In 1974, an 11-year-old Paul Perdue shoved some coins into a newspaper rack to get a copy of the Pine Bluff Commercial. He said he wanted his own “pristine copy” of the paper, which carried a big headline: “Nixon Resigns.”
Since then, he’s been an avid collector of all things Pine Bluff, and he’s bringing much of that collection to town and displaying it on Saturday and Sunday.
“I probably have 10,000 items, including photographs,” he said by phone from his home in Dallas. “I’ll cram as much as I can into the U-Haul, but I don’t know that I’ll get more than half of it in there.”
The memorabilia will be on display in the conference room of the Hampton Inn, across from Walmart off Olive Street on Mallard Loop, from 10 to 6 on Saturday and noon to 5 on Sunday.
And if you were itching to buy some of those items, you will be disappointed because none of it is for sale. Perdue has something else in mind.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“We need a new museum, and I am trying to raise the awareness to that fact,” Perdue said. “So I will be approaching people who have a like interest in preserving Pine Bluff’s history and getting this idea going and hopefully getting a new museum built.”
The Pine Bluff-Jefferson County Historical Museum, located in the old train depot downtown, has been closed for many months because it is in need of repairs. Perdue said it would take a half-million dollars to put the building back into working order.
“We all know that isn’t going to happen, but the need is there for Pine Bluff to have a viable museum,” he said. “I’m a collector; you might say I’m a hoarder. But I’m not a businessman to the extent that I know anything about how one would go about building or creating a museum space. That’s why I need help.”
Perdue said his collection includes many Commercial newspapers that carried momentous headlines.
“I have one that says ‘Machine Gun Kelly Gunned Down,'” Perdue said. “A friend of mine found it 25 or 30 years ago in someone’s pile of trash. I’ve got Kennedy assassinated, John Glenn going into space, the moon landing, the beginnings and endings of wars, lots of Commercials.”
But there’s much more to the collection.
“I’ve got a post card collection, a photo collection, 20 binders of Pine Bluff ephemera, saloon jugs, the hitching post that stood in front of the Bell Mansion on Barraque that was built in 1852. A rocking chair made by a Pine Bluff woodworking company, milk cartons from an ice cream company that stood where the Arts Center is located now. Milk bottles, items from an oil company that used to be in town, and maybe the most unusual item, an electric lunch box made in the 1930s or 1940s by a Pine Bluff guy.”
And it is also because Perdue has so many items that he is eager to see a new museum in Pine Bluff’s future. “My father was a well-known history and Civil War buff,” said Perdue, who moved away from Pine Bluff after graduating high school in 1981. “And my grandfather ground it into me to be proud of where you’re from, be proud of Pine Bluff. So I’m this odd combination of historian and chamber of commerce-type rooter for Pine Bluff. That’s what I’ve turned out to be.”
Joe Dempsey, head of the board of the Pine Bluff museum, said he would be thrilled if Perdue can make something happen with his efforts. Dempsey said the museum had water damage from a leaky roof and from burst pipes after a freeze but that those problems have been fixed.
“I think a train station is a grand place to have a museum,” Dempsey said. “What could be more appropriate than that? But now black mold has been identified inside, and more than likely everything in there will have to be cleaned. The problem is the place has become a money pit. So what Perdue is doing is actually something we have also been working on.”
