Mena Teens

In June of '73 we moved to Mena with a full car load. My father purchased a small nursery with a house on the property. Part of the house used to be a general mercantile called the Old Rock Store. It was a four bedroom house on the west side of town. My bedroom served both as where I slept and also as the family room. Money was very tight. Everyone in the family was required to pitch in and help with the business. In theory that was great, but in reality my parents discovered that making my sisters work there cost them more than it was worth. I remember building flats for the plants, building cups for the plants out of tar paper, and then transplanting the seedlings. My sisters didn't care about the business and they would kill many of the plants during this process. Little to say, they were no longer a part of the business. My little brother was too young to contribute. I loved it!! From the time we moved there until when I went into the Marine Corps I worked whenever I could.

I mentioned that I thought that everyone in Mena would be a hillbilly. When school started I learned very quickly that although everyone talked funny, they were no different than everywhere else I had ever lived. I was still one of the smallest kids and no smarter than the average kid. The only thing different about me was that I was short but wore a size 10 shoe. During the summer months, the nursery business is very slow. When we didn't have work at the nursery, I got a job inserting papers at the Mena Star (the local rag). I don't remember what I got paid, but I'm sure it wasn't much. Gone are the days when you can get a job as a 12 year old. When School started I opted to join the football team. In CT I was in the band. I wanted to be the next greatest athlete. The only problem was that I was not gifted in the area of height. I was fast and I could outjump just about anyone, but size was what mattered in football. I got to play a little, but I really didn't have a clue about what I was doing. When football was over, I tried out for Basketball. Because I didn't take a physical in the fall, I had to take one before I could play basketball. Little to say, the doctor said that I had a hernia and couldn't play until I got it fixed. Turns out it wasn't a hernia at all, but I chose to go back to band. I played the trombone and had the edge on others in the band. I had been playing for well over a year while the rest were all beginners. I never did care much about band, but I liked belonging, so I stuck with it for a while. At least until I laughed at something that the band director said and she got mad and told me to quit laughing or leave - so I left and changed to study hall.

Jr. High Football 1973 (I was #39 - the second player from the left in the front row)

Things were moving along in Mena. My family wasn't getting rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we were keeping busy. We grew most of what we sold. We were getting landscape and mowing jobs. During the fall we sold mums and fruit trees. At Christmas we sold poinsettias and christmas trees. January and February were pretty much dead months and I still don't see how my folks got by. We had four greenhouses and three of them had to be heated during the winters. I can remember one winter was especially bad for us. Money was ultra-tight and we didn't have a customer for the entire month of January. Everything was so frozen that we couldn't do any landscaping. My best friend's parents (Vernon) owned a chicken laying house, so I went out there just about every day and helped gather eggs. In return I got crates of eggs and some chicken to take home. That winter we heated the greenhouse with firewood to save money on gas. My father did most of the stoking of the fire, but I took my turns every night. What a nightmare. I know that the temperatures set records that year as well as snowfall records. The snow was awesome, but the cold sucked. I didn't have a heater in my room so I froze at night. I was, however, the only one in my family that never got sick.

I guess I was oblivious to a lot of things that happened around Mena when I was growing up. I never knew that Mena was the Marijuana Capitol. I met people in California and Texas who knew of Mena for just that reason. I did smoke cigarettes and sneaked the occasional beer, but didn't go near the other stuff. When I got to high school, I rejoined the band and made a lot of new friends. I was never very good because I NEVER practiced. I was the foreman of the landscape crew and worked around the nursery when I wasn't on a job. I enjoyed the business and often got to skip school to go on business trips with Dad. We spent a lot of time together. After a hard days work, we would eat dinner and then go out to play some one-on-one basketball. Dad was left handed and had a killer hook. I was probably 16 or 17 the first time I beat him. After that we traded wins back and forth. Although I wanted to play football, baseball and basketball, the family needed me to work to help get by. I don't remember ever complaining. Once I got my license, my pay usually consisted of enough to buy gas and a movie on the weekend. I still treasure the time with the nursery and don't have any regrets about having to work through my teens.