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 .