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ACD: It sounds crazy nowadays, but that's exactly right. Then I decided I would leave Waldo. (I) couldn't do anything there but become a head bookkeeper for Waldo Fertilizer, or working for one of the banks there and they didn't pay much of anything. The salary was so low. They could hire more people than they needed because the salaries were so low, because nearly everyone wanted to work in the bank. The same way I understand First National Bank of Magnolia, they can hire more people than they need any day.
RLT: Your education?
ACD: I went through twelve years of school in Waldo, Arkansas. Then I started my practical education in all the other things I had done. When I decided I wanted to leave Waldo, I called W. W. Findley, in Little Rock, Arkansas, and asked him to get me a job. He was the accountant for all the Garland Anthony saw mills. Garland Anthony was from Bearden, Arkansas, and they were a tremendously wealthy family in Bearden. John Ed Anthony is their grandson. I knew him when he was a baby. I went up there and he gave me a job, Mr. Findley did. I started parking at the Rector Building in Little Rock, which was a well-known sight that day and time. Nowadays, I'd have to tell you where it is. I asked him where I should park. He said "Park? You don't need to park. You are going to be on the road." I had already moved up there, my wife and I didn't have any children then. I moved up there and had to, next day or two, I had to get my things moved back to Waldo.
I started traveling. I worked for a CPA, well known, one of the outstanding ones in the country at that time. He could handle anything that came up. Handled all those saw mills and one railroad company, El Dorado and Wesson Railroad company out of El Dorado and Wesson, Arkansas. Which at that time was considered to be the wealthiest railroad in the United States; because of the fact that they got all their initial haul from Lion Oil Company to bring it out to Illinois Central or Rock Island Railroad and it just made them immensely wealthy. They were doing that. I never did get to audit their books there, but I did get to go around with Horace Eddy, from Buckner, Arkansas. And he was the head man for Mr. Findley at that time, and he was not a CPA then, but seemed to me he could have been. He was really smart. He knew how to get along with people. Everybody liked Horace Eddy, including me. He was a dear friend to me. He would look after me.
On a week we would be off working at a saw mill of Garland Anthony, whether it be in Fordyce, or whether it be in Gladewater, Texas, or wherever it was. Horace would always make me leave early on Friday afternoon to come home, because he said "You and Margaret haven't been married long, and you need to be together." He was a great fellow. He was an older brother to Kenneth Eddy, who used to be here in the courthouse. I can't tell you how good he was to me. He was all that time studying to be a CPA, and he got to be a CPA and they moved here. He lived in that two story house this side of the mill there just off of Garland Street. Somebody else lives there now. That's where he was living. Anthony owned about thirty of the mills that we audited the books for.
- If a bookkeeper would get sick, or one of them would quit and go to
another job, then Mr. Finley would send one of us down there to keep the
books until they got well or they hired somebody else. They ended up sending
me to Mt. Holly, Arkansas. Vernon Whitten, who was the son-in-law of Garland
Anthony, ran the mill. I think he and his wife owned it then. Mr. Anthony
owned a little part of it and they owned part of it. It was a partnership.
I went down to keep the books and I just fell right in. I didn't have any
problems with bookkeeping, because my brother had taught me all---everything
about bookkeeping without me having to go to school. Vernon liked the way
I was doing things, and I got ready. I told him, I said "I want you
to get somebody. I need to leave." He said, "Oh well, we will
find somebody later on." One or two people came and interviewed for
the job, but they didn't seem to be satisfactory. He didn't want them and
I wasn't particularly impressed with them myself. I should have been more,
I guess. But he said "You stay here and keep the books until I find
somebody." We didn't have any children, Margaret and I didn't at that
time. He said, "I'm going to move to El Dorado, and I want you and
Margaret to just come move into our house". They had a nice house.
Nicest one around Mt. Holly, I guess. He said, "You can move in there
with us, and soon we are going to move to El Dorado." I took him to
his word, so we moved down there. We moved in there with them.
