OLD NEWS

100 YEARS AGO: Missing teen turns up in boy's clothes again

This ad from the March 20, 1929, Arkansas Gazette refers to the sandlot field known as Donkey Hill.
This ad from the March 20, 1929, Arkansas Gazette refers to the sandlot field known as Donkey Hill.

I am worried about our Trennie Smith.

When last we saw her in 1917, Trennie was named Flossie Trinnie Smith, and she had just been found alive and well (see Old News, July 21, 2017). People at Marmaduke had been so upset by the teenager's disappearance that the sheriff locked up the men in the family she boarded with.

But after a month she turned up, picking cotton near Hurricane in Greene County while dressed as a man, with shorn hair. She told police she'd gotten bored and left home in search of adventure.

To pick cotton? We've done that, and we don't buy it, Trinnie/Trennie.

So imagine my concern when she turned up in boy's clothes again, without her first name, about 100 years ago at Paragould. I read about it in the Sept. 5, 1918, Arkansas Gazette.

Yesterday morning Chief of Police Norman arrested her in this city and placed her in jail. She was again attired in men's apparel. She was married last spring to Roy Yergain and since then has been living with her husband at Cardwell.

She said she was on her way to St. Louis to see her mother.

She is being held in jail awaiting explanation from her husband.

Well? What was the explanation? The Arkansas Gazette archive is no help. Neither is the Arkansas Democrat, or any of the other newspapers I've been able to search online.

Prowling around in Ancestry.com, I did come across a Roy Yeargain who lived at Cardwell, Mo., during the correct time frame and with a wife the right age. They were even married in April 1918. But she was named Ruth Smith.

Flossie/Trinnie/Trennie, what were you running from?

RETURN TO DONKEY HILL

Since we're revisiting former topics, let's return to Donkey Hill.

We went there in an earlier column about Little Rock's first big auto show (Old News, March 5). Thanks to Bernadette Cahill's book Arkansas Women and the Right to Vote (Butler Center Books, 2015), which describes the campaign for suffrage through the buildings involved, we knew that the southwest corner of Second and Spring streets in Little Rock had once been known as Donkey Hill but by 1918 held Liberty Hall, a large-ish building used for assemblies.

Today that lot is a somewhat raised parking lot for the Pulaski County Administration Building. Cars park 3 or 4 feet above surrounding sidewalks, which makes it easy to envision a steep little hill right there. With a little donkey atop it.

But subsequent reading in the newspaper archives has turned up a competing site for Donkey Hill -- the northeastern corner of West Third Street and Broadway.

Here's evidence from the April 18, 1920, Arkansas Gazette, under the headline "Boys Lose Famous Baseball Grounds":

There will be no more baseball games played at "Donkey Hill," the oldest of Little Rock town lots, where young Little Rock for more than 40 years played the national game. The growth of the city finally has robbed the boys of this favorite spot which is to be the site of a great big modern building that will cost the builder approximately $100,000.

Gee willikers, that was a pile of money in 1920. The inflation calculator at dollartimes.com estimates it would have bought about what $1.3 million can buy today.

That corner also is a parking lot today.

The 1920 Gazette explains that Hardin Bale was leveling the boys' sandlot to erect a new building for Roy Stueber's 555 Tire & Service Co., which was moving from Main Street. The two-story service station would be fire-proof, made of brick, steel and concrete. It would front 150 feet on Broadway and 140 feet on West Third.

The Gazette notes that only a few neighborhood kids played ball at Donkey Hill anymore, thanks to better ballparks.

But 20, 30 and 40 years ago many a hot fought game of ball was played on "Donkey Hill" and the players now are some of the city's best known and busiest business men. It is with a tinge of regret that they now see a gigantic steam shovel rooting great holes into the field where they used to play. The infield was always rough and bumpy, which made little difference in those days, but now the great shovel has ruined it forever.

Bale had bought the land in 1919 from Mrs. W.E. Green, who received it from her father, Zeb Ward, as a wedding present.

An architect's rendering in the Gazette on July 25, 1920, in no way suggests the magnificence to come. The amazing Mr. Stueber (1891-1954) would buy up the whole block and erect a palatial service station/headquarters for his rapidly diversifying side lines. You can see it in Ray Hanley's postcard anthology Lost Little Rock; here's a shortcut link to an online sample of that book: arkansasonline.com/903card.

Four stories tall, 555 Tire & Service hosted outside businesses, too, including a Piggly Wiggly. Quite the leap for a man who started out as a roadside auto repairman, driving a blue car that was summoned by dialing phone No. 555.

Writing about Stueber in October 2013, historian Tom Dillard noted that calling the 555 Building a service station is like calling the Vatican a church. "How many service stations are four stories high and contain a restaurant and night club on the top floor?"

The Rainbow Garden nightclub was a treat for his 150 employees and everybody else who flocked there to dance and hear big-name performers. At various times Stueber placed a car and an airplane on top of the building, too.

The rest of Dillard's column is a joy to read, and you should. But I'll skip ahead and tell you that National Investors Life Insurance bought 555 in 1962, demolishing its auto-related footprint and renovating the four-story attachment. In later decades it was home to Union Life Insurance Co. Today it's the Pulaski County Administration Building (see arkansasonline.com/903now).

Walk around the block and you'll quickly realize the two Donkey Hill candidate parking lots are just opposite corners of the same block.

What if, once upon a time, the whole block was Donkey Hill? Or what if construction of Liberty Hall caused the name Donkey Hill to shift to the other part of the block? Or what if none of this interests anybody but me?

How sad would that be.

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photo

The Rainbow Garden nightclub was a happenin’ spot atop 555 Tire & Service Co. in December 1924.

ActiveStyle on 09/03/2018

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