Magazine publishes Nevada woman's story

By Steve Moyer

Herald-Tribune

NEVADA, Mo. -- The April/May issue of "Reminisce" magazine features an article from a Nevada resident, Pauline Sewell. Sewell married a Mexico, Mo., musician, Arthur Sewell, who was in a trio that won the Old Fiddlers contest in Moberly in 1935.

Arthur is pictured in bell-bottom overalls with his guitar on his knee. Sewell noted that he looks like Elvis Presley in the picture, which is ironic, given that she is the one related to Presley.

"I'm kin to the Presleys," Sewell said. "My great grandparents were Presleys and they were Cherokee Indians who had 14 kids. They walked in the trail of tears with 12 of them. They're buried out by the state hospital at a little church there."

In the article, Sewell tells how her husband started playing the guitar as a young boy, sneaking his sister's guitar out of the house to play it in an alley out back.

Sewell related that she met her husband in 1939, marrying him within three weeks of meeting him. It's a marriage that lasted 60 years. Arthur financed the marriage by hocking his guitar to pay the preacher and buy a ring.

Sewell said she read in the magazine that anyone submitting material should wait at least a month to ask about the submission, but she heard back well before a month passed.

"I just wrote it and sent it in on a Friday," Sewell said. "They called the next Tuesday that it was going to be in, but it was a year before it finally went in."

Sewell said she was a Nevada native and moved close to where she was born after Arthur returned from his service in the army of occupation after World War II. The couple owned and operated a bait shop on Tower Street for many years.

"I was born in Nevada, right across where the bait shop was," Sewell said. "When my husband came back, we got the bait shop and lived there."

Sewell said the bait shop she and her husband operated attracted generations of loyal customers.

"We had boys who would come in and buy bait and, years later, they would come in with their boys," Sewell said.