LITTLE ROCK — Duie Talley didn’t ask the name of the pretty girl who sold him popcorn from a cart on the sidewalk just after he left work one afternoon in 1947.
“I got out of the car and talked to her for a minute and bought some popcorn from her,” Duie says. “She looked pretty good but I had to do something else and I left pretty quick. I found out the next day or two who she was — I asked some other people.”
Her name was Jetta Williams, and he learned all about her and her family, too.
Jetta also had taken note of her attractive customer.
“I just saw that guy and I said, ‘That’s who I want to marry, right there,’” Jetta says. “The way he acted and everything, I just thought, that’s the person for me.” She knew who he was, and she knew his family had moved from Illinois to a place near her aunt in the Meadow Lake community in Jackson County.
They didn’t see each other for a couple of months, and when they did it was at the Church of Christ in Hindman.
Duie and a girl he had been dating were leaving the church to pick up two preachers who were coming by bus from Harding College in Searcy to Olyphant. The preachers needed a ride to the church where they would preach that Sunday.
Duie’s girlfriend invited Jetta to ride along with them.
On the way to Olyphant, Duie asked Jetta if he could come to her house to see her that Saturday night. “The other girl said, ‘Well, if he comes to see you, I’m coming, too,’” Jetta says.
She didn’t, but Duie did. “She never did act like she was mad at us, though,” Jetta says of the girlfriend.
Duie took Jetta to see a movie that Saturday night — a John Wayne picture, she thinks. She thinks their second date involved taking her parents to Oil Trough.
“My mama wanted to get her hair fixed, so we took her, and we went on to the movies while she was getting her hair fixed, and then we went by and picked them up and took them back home,” she says.
By the third date, they decided they might just as well get married. After they got engaged, Duie left for California with a family friend who needed help hauling workers to and from orchards. He was determined to make some money for starting their life together.
Jetta went to work while he was gone, helping a family take care of someone who had just had surgery. She was also cooking, cleaning and working in the cotton patch for that family.
Jetta was picking cotton when he returned a month or so later.
“He came down there looking for me in the cotton patch,” she says.
They were married on Dec. 21, 1947, on the steps of the Jackson County Courthouse.
“On the morning of our wedding, Duie was at home with his parents and got up early to build a fire in the stove,” Jetta says. “I guess he was dressed nicer than he would have been, going to work, and they asked him where he was going. He said, ‘I’m going to get married.’ That was the first they had heard of his plans. They just took it as fact and didn’t comment too much.”
Jetta’s cousin had gotten married the Friday before, and she and Duie would have married then too, but they didn’t yet have their license.
“It took three days to get one. Our third day was on a Sunday morning,” she says.
She first met Duie’s family after they exchanged their vows.
“I had seen them around the area but didn’t really know them,” she says. “But they accepted me, and I was part of the family from then on.”
Her family didn’t accept Duie quite as readily, though they did eventually welcome him wholeheartedly.
“He was good to them,” Jetta says. “He would take my mama to the beauty shop, and he helped them on their land.”
Duie and Jetta went to work picking cotton and pulling it to the gin by the wagon-load just a few days after they were married; eventually they had enough money to buy a farm.
The Talleys, who live in Bradford, raised three daughters — Betty Turner of Bailey’s Crossroads, Va.; Brenda Dunn of Bradford; and Dianna Roller of Gassville. They also have four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
“We have a wonderful family,” Jetta says. “I’m really proud of them. We all get along and everything. None of us practice this fussing and fighting. We all try to treat everybody right.”
On our wedding day I wore:
She says: “A dress the lady of the household where I was working gave me. It was navy blue and it was dressier than other dresses I had. It was sort of a crepe fabric and it had a little flounce at the waist, so it had the appearance of a jacket.”
He says: “My regular pants and a shirt.”
My advice for a long, happy marriage is:
He says: “Work every day and come home every night.”
She says: “Be a good gentle person and trust in the Lord. Treat everybody right and do everything you’re supposed to.”
If you have an interesting howwe-met story or know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or e-mail:
cjenkins@arkansasonline.com
High Profile, Pages 35 on 12/30/2012