2022.06.02 FAMILIAR FORK IN THE ROAD

THROW BACK THURSDAY - FAMILIAR FORK IN THE ROAD

Plus Class News

Stifft's... as part of the Stifft's Addition to City of LR. Began as a streetcars' stop between downtown 

and the Heights and its Forest Park recreation area way west on Prospect Avenue. Trolleys took over in 1947..

 

Conversation between Jerry Dean, former newspaper editor here, and another "Heights" guy:       

    • You mean buses took over in 1947?

    • I remember Mom taking us downtown (to Cave's Jewelers and Kempner's Shoe's) in the 1960s.

    • I remember boarding a bus at Beachwood/Kav. I asked my mom if we could sit on the long bench

    • seat at the very back. Mom agreed but the glares we got. I couldn't understand why all the others

    • sitting in the back seemed so angry at us. At least not until I grew up. Even though Federal law had

    • passed de-segregating public transportation, and while my mom must have known that,

    • buses in Little Rock were still segregated, in practice, for several more years. We two little

    • white kids with our white mother essentially took the only remaining seats where a black

    • passenger might comfortably and safely sit for that leg of the trip downtown.

 

It was a drugstore in 1936 when this was at the intersection of Markham and Prospect Ave., 

the name hadn’t been changed as yet.  I lived at the Gitchell Apts. at 1117 Prospect Ave. 

and at the age of three I hated the name change, because I had to learn a new address!

 "Prospect" a double entendre, as I've gathered.

Jerry Dean


Yes, and "Kavanaugh" is hardly the easiest name for a child to say -- OR spell! I know very few 

who even know who Wm. Marmaduke Kavanaugh was -- a beloved community leader, who died 

young and suddenly. My Dad used to laugh at my early efforts to say KAB-Naw Bool-vard! Folks 

who live there should know about his efforts to start Traveler baseball, develop many of the good 

things about my hometown!

We had everything. A grocery store, variety store, Buckingham’s Liquor (I did not go in), a barber/beauty shop. cleaners, & Buice drug. A laundry mat was at the other end of the paint & wallpaper building. 

I, for one, used to love to go into that wallpaper store when I first came back to Little Rock.  I've never

seen so many samples and choices.  Still miss seeing it when I drive by.

1956 Class News

I have 105 names on the REGISTERED FOR THE REUNION list. Are you one of them?

If you are, you received a magnet for the UNSTOPPABLE TIGERS! If you haven't registered

yet, have misplaced your registration form or if you just have questions, hit REPLY.

If you live in Little Rock and you're free next Monday night, June 6, meet a bunch of us for dinner

at the Olive Garden Restaurant on Rodney Parham Road, at 6:00p. AND let me know to expect you,

please.

ML

LRCHS 1956