LITTLE ROCK — Two events in a recent five-day period have caused me to think a lot about having grown up in Arkansas and why I choose to raise my own family here.
The fact that I turn 50 next week has led to additional contemplation. It's not that I don't know any better, as some outof-state acquaintances might contend. I worked in Washington for several years in the 1980s as a newspaper reporter and have traveled extensively.
The first event was the 54th annual Grady Fish Fry in the Ned Hardin pecan grove just off U.S. 65 south of Pine Bluff. This gathering, a storied tradition in Southeast Arkansas, always takes place on the third Thursday in August. There's no set program, no speeches, just eating and visiting. The Grady Lions Club sells about 1,300 tickets each year.
"My father is 92, and this has been his pride and joy so to speak for years," Randy Hardin of Hardin Farms told the Pine Bluff Commercial last week. "He looks forward to it from one year to the next. The main thing for him is to just see it pulled off again. It's a good place for people to come who maybe don't see each other but once per year."
The Lions Club members purchase more than 1,000 pounds of Dumas-raised catfish. They spend the week of the event pitching tents, setting up tables and chairs, bringing in the cooking equipment and cleaning the areas where people will eat and park. For $12, a person can get all of the catfish, french fries, hushpuppies, coleslaw and watermelon he can eat. Shortly after 4 p.m., folks from all over Southeast Arkansas are gathering under the giant pecan trees.
The volunteer workforce comes courtesy of the Arkansas Department of Correction. The prisoners, dressed in their prison whites, help clean the tables and hand out the watermelon slices. The prison band plays. One senses that the Grady Fish Fry has changed little in its more than half-century of existence.
The second event was the Monday afternoon funeral of Ann Vining of Arkadelphia, the wife of legendary formerOuachita Baptist University head basketball coach and athletic director Bill Vining. For those of us who grew up in the Ouachita Hills section of Arkadelphia, Ann Vining was the den mother for an entire neighborhood.
The Vinings had six children. They also had a swimming pool, something that was sure to attract dozens of other kids on summer days. Growing up in that neighborhood, you knew there were certain constants in life. In the summer, you would swim in the Vining pool. In the winter when school was called off for an occasional snow day, you would go sledding by the Vikings' home. In the fall, youwould play touch football with the Vining kids on the Ouachita football field, which was just down the street.
Jeff Root, the dean of humanities at OBU who also grew up in Ouachita Hills, put it this way: "There was the hole in the fence that allowed us to play football in the Ouachita stadium until darkness closed in. There wasthe drainpipe behind the stands that provided an Olympics-like balancing event. There were too many larger-than-life figures to name. Neighbors on each side of our house were equally intriguing gentlemen with very different personalities-Bob Riley, the extroverted, eye-patched lieutenant governor, and Dennis Holt, the introverted playwright. And, of course, I remember many Ann Vining stories. Fittingly, she was at the top of Ouachita Hills, the point from which she looked after us all."
They came from all over Arkansas for Monday's funeral-nieces, nephews, friends, former players of Coach Vining and others. They filled the large First Baptist Church sanctuary, and then theyfilled the church's fellowship hall afterward to visit with each other and celebrate a well-lived life. The service was almost 90 minutes of memories, laughter and music.
So what do a fish fry in Grady and a funeral in Arkadelphia have in common? The fact that there's still a palpable sense of history, continuity and place in towns across this state. It's a state where "How's your mama doing?" is still a question you ask friends. It's a state where you know people on a first-name basis and keep up with them through the years. It's a state of small towns where family matters.
I was drawn to a recent quote by Claiborne Deming of El Dorado, who retired at the end of last year as the president and chief executive officer of Murphy Oil Corp. Deming, a Tulane University graduate who now serves on the Vanderbilt University board and is chairman of the National Petroleum Council, could live anywhere. He has chosen to stay inEl Dorado, having recently purchased a three-story downtown building that he will renovate for his offices.
Deming told the magazine Talk Business Quarterly: "I think the small-town South is the best lifestyle in the world, by the way. I love the people, I love the pace, I love the friends I have. I just love the lifestyle. I think it'sa culture which is superior to most."
Having shared catfish with hundreds of my fellow Arkansans in Grady on a Thursday night and having wiped away tears with hundreds of others in Arkadelphia on a Monday afternoon, I could not agree more. Time marches on, and we begin to lose our role models once we reach a certain age. Yet even in the helter-skelter, tweet-a-minute culture of 2009, the Arkansas sense of place remains strong.
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Free-lance columnist Rex Nelson is the senior vice president for government relations and public outreach at The Communications Group in Little Rock.
Editorial, Pages 19 on 08/29/2009