In time Butterfield, AR in the 1940s

In the 1940s Butterfield, AR was a small sleepy railroad community with two stores. If you had a car, you could buy gasoline for it at the store north of the railroad tracks. The heart of the community was the two stores with the railroad running between them. It was at the foot of the hill on Hwy 51 about five miles north of Malvern.

My friend Charles Fletcher and I (a pre-teenager) would walk about a mile from my house in the Cooper community to Butterfield to visit the old Rock Store. We would ask nice Mrs. Howard for the cola bottle caps from the “catch” box on the large self-serve cold drink box; she always gave them to us. We would look through the bottle caps to find “Free Drink” on the inside label. It was always fun to drink a free drink!

The train depot was just east of the railroad crossing at the foot of the hill on Hwy 51. It was a good place for a country boy to know about because it had a public rest room. I liked to watch the steam engine powered trains come and go. The black coal fired monster engines would snort, let off steam and blow their whistles. On the platform was the hustle and bustle of the baggage handler pulling his four wheeled cart and passengers milling around passing the time until boarding. There was a lot of train traffic; very long freight trains and short passenger trains ran from Little Rock to Malvern and beyond!

The railroad repair crew was stationed near the train depot in Butterfield. As I recall the crew consisted of three men. They wore overalls and felt lined blue denim jackets summer and winter. I couldn’t understand then, but the felt lining was actually cooling them because of the evaporative cooling effect. They wore straw hats in summer and warm caps in winter. They replaced rotten cross ties, kept the rails leveled and at the correct elevation and did other maintenance as needed. They rode the little pump, see-saw, handcars or the little one-cylinder puttputt gas engine powered work car.

Back in the day farmers were allowed to let their cattle run free. If a cow got on the railroad tracks and was killed by a train, the work crew would find it. They would dig a hole near the body and in the right of way to bury the cow. Soon word would get around that buzzards were flying “in a certain place” and the farmer would go find the work crew, describe his cow, fill out the paper work and receive some pay for his loss.

We lived on the Old Military Road about half a mile south of the railroad tracks. Dad and mom would always feed the bums and hobos that came up the road from the tracks. Dad let the men split wood so they would feel better about accepting food. They were nice acting. Dad said we never knew who we were feeding, it could be one of God’s people.

During my young years I attended Cooper School. Our teacher was Mrs. Eudora Fields. One day she took all of the students down near the tracks to watch a passenger train “fly” by. She told us to wave when the train got in sight because a famous man was riding the train that day. It was General John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing, an officer in the U. S. Army that led the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I.

Cabooses were once used at the end of nearly all freight trains. They provided shelter for the train crew and on long trips the caboose was a place to stay/sleep. A cast iron, coal fired stove was used for heating and cooking. The caboose was usually painted bright red and had red lights on the rear so it could be seen at night.

This Tidbit in Time shared by the Hot Spring County Historical Society The Heritage, Vol. 39, p. 3033