Trees symbolize roots of native Bella Vistans
Naomi Allen is one of very few adults who can say she’s spent her whole life in Bella Vista. She lives very close to the home she was born in on the east side and owns one of the few large parcels of property left in town.
“I have seen a lot of change,” she said, “It’s hard for the people who live here to see all the changes.” She spent a career working for Walmart, but is now retired.
Her father, Jack Crabtree, farmed, but when John Copper came along and started building homes, Crabtree worked as a handyman. He helped build the bridge at Cunningham Corner, she remembered.
He also planted many of the trees that line the roads on the east side. She doesn’t know why Cooper wanted to plant all those pine trees. They were only about 12 inches tall, she said.
One day her father came in from work, reached for his glasses to look at the newspaper and realized his glasses and their case were not in his breast pocket. He knew they must have fallen out when he was planting trees along the road. Back then, Allen remembered, there wasn’t money for a new pair of glasses, so the next day her dad went back out and dug up all the trees he had planted the day before.
“I think he found the glasses in the last tree,” she said.
She married a man who was surveying the area for Cooper. He left home one day without mentioning his plans. She thinks he kept it secret because he knew she wouldn’t have let him go.
Allen’s husband and his boss took a small boat into Wonderland Cave and followed the underground river. They came out in Bear Hollow, she said.
Her brother, Jackie Crabtree, is the mayor of Pea Ridge, but his first job was taking care of the golf carts at the Country Club. He remembers meeting all the college coaches, including Bear Bryant, when they held the annual golf tournament. But he never played a single round of golf.
They grew up on Jack Crabtree Road — named for their father, but there are also roads named for Allens children on the East side.
When she found herself a single parent, she thought about selling the farm she had bought with her husband, but Cooper representatives didn’t offer her enough money.
“I told him I would put a pig farm on it first,” she said, but she didn’t. She was too busy working to support her kids.