REX NELSON: Purple hulls and tillers

The temperature was in the 90s and the humidity was high, but that didn't stop a crowd of several hundred people from gathering around a field at Emerson for the annual World Championship Rotary Tiller Race. You read that correctly. And before you laugh, note that not only were reporters from as far away as Texarkana and Little Rock present, the Wall Street Journal sent a correspondent.

Not bad for a town of fewer than 400 residents about six miles north of the Louisiana border. Emerson was named for Reuben Logan Emerson, a teacher, merchant, banker, state representative and newspaper owner. He founded the town that bears his name in 1905. Since then, the timber, oil and bromine industries have been the heartbeat of the area. Emerson always has existed in the shadow of Magnolia to the north. When I thought of Emerson, I thought of three things: Coach Pat Foster, sportswriter Jim Bailey and talented high school basketball teams. One of the keys to Eddie Sutton's success as the head basketball coach at the University of Arkansas was hiring quality assistants such as Foster and Gene Keady. Now you can add purple hull peas and motorized tillers to the list of things I associate with Emerson.

Foster, a 1991 inductee into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, played high school basketball at Emerson and went on to earn All-Southwest Conference honors at UA. He proved equally adept at coaching. At Camden Fairview High School, Foster compiled a 10-year record of 215-95, including six consecutive district titles. Due to Foster's extensive contacts with high school coaches across the state, Lanny Van Eman hired him as an assistant coach at UA. Sutton wisely chose to keep Foster after Sutton was hired from Creighton University by UA athletic director Frank Broyles in 1974. Foster worked with Sutton to make Arkansas a basketball power. Foster's recruiting ability inside the state was a key to the rebuilding effort.

Foster, however, couldn't turn down the chance to be a head coach. He moved to Beaumont, Texas, when Lamar University came calling. Success came immediately. His first Lamar team went 25-5 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Foster compiled a record of 134-49 in six seasons at Lamar. When Houston offered him its head coaching job in 1986, Foster initially turned the Cougars down. Guy Lewis was retiring after 30 years and a 592-279 record at Houston. Foster changed his mind in April 1986 and decided to become only the third head basketball coach in the program's 41 years. He said: "It will be difficult to win as many basketball games as Guy has. I probably won't make it that long." He made it seven seasons with a 142-73 record. Foster was later the head coach for six seasons at Nevada with a 90-81 record.

As for Bailey, he was the sportswriter I grew up wanting to be. Like many Arkansas boys who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, I read everything Orville Henry had to say in the Arkansas Gazette about the Razorbacks. But I read Bailey's stories first because he covered the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference, and I was raised at Arkadelphia, the home of two AIC schools, Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University. Bailey not only was a wordsmith but also was versatile. Though Arkansas doesn't have a major league baseball team and hosts few major boxing cards, he was recognized as one of the best baseball and boxing writers in the country during a career of more than 50 years with the Gazette and later the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

In 1990, the folks at Emerson decided to be known for more than basketball and sportswriters. The Purple Hull Pea Festival was held on the last Saturday in June and has been going strong ever since. The tiller races were made a part of the day's lineup that first year for something different. The festival's witty website puts it this way: "It has evolved into a monster. There simply is no other event like it. Unique among motor sports, we like to say it's the highlight of the tiller racing season. Of course, to the best of our knowledge, our one-day event is the tiller racing season. ... There are some rules, which have become a necessity. In fact, after the great tiller racing controversy of 1993, the festival created the World Tiller Racing Federation specifically to address the issue of rules and proper running of the race. For instance, an officially sanctioned tiller track is 200 feet in length. Racers--or tiller pilots as they are sometimes called--must wear shoes. Yes, some weren't."

My radio sidekick, Paul Austin of the Arkansas Humanities Council, joined me in the Emerson School District cafeteria for a lunch consisting of purple hull peas, sliced onions, sliced tomatoes, cornbread and iced tea. While we ate, we watched the pea-shelling contest, which featured as many contestants from Louisiana as from Arkansas. After lunch, we went outside for what's billed as the Million Tiller Parade, though the number of tillers on parade fell quite a bit short of a million. The grand marshal this year was Steve Sullivan of KATV in Little Rock. Unfortunately, Sullivan couldn't find his car and ended up walking the route.

By 2:30 p.m., it was time for the tiller races, complete with pit crews and teams with names such as the Till Billies. There was dust, there was smoke and there were arguments about the rules. I can only imagine what that Wall Street Journal reporter was thinking.

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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 07/06/2016

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