Friday, December 11, 2020

Congratulation to the Warren Branch Library Friday Book Giveaway Winner for Week #20 - Carol Murphy


Congratulation to the Warren Branch Library Friday Book Giveaway Winner for Week #20 - Carol Murphy!! Join us for our next Friday Book Giveaway!! To enter, comment "I need this book!" on the Warren Branch Library's weekly giveaway Facebook post on FRIDAYS at 8am!! Books will be given away at 5pm each Friday.

Sunday, November 22, 2020

Pastime: More on those “Singing Majorettes”

(Top row) Karen Johnson, Stephanie Woodard and Gayle Green (Bottom row) Sharon Trussell, Lucinda Miles, Jane Davis and drum major Terri Lassiter.

By Maylon Rice

As is often the case with a Pastime – another memory immediately starts a new one.

After writing about the “Southern Fried Chicken” served at every Band Banquet following Marching Season each fall, Gloria Williams Alpe, now of Bentonville, followed a social media post saying she and a couple of others in her class – Becky Russell Stephens among the  others -  remembered more about those “Singing Majorettes.”

Just to solidify the fact about the “Southern Fried Chicken,” was the banquet staple, Gloria found in her scrapbook, the 1964-66 band banquet programs. Each was run off  on the high school office spirit master copying images on orange construction paper for covers with a thin piece of white paper again run through the wet spirit master printer -  for a program, stapled to these decorative covers.

And each menu in that grouping of 4 programs – featured as the entrée  “Southern Fried Chicken.”

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Jessica Thomason wins Library Candy Jar Giveaway


Congratulations to Mrs. Jessica Thomason (also pictured Sutton) on guessing the closest number of Reece's Pieces in our Candy Jar Giveaway!! She guessed 1005 pieces and the total number was 1009!!

Friday, November 13, 2020

Pastime: Band Banquet Fried Chicken


By Maylon Rice

This Pastime always surfaces in early November each year and harkens me back a crisp, golden fired memory of band banquets and fried chicken.

How can you have a memory of two things like the Marching Lumberjack Band Banquets and fried chicken?

The two seemingly unrelated items were – well staples – and both always on the menu for that event.

In the days before the Arkansas Activities Association expanded prep football into playoffs at the district, regional and even state level, football ended  when the regular season ended. The Lumberjacks were often 7-2-1 or 7-3 and usually somewhere in the rankings for a conference title.


In the late 1960s or 1970s,  when the final whistle blew on a regular season schedule football  was over until next year.

And it was the same with the marching band.  After football season (which ran concurrent with marching band competition season) the marching band season was over.

Often the Marching Lumberjacks made three contests each year. We were often aware of and invited to more than three such contests – but by Martin’s Law and the financial limits of the taxpayers of Warren School District No. 1 – three out of town marching contests were the maximum.

At the end of the Marching Band season, there was always a Band Banquet – which was to signal an end to the marching season and the start of the holiday season with concert band practices and performances commencing.

I have in my files, three tiny band banquet programs from 1969, 1970 and 1972. Somehow, the 1971 program and its contents escapes me, but connecting the dots I can fill in the year with no problem.

The 1969 and 1970 programs (as was 1971) were held in the Warren High School Cafeteria. The 1972 program was moved to the new Fellowship Hall at the United Methodist Church.

As a kid, I never really thought much about the format or the menu – now it is so funny to me – the menu – never changed.

It was always printed on the inside cover of the band banquet program.  It consisted of: Tossed salad (iceberg lettuce, a few mealy sliced tomatoes, possibly some celery and maybe a little chopped onion), Lima Beans  were served three out of the four years, with a 1972 addition of green beans; a baked potato (always) and then this description: “Southern Fried Chicken.”

Why fried chicken every year?  


Well, fried chicken, was Curry Martin’s favorite.

So it was not just “fried chicken,” but “Southern Fried Chicken.” While most cookbooks will make a distinction, I’ll give you my take on this fine delicacy served up to the band members, their parents, and guests at the event.

It was buttermilk coated, deep fried, golden brown chicken with the skin as crispy and dark but oh, so good.

Hot rolls and those often found tiny “pats” of butter swimming in a dish of an ice cube or two on the tables, completed the meal. There was never, I repeat, never enough butter at the tables for me.

For dessert there were individually cut slices of chocolate cake, usually a German chocolate cake. Sometimes there was an attempt at a carrot cake – usually heavy on the mix and light on the carrots and even once there was an attempt at a red velvet cake as a near riot broke out across each table for the two or three slices at a setting of 10 diners.

But always, and I mean always, there was Southern Fried Chicken.

I am searching my memory banks as to the source of the chicken when memories of standing in the serving line flashed in front of my brain.  It was Ms. Ruby Carraway’s Southern Fried Chicken.

The Carraway boys, the elder Pat and the younger (and now sadly deceased Tommy), Ms. Ruby’s grandsons were in the  band.

I can see Ms. Ruby and her son Julian Carraway and other family members or staffers at their Southern Fried Chicken Restaurant out on the Fordyce Highway – near the old skating rink and across from Burgess Williams Massey-Ferguson tractor dealership – serving up mountains of Southern Fried Chicken at the band banquets.

That is all gone now. 

The restaurant, the accompanying business and the principles in that once thriving business. (For the younger set this was long before that Kentucky Colonel Harlan B. Sanders, showed up on South Main, in the former home of the Rose Oil Service Station). It was the best chicken served anywhere. On most Sundays, after church, you could not get an immediate seating in that restaurant, it was always busy.

But let’s head back to the band banquet.

Mr. Martin and the band boosters always paid for a color film of one of the marching band contest routines.  One year it was in Crump Stadium in Memphis, another at the brand new McClellan High School in Little Rock and once I can recall at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia.

After the film, the entertainment was usually “The Singing Majorette,” under the tutelage of Mrs. Mary Lou Martin playing an upright piano lugged into the cafeteria by a collection of band guys the afternoon before.

Always a speaker, such as Homer Brown, the legendary band director at State College of Arkansas (now UCA), or Russell Langston, President of the Arkansas School Band and Orchestra Association or Don Mix, director of bands at the Arkansas State University, spoke in the echoing chamber of the cafeteria  on the value of a good music program in Arkansas’s public schools.

The senior band members were recognized, and then the best announcement of the evening was given.

“There is some left over chicken at the back table, help us eat it all,” Mr. Martin would say, as Mary Lou hurried over to fill him a plate of chicken for later consumption. 

I could always use another piece of Miss Ruby’s chicken.

That is a golden, crispy Pastime that is so much more delicious than that pressured friend finger licking imitation, I assure you.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Friday Book Giveaway-Winner for Week #18 - Heather Wright Baker


Congratulation to our Friday Book Giveaway-Winner for Week #18 - Heather Wright Baker!!  (also pictured Cora Baker) Join us for our next Friday Book Giveaway!! To enter, comment "I need these books!" on the Warren Branch Library's weekly giveaway Facebook post on FRIDAYS at 8am!! Books will be given away at 5pm each Friday.

Elianna Green has reached 800 books in Warren Branch Library's 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program


Elianna Green has reached 800 books in Warren Branch Library's 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program! Way to go Elianna! For more information about this program, contact the library at 870-226-2536.

Friday Book Giveaway Winner for Week #17 - Gina Atkins


Congratulation to our Friday Book Giveaway Winner for Week #17 - Gina Atkins!!  Join us for our next Friday Book Giveaway!! To enter, comment "I need these books!" on the Warren Branch Library's weekly giveaway Facebook post on FRIDAYS at 8am!! Books will be given away at 5pm each Friday.

Sunday, November 8, 2020

Warren Branch Library would like to recognize Ms. Pauline Hoyle for reading 300 books in 2020

Warren Branch Library would like to recognize Ms. Pauline Hoyle for reading 300 books in 2020. She has completed 1 States, 1 Read-A-Latte, and 4 ABC Challenges! Way to go Ms. Pauline!