A.F. Kuykendall by Ivah Kuykendall

My Father – A.F. Kuykendall

-by Ivah Kuykendall-

Papa at the Pool

I wish everyone could have had a father like mine.  He was the idol of my life.  He was so large and strong looking, and was always dressed appropriately-- even when he worked all day, with farmers who lived on the Frauenthal farms & there were many of them in Faulkner, White, Cleburne and Conway counties.  He would see that they had the necessary things they needed for their year’s work & that they could borrow money from Frauenthal and Schwartz to tide them over.  He could tell at the end of the season how many bales of cotton or bushels of corn etc and then see that they paid their debts to F&S at the end of the year.  Sometimes they were tempted to take their cotton out of county to have baled & then neglect paying F&S but Papa had a method he worked out by counting tolls on stalks. Then the stalks on a row and the rows and he could tell, to the bale, how much each farmer made.  All the customers knew he could estimate and therefore he never had any trouble with them on settlements.

Papa was a true Democrat.  He was the Democrat leader for Faulkner County.  Traveling as he did he learned lots & gave good advice.  He was many times persuaded to run for any office but never let them talk him into running.

All young people liked papa as well as the old people.  He could talk to any of them on any subject.  Papa didn’t see evil in anyone.  He listened but didn’t criticize.  Papa loved and respected his family.  Gave each child its share of attention and needless to say, how much his children loved and respected him.  Thanks to Mama!  She adored him and made us feel he was the finest & I knew he was the best looking!

Papa was the gentleman farmer, you might say.  He always held a job, at first a surveyor, then he worked at the Faulkner County Bank, and later for 25 years with the largest firm in the surrounding counties-- Frauenthal and Schwartz.  But he also knew everything going on around our farm.  He always had an overseer who lived on the place and Papa planned with him.  We grew cotton and corn.  Mama always had acres of vegetables of every kind.  In those days bugs & insects were not bad so no one ever had to spray.

When we were children papa played with us lots.  He always saw that we had horses to ride and I can remember when he brought us two little “jennies.”  We could ride them any time we wanted to.  They were really no good for anything else. We would have lots of friends from town who loved to come to our house because we were a big happy family with many interesting things to do.

In those days there were no entertainments- only what we made ourselves-- playing dominoes, checkers, hop scotch or marbles.  It wasn’t until we moved to town that we had a Victor Victrola.  Papa would let us buy records and he enjoyed listening.  We had many beautiful records.  Then came the day when we got our first radio!  The first one we got we had to use ear phones.  Then in a year or so we graduated to the kind where we could sit quietly in front of it and hear the wonderful news and mostly classical music.  That was great!  Every afternoon at 5pm “Amos &* Andy” came on and Papa would come in, turn it on and listen.  Then when it was over he flipped it off until the news came on at 6.

Papa dearly loved Roosevelt and when Roosevelt gave his fireside chats, papa would take a bath, dress himself up, get his cigar and go in and sit in front of the radio and listen to every word he had to say.  Never let us utter a word until it was over.  Then he always said, “that is the greatest man living.”  I believed him too.

As far back as I can ever remember Papa took the Gazette and each morning, summer and winter, he was on the porch to meet the Gazette boy.  I didn’t have to read the paper because he would read it to us while we ate breakfast.  Then in the P.M. he was ready to read the afternoon paper.  He called it the “Gimlet” or the Cabin.  The real name was “Log Cabin Democrat”.  We didn’t dare touch it until he finished reading.  How I would have loved to just get hold of that paper. 

Papa was loved and admired by his grandchildren.  He demanded respect & love from them.  They loved him and waited on him hand & foot.  I never saw my father take a drink or use an ugly word or curse.  His “by word” was “By Thunder”.  I often wondered what that meant.  Papa was a truthful, honest person. 

Every fall a circus would come to town “Barnham & Bailey” and Papa always took the whole family.  He thought it was educational for us to see the beautiful animals and acting etc.

I can never remember any time at Xmas that he didn’t see that we had a Xmas tree. It was lots of fun because our cousins and their parents came and they brought their gifts for their children.  I had one Aunt who had 2 boys and 2 girls.  She was Papa’s ½ sister.  Papa always had a gift on the tree for each one of them.

It was a great day when Conway got its first electricity.  We had our house in town strung for lights.  The wires were not in the attic.  We could see them.  They thought that was safer.  All the children, Papa & Mama got ready for the great event-- turning the lights on.  What a great day.  Then when Conway got water piped in we were the first on the line in Conway to get water.  The pipes came right thru our property for at least a mile.  Papa gave them the “right of way.”

When we lived on the farm & we were all small except the 2 older boys & Hettie, Papa bought us a surrey with fringe on it.  That was about 1906 or 7.  We children went to Church in the surrey and Papa and Mama took the 2 little boys and went in his buggy.  He always drove 2 farm horses to his buggy and that was a sight to behold.

The men and boys sat on one side of the house and the women and girls and babies on the other side.  I couldn’t enjoy Church for looking at Papa and wishing I could sit by him.  When Claudia and Ella got old enough to take Elizabeth and me with them we went to Church in town-- also Sunday School.  Papa said he’d rather go out in the country because he chewed tobacco and felt like it wasn’t proper to spit out the window in a town Church.

Papa was miserable when he retired.  In those days there was no retirement benefits, so he decided to build a swimming pool.  He had to have help in running it so Claudia and I stayed with him for 17 summers.  I taught in Conway & Claudia was Assistant to the Supt. In Ft. Smith so we had our summers free.  Many summers the brothers would help us, especially those depression days when they would be laid off their work.  They always knew they would be welcome back at home until they got other work, so therefore, they would help us.

Papa and Mama on their Golden Wedding anniversary

Papa always was at the pool.  His big responsibilities were supervising and advising.  He had his big rocking chair and he sat there and visited with people when they came.  Really that’s where he did his advising the people on politics.

When he got too old to stay down there all day, he sat under a big tree in front of our house and entertained himself counting the cars and people going to the pool and at the end of the day he could estimate how much we took in that day.  He never got too old to help get the days earning ready for the bank.  Hardly ever made a mistake counting those nickels and dimes.

Papa loved to burn grass.  He called it cleaning up & getting rid of weed seed & bugs, etc.  One day when he was become very old he wandered down to the pool (in the Fall) and thought he’d just burn around a little, so when he got ready to come home he thought he had the fire put out.  While we were eating supper one of the little King boys burst in the front door yelling “Uncle Frank, your swimming pool is burning down.”  Sure enough it wasn’t the pool but the building and all the contents.  Lucky to have it- the boys, Oscar leading and supervising it built another building and it was ready when the next season opened and it was a dream.  The whole upstairs was a big bedroom.  Claudia and I always slept down there and we always had several who shared our big room upstairs—always the lifeguards and the nieces and nephews when their grandmother and “Bad” (Hettie’s nickname) would let them.

Now back to Papa.  He had a very interesting as well as hard life.  His father died when he was 3 years old.  “Mother” (That was his mother, so all of us called her “Mother”) was left with 3 children.  Uncle Elias, Papa and Aunt Rebecca.  The Civil War came along and Papa was a very young child.  Uncle Elias was large enough to carry water to those who had to stand watch on duty.  Then when war was over Mother married her second young man, John P. King, who happened along.  He was a dashing young man!  Years younger than mother so she & he married.  They had 3 sons—Eslie, Balus, James (Jim) and one daughter Barbara.

When Papa became 17 years old he decided to get out on his own.  He had helped his Stepfather clear land and had done some farming. That was on the piece that later Papa bought, the place where his father and his mother owned—where we live now.

Papa left home and went to Texas and worked on a ranch for a year.  Then he came back to Arkansas and he and Mr. Livingston rented some land on the river.

Papa’s schooling-  Each child had for his primer a paddle hung around his neck with the alphabet on it.  Everything was memorized.

 As far back as 1856 there were no schools in Faulkner County.  Papa, born in 1856 described the school he went to as a he remembered.  His old grandfather Kuykendall, known as Granddaddy Kuykendall, [Adam Robert Kuykendall Jr] gathered all the children around him and taught them while their parents worked.  He had a fair education since he had been reared in North Carolina and Virginia.  This was a little settlement north of the present site of Conway.  Most of the children were relatives.  He got no salary.  Later my father went to a school 3 miles from his home. The teacher got a very low salary and the children’s parents took turns keeping the teacher.

Papa learned to survey by hiring a black man who knew how to survey.  Papa never told him he couldn’t survey so he became a very good pupil. 

A.F. Kuykendall Family, 1917:
Left to Right Top Row: Marcus, Oscar Stone, Claudia, Ella, Hettie, Ivah, Elizabeth
Seated: Mary Catherine “Mollie” Allen Kuykendall (Mama), Adam Franklin Kuykendall (Papa)
Bottom Row: Hiram, Robert and Arnold