When I was a kid, television was beyond our imagination. We had radio, but it was used mostly as a way of keeping up with the world news and knowing whether the Japanese or Chinese gorillas (guerillas) were winning. Movies presented news "shorts" also.
Saturdays were our entertainment days. We rural people crowded into our vehicles and drove to town, often taking butter, eggs, and other farm produce to sell to the Piggly Wiggly and the A&P stores.
We and everyone else tried to park on the square across the street from the central county courthouse. There we could see people on the sidewalks in front of the stores on the east, west, north, and south sides of the square.
There was strong competition for certain locations. If you parked north of the courthouse, you were likely to see more action/entertainment than elsewhere.
The farm women went to the dry goods stores mostly to buy clothes patterns and bib overalls for the kids, then joined other women to sit in the cars sipping cherry cokes from the drug stores on each side, and to catch up on local gossip.
The husbands went to the barber shops or pool parlors, and the kids were sent to the movie to see Gene Autry, Johnny Mack Brown, The Lone Ranger, or Roy Rogers films. If the kids didn't go to the movies, they stayed in the back seats of the cars licking and dripping ice cream cones and fighting.
A trades-day drawing was held on one side of the square at 1 p.m. The city manager read off the winning ticket numbers and awarded the small cash prizes. Then the real entertainment began.
Everyone was disappointed if we didn't see "Bushy" strolling along the sidewalks with her bland, uninteresting husband. "Bushy" was what I envisioned an Amazon queen would look like. She was at least 6-foot, 6-inches tall, not counting her hair. She had an extremely pale complexion, appeared strong, had intensely red-painted lips and cheeks, and her brows were very thick. She wore big, round, dangling earrings, and had jet-black hair which she wore frizzed out and up in an Afro-like mass as big as a washtub. It made her appear 6-foot-8.
I think most of us thought of her as an escapee from the South American jungles. We were, frankly, fearful of her.
"Bushy" wore large, dark eye shades most of the time, but I did see her once without the shades. Her eyes were green and black slits, almost reptilian, and definitely scary. No one knew where she came from, and I never heard her speak. There was constant speculation about her origin. After about four years, she disappeared and was never seen again.
"Li'l Hippo" was always there, leaning on a light pole near the pool hall, licking a "Hawa-yun Delight" ice cream cone, and talking to "Chicken," a very scrawny girl who walked repeatedly around the square, looking like a lost chicken. They were both just wanting to be noticed and admired.
Stories were read into the activities observed on the streets each Saturday. Children growing up at the time were more self-conscious and inhibited than they are today. I think it is because we kids always felt we were "on-stage" when we walked around the sidewalks on Saturday. We knew people were making comments, such as "Look at the zit on that boy's nose," or " That girl's dress couldn't be any tighter."
Thank goodness for television. People could choose to stay home on Saturdays and watch TV! It heralded the end of an era and the decline of the small town, in my opinion.
-- Louis Houston is a resident of Siloam Springs. His book "The Grape-Toned Studebaker" is available locally and from Amazon.com. Send any questions or comments to [email protected] or call 524-6926. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 02/03/2016