Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Three Men And A Store, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

Most accurately, we should probably call this “two men, a boy, and a store.” It features three generations of males from the same family—the father, his only son, and his first-born grandson. The store, Arkadelphia’s first “big box” discount store, Howard Brothers (colloquially known as Howard’s), sat atop the last northward hil l on Tenth Street (aka US Highway 67/AR Highway 7) and looked eastward and northeastward across its parking lot over the Caddo River and Ouachita River floodplains. The occasion arose when the father and his wife drove from Montgomery, Alabama over the course of about a dozen hours …

Deranda And The Pediatrician, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

The winter after her tenth birthday brought the crisis with it. That crisis compounded a wretched combination of willfulness and unrecognized reality with timing. The compound meant that she might not live to be eleven— however impossible that seemed at the time.

She was a child who loved the outdoors and its beauty, but also loved order, neatness, and cleanliness. Those two loves warred within her, with the best manifestation being a penchant for interrupting her early preoccupation with making mud-pies for frequent trips indoors to wash up before returning to “cooking.” The long walkway from her first childhood home …

Reflections On Experiences Abroad, Myra Ann Houser, Benjamin Utter, Monica Hardin, Ray Franklin, Donald Allen Copeland Jr., Susan Monroe

Creative Works

Reflections on Experiences Abroad is a collection of essays written by Ouachita Baptist University faculty and staff who have lived outside of the United States. Students in Professor Margaret Reed's Fall 2022 ENGL 3383 Editing class copyedited and helped prepare this volume. It is a one-time publication that gave Reed's students an opportunity to demonstrate their editing skills at the end of the course. The student editors were Darby Jones, Sydney Motl, and Addie Woods.

The Game Warden's Gun, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

Growing up in 1950s Evergreen, Alabama, meant more than growing up in a small, South-Alabama county-seat town. It meant growing up in a rural environment where hunting and fishing were never more than a few minutes away. Field and stream activities lured mostly males above the age of eight, and generous game laws did not obviate a brisk business in poaching. Since it was a poor county, Conecuh had its share of those who poached to put meat on the table as well as those who poached because they did not believe that game laws applied to them. Some prime …

The Uses Of Disease, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

Our library occupied the end of one east-pointing wing in the old Evergreen High School building. In furnishings it resembled nothing as much as the traditional reading room: bare rectangular wooden tables surrounded by straight-backed hard-oak wooden chairs. Windows pierced the outside walls that bounded it on the south, east, and north sides. Around the walls rose short semi-full shelves of books that I never saw taken down in my years of occupying the building. No periodicals sat in sight, nor did any traditional finding aids for books or periodicals. At the room’s east end stood an elevated desk and …

The Best You Can, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

Mary Washington taught History at what was then Howard College while I was a student. Possessed only of an MA, she epitomized the best of the “junior lecturer” tradition. She was widely read and traveled and displayed a love of learning on the one hand and an iron will that balanced that love on the other. Students found her immensely accessible while immensely knowledgeable—a powerful combination. Perhaps most significantly of all, she wedded her equanimity to the most pleasant of personalities. To contact her was to feel bathed in grace. To see her anywhere on campus was to see her …

A Long Way From Frankville: Stories By Sam Granade (1918-2008), S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Deacon Devotional, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

I’ve just finished reading The Monuments Men, about the small group of individuals tasked with saving public and private art looted by Nazis in World War II. Saving it and returning it to its proper owners. You may have seen the movie made from the book. These people dealt with sculpture, flatware, glass, crystal, furniture, oils, watercolors, tapestries, books, incunabula, manuscripts—everything artistic of value. Some of the pieces were acknowledged masterpieces, some “from the school of,” some artwork that paled in comparison with the other. But each piece had been identified as art worth having. Art not worth having, “degenerate” …

Lewis Lavell Cole, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

Lavell Cole was born and reared near Hodges Gardens, Louisiana and thrived on “making do” in a rural world that centered on the land and its activities and rhythms. He attended Northwestern State University near home, where he prepared to teach high school history and acquired a Masters degree. He taught and worked as an electrician for Brown and Root before getting the 1969 call that brought him to Ouachita Baptist University in his mid-twenties to teach history. He stayed until increasingly poor health invalided him out of the academy in his mid-fifties and then took his life on November …

Kirby Goes Hunting, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

You see, I have this friend. Arliss is really nice, and used to be a good ole boy. We grew up together, went to school together, and fished every dab of water and hunted every patch of woods around. We fished for anything that would strike a hook and hunted whatever was in season. We were inseparable.

Kirby And The Camera, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

Kirby had watched the ritual many times, but repetition had done nothing to enlighten him. His mistress would get out a small black-and-silver object. Then She would chase members of his pack, or force them to sit still in particular places or perform peculiar tricks while she held the object to her face.

Two Angels And Walt Whitman: Servant Leadership And The American War Between The States, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

I must begin with a caveat we’ll call “truth in advertising.” My upbringing branded me on the tongue, and although I lack my father’s drawl, I seriously doubt that anyone mistakes me for a Yankee. In case I’m wrong, I’ve worn the correct color and the tartan I share with John C. Calhoun. I’ll also remind you of my bio and relate a story.

I’m a Southerner born, bred, and educated, never living farther north than Louisville, Kentucky, for any length of time. I’m also just four generations and less than a century removed from what folks still referred to …

Kirby And The Mouse, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

Like all Yorkies, Kirby carried himself with an air of importance. The small body and short legs common to all toy terriers in no way detracted from his sense of self-importance or his erect stance and ears. A true earth dog, Kirby lived out the urges of a great hunter whose ancestors had been bred to catch small mammals like rats and foxes, often by following them into their earthen dens. His small eyes always snapped with excitement and nothing in his life quite matched the sport of a chase.

Guinea Pig With A Pc: Or, Bcl3 Gap Reports In Ascii And What They Can Mean To You, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

Everything that follows must be understood in light of three major facets of my experience, training, and assumptions. Without this background, at least some of this article will be less (if not in-) comprehensible, so bear with me.

First, I'm trained as an historian, have taught history for 25 years (still do occasionally), research some, and publish when I can. I try to keep my hand in as an academician, for I identify myself as a member of the academy. My formal training ended as historians were beginning to use machines to engage in cliometrics—the statistical study of history—and none …

Claudius: A Christmas Story, S. Ray Granade

Creative Works

"Tell us the story again," one begged. The others immediately chimed assent, and the chorus of "Yes" and "Please" arose.

"Are you sure?" I responded.

When the affirmative choir swelled again, I assented to their importuning. "It all began," I started, "a very long time ago, before I or my father or his father or even his father's father were born. It begins, as all good stories do, once upon a time."