Carthel (L-R), Burl and Raymond Hunt

The author was born January 20, 1924, the third of three sons of Charles C. and Clemma Hunt of Plainview. Charles was killed January 12, 1935, when he was hit by a train in Malvern; Clemma died in June 1939 after being hit by an automobile in Little Rock.

 remember going to visit relatives in the Plainview area about seven miles out from Judsonia. I would go to the freight yards in North Little Rock and hop a freight train (I think a Missouri Pacific) and jump off at Judsonia and walk the seven miles to a relative.  This had to be around 1936 when I was 12 or 13 because I went to work at Frick's Drugstore in Little Rock before I was 14. That job required seven days a week from 5 to 10 p.m. with every other Sunday off.   The salary averaged out at 10 cents an hour, which is probably about what I was worth.  I was the bicycle delivery boy.

One Saturday night I left the freight train and walked into Judsonia.  There I met my cousin Henry Other Joyner and his wife Ruth. They were going to a western movie.  They asked me to go along.  I did not have the 10-cent admission fee. I told them that I had already seen that one. I told them that I would walk on out to their place.  Ruth had bought some things and asked me to carry them out. I did. There were some bananas in the sack. I very much wanted to eat one but did not. 

When I arrived at their place it was a shack very much like places where berry-pickers lived as they passed through.  The walls were papered with newspapers. To pass the time I read the wall newspapers. On one of them I found my Daddy's obituary.

A few years later, I arrived in Judsonia by a Greyhound Bus.  By then I was an apprentice seaman in the United States Navy and, at a salary of 21 dollars a month no longer had to ride freight trains to get from Little Rock to Judsonia.

It must have been late at night when the bus pulled in to Judsonia (at least 9 o'clock). Not a thing was stirring, not a light was showing.  A pickup truck came down the Main Street.  The driver was my brother Raymond Hunt. He did not know that I was coming to Judsonia and did not know that I was coming to visit him while on leave from the Navy.  He had come into town to get a veterinarian because a neighbor had a horse that was down.  We picked up the vet and went to the neighbor’s house. Again, the "house" was very much like the places that strawberry pickers endured while passing through. 

The horse was flat on its side in the yard. The vet gave it a shot and it immediately stood and fell over dead.   A mother and daughter witnessed this and I remember the mother saying: "There goes our new house." The father offered to pay Raymond for his trip to the vet. Raymond’s reply was, “All I lost was a little time. You lost a horse.”  I often wonder if she ever got her new house.   

Henry Other Joyner is still living. He and Ruth migrated to California. Ruth died two years ago. Both Raymond and Carthel are dead and I miss them very much.  We went through tough times together. Funny thing--we did not know they were tough until years later. vvv

Charles and Clemma Hunt with their sons