Living On Curry Road

Welcome to the Adventures of Living On Curry Road

Rye, Arkansas is located eleven miles north of Warren, AR, fifteen miles west of Monticello, AR and approximately thirty miles south of Pine Bluff, AR. Rye has been the home of the Curry family for over five generations. This family has farmed this land producing cattle, chickens, timber. The area is beautiful and the family culture is equally impressive with its generations of family that continue to live by the standards that made America a great country.

Rye, AR and the Curry family are a story of strong American values and the building of personal character, the love of God and a lot of very hard dedicated work. Donald Curry and Kay Curry are the current owners of most of the original farm land originally developed by the generations of Curry family. Kay Curry is the daughter of Jimmy and Hazel Baker and married Donald over fifty years ago. Both have continued the legacy of the farm life on Curry Road. Donald and Kay have raised a family of two daughters and one son. Mark Curry currently operates a cattle operation as well as four chicken houses on his part of the property. Lisa Tooke, wife of Dennis Tooke of Lake Charles, La and Donna Curry, of Little Rock, AR plan to retire back to the farm land when thier retirement time comes.

Jane and I were asked to help in a restoration of the 104 year old house shown above. We are so blessed to be allowed to have input as well as provide a labor of love to help restore this house to its original beauty for Donald and Kay Curry

As Jane and I came into the property with our RV, we came down the gravel road leading to Curry Road. We came down this gravel road and had to stop and take a picture. We are including that picture with this overview so you too can see the beauty of this area.

It reminded us of the book “The Painted House” by John Grisham and we hope you will get the same response.

Jane, Carl and Charlie Pierce

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Good Day to All,,,, its been busy here today. As with all Lower Arkansas (LA) communities, storms and tornadoes and all kinds of situations call for the need of a "Frady Hole" or some times called a storm shelter. Well this one is over 90 years old and its still standing. The picture on the left is the beginning of the cleaning process. The picture on the right is what Jane has accomplished. So far, three scorpions, many "dirt dobbers" nest and many spider nests were disturbed. Jane did not know any of that when she was in there cleaning. Guess what, we had tornado warnings all around us tonight so, good job Jane and timely also. Now we can go in read our "Sears Catalog" and wait for the "stuff" to go by. I wonder just what else has happened in this "Cave " of surrival?

During the past few days the number of Blue Birds have been increasing in alarming numbers. They seem to be thrilled with the picture of themselves and they constantly fly into our tinted windows and the windows of the Honda. This one is just amazed with the prospect of meeting someone as interesting as him or her self. The second picture looks like the bird in embeded in the window but actually it is an optical illusion and very interesting.

One of the great things of this old house is a "sleeping room". It was a room that was normally located in the western area of the home and situated to benefit from the "breezes" of the seasons. Prevailing winds are typically from the west in this area. This was designed since air conditioning at the time of this construction was virtually non-existant. So, people build these sleeping rooms with lots of windows so in the evening and night time hours they coud sleep in comfort from the gifts of God. Neat Huh????? Well, we had to remove these windows and we found out they were built "on site" in the original construction. So, we tried to remove the windows and save the history of the original windows. These are not "single hung" or "double hung" windows but custom built years ago. I think we were successful and it took a lot of time and labor to accomplish. Donald, Mark and Kay Curry were on site and hands on as well as Jane and myself. Boy, are we glad this is done and the outcome was deemed to be successful. In the follong pictures the first picture is the wall after we had removed the windows, the next picture is after the reconstruction was completed and the windows re-installed from the outside view and the final picture is with Kay on the inside giving her sigh of relief. Job well don by all involved and history is preserved. This is a great old house and we want to keep all we can of its original construction.