Hope and Cave City held dueling watermelon festivals on the same weekend again this year. Hope has the older watermelon tradition, but Cave City has been making a strong push in recent years to capture the hearts of Arkansans. For most of the summer, I've noticed a truck parked along Cantrell Road in Little Rock with a sign proclaiming "Cave City watermelons."
"Ours are bigger," they'll tell you in Hope. "Ours are sweeter," they'll counter in Cave City.
Having grown up in southwest Arkansas, I always thought of Hope as the place for watermelons. When I was a boy in Arkadelphia, nobody yet was giving much thought to Bill Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Mack McLarty or any of those other nationally famous folks from Hope. We associated Hope with watermelons, the Bobcat football team, the Pop Cola served at games there, and Big Arkie, an alligator caught near Hope in 1952 that weighed 500 pounds. When we would go see him at the Little Rock Zoo, we were told he was the largest alligator in captivity.
"Big Arkie was spied by a young boy in a flooded pasture by Yellow Creek, which is west of Hope," Elizabeth Hennelly writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "Ed Jackson, caretaker of a local hunting club, was alerted and, with some companions, wrapped Big Arkie in a 50-foot-long cable attached to a tractor. The alligator spent one night in Hope's public children's pool, encased in chicken wire. On the following day, he was delivered to the Little Rock Zoo, doubled up in a crate. When the truck containing Big Arkie arrived at the zoo's alligator pit, it took seven men 45 minutes to unload him. Raymond Gray, then director of the zoo, measured Big Arkie at nearly 13 feet long. No one could be sure how old Big Arkie was as he was fully grown when captured. ... On the first day of Big Arkie's showing at the zoo, about 3,000 people came to see him. Big Arkie was the main zoo attraction for 18 years."
I became more interested in Hope watermelons when I studied biology at Arkadelphia High School under Lloyd Bright of the famous Hope watermelon-growing family. Bright, who would regale us with stories of sleeping in the fields with watermelons when he was young, would go on to raise a melon weighing 268.8 pounds in 2005 on his father Ivan's farm east of Hope. Lloyd's son Jason had a 260-pound melon listed in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1986. I also became friends as a young newspaperman with C.E. "Pod" Rogers Jr. of the Hope Star. It was Rogers who convinced the Hope Chamber of Commerce to bring back the Watermelon Festival, which had first been held in 1926. Rogers traveled the country promoting Hope melons, appearing on national television programs with the likes of Glen Campbell, the Smothers Brothers and Willard Scott. The festival has been held continuously since 1977.
Mary Nell Turner, the beloved Hope High School newspaper and yearbook adviser who died in March of this year, wrote in a history of the festival: "The competition for growing big melons was a creation of John S. Gibson, who in 1916 began to offer modest prizes for the largest vegetables and watermelons. Hugh and Edgar Laseter, local farmers, developed a seed line to try to win the contest. Hugh grew Arkansas' first giant watermelon in 1925. The 136-pound melon, harvested on Aug. 12, 1925, generated the excitement that led to the first watermelon festival, held the following year.
"The first five festivals drew large crowds. The crowd numbered 30,000 in 1928. Many visitors traveled on the Missouri Pacific, Frisco and Louisiana & Arkansas special trains from Little Rock, Shreveport and Oklahoma. Fox, Pathe, Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer News filmed some of the events to show in theaters across the country. Loudspeakers were borrowed from Arkansas Power & Light Co. in Little Rock to broadcast the program to the large gathering of people.
"Each year, the day's program included a parade with decorated cars, floats and bands. At Fair Park, a coronation ceremony, including a pageant by local youth, introduction of the maids and the crowning of a queen, was followed by a speech by a visiting dignitary. Visitors then were served free iced watermelon. The day ended with dances in the Elks Hall, a skating rink or in the streets. In 1928, two trains were stopped at noon so that passengers could be served watermelons."
The Great Depression made funds difficult to raise, and no festivals were held from 1930 until "Pod" Rogers brought the Hope Watermelon Festival back in 1977.
Far to the north on the Sharp County-Independence County line, Cave City began its festival in 1980. Cave City, with a population of 1,904 residents in the 2010 census, once was known as a resort. As early as August 1881, a letter appeared in the Sharp County Record promoting the positive effects of the water from the Crystal River Cave beneath the town. The water from a well that went into the cave came out at 57 degrees throughout the year. The cave was one of the first in the state to be opened to tourists. The Crystal River Tourist Camp was built of stone at the entrance to the cave in 1934. The unusual buildings still stand and were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
Bigger or sweeter? Arkansans have to choose since the two festivals are on the same weekend each August.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the director of corporate community relations for Simmons First National Corp. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 08/24/2016