A Visit to Jonesboro, Arkansas

This senseless killings of students and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, brought back a memory of my visit to Jonesboro, Arkansas. Anna went on a business trip to Memphis in 1998. The meeting was to be about 5 days. I tagged along. We drove. One day while she was at a meeting I crossed the Mississippi River on a bridge to carry me into Arkansas. In Arkansas, I headed north to Jonesboro, Greene County, Arkansas. My great great grandfather Jason Henderson Hunter spent his last years in Greene County. He went through three wives and at least three mistresses. He sired children from all of them. He was also a state representative in his time. Before the Civil War he was a representative in Cape Gildraldo, Mo., and after the war a representative in the Greene and Craighead County area of Arkansas. I knew from research and correspondence that several of his children are buried at Oaklawn Cemetery just outside Jonesboro and I thought Jason was possibly buried there too. In Jonesboro, driving around town, I soon discovered that Oaklawn Cemetery was going to be hard to find. I saw a funeral home. If anybody would know where Oaklawn Cemetery is would be a funeral home. I pulled into their parking lot and went inside. I asked someone who worked there where was Oaklawn Cemetery. I forgot what the person looked like but I do remember getting the 3rd degree. Like, “where are you from?” “Do you know someone buried at Oaklawn?” and so on. They told me where the cemetery is. I found it. I did not find Jason’s grave but did find several of his offspring’s. About where the Hunter plots were, thousands of Dragonflies were flying all around me, intruding in my comfort zone. (just worth mentioning). While driving back to Memphis it hit me why the funeral people acted so strange. Just a short time before, maybe a month or so, in Jonesboro at West Side Elementary School four students and one teacher were killed. Two boys, ages 11 sat off a fire alarm at the school and shot people as they exited the building. One of the killers Andrew Golden was killed 22 years later in a car wreck with a head-on collision with a Daniel Petty, age 59. The Petty surname is my mother’s maiden name. I wonder? Driving south through Arkansas I got entertained by two immature crop dusters in their air planes showing off for each other. The did loops, nose dives, chicken with each other and even sprayed some crops.