Tales from Toad Suck: Adventures of a Boy Who Lived a Life Different from Other People His Age
Rotarians were treated to the thrills and perils of growing up in Toad Suck, Arkansas, as John “J Dub” Black, former president of the Culver City Rotary Club, regaled us with stories from his book, Tales from Toad Suck: Adventures of a Boy Who Lived a Life Different from Other People His Age. It’s a story of survival and love.
First we all stood up and were shown how to call pigs. We called loudly three times, “ohh pig su-ey,” and then when no pigs came, we sat down and heard stories like the one about the Hallowe’en when the boys persuaded the cow up unto the belfry of the church. There she stood with her head looking out the opening, for a day and a night while six grown men tried to figure out how to teach a cow to walk backward down the stairs. And, as J Dub said, “That’s a true story.”
J Dub grew up in a small town in hard times, but as he said, nobody told him that. Toad Suck had a movie theatre that on Saturday night showed John Wayne flicks, and a barber shop that was the social center of town. The nearest “big” town was Little Rock, about 35 miles away
One of the big sports there was jug fishing, at which Pimento, a black fisherman, was expert. The empty one or two liter jugs act as floats to hold the baited hooks and they drift on the river currents. Once however there was a jug fishing contest, and a jug was snapped up, as bait, by a Moby Dick of a fish. Pimento just fell into the Arkansas River and was carried after the jug on its line, which was pulled by the fish. The fish was four feet long with teeth and fins. It took a .357 magnum to kill the fish, and it nearly sank the boat. Another true story.
Long ago, steamboats traveled the Arkansas River when the water was at the right depth. When it wasn’t, the captains and their crew tied up to wait where the Toad Suck Lock and Dam now spans the river. While they waited, they refreshed themselves at the local tavern there, to the dismay of the folks living nearby, who said: “They suck on the bottle ’til they swell up like toads.” Hence, the name Toad Suck. The tavern is long gone, but the town’s name was voted in a 2012 poll as “most unfortunate town name.”
The big happening in Toad Suck is Toad Suck Daze, a spring festival the first weekend of May. Normal population of the whole county is 35,000 but it swells during the event to 170,000. There are toad-mobile races and three-legged races and rides on the old ferry, which has been re-placed in the lake which was created after the Dam became a road across the river and the ferry was no longer needed.
There is a Toad Queen at the Festival, but as J Dub said, there were some years in which there was no queen, as contestants only got enough votes for third place in the contest. First place and second were “left open.” “Not a lot around there,” J Dub said.
He was a natural storyteller, and left the club wanting to hear more. By the way, did you know that owls talk to each other a lot when they are in different trees. Well, in Toad Suck, they do.