Lost giant: Trail cold on travel center's 30-foot Indian bust

Peter Toth's lost Texarkana sculpture

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and on writeforarkansas.org on Jan. 5, 2011.
 
It seems like a hard thing to lose: a stately, 30-foot, wooden American Indian head capped by an elaborate feathered headdress, his twin, shoulder-length plaits of hair framing a weathered but regal visage.

But no one knows exactly what happened to the statue that, until 20 years ago, stood sentry in front of the Texas Travel Information Center on Interstate 30 in Texarkana.

‘If you saw it, you’d remember’

The bust, hewn from red oak, was the creation of Hungarian-born sculptor Peter Wolf Toth.

It was part of Toth’s Trail of the Whispering Giants, a series of more than 50 massive pieces the artist created across the country. He placed at least one in each state to memorialize the plight of the American Indian.

Sale of hospital could be challenged

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and on writeforarkansas.org on Nov. 28, 2011, the second of a two-part series.
 
MURFREESBORO, Ark. — The Pike County Quorum Court took a back seat in the September 2010 sale of countyowned Pike County Memorial Hospital to Louisville, Ky.-based New Directions Health Systems.

Members insisted on a provision allowing the county to recover licenses and equipment and voted to ratify County Judge Don Baker’s signature on the final agreement, but otherwise played little role in the transaction. Negotiations, with the exception of some legal documents prepared by deputy prosecutor Jana Bradford, were handled exclusively by Baker, who has kept details close to his chest.

“I was the contact for the Quorum Court, and I was the one that signed everything,” he said.

Baker said negotiations were carried out almost entirely by phone and that no written record of the calls exists.

Missing gas card a conundrum to fire department: Records show it's still in use

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and on writeforarkansas.org on Aug. 8, 2011.

A Miller County Rural Volunteer Fire Department credit card that no one seems able to find has been used to purchase several thousand dollars in fuel since 2009, records show.

More than $3,000 was charged to the EZ Mart fuel card assigned to Trinity VFD’s Rehab 51 vehicle during 2009, 2010 and April and May of 2011, according to monthly invoices maintained by the countywide department.

Records for the first three months of 2011 are under review by state auditors, and records from June have not been filed. Trinity Chief Ronnie Sterling said he doesn’t know who made the purchases.

“That card is in Bright Star, and that vehicle is in Bright Star,” Sterling said. “We never put it into service.”

Amity Boys: Lifelong friends still get together to reminisce, clean up cemeteries

Photos by Eric Nicholson. The Amity Boys gather for breakfast at the home of Tom Hollingshead, left.

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and on writeforarkansas.org on March 7, 2011.

AMITY, Ark.—Sausage patties sizzle in the frying pan, filling the kitchen with the slightly sweet smell of seasoned pork. A skillet of shredded potato browns on the adjacent burner while two pans of biscuits brown in the oven.

Tom Hollingshead, an apron draped over his front, tends to the food, ignoring the truck he can hear pulling into the driveway. A handful of men, silver-haired and jovial, enter through the enclosed porch.

Peach Preserves: A few families carry on despite decline in Nashville agribusiness

Photos by Eric Nicholson. Joey Jamison, a third-generation peach farmer, cuts into a bud on one of his 4-year-old peach trees. Jamison has managed to hang on in the peach industry by selling at farmers markets and supplying Bryce’s Cafeteria with peaches for its pie.

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and on writeforarkansas.org on May 9, 2011

NASHVILLE, Ark.—Above the postmaster’s lacquered oak door in the Nashville Post Office, Bert Johnson’s peach orchard extends to the horizon beneath a cloud-streaked sky.

Workers in baggy overalls and worn fedoras march between rows of leafless peach trees, spraying pesticide from a tanker truck, and, elsewhere, pluck fruit from laden branches. Their faces are anonymous, their expressions fixed and humorless.

Kneeling among them, holding a grafted branch upright while a worker shovels in the ochre soil, is Johnson himself. His eyes, set in an angular, weather-creased face, stare into the distance as if gauging the likelihood of a storm.

Robed brothers pull up stakes in Arkansas

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and on writeforarkansas.org on Jan. 16, 2011.

FROG LEVEL, Ark.—Ray Swanke ducks into a bunker-like outbuilding on his property near Horatio, Ark. and scoops up one several cardboard-sheathed squares of marble from a pallet on the floor.
 
His wizened frame, swallowed by a billowing white robe, belies his strength. He carries the 80-pound slab of stone with ease to a flatbed trailer waiting on the other side of a gate topped with barbed wire.

He piles tarps, bungee cords, tools and other provisions alongside the marble, then fetches a few large mason jars filled with popcorn kernels, which he wedges securely in a plastic barrel.

“Vern loves organic popcorn,” he explains.

Going places: McCaskill, population 96, growing

Photo by Evan Lewis. Mayor Marion Hoosier is overseeing a minor renaissance in McCaskill, Ark.

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and on writeforarkansas.org on Jan. 3, 2012.

McCASKILL, Ark.—Adrian Robinson and wife Catherine were en route to San Diego by way of Arkansas in 2006.

Adrian’s sister had offered him some timber—he is a serious woodworker—and the couple had flown to Knoxville, Tenn., and rented a truck to haul it back home to California.

On the way, they stopped in Nashville, Ark., to visit Adrian’s brother, an engineer at Husqvarna. The brother is 12 years Adrian’s junior, and with nine other siblings, almost a stranger.

The Robinsons were already looking for a place to retire, somewhere with a lower cost of living and a sounder state budget than California. During their visit, Catherine decided that the gently rolling hills of Southwest Arkansas were suitable.