Food memories

I agree with Bob Lancaster. John Noah’s had one of the best plate lunches in Pine Bluff. That fried chicken was almost always perfect and the cole slaw — oh, my gosh. It was a sad day when that restaurant closed. That town has seen some wonderful restaurants go by the wayside in the last 10 or so years. Tommy’s was a personal favorite of mine — I jones for their onion rings right now. If you were lucky, you’d come in on a day that Nita (Priakos) had just made some baklava. From pick-up trucks to Lexuses, you’d see it all at Tommy’s. Another restaurant that was well known was the Famous Cafe, at 4th and State. Mrs. Manuel made absolutely the best collard greens in the world and her brown gravy was ambrosial. Jones Cafe, when it was at Noble Lake and had the two queens of the kitchen (Mutt and Mrs. Jones) was so much better than the newer restaurant. If you wanted just a tech more of something, you could peek in those swinging doors in the kitchen and ask for it. The view from the booths in the back was cool, too — the lake and birds walking around. I would kill for the recipe for the relish they served. Dang it, I guess I’m just going to have to settle for a TV dinner tonight. All this talk of good food has made me really hungry.

Lynn Doggett

From the Internet

Not so great

I have to disagree with your Best of Arkansas Best Grocery Store. I shop at the Heights Kroger Store, but since they remodeled I have found about a third of the products I have always purchased at this store are no longer in stock. When I asked the reason I was told it was a regional decision, not made by the store. Still with the price of gas around $4 a gallon it is becoming increasingly difficult to travel to three or four different stores to find products. At this rate I’ll have to sacrifice a beautiful, clean store for a store that carries the products I need at a price I can afford.

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Heather Plankenhorn

Little Rock

Real colleges

Re Doug Smith’s article about Rep. Donna Hutchinson’s suggestion to end remedial courses at four-year colleges and the suggestion that some four-year schools might be better as community colleges:

While old school, the dynamics and rich expression/development afforded by the Pine Bluff campus is a plus whether or not the NWA types comprehend it or not. To understand the resources and dynamics required for education alive with spiritual underpinning requires more than perhaps the State can address, but structural shifts are in the making.

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Bill Wells

Louisville, Ky.

 

Follow the money

Most folks know that Republicans don’t do much without a profit being realized in it. Most folks also know that Arkansas Democrat-Gazette publisher Walter Hussman is known for squeezing his nickels until the buffalo bellows.

So, I and many others I’m aware of are curious as to how much Mr. Hussman is realizing in profit from the taxpayers having rented his old Gazette building? And do the recent renovations go to his ownership when and if the three charter schools are no longer his tenants.

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Quite a few of the people involved in that project are tightly knit with Hussman. The lawyer, Jess Askew, has been the lawyer for Hussman in several legal matters.

Just whose schools are these? What other schools would the city of Little Rock go through such gyrations to accommodate traffic and in so many other aspects? Does anyone think the city would do such back flips for a bunch of other charter schools in the area?

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It’s about time, in fact long overdue, that a reporter of good reputation and qualification do some investigation of those matters. Tell us where our money goes and into whose pocket it finally goes. What are the rental fees charged? What are the salaries of all personnel in administration of them? What are the teachers’ salaries and how do they compare with those of the public school teachers? What are the incentives and other perks available to the various employees at the schools?

Since we, the taxpayers, are being tapped to keep Roy Brooks employed to satisfy Mr. Hussman and his cohort, and to prove to us that the Big Shots are in charge, we have a right to the facts.

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The School Board in Little Rock voted Mr. Brooks OUT and the Hussman cohort, including the Democrat-Gazette editor just couldn’t stand that. After all, it was a BLACK majority of the board so from their perspective it had to be racially motivated by folks who don’t yet know how to properly handle new-found power!

Please have someone lance this festering boil and inform us what is going on and give us the hidden information they’ve so carefully kept quiet about.

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Karl Hansen

Hensley

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