Desha County is where the little delta town of Arkansas City is located. The town has a tremendous amount of history behind it and a few of the buildings that are left standing are actually on the National Historical Register. I always maintained that the place could have been a fantastic tourist attraction, if things had been handled just right. For whatever reason, that never materialized and now it is mostly a ghost town.
When I lived there, practically everyone had a nickname with some hidden meaning attached to it. Some I knew what it was, some I didn’t. In any case, we had to laugh! I’ll attempt to tell you about some of these characters as I remember them.
First of all, as I told in a previous post, I was simply called “Ms Ann”. At least that’s what they called me to my face. I imagine behind my back, I was called “the crazy convenience store girl” on account of the snake incident at the post office! You can read about that in my previous post.
My hubby on the other hand was nicknamed “Pee Wee”. He actually acquired that nickname at birth since he was the smallest of a set of twins. The name just stuck with him all his life. It may have fit when he was born, but he sure managed to outgrow that name. He was about 6 feet 2 inches tall, and weighed around 200 lbs. Still, he was stuck with that nickname forever!
There was a guy there called “Shuckens”. No clue where that name came from, but he was constantly doing and saying things that made people shake their heads in wonder.
Most of his time was spent on the corner of the street, just sitting in his car, counting every vehicle that passed him by. He took notes!! For what purpose, no one knew. By the way, even his car had a nickname……”Baby Orchid”, was what came out of his mouth, but he was trying to say “Baby Ostrich” which he could never pronounce correctly! Another pastime of his was to shoot birds that landed on his car with a rifle. How crazy is that??
Now, everyone knew Shuckens was a miser. Even though it was a well known fact that he had plenty of money in the bank, he would always try to get as much free “stuff” as he could. His nickname for everyone besides himself was “Rockerfeller”, probably because he thought everyone else had more money than he did.
Once while hanging around the shop my hubby worked at, the guys there decided to play a trick on him. “Hey Shuckens”, they said, “we heard a meat truck turned over out on the highway and there are steaks and all kinds of meats everywhere, just for the taking”! Well, that’s all Shuckens needed to hear. He immediately loaded up some washtubs and headed out. When he got back, he was hopping mad!! He didn’t go around the guys at the shop again for a very long time!!
Then there was the time, my hubby and sons were skinning a deer that they had just killed. Shuckens wanted to know about the meat as he didn’t know much about deer. My husband told him the best part was the deer brains and that he could have them…. all he had to do was take the head home, clean out the brains and bring the head back for them to mount. Poor Shuckens fell for that ….hook, line, and sinker!! He took the deer head home, cleaned out the brains and stocked up his freezer…..Ha! He really thought he had something! Can you imagine??? I have no idea if he ever cooked up that mess or not! My guess is that he did!
A bad habit that Shuckens had was showing up at my house every night for a free meal. I needed to figure out a way of breaking this habit. Thinking about it, and knowing how Shuckens was, I asked him for a stick of gum. His reply was “you know where the store is, go buy your own gum”. Ha! Just the ammunition I needed. My reply was “you know where the door is, so don’t let it hit you in the butt on the way out”! Needless to say, that was the last meal ole Shuckens got at my house!! You might say, he cut off his nose to spite his face!!
The hardest working woman I knew was “Annie Bee” who was the cleaning lady at the courthouse. Not sure if that was her real name, but that’s what everyone called her. She showed up for work every single day and shined, polished, swept, mopped and cleaned that courthouse from top to bottom. You would think she owned the place the way she took care of it. I’m sure no one else has ever put in as much effort in cleaning like she did.
The city police force consisted of one person, known as “Baretta”! Not his real name of course, but another nickname. The city couldn’t actually afford a police car, so he could be seen driving around town in his trusty personal vehicle. They did manage to get him a light to go on top of it and I guess maybe he was paid mileage.
Baretta and I had a history, a bad one at that! We had several disagreements and arguments and just didn’t see eye to eye, so when I later married his brother it was rather awkward for awhile. We managed to resolve our differences and actually became good friends after that!
This next couple I’m about to tell you about is perhaps the most unique of all! “Berthola” and “Poncho” were indeed a rather odd couple. They always provided the town something to talk about for hours with all their antics.
Berthola was a small woman in stature who made her living by “entertaining” and Poncho was a tall slim man who made money by doing odd jobs when he wasn’t at the local watering hole. No one could figure out if they were married or just “together”. They fought and argued a lot and ended up in jail most of the time, but always stayed together.
One particular day, Berthola was roaming around looking for Poncho. She found him at the “watering hole” and immediately started nagging him to go home with her. Ponocho apparently wasn’t ready to go home, so they got into a shouting match. It was reported that the man was falling down drunk by then.
Berthola, seizing this opportunity, looked him straight in the crotch (that’s about how tall she was) unzipped his pants, reached in and “seized” him by his ……ummmmm…..”package.” With Poncho as inebriated as he was, she had him practically on his knees, wailing, howling, and begging for mercy as she drug him all the way home! I guess that’s one way to get a man to follow you home!!
Ya’ll I can’t make this stuff up!! I didn’t see it myself, but lots of other people did. It was talked about for weeks!! As you can imagine, that one incident was the source of numerous jokes and conversation. To this day, people still recall it and laugh!!
There were numerous elected officials and employees of the courthouse who were counted among the more normal or sane people, including me after I sold my convenience store. Well, I guess that is debatable! We did try to act and sound normal during business hours!
I worked in the Circuit Clerk’s office as Chief Deputy and when my boss decided it was time for him to retire, I got this crazy notion in my head that I wanted to run for office. Politics…..what the heck was I thinking??? Ok, maybe I had one of those moments of temporary insanity again!
Well, it didn’t end up so well because after months of speeches, hand shaking, pounding the pavement seeking votes, and just generally wearing myself out, the election was lost for me! Heartbreaking at the time, but actually, as it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Losing forced me to look for work elsewhere and I landed the best job I could have imagined! So, losing was really a big win!
Silver lining behind every cloud, as they say!
Hope you enjoyed hearing about some of these characters.
Stay tuned, as I dig deeper into my memory bank, I’ll be writing about more characters and adventures. I’m sure they won’t mind too much, most of them are long gone!!
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