All you have to do is mention the drive from Little Rock to Memphis on Interstate 40, and the tales of woe start coming.
One person will tell you of the time he was in his car on the interstate without moving for hours following a wreck on the busy stretch. The next might talk about an important appointment she missed in Memphis due to a backup in a construction zone. There are stories of being hemmed in by big trucks on three sides and a concrete wall on the fourth side. There are rumors that West Memphis will name the orange construction barrel as its official symbol. There are sections of interstate that seem to have been under constant construction since I was a child.
More Arkansans are choosing to take the old road--U.S. 70. If you have time to spare, it's relaxing and gives a traveler a sense of real life in east Arkansas. The added benefit is that the highway passes two of the oldest and best barbecue joints in the state. It's not a problem to fill a full day with activities along the route.
I set out from the foot of the new Broadway Bridge in North Little Rock and head east past Verizon Arena. After crossing under Interstate 30, there are the usual convenience stores and chain restaurants found at interstate exits. Within a few blocks, however, I'm in a part of North Little Rock the tourists don't visit. This is the land of tire shops, discount furniture stores, pawn shops and cheap motels. I pass the building that once housed Roy Fisher's Steak House, known for its bountiful breakfasts and hearty plate lunches. With Fisher's long gone--the building now houses an appliance store--the men in suits and ties who work in the downtown Little Rock towers no longer have a reason to come to this stretch of East Broadway Street.
I enter Rose City, a neighborhood that has produced the likes of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and former U.S. Representative Tommy Robinson, and drive past the reason I still come to this area of North Little Rock, the White Pig. The venerable restaurant has been serving pork since 1920, though the original building
has been gone for decades. The sign, though, is such a classic that a photo of it is featured atop my Southern Fried blog. Just past the restaurant are remnants of a building that once housed a strip joint. There are scrap metal and auto salvage yards. It's like having gone back in time to, say, the 1960s.
I'm brought back into the modern world by the sight of the multimillion-dollar headquarters of Ben E. Keith's Mid-South Division. The food services company moved into the 420,000-square-foot facility last year. The Mid-South Division once was the Dillaha Fruit Co., founded by Theo Dillaha Sr. in 1929 and headquartered in downtown Little Rock for almost 45 years. Ben E. Keith purchased the company in 1973 and began construction of a facility near the Port of Little Rock the following year. The Mid-South Division serves all of Arkansas and parts of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Tennessee.
I cross under Interstate 440 and go back in time again, transported from an urban area to an almost stereotypical version of the agriculturally dominated Old South. On the right is Hills Lake, an oxbow filled with large cypress trees. There are historic homes and huge pecan trees along the route. The perceptive traveler realizes that the Mississippi Alluvial Plain--commonly known as the Delta--extends to the North Little Rock city limits.
Soybean fields give way to ponds as I near the headquarters of the world's largest minnow farm. I.F. Anderson dug and stocked his first farm ponds in 1949. The farm is now capable of producing more than a billion minnows a year. The complex has an 11,000-square-foot hatchery, almost 200 miles of levees, and about 6,000 acres of ponds. Anderson received a loan in the late 1940s to buy a bulldozer that he used to build ponds. When he noticed wild minnows appearing in those ponds, he began to explore the idea of raising minnows to supply fishermen with bait. The business took off from there.
Just before entering Lonoke, I pass a turn to Joe Hogan State Fish Hatchery, among the oldest and largest state-operated hatcheries in the country. In 1928, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission instructed its secretary, Guy Amsler, to find land for a hatchery. Amsler settled on two adjacent rice farms, and the state purchased 266 acres. The first superintendent was Dell Brown, who had supervised the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries' Mammoth Spring National Hatchery. The federal hatchery in far north Arkansas had been established in 1903. Joe Hogan, who had worked with Brown at Mammoth Spring, came with his boss to Lonoke. Hogan took over as superintendent soon after the hatchery was completed.
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission notes in its history of the project that "due to the lack of mechanized machinery, the early ponds were dug by mules pulling dirt slips and by laborers using shovels to load dirt onto wagons by hand. The soil had enough clay material to make pond levees that could hold water. Another crucial factor was that the water table was about 60 feet, and the alluvial water in the subterranean sand formation provided plenty of water for filling the ponds. During the initial phase of construction, 32 ponds covering 40 acres were built. ... In the spring of 1929, only a few of the ponds were complete to the point that they were usable. Wild stocks of largemouth bass and bluegill bream were captured from the White River and stocked in the available ponds. The first crop was produced that same year."
By the late 1950s, the state had built 56 ponds covering 214 acres. The facility was named in honor of Hogan in 1956.
I pass through Lonoke, with a population of 4,245 in the 2010 census. I spend about an hour at the Lonoke County Museum, which is along the highway downtown. An exhibit in the museum concerns Eberts Field, which was the second-largest training center for Army aviators during World War I. The 960-acre base west of Lonoke housed 1,500 enlisted men and officers along with thousands of planes. The base closed in 1919.
I leave Lonoke and head toward Carlisle. It had 2,214 residents in the most recent census, and Hazen had 1,468. I'm in the Grand Prairie now. W. H. Fuller, who had first seen rice being grown in south Louisiana, decided to experiment with the crop near Carlisle. His first crop failed when he had problems with his wells. In 1904, he produced a rice crop that yielded 5,225 bushels from 70 acres. Rice growing soon dominated the Grand Prairie economy, replacing cotton as king. Arkansas now produces half of the nation's rice.
DeValls Bluff on the banks of the White River is worth a stop to read the multiple markers that describe its rich history and to grab a pork sandwich from Craig's Bar-B-Q. If I were forced to pick just one barbecue restaurant to visit in the state, this would be it. Lawrence Craig, who learned to cook on boats plying the Mississippi River, joined forces with his uncle Wes to open Craig Brothers Cafe in 1947. The restaurant has been going strong ever since. In 1997, Craig's was one of the featured restaurants at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C.
I cross the White River and pass through Biscoe, which had just 363 residents in the most recent census. During the four years I worked for the Delta Regional Authority and drove weekly to the DRA headquarters in Clarksdale, Miss., my favorite fruit and vegetable stand each summer was here. Biscoe is also where I would stop in the morning for a sausage biscuit and coffee at what's now Mack's IGA, a classic country store that has been around since 1926.
The next community is Brasfield, where travelers headed east cross the Cache River and enter a vast bottomland that includes not only the lower Cache but also the Bayou DeView, Robe Bayou, Hickson Lake, Gator Pond, Bowfin Overflow, Straight Lake, Apple Lake and other oxbow lakes and sloughs. Much of the land is owned by Arkansas Game and Fish Commission as part of Dagmar Wildlife Management Area. It's one of the most important wintering areas for ducks in the country and has cypress trees that are hundreds of years old, black bears, alligators and bald eagles.
Three towns of size--Brinkley, Forrest City and West Memphis--lie ahead. Brinkley, once a significant railroad town, has been bleeding population for decades, falling from 5,275 residents in the 1970 census to about 3,000 people now. Brinkley has the excellent Central Delta Depot Museum in the brick train station that was built in 1912. Union Pacific deeded the station to the city in February 2001, and the museum opened in May 2003 with an emphasis not only on Monroe County but also Woodruff, St. Francis, Prairie, Lee, Phillips and Arkansas counties.
With a population of 15,371 in the 2010 census, Forrest City is by far the largest town between North Little Rock and West Memphis. Located on the western slope of Crowley's Ridge, it has been a center of commerce for the area since the 1870s and has served as the St. Francis County seat since 1874. The city is home to more than half the county's residents. If time allows, the St. Francis County Museum, a block off the highway on Front Street in the Rush-Gates Home, is worth a stop.
Coming off the east side of Crowley's Ridge, I cross the St. Francis River. The highway closely parallels Interstate 40 until the edge of West Memphis, when it takes the visitor downtown. Just as was the case in North Little Rock, the highway is Broadway Avenue as it passes through the city. And just as was the case in North Little Rock, used car lots and surplus stores mark much of the route.
The Memphis skyline is visible across the Mississippi River, and it's time to end the trip with a meal at an Arkansas classic. Louis Jack Berger's father, Morris Berger, surprised him with a trip to Mexico as a high school graduation gift. Their enjoyment of the food there inspired them to open Pancho's in 1956.
The original restaurant featured packed dirt floors and a live tree that was saved during the construction. A large truck destroyed that building, but a new one was built, and people come from throughout the Arkansas Delta to eat there. This is also the area where famous Plantation Inn, a club that had live music nightly, once stood. Instead of music and dancing, a plate of enchiladas will have to suffice as the trip east on U.S. 70 comes to a close.
Editorial on 05/06/2018