Notes from Dr. Sam

Good Day,

I hope this note finds you well.

I was born and raised in the wake of World War II. My life began near the town of Augusta in the White River Delta of East Arkansas. Our extended family had moved north from Stuttgart in the early 1930s during the depths of the Depression. Grandpa Taggart and his sons went to work as sharecroppers for the Conner Company, raising rice.

The presence or absence of money wasn’t felt daily in our lives. The company provided the house we lived in, a tin-roofed, wooden, tar-paper house with two rooms and an outhouse. 

My grandmother, mother, and aunts raised large gardens and canned foods most seasons of the year. Each of our homes had a large pantry with canned vegetables used especially in the winter. We had cows, chickens, and pigs so we had milk, eggs, and meat. Dad and his brothers hunted, fished, and trapped to fill in the gaps. 

As a sharecropper, my dad was paid once a year when the crops were sold, and they settled up with the Conners. For several decades, the Conners had owned and run the mercantile in downtown Augusta where most of our material needs were met. Necessary food items like salt, sugar, flour, and tobacco were purchased on account either at the Mercantile or from the Kelly wagon that made its rounds to the homesteads on the farms. 

By the early 1950s my mother—a town-girl before she married—had had enough of the farm. They bought a house in Augusta for $6,000, and we moved to town (two miles from the farm). It was about this time that money and the Bank of Augusta began to play an obvious role in our lives. 

The economy was improving and there was more to go around. The joke in our family was that money burned a hole in my dad’s pocket, but mom squeezed a nickel till it screamed. 

My mother was determined that my sister and I would get an education and learn the value of things. Her idea of education extended well beyond the schoolhouse. In the mid-1950s, we were encouraged to take part of the money we made doing chores and open a savings account at the Bank of Augusta. 

She would take us down to the bank, then stand and watch as we walked up to the teller’s window. I can clearly remember how proud I was of my little brown bank book full of hand-written entries. Once a year or so she would help us to buy a $25 dollar U.S. Savings Bond for $17.50 to be redeemed at some time in the future. I can remember her saying, “Remember, a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, that’s how you get somewhere.”  

The lesson stuck with my sister and me; we learned a lot about life from the frugality and simplicity of our little mother. 

Have a good journey,

Sam

 Dr. Sam Taggart is a retired doctor/writer/marathon runner who practiced in Benton for 45 years. He recently released For Every Family, A Family Doctor: a history of the modern Family Medicine Movement in Arkansas. His other books include Country Doctors of Arkansas, The Public’s Health, With a Heavy Heart and We All Hear Voices.