“WELL, I COULDN’T
TELL FOR SURE WHICH
ONE STARTED IT.”
– NINA
hackberry tree – once declared the
largest hackberry in Arkansas by the
state forestry department. Its descen-
dants shade the front porch where
Forrest and Nina still sit awhile and
talk when they’re in the neighborhood.
60
Forrest tells of the time when he was
puttering around near the house and found
one of Nina’s roosters lying dead on the
ground. A few feet away, he found another
dead rooster. Alarmed, he yelled out to Nina,
who was in the house: “Nina, somebody or
something has killed two of your roosters.”
“I know,” answered Nina, “it was me.”
“Why in the world did you kill them?”
Forrest asked.
“Because they were always fighting,”
answered Nina. “I just got sick and tired of it.”
“But why both of them?” Forrest asked.
“Well, I couldn’t tell for sure which one
started it.”
The Woods lived in the house for a
few years, then bought 40 acres over-
looking the river. Forrest borrowed
money to buy feeder cattle and start his
own ranch, but beef prices plummeted
and he couldn’t pay his debts. For a
time, Forrest found work on the con-
struction of the Bull Shoals Dam. It did-
n’t pay much, but it kept the family
afloat. In 1953 he got a better job in
Kansas City at the General Motors
Fairfax Assembly Plant, helping to
build F-84 Thunderjets for the Air
Force.
“I just drove by there [the plant] one
day and thought to myself ‘surely as
big as this place is they’ll have a job for
me.’ They did, and we stayed there as
long as we needed to,” he recalls.
FLWFISHING.COM I FEBRUARY-MARCH 2018