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The Attraction at Piggott, Arkansas

© Renie Burghardt

A drive on Crowley's Ridge Parkway, in Eastern Arkansas, is a pleasant experience for a nature lover. The Ridge designated a National Scenic Byway in 1998, has six intrinsic qualities that qualify it as such: natural, archeological, historic, cultural, recreational, and scenic significance. And as a nature lover, I have reveled in the Ridge's dramatic and beautiful scenery for several years now. But on this last trip, I was heading to Piggott, Arkansas, one of the towns on the Ridge, to check out a different kind of attraction.

Piggott is a town of just under 4000 residents. It is an attractive town, with lovely homes, and beautiful scenery, but Piggott is an out-of-the-way town, not off of any major interstate, so one doesn't just stop there while on the way to some other destination. And as for shopping, well, forget that. Piggott doesn't even have a Wal-Mart store!

However, Piggott, Arkansas does have a major attraction, and people from all over the country, and even world flock there on purpose. What is this major attraction? Well, have you ever heard of Ernest Hemingway? Yes, that Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. He used to spend considerable time in Piggott, between the years of 1927 through 1940, the years he was married to his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. Pauline was the daughter of wealthy Piggott residents Paul and Mary Pfeiffer. She graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism, in St. Louis, in 1918, and later went to work for the Paris Bureau of Vogue Magazine, where she met Ernest at a party.

As a couple, Ernest and Pauline visited and stayed in Piggott quite frequently. And the years 1927 through 1940 were the years that Hemingway wrote eight books, and numerous short stories, doing much of the writing right there in Piggott, in the Barn Studio! The movie version of A Farewell to Arms, published in 1929, actually had its world premiere at the Franklin Theater in Piggott, in December of 1932. And back then, Piggott was a much smaller town!

Pauline and Ernest's marriage lasted 13 years and produced 2 sons. Those were the years Hemingway rose to fame, and was financially supported by the Pfeiffer family. Pauline's uncle Gustavus Pfeiffer bought the couple a car, a home in Key West, and financed their African Safari. Folks in Piggott thought of Ernest as a freeloader, mooching off his in-laws after squandering his earnings from his books on extravagant living. So, folks who worked hard for a living in the 30s weren't much impressed by Hemingway, even after he won the Pulitzer Prize. He in turn, considered the locals, country bumpkins, although he did enjoy quail hunting, with some of them.

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