Rosetta Decoration June 1927

This is a letter in rhyme that Edra Beasley and Gladys Warren wrote to Edra's sister Mildred when she was living in Washington state in 1927. The names and events are true. They probably had as much fun writing it as Mildred did reading it.

Come all you people young and old, and listen to a story that has never been told.
It first began on a Sunday morn, the sun was high and the dew was on the corn.

The creek was up and the moon was low but to the decoration we was bound to go.
A jolly gang that was numbered nine, we mounted our horses just feeling fine.

Upon Old Joe was a lass and a lad, upon old Rhoda was Bertie and her dad.
Upon old Blue rode Annabelle, and Susie happily rode old Nell.

Poor old Jonah with his ragged old saddle, carried two girls riding a straddle.
We scampered away in a pace and a trot, the faster we went the further we got.

We sat in the saddle with a steady nerve, and we blowed the horn at every curve.
Our motors got hot and almost boiled dry, but we just stepped on the gas and made it in high.

We started up the mountain going very slow, and Edra tore her stocking from the top to the toe.
We stopped at Mrs. Baucoms - she was doing fine, and has named her baby Ryntha Catherine.

We out out there about 11:15, and began seeings sights we had never before seen.
Olzetta had a fellow - T. was her pride and joy, someone said he was a Boen boy.

There was Pearlie Hughes, in a dress way below her knees,
And the shoulder seams were long enough for sleeves.

Her dress was brown, trimmed in blue and was big enough for two.
They sat the dinner on the ground - then the people gathered round.

There was ham and there was steak and Belle Warren had a candy cake.
There was pie and cake -- thin and fat -- and Herman Warren wore a jellybean hat.

Rosette Pierce and three daughters all dressed alike - in dresses so big they would never draw tight. The baby was short, wide and fat and like it's mother, it wore a hat.

There was Oliver Boen - a big tall man - he brought their dinner in a blue lard stand
With an oil tablecloth, rolled up in a roll, long and slim like a fishing pole.

There was two recitations, a song or two.
A talk by Rufus Warren and the decoration was through.

Some of My Memories of Garber

This picture was taken in 1929. Mail was brought to the little
village of Garber by horseback except when it was time to send roots to the drug houses in Chicago and other points east. (A drug house at that time was where they made legal drugs)
Times were hard, money scarce and sometimes digging roots brought the only hard cash the people had. They raised everything they ate or traded with their neighbors.
In the late 30's my grandmother was still digging ginseng, and peeling cherry bark to ship east. Sassafras roots and may apples were two of the main 'crops' they dug. Many people from the creek moved to Oklahoma looking for work during the depression.
I left Ark. before I started to school and only lived one year in 1942 on Little Piney but I thought (and now I know) it is a little bit of heaven. There was a huge sweetgum tree by the blacksmith shop. Want chewing gum? Just grab a horseshoe nail and dig out some sap and you had chewing gum. My cousin and aunt and I spent hours with a pieces of bacon, a safety pin and a string catching crawdads.
Times were changing fast that year as we were at war. People living along Little Piney joined the move west looking for work. We went to Calif. in 1942 and I remember visiting Little Piney folk everywhere we went. In 1948 progress in the name of REA came to Little Piney even tho the majority of the people were gone. My grandparents had already sold the farm and moved to town. Two of my aunts still lived on the creek so we still had a connection to Little Piney plus
my father had 40 acres that his grandfather had given him. Today that 40 acres is in a trust for our children and grandchildren. Through the years my father showed my husband and sons, then the grandsons and great grandsons where the best fishing holes were and taught them to hunt where his grandfather had taught him. The family camps, swims, fishes and hunts and each one has their own Garber memories even tho Garber is no more except for the old PO building, Grandma and Grandpa's house and the barn Uncle Charlie built.
Memories of Garber, a little bit of heaven for me as a child .