Yearly, because the wintry days meander into springtime, my spouse begins waiting for the flowers on the hill between Rogers and Pea Ridge on the prime of the north slope arising from Brush Creek. A few weeks in the past I seen that Mary Durand in her Autumn Place article referred to Effie’s flowers in bloom, and talked about an obvious yearly contest amongst associates to see who will first spot Effie’s jonquils blooming on the hill.
Evidently as springtime approaches annually, waiting for Effie’s flowers has grow to be a practice for a lot of Pea Ridge of us. I first realized to think about these flowers as Easter flowers, and so they, much more than the Easter lilies, are to me indicators of the Easter season and of the restoration of life.
Generally I ponder how
many Pea Ridge individuals take into consideration Effie and Harry Johnson as they journey previous the Tuck’s Chapel turnoff going south towards Rogers and begin the mild slope all the way down to Brush Creek? Effie and Harry lived in a home simply up the hill above these lovely flowers. The home is not there any extra, and it takes a little bit of creativeness to image a home in that location, but it surely was there till a number of years in the past. I can not even keep in mind if there was a driveway to the home. If a driveway existed, Effie and Harry in all probability did not really want it. As finest I keep in mind they by no means had a automobile. They all the time both walked to Pea Ridge or Rogers or wherever they wanted to go, or they caught a experience with somebody on the best way.
As might be the case with many small cities, Pea Ridge has had its a number of colourful individuals who lived within the space and have been ceaselessly seen about city. Enter Effie and Harry.
It’s attention-grabbing to me that this colourful native couple, particularly Effie, has left us such a colourful legacy, one which renews itself 12 months by 12 months, such that many people acknowledge the arrival of Spring after we see Effie’s flowers in bloom. Generally as we stay by our years, we might hope that one thing we do will probably be remembered with appreciation, even when we by no means attain to celebrityhood, and even when we do not have many claims to private fame.
Effie grew up as Effie Clanton. She was a sister of our well-known native blacksmith, Johnny Clanton. She grew up within the early 1900s, and would have attended faculty on the outdated Cross Lanes Faculty which stood east of Pea Ridge between Buttram’s Chapel and outdated Leetown. As all native households did in these days, the household struggled by the Nice Despair, by the times of World Struggle II, and even throughout the restoration years afterward. Although not extremely educated, Effie was imaginative and located methods to take pleasure in life.
As a few of us keep in mind her, Effie beloved issues western. She was an enormous fan of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and their western motion pictures. These walks to Rogers or Pea Ridge would typically be for going to the films. Effie would costume up in western outfits, together with the holsters and six-shooters, and when Roy Rogers was in a gunfight with the dangerous guys and one of many desperadoes was about to ambush him from behind, she may name out a warning: “He is behind that rock, Roy!” Roy Rogers ought to respect that he had such a fan looking for him! I suppose right now many drivers may hesitate to choose up a pair strolling residence from the films in the dead of night, particularly if the girl was packing weapons on the suitable and the left. However, it was totally different again then (and so they have been cap-pistols in fact).
Effie might even have dreamed of being within the motion pictures with Roy and Dale. Probably, given the chance, she would have aspired to be a western film star. And, if she had had a film alternative, she actually would not have wished to be a kind of protected fairly ladies; she would have wished to be on the market serving to Roy spherical up that gang of crooks.
Nicely, in life we aren’t all the time remembered for the issues we dream of being remembered for. However how nice and becoming it’s that, though she has now been gone a few years, Effie continues to be remembered for her great flowers flowing over the hillside. As you drive to Rogers from Pea Ridge, be looking out as you begin downhill to the Brush Creek swoop. Do you see these flowers spreading up the hill on the west aspect? These are Effie’s flowers!
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Editor’s observe: This colunn was initially revealed on April 2, 2008. Jerry Nichols was a local of Pea Ridge and an award-winning columnist and vp of Pea Ridge Historic Society.