Tracy Lockhart was a familiar figure in downtown Rogers in the mid 1900s. He was a peddler, one of several who roamed the streets of Rogers trying to make an honest dollar however they could. Tracy and his brother Bill were badly injured in woodcutting accidents when they were youngsters, leaving them disabled for life. With Bill unable to work, Tracy had to find a way to earn their keep.
Tracy began peddling around 1922, at first selling wood and then rabbits. In spring and summer he took his neighbors’ surplus produce and sold it where he could, often walking six or seven miles into Rogers or to Bentonville, Springdale, or Fayetteville if he could catch a lift.
The brothers moved into a one-room shack in the southern part of Rogers in the 1940s. About that time Tracy began carrying an oak-splint market basket on his arm filled with all sorts of goods, including candy and gum. Singing his song, “Chewing gum, candy, right here, handy,” he’d make the lunchtime rounds of the chicken plant or the canning factory. [Click here for more on Tracy’s market basket, now in the Museum’s collections.] Later on he acquired a small push cart with lettering on the sides advertising Beaulieu’s Hardware store, seen here in this often-reproduced photograph taken by well-known photographer Hubert Musteen.
Tracy Lockhart and his
push cart, 1954. (Hubert Musteen photo) Neg.
#N007927.
Brother Bill died in 1964 and Tracy in 1967;
they’re buried at Tuck’s Chapel Cemetery.
Longtime resident, businesswoman, and
unofficial town historian Opal Beck remembers
the day of Tracy’s funeral, when downtown
shopkeepers and professional men closed their
doors so they could attend, a mark of honor
and respect in her eyes.