This is old, Lois, and we're coming up on July the 17th, which is Founders Day down here. Now that we've been celebrating this day, all the way back before, long as I can remember, and back before I was born, they had Founders Day down here, and it's supposed to be the day when this little community called Wildwood, when they settled this place down here and incorporated this place called Wildwood. It used to be a lot bigger than it is today. It ain't nothing but a crossroads now, but back when I was growing up, they had a blacksmith shop and two or three stores, and there was a boat landing where people could land their crops, could take their crops so that the boats could pick them up.
And at one time, they say that this community was thinking about making it to county seat. Now that was before there was any counties down here, but they was coming up with these counties. This was back in 1881, according to the stores now that I learned when I was in school. Now I didn't go to school very long, but I just went through the second grade, but I can still remember what I learned back then.
And they said this place was incorporated in 1881, and that they was considering making it county seat, but then the railroad, and according to the store, now that was told that this old man named Walter Black was trying to get him to put the county seat in down here, and he found out that they was building a railroad. And so what he done was he bought up a lot of land down here, and he had a lot of money, they say. And so Walter Black built him a blacksmith place and a store, and he had bought up all this land because he thought the railroad was coming down here, and he was gonna settle, he was gonna sell this land, and make him a bunch of money is what he had in his mind, and that's reading he bought the land. Well, as it turned out, the railroad didn't come down here, it went to Helena, and so this cut, now they did run a spur line down here to Wildwood, and so it didn't just drive up overnight, and it become a pretty good community as long as the trains run down here.
They had, like I say, two or three stores, they had a liquor store and a cotton gin, and later on when they started growing soybeans, they had a silo down here, and it was a pretty good driving community, and I don't know how many people lived down here at that time, but it got to grow pretty big, but then when I was growing up, it kind of reclined, and people moved out of it, and the train stopped running, that was a big thing that happened, the train stopped running, and the riverboats didn't come by here no more, because people started taking their cotton to the highway, to places on the highway, and so this place kinda dried up, you might say, but anyway, I'm getting away from the subject, because I was talking to you about Founders Day, but I want you to know what I was talking about, but anyway, we always celebrated Founders Day when I was growing up, and I remember they used to, you know, they used to set the whole anvil off at midnight, what they done was this man had some gunpowder, and he'd put in that little blacksmith, had some gunpowder, and he'd blow that anvil up in there, and it could ring, you could hear that thing all over this country, and he'd do it as long as he had gunpowder, that would go on for two or three hours till he run out of gunpowder, and then of course you would always hear the dogs houndling because it would wake them up, and it set them howling, and that was the first thing that I remember about Founders Day, and we'd go to school and we learned, they had a parade down here, and we learned to Arkansas Traveler, now I can't remember that song, I mean I remember the words to it, but you know I ain't no sanger, but it went to some about, old and lonely road quite long ago, a traveler trod with fiddle and a bow, while traveling through the country rich and grand, he quickly sensed the magic and the beauty of the land, and it went on, of course it was a lot faster than that, but I can't, you know I just don't talk that fast, but I could used to, could sing it though, or could sing at it when we was in school, because we had to, and so, and we had a parade down here, and we'd sing that song and all the little schools, you know they was, they was old four or five schools in this area down here, because you know that was before school solidated, and every little place, I had a little school house, and these, they had a parade, and these kids, you know what come down here, and you would say something, you know they had this little, old poem that you'd holler out, you know when you was marching down the road, and they'd line us up, you know, and I remember what they, what we said when I was in school where we'd say, a stand them on the head, stand them on the feet, wild wood, wild wood, can't be beat, that's what we'd say, when we'd march down the road, and these other little schools they had their own sayings, you know like they was one at Greasy Corner, and I don't remember none of the rest of them, I was just a little old bit of kid when this was going on, and then of course, like I told you before, I had to drop out of school, and so I didn't, I didn't get in any of the other schools, you know we didn't, but they started, they kept on celebrating it, year after year, and I'd always come to the celebration, you know, but I didn't have no part in the program, and I think I'd just come to see it, and they'd have far works, and they had a string band that would come down here, and had a big old barbecue, you know where they would, they'd give out free soda pop, and barbecue to anybody that wanted it, and they still do that, we still have that today, and they have barbecue and soda pop, and you can get all you want, and of course, they don't do it in front of the kids, but after the kids go back to school, you know they get, they have a beer, they've got a big old kegabear that they bring out, and they serve all the beer, you know you won't, and so anyway, that just tells you a little bit about the Founders Day, and they'd done this up until, well when Bernie's Grantham come down here to the school, well she wasn't, she wasn't from around here, they got her, they hired her from over in, oh I believe she was from Jefferson City, Missouri, and she didn't know nothing about this thing, and she said, she said she wasn't gonna celebrate Founders Day, that it didn't mean nothing. Well I don't know if it means anything or not, but it meant something to me, you know, because I'd always done it, and it's what they call a tradition, you know, that we had always been doing it, and so, but you know she was a teacher, and so she didn't let the kids come down here and celebrate, but you know we kept on celebrating Founders Day, well like I told you, about a year and a half ago, oh, to its Adam, I mean Francine Adam would say, we called her to its, when she was growing up, but her name is Francine, and she went off to college and to the university, and got her license, you know, to teach, and got education, and she come down here, and when Bernice Grantham had her baby, she moved off and they hired Francine, and so Francine, you know she grew up down here, and she knew it all about Founders Day, and so she said that we was gonna celebrate Founders Day, and the kids was gonna do it, just like she done, when she was in school, but she said what she was gonna do is she was gonna look up in the books and everything, what she could find out about Wildwood, and how it was settled and everything, and she wanted to get some more information on Walter Black, and see what she could find out about it, and so that she could find out what the truth was, because there's all kinds of stories that, you know, that grow up down here about Walter Black, and about the Founders Day, and when the community was settled, and so forth, and when the year was that had happened, and she said she just wanted to get the facts straight, and she said she thought it was time that we had, you know, a real history of what had happened, you know, and so that we could separate the truth from just stories that we grew up with. Well, that made sense to me, and so she started, you know, doing her, what she called her research to find out, and so I'm gonna tell you in the next part of this story, what Francine has found out so far, and in a way it's kind of disappointing to me, but at the same time, you know, it's, I think it's good that we really know the truth about what happened, because, you know, like I say, it's kind of disappointing, but at the same time, you know, I kind of wanna know the truth myself, so I appreciate her research that she done, and that she's still doing it, she's still working on it, but she said she was having trouble, you know, getting the facts, but she was gonna get them if she could, and so anyway, that's something that she learned how to do, when she was going to college, so if anybody can do it, then no Francine can. So anyway, in the next part of this podcast, I'm gonna tell you some of which he found out.
So in any way, that lets you know what founder's day is, and it's gonna be celebrated some way or other on July the 17th, so I'm gonna tell you more about it in the next part of this podcast.