On Lazy Thursdays, Hampton Businesses Shut Doors
Last updated Friday, December 26, 2008 10:22 PM CST in News
By The Associated Press
HAMPTON — In the seat of rural Calhoun County, don’t try to fill a prescription, buy a hammer or pick up a bouquet of flowers on Thursday afternoon.
Family businesses in the south Arkansas town still cling to the town’s 70-year-old tradition of shutting down at noon on Thursdays. Such midweek breaks were common across rural Arkansas through the mid-20th century, historians say, but seem to have faded everywhere but in Hampton, the largest city in Arkansas’ least-populated county.
“It’s just something we’ve always done, and we’re going to keep on doing it,” Max Dyson, a longtime resident and superintendent of the city’s schools, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “I really don’t know why. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, I guess.”
Maude Harrell, 89, said the practice got its start when her father got Hampton’s other businessmen to agree to close shop Thursday afternoons when he opened the Calhoun County Bank in Hampton in 1937. Bennett Harrell argued that the workweek had become too burdensome after the town’s businesses started operating on Saturdays. Plus, there was little money to make on Thursday afternoons anyway.
Today essential enterprises like the courthouse, grocery, gas stations, banks and schools — even Maude Harrell’s NAPA store — remain open all day Thursday. But most of the smaller, family-owned businesses — plus the Hampton clinic and the library — still lock their doors Thursday afternoon.
“It’s just kind of stuck all these years,” Harrell said.
Officials with neither the Arkansas Municipal League nor the Association of Arkansas Counties have heard of another town in Arkansas where that much commerce halts during traditional business hours. However, the practice used to be common across rural Arkansas in the early to mid-20th century, said Michael Dougan, an Arkansas historian who has written several books on the Natural State.
Dougan said he’s found newspaper advertisements from across Arkansas that document how towns shortened weekday hours, usually on Thursday or Wednesday afternoon, to compensate for longer Saturday hours.
“I’m inclined to think it was a nearly universal custom,” he said.
Robin Wilson, who owns Hampton Builders Supply, tried staying open Thursday afternoons when she bought the business 10 years ago. But the experiment ended quickly after few customers showed Thursday afternoons.
Now she closes at noon on Thursday, and, like Bennett Harrell 70 years ago, she makes up for the lost business by opening on Saturday.
“It will never change,” Wilson said. “These people don’t change. This town doesn’t change.”
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