It was 1985. I was 26, single, living in the state's largest city, serving as assistant sports editor of the Arkansas Democrat, covering Dallas Cowboy home games and loving life.
Because so many sporting events occur on weekends, my days off were Mondays and Tuesdays. Those aren't the best days off for a social life, but I loved movies and had a friend who was a manager for United Artists Theatres. He gave me a UA pass, which was good for most Little Rock movie theaters in those days.
I would go to three and sometimes four movies in a day. Among my favorite 1985 films was director Peter Masterson's "The Trip to Bountiful," which was adopted from Horton Foote's 1953 play of the same name. The movie is set in the fictitious town of Bountiful, Texas, in the late 1940s. An elderly woman wants to return to the town where she grew up but is prevented from doing so by her son and daughter-in-law, who know that Bountiful disappeared years earlier.
The lady, Carrie Watts (played by Geraldine Page), sets out to catch a train to Bountiful but is told there are no stops there any more. She finally gets on a bus that will take her near there.
With the help of the police, her son and daughter-in-law find her. The sheriff offers to drive her to what remains of Bountiful. Watts learns that the last resident recently died. But she indeed returned and is ready to go back to Houston with her son and daughter-in-law.
Last month, I returned to my Arkansas version of "Bountiful." It's not the town where I grew up. Instead, it's the farm where I hunted, fished, gigged frogs, cut down Christmas trees, gathered walnuts and spent valuable time with my father. In those days, the farm along the Ouachita River southeast of Arkadelphia was owned by Odus Pennington. He was a family friend, and we were among the few people he allowed to hunt and fish there.
Quail hunting was our preferred activity in the 1970s, and the Pennington farm held seven or eight coveys. It also had a large slough near the river. We could hunt quail most of the day, put the dogs in the truck late in the afternoon, then hunt ducks along the slough until dusk.
Once quail season concluded, we caught crappie in the slough. By late spring and summer, we were fishing for bass and gigging frogs. My father's favorite kind of fishing on the slough was using top-water baits to catch chain pickerel, which he called pike. They sometimes would hit the bait as it reached the boat, scaring us both. The fish had too many bones to eat. Odus wanted them eliminated from the slough and advised us to leave them on the bank for the wild hogs.
If there were anything he hated more than those chain pickerel, it was beavers. Beavers were cutting down his prized stands of water tupelo. Water tupelo are native to the Gulf Coastal Plain and lower reaches of the Mississippi River watershed. The trees can reach heights of 90 feet with trunks that are funnel shaped at the base. They often grow close together in the coffee-colored water of Arkansas swamps.
When the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission began importing alligators from Louisiana, Odus asked state officials to stock as many as they wished on his farm in order to control the beaver population. Alligators thrived there. A big one would follow us when we fished, always staying about 20 yards behind the flatbottom boat we used.
"You keep an eye on him while he keeps an eye on us," my father would say.
Odus loved to feed those alligators marshmallows and watch them try to chew. He parked along the slough, beat on the side of his truck and then waited as alligators swam toward the bank like a herd of cattle coming for a sack of feed. I realize this isn't a recommended activity, but my son enjoyed feeding marshmallows to alligators.
Austin Nelson, now 31, would beg my father to take him to the Pennington farm whenever we visited my parents in Arkadelphia. I told him once: "Austin, I can assure you that you're the only student in your Little Rock kindergarten class who feeds alligators in the wild."
The farm once was part of the historic Rosedale Plantation. Joseph Allen Whitaker arrived in Arkansas in the 1850s and purchased land in Manchester Township, which has belonged to both Clark and Dallas counties during its history. Whitaker hired carpenters to follow the plans of architect Madison Griffin while building a plantation house, brick kitchen, slaves' quarters and barns.
By 1860, Whitaker owned property worth $110,000 and at least 23 slaves. The plantation house burned in 1886. The family lived in the kitchen for a few years before another home was built. That house burned in 1919.
Whitaker and his wife Rebecca had moved to Arkansas from their plantation in North Carolina. Griffin had also been the architect for their North Carolina home. Census records show that several carpenters lived on the Arkansas property for an extended period. They came from Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia.
Whitaker, likely one of the wealthiest men in Arkansas at the time, planted a variety of rose bushes, cedar trees and magnolia trees. He even imported peacocks to live on the plantation.
In my research, I found a 1914 photograph of a young Amy Jean Greene at the plantation. She was a daughter of Whitaker's second wife, Betty Amy Smith. In the photo, Greene is with a former slave named Joe Neal.
One of Neal's relatives later wrote: "He stayed at the plantation after the Civil War, was in charge of the horses, made the horse collars, plows and equipment for working the fields and built a cotton gin that was in operation on the plantation. He made many things to make life better for Betty Amy and her family, including silver spoons out of silver dollars."
I knew Greene when I was a boy. She was a force of nature. She was born in November 1906 and died in April 1977. Greene was a founder of the Clark County Historical Association and a president of the Arkansas Education Association. When we would hunt in the back field on the Pennington farm, my father would point to the adjoining forest and say, "That's Amy Jean's land."
Last month, I asked Larry Pennington, who grew up on his parents' farm on the other side of Palmetto Road, to drive me on the dirt roads to the slough. Odus, who's no longer living, was Larry's uncle.
Larry arranged for gates to be left unlocked, and we headed that way on a warm, sunny Thursday. It had been more than 20 years since I was last here, and I was expecting that my version of "Bountiful" had changed. I was prepared to be disappointed.
There indeed had been some changes. Fields that once alternated between soybeans and cotton were now planted in pine trees. Still, the place remained the outdoor paradise I remembered.
As we neared the slough, geese flew from the water. Several deer crossed the road. We went to the banks of the Ouachita River, now covered in cane. The two cabins and black walnut trees where my father and I gathered nuts were still there. As we headed back to the main road, a mallard drake and hen flew from the slough. It was a beautiful sight.
Larry said, "I haven't been down here in a long time, either. Let me see if I can get down this road to that back field next to Amy Jean's land."
We reached the field, now planted in young hardwood trees. That's when it happened. In an era when quail are rare in Arkansas, a covey of at least 15 birds flushed in the corner of the field where I hunted with my father half a century ago. As excited as children on a Christmas morning, Larry and I jumped from the truck, walked into the woods and flushed the singles.
Then, as tears came to my eyes, Larry said: "My father, your father and Uncle Odus are up there smiling. They're amazed that two old guys like us can get so excited over a covey of quail."
It was the biggest covey I had seen in Arkansas in more than 30 years. Bountiful lives. Yes, you can go home again. I just hope we can return in the summer to visit the gators.
Larry's wife Gail put it best after we told her our story: "Seeing how excited you and Larry are; I think those quail may have been from heaven just for the two of you."
Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.