A south Arkansas boyhood

— Born 13 months apart, state Sens. Jimmy Jeffress of Crossett and Gene Jeffress of Louann have long been familiar figures at the state Capitol.

Jimmy, born in September 1947, first was elected to the House in 1996 and has served in the Senate since 2001. Gene, born in October 1948, first was elected to the House in 1998 and has served in the Senate since 2003.

Both are retired teachers. Jimmy’s district covers Ashley, Bradley, Chicot and Drew counties along with part of Desha County. Gene’s district covers Calhoun County and parts of Ouachita and Union counties. They represent a huge swath of south Arkansas in the state Senate.

They’re also repositories of knowledge about life in the 1950s and 1960s in those pine woods. In fact, Jimmy is writing a book about growing up in the Ouachita River bottoms of Ashley County. He says life moved at a much slower pace than it does these days, revolving around school, church and family.

The brothers are well known not only by legislative observers but by those who follow Southern gospel music. They come from a family with deep gospel roots. They grew up singing and teaching gospel music and became music educators by trade. While teaching in the public schools, they continued composing and teaching gospel music while singing with the group known as the Jeffress Family Singers.

For Gene and Jimmy Jeffress, weekends meant singing.

“Most rural churches had homecomings on a set week every year that involved all-day singings where dinner was served outdoors simply because for them the modern fellowship hall had not yet evolved,” says Jimmy, a Baptist. “My family attended such homecoming events almost every Sunday. On Sunday mornings, we would pile into the family car and ride to the homecoming that was being held that day. We traveled down dry, dusty gravel roads to homecomings held at churches with names like Little New Hope Baptist Church.”

He says the crowds at these events consisted of “folks who loved to sing and who loved gospel music. They often would drive many miles to attend a singing. They along with the local church community and their visiting extended families made up the crowd. The local folks usually sat in the back of the church or moved outside to sit in folding chairs in order to visit with one another while the professional singers sang.”

Jimmy remembers the food at these events as much as the singing.

“As the noon hour approached, the local women would quietly begin to assemble lunch on the permanent tables that had been built years ago underneath the mighty oak trees that stood in the rear of the churchyard,” he says. “The ladies had brought lunch from home to share with everyone.They had spent the entire week planning and preparing for the homecoming meal, much as they would plan a holiday meal for their families at Thanksgiving or Christmas.”

He recalls that someone inside would be recognized for “a few words of instruction before we break for lunch.” That person would tell where the outside restrooms were located, thank the visiting singers for attending and welcome visitors. He would then “ask the blessing on the food.”

There was baked ham. There was fried chicken. Often, there was a pot roast with gravy, baked chicken and dressing and a huge pot of chicken and dumplings.

“After many years of attending these events, I knew the better cooks and who those were who prepared food to my liking,” Jimmy says. “I quickly learned to compliment the ladies whose cooking I liked, as it paid off in many ways. There was every type of vegetable known to man-black-eyed peas, crowder peas, purple hull peas, lima beans, speckled beans, fried okra, fresh creamed corn, snapped green beans and, in the summer, fresh tomatoes. There were always fresh tomatoes. They were the grandest of the vegetables. Sliced in great, thick slabs of wondrous joy, fresh tomatoes from south Arkansas were always present.”

Wild game dishes sometimes could be found during the fall and winter.

“One community always held its homecoming the second week of October, right after the opening of squirrel season,” Jimmy says. “The men of the church would work for two nights in advance of the homecoming, cooking up a communal squirrel mulligan for all to enjoy. At other locales you might find a venison roast or a dish of wild turkey and dressing or even duck gumbo.”

Jimmy says at his home, in the old Southern style, dinner was the summer meal served in the middle of the day and supper was in the evening. He sent me a sample chapter of the book he’s working on. He has written about a cabbage-eating contest his father came up with in order to get Jimmy, Gene and two cousins to devour two pots of boiled cabbage.

“We were used to eating things that most pepeople aren’t accustomed to consuming, but I tell you this: It was 40 years before I had a desire to eat cabbage again,” Jimmy writes.

There hasn’t been a lot written about rural south Arkansas through the years. Other parts of the state-the Ozarks, the Ouachitas, the Delta-have received more attention from writers and historians. I find myself already looking forward to the rest of the book.

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Free-lance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com

Editorial, Pages 17 on 07/06/2011

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