthy and happy and are sitting in their bouncy seats on the kitchen table as I write this post.
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What’s In the Works ~ The McElroy House: Center for Regional Oral History and Folklife Research

After much thought and time spent wondering where to go from here, I have decided to begin the process of creating a small oral history and folklife research center in my hometown. I have included my plans and ideas for the Center listed at the bottom of this post. I welcome any feedback! Continue reading »