Looking Back

(Editor’s Note: This column looking back at St. Francis County’s history is featured each Friday on this Lifestyles page along with the week’s History Photo. The items included in this column were printed in previous editions of the Times-Herald.)

March 1917

Raps the Dance - Possibly the most powerful sermon yet delivered by Evangelist Reese during the meeting was that of last Sunday night. With reference to the dancing evil, Evangelist Reese said in part, "I am attacking the pet sin of the age. The dance is the most popular amusement of modern society. Like a slimy serpent it has crept into every nook and corner of our social life and is not only paralyzing and strangling the spirituality of many churches, but is destroying the sanctity of the home and despoiling the purity of many our young people. Human nature demands recreation, chance, amusement –something to freshen existence and make life worth while. But I am opposed to the dance. It is seductive and damnable amusement. There are many minor objections which I might bring against the dance but I have no time here to name, let alone discuss them. I pass at once to what I consider the principle objection to this choice invention of the devil. The modern dance had its origin in a brothel in Paris, and it was many years before respectable people were caught participating in it. This fact alone ought to cause any lover of purity to spurn the dance. The dance is based, built and carried on upon consciousness on sex. Divide the sexes and the dance is dead. The dance was so planned as to fan the passions into flame and gratify so far as possible, an unhallowed lust. It is impossible under existing conditions for any Christian to dance without bringing reproach upon the cause of Christ, without lessening his or her influence for the cause of Christ. In the dance as it exists today in America and in England a familiarity of contact is permitted between the sexes that is nowhere else permitted in decent society. This is true in the most select dances that are held. If any lady should permit any gentleman except her husband, father or brother, to handle her any where else as he handles her on the dance floor she would be regarded as immodest and unworthy, if nothing worse. Certainly these attitudes do not become any better when taken accompanied by straining his warm breath upon her exposed arms and breast, that almost magic and ungovernable personal electricity darting between their meeting fingers, their blood heated and quickened with every step until the heat of one body passes into the other. Do you mean to intimate to a man with sense that men and women with red blood in their veins can engage hour after hour in such an exercise and no evil come of it? It is not whirling on tip toe to the sound of music that is so attractive but it is in the close proximity of the sexes – if being fondled, cuddled and caressed by the opposite sex that is so fascinating and any man who thinks and is honest knows it! And here is one preacher who will look you in the eye and tell you so. The waltz as bad as it is and suggestive and immoral and as many as it has ruined is becoming stale and time sand unsatisfying. So many new dances are being invented.

Trial In Dry Case - The trial of Surveyor Henry Fleming charged with bringing alcohol into dry territory held before Squire Bob Stevens resulted in a hung jury and the case was set for rehearing. Deputy Tankersley testified that he saw the surveyor and a friend drinking together, and the City Marshal Cargill caught the surveyor with alcohol in his grip.

Weems Here - Rev. D.J. Weems has been in Forrest City this week in the interest of the Arkansas Children's Home Society, which is a nonsectarian institution. Any child, sound in mind, and body, under 12 years old, will be received by this Home. Any person prepared to give a child a Christian home can with proper endorsement secure a little boy or a little girl from this society by writing to Rev. O.P. Christian, 2428 Louisiana Street, Little Rock. In a little more than four years this society has cared for about 400 children.

Float - Secretary Nathan B. Norton was instructed at the last meeting of the commercial club to get in touch with those in charge of the J.T. Harahan Bridge celebration to be held in May and if possible make arrangements for the entry of a float representative of Forrest City in the great parade. It was suggested that an appropriate float would be one of an historical character, commemorative of General Nathan Bedford, the Confederacy's greatest Calvary leader who Forrest City was named and correct the wide spread impression that Forrest City is spelled with only one r when it should always be spelled with two r's as was General Forrest's name.

Izard - Col. V.B. Izard, an honored citizen and life long Democrat of this county, is offering as a candidate for delegate from St. Francis County to the State Constitutional Convention to be held in Little Rock in November and that gentleman's announcement appears in the proper column in this issue of The Herald. Col. Izard is a gentleman of rugged honesty and unimpeachable integrity and we have not a man in our midst who enjoys a more varied experience in his service of the party and the people and he possesses a ripe and mature knowledge of the state's needs. Moreover, Col. Izard is a public spirited man of large vision. He has been in the forefront of many progressive movements, such as good roads, temperance reform, education and diversified farming. Arkansas probably has no other citizen who has so unselfishly given such a large part of his time and influence to the service of the state. What Barnes Is Doing? - The Herald man dropped in on Mr. Barnes at the ice plant one morning the first of the week and that gentleman dropped everything with the statement, "Say, Mr. Newspaper Man, come with me a minute. I want to show you something pretty," and following him into the refrigerator room, we looked with hungry eyes upon two large shining pans filled with the finest and purest butter you ever saw. Mr. Barnes had made it that morning. And ranged along beside the blocks of ice were several 10 gallon cans filled with buttermilk. There are not many people, perhaps, who know it, but this man Barnes has gone ahead and put in a miniature creamery outfit at the ice plant, just to demonstrate the possibilities of such an enterprise in Forrest City. First the raw milk is put through a separator where the sweet creamer cleansed of all impurities. Then both the cream and the milk is pasteurized through another process by which it is heated to a temperature of 140 to 150 degrees, after which it is transferred to the refrigerator or cold storage room where its temperature is rapidly run back down to 35 or 40 degrees, rendering it absolutely sanitary and healthful. Mr. Barnes is an expert in this line of work and states that he will never rest contented until Forrest City can boast of an up to date and modern creamery plant. Hold Up - A daring holdup was staged here Wednesday night about 9:30 when two strangers, white men, who gave their names as G.J. Stevens and Will Doran, hailing from some point in Illinois, relieved a timberman by the name of Walter John of his roll, amounting to $18. Johnson, it is said, had made a trade with the two men and had engaged them to assist him in rafting timber on the St. Francis river, giving one of them a “piece of change," to tide them over until morning, when the man, Stevens, whipped out a gun and ordered Johnson to "cough up" all the coin he had. Following the robbery, which occurred at the crossing of Rock Island and Iron Mountain on Front Street, Johnson notified the sheriff's office and soon Deputy John Tankersley picked up the trail of the highwaymen and firing several shots after them, chased them in a point about two miles west of the city near the home of M.R. McCrary where they succeeded in giving him the slip. As an early hour Thursday it was reported that the thieves had returned to the city and Deputy Tankersley arrested the two men whose names are given, but as no positive or direct proof of their guilt could be established, they were later released.