BATESVILLE — An event to celebrate memories made on Main Street in Batesville will take place Saturday at the Old Independence Regional Museum.
Main Street Memories is set for 7 p.m. in the Program Room of the museum.
“I’m very excited about this,” said Twyla Wright, volunteer exhibit curator for the museum and the planner of the event. “We have nine different people who will be sharing memories from their time on Main Street in Batesville. One will be a former paperboy. We’ll have others just sharing their memories.
“That was the thing you did back in the 1970s and 1980s. … You went down to Main Street,” Wright said. “That is where everything was happening.”
Speakers for the event include the following:
• Neva “Cookie” Ball will speak on life on Main Street in the 1940s.
• Fredd Wann will speak about being a paperboy in the early 1950s on Main Street and on how to fold a paper.
• Nelson Barnett will talk about drag racing on Main Street in the late 1950s and 1960s and the popular late “Owl” show and Christmas decorations.
• Butch Ketz will speak about starting the Platter Inn Music Store with three other teens in 1957 and Sunday-afternoon movies.
• Gene Crawford and Cindy Barber will talk about being teenagers on Main Street in the 1970s and 1980s and going to movies on Friday nights.
• Suzanne Magouryk will talk about walking Main Street to the bowling alley and stopping in at Crosby Drug Store for candy and buying shoes in Heuer’s Family Shoes. As she said, “After 53 years, I’m still 100 percent a Main Street girl.”
• David Thompson will talk about growing up in his family’s jewelry store, which is still in business.
Wright said the speakers will be limited to about five minutes each.
“I think it’s going to be oodles of fun because you don’t want to hear others people’s memories that go on and on,” she said. “If they are allocated five minutes and cross various generations, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. You don’t just have an evening of people remembering stuff, like your grandmother used to say.”
Wright said Ned Metcalf of Little Rock will serve as master of ceremonies.
“He orchestrated many years of the White River Water Carnival beauty contests,” she said of Metcalf.
Music will be interspersed between the speakers. Local musicians who will perform include Lucy Yeager, Danny Dozier, Jon Healey, Sonya Rucker and Father Stephen Gadberry.
Wright said the idea for the event came from having a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institute — Main Street America.
She said the EAST (Environmental and Spatial Technologies) Lab at Southside High School worked with the museum on an exhibit that is currently on display called Down on Main.
“It’s a partnership between our museum, Southside EAST Lab and the Smithsonian,” Wright said.
She said Main Street Batesville is involved in supporting the event.
“Our organization is honored that the new exhibit features historic Main Street Batesville,” said Mandi Curtwright, executive director of Main Street Batesville. “There’s so much history downtown, and we are glad the museum will be able to share some of it with everyone.”
Wright said tickets for Main Street Memories are $20, and seating is limited to 50 people, who can get tickets by calling the museum at (870) 793-2121.
Following the program at the museum, hors d’oeuvres will be served.
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.