This column originally ran November 11, 1996. — J.T.K,
ARCADIA, Ks. “Take our picture,” my uncle J.T. calls as he gathers the three men in a row in the middle of Harris Street. “We were in the first grade together!” I peer through the lens at him, Charlie McMillin, T.W. Glor and Walter ‘Kerdock’ Foulk.
The men, now in their middle sixties, smile into the camera’s eye and I snap the photograph. The sun is 11 a.m. brilliant on their faces.
It is a telling picture, for it reveals both the age of this small rural town and some of the stories of its past. Over their shoulders is an old, empty stone building with a cornerstone that reads 1889.
Arcadia got its start in 1857 with the founding of a post office and stage stop known as Hathaway, about half a mile north of the present city. Assistant postmaster, Charles Jewell, later changed the name to Arcadia (which means ‘rural beauty’) at the suggestion of a sweetheart living in Chicago.
The present city of Arcadia was originally Finley City, named for Capt. George Finley who employed 25 men uncovering and hauling coal near the railroad switch that had been extended there from Ft. Scott. In 1876, the old Arcadia post office was loaded up and hauled to Finley because that was where the railroad dropped off the mail. Thus old Arcadia was abandoned, Finley City lost its name, and new Arcadia was born —
though the official charter for the town was not issued until about 1882.
I’m in Arcadia this day to attend an auction of items from Ferraro’s store and the Ferraro estate. It’s a bittersweet day — good to see my relations and friends and recall the days when Ferraro’s store flourished (along with Arcadia’s six grocery stores, movie theater, Chevrolet dealership, furniture store, and various other business necessary to sustain a
thriving town) — but also gut sad to see the now empty streets and store fronts of the businesses long closed.
Back in ‘76, I was in graduate school at the college and decided, one brisk fall day, to drive over to Arcadia to have lunch with my Grandma Fowler, stop by Ferraro’s store to visit with the ever-gracious Georgie and look over her wares. The store was much the same as it had been back in the 30’s and 40’s, with high, pressed-tin ceilings, shelves lining three walls and glass display cases in rows around the space.
I bought a tweed topcoat that afternoon, knee length brown. I still wear it on blustery winter days, usually with my Italian fedora. In 1929, Mike Ferraro and his wife, Georgie,
(formerly Georgie Cowan of Coalvale) first opened ‘Ferraro’s Cash Store’ in the old bank (the one with the 1889 cornerstone) on Arcadia’s main street selling groceries only. They soon added clothing to their wares and moved the store three times before ending up at the location I visited — eventually dropping the groceries and selling clothing only.
Mike passed away in 1973. Georgie in 1981. As the auctioneer punched out his staccato rhythm in the background, my uncle, J.T. (Fowler), a close friend of Mike and Georgie’s son, Hal Dean, shared stories about the Ferraro's. “I used to love to go over there to eat,” he said, “because Hal Dean was an only child and there were fourteen kids in our family.
“Course Hal Dean liked to come to our house because there was so much action. And I remember Mike had a great workshop. Hal Dean and I repainted our wagons there one day and lettered them “Home State Bank” and “Ferraro’s Cash Store” to advertise our
parent’s businesses.”
Hal Dean laughed as he corroborated another of J.T.’s stories — one about Mike hiring them to do chores in the grocery store, and, when they started acting up, paying them off just to get rid of them. “Yeah, he’d have us sort out hundred-pound sacks of potatoes
and we’d invariably come across a rotten one and start a ruckus, teasing one another with it or rubbing it on one another. Dad would give us fifteen cents and tell us to ‘Just go on!’”
Another of the men in the photo, Charlie McMillin, played with Hal Dean and J.T. on the ‘46 high school basketball team. Coached by the principal, Artie Bowlus, they defeated Frontenac in the Regional to earn a trip to the state tournament in Hutchinson. Other starters were Allen Curnutt and Don Glor. My cousin, Jimmy Lee Guthrie, was on that team too — along with Jim Skidmore, Bill Silvers, Jack Garrett and Bill Green. But Hal Dean was the stand-out, averaging 18 points a game and later going on to play for Tom Scott at the university of North Carolina.
For the past 17 years, Hal Dean and my uncle J.T. (and sometimes Charlie as well) have attended the Final Four basketball tournament together, reliving their Arcadia boyhoods and the magic of their time on the hardwood.
Incidentally, the Arcadia Bearcats got beat in Hutchinson by Lindsborg in the first round back in ’46 — partly, Hal Dean believes, because they had two starters ailing, and partly because they drove up the same day of the game instead of the night before.
When I asked my uncle about it, he, at first, said nothing. Then, after a long silence, broken only by the auctioneer’s incessant beckoning, he sighed and said, “You know, J.T., we replay that game every time we get together.”
If you have a story or photo for LBC, contact me at 620-704-1309 or jtknoll@swbell.net
