American youth dissatisfied with mainstream values in the 1960s and ‘70s expressed their rebellion in a number of ways. Men grew long hair. They marched for women’s lib and Black civil rights. Protests against the Vietnam war led the nightly news. Free love, pot, LSD, and Bob Dylan were in. A counterculture fundamental was a belief that industrialization degraded the environment. Harmony with nature was soulful.
Hippies founded communes to grow their own food, enjoy clean air and water, and do as they pleased without the interference of squares and killjoys. A few of these idealistic, back-to-the-landers headed for the hills and hollers of the Ozarks, copies of The Mother Earth News and the Whole Earth Catalogue in their rucksacks.
In the 1970s author Thomas Michael Kersen’s 29-year-old father, Michael Kersen, quit his managerial job at a fast-food restaurant in El Paso, packed his family, and, with some friends, lit out for an 80-acre patch of property in the wilds of the Arkansas Ozarks. They wintered in a shack without electricity or running water. When it rained, he and his sister stuffed newspapers (unsuccessfully) in holes in the roof.
Like similar groups, the Kersens were unschooled in agriculture, underfunded, and oddly unaware of other colonies. The middle-class urban youth, many college-educated, respected the music, crafts and survival skills of old-timers and sometimes bonded with their backcountry neighbors. Conservative retirees, who were also attracted by the cheap land, were more likely to take exception to counterculture lifestyles.
Despite the vividly described hardships, the experience was stimulating for young Kersen. He is today an associate professor of sociology at Jackson State University, Mississippi. During the pursuit of his PhD from Mississippi State University he became aware of the complexities of Southern identities. Southern Missouri and northern Arkansas are not “Dixie” but have Southern components. Like Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis on the American frontier, Professor Kersen thinks the Ozarks is also a “transformational space”:
In the case of my research, I consider the Ozarks itself a liminal place; it is a “betwixt and between” region at the crossroads of various types of cultural heritages, and one in which isolation and independence spurred a diverging culture.
This “betwixt and between” state of the Ozarks often puts the region and its inhabitants in a situation of challenging normative structure of society at all levels. The region abounds with blurred boundaries such as southern/nonsouthern, past/future, and individualistic/communalistic. It also attracts people who live on the margins of society, sometimes known as tricksters, or “edgemen” as Turner called them. Last, when looking at the Ozarks, one is confronted with the question of whether the region “live(s) with and in the nation as a whole” and how the nation regards the region.
The liminal nature of the Ozarks fosters eccentricity and creativity. The Ozarks has also captured the imagination of people outside the region and motivated them to engage in alternative or countercultural activities. The region has lured all types of edgemen and women: folks that were part of counterculture groups, communards, cultists, and UFO enthusiasts. In addition to fringe groups, reporters, Hollywood personalities, and other key figures in popular culture have found the mythopoetic aspects of the region exciting to explore and exploit. Al Capp used Li’l Abner’s Dogpatch, a mythic Ozarks, to explore social problems. Even real towns, such as Eureka Springs, have a long history as places many people believe possess a mystical energy vortex. To a greater extent than in other regions, some Americans sought an idealized version of the Ozarks to found communes and follow back-to-the-land practices.
Moving past previous research that discusses the Ozarks as a unique region, I argue that the Ozarks is a liminal region, or a “thin place.” They are a place that defies conventional categorization and often attracts creative, often marginal people. The Ozarks are where the sacred and paranormal worlds are close by. Such places, like the town of Eureka Springs, foster inclusiveness, and creativity. This live-and-let-live attitude was attractive to communal folk who wanted to make their lives and the world a better place. It is also a region that appealed to the religious devout, LGBT individuals, alternative economic practitioners, and others as somewhere they could live more freely and openly than was the case in most other regions.
Wrote Kersen: “In the pages to follow, I use my sociological imagination as a scaffolding for the narrative about the Ozarks, modernity, and popular culture. Part of the sociological imagination depends on exploring the cultural and historical contexts that have shaped the lives of a number of different groups that have called the Ozarks home.”
Indeed, few books on the Ozarks mention Oswald Spengler, Soren Kierkegaard, Max Weber, or Paul Tillich. The book does evidence a familiarity with standard Ozark history and literature: “The Ozark Symposium has been the springboard from which much of what is in this book began. I will always be grateful that Brooks Blevins was the first to invite me to come and hear the various presenters. After that first visit, I was hooked and have faithfully attended every year.”
Some of Kersen’s interpretations are unorthodox, such as considering Li’l Abner a “trickster”—a mythic character known for his defeat of conventionality and disrespect for authority. Inserting a Jungian archetype in an Ozark book is an example of his “sociological imagination.” Al Capp’s hunky hillbilly hero is not usually considered devious or clever.
“Where misfits fit” is a phrase that has been applied to Eureka Springs, Arkansas for decades. Founded on a misconception that its numerous springs had medical benefits, the town attracted schemers and dreamers a century before the influx of counterculture youth. A haven for writers and artists, it was hip before there were hippies. Kersen describes the relative harmony the bohemian resort town achieved between its liberal constituents and the builders of a Christian theme park. Anti-Semite Gerald L. K. Smith never fully realized his dreams, but he did live long enough to create a 65-foot statue of Christ and found an outdoor drama, The Great Passion Play. Due to the financial benefits derived from these attractions, town fathers overlooked Smith’s bigoted past. So too have the newly arrived counter-culturalists. “Development and money making are very important,” wrote Kersen.
Eureka Springs Centennial mural by Louis Freund, 1979. This former Victorian spa in the hills of northwest Arkansas became a haven for folky bohemians when faith in spring-water cures died. It was a perfect habitat for counter-cultural idealists in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Eureka Springs Art Wall is a city and arts council project. The Plywood panels painted by local high school students often illustrate the hippie influence on the town’s image. A few miles north, Lothlorian Commune builds an impressive wood geodesic dome. Like many, back-to-the-land ventures, it folded after a decade. Many of its idealistic members went on to successful professional careers, several achieving doctorate degrees. Basically, the book advocates the idea that the countercultural invasion of the Ozarks has been overall beneficial.
The hippie era contributions to Ozark music are discussed. Several rock bands achieved, at least for a time, national recognition. Black Oak Arkansas, though from a small delta community of that name, did repair between tours to a 1,300-acre commune twenty miles from Mountain Home. Given that the trickster exhibits “unbridled sexuality” and Black Oak’s music was uninhibited, Kersen considers them, like Li’l Abner, tricksters.
Ozark Mountain Daredevils, the other regional group to achieve fame, wasn’t as “misfit” as the bad boys from Black Oak: “Many of the songs are set in dreams and mythic places that emphasize ambiguous or indeterminant facets of liminal space. Often, these fables focus on the wanderer, the homebody, modernity, and nostalgia.”
He met with members of a little-known band who personified, in his mind, the Ozark back-to-the-land movement:
…the Hot Mulch Band arose out of the region’s communal efforts, and thus, it emerged as the musical expression of alternative living in the Ozarks. Indeed, the band epitomized the cultural and creative matrix of the region and showed people that there was a third way to life rather than left or right. … Many back-to-landers in the Missouri Ozarks were focused on living harmoniously with nature, each other, and with their neighbors. Such living is a form of communitas that linked a reverence of nature and highlighted sustainable energy and food practices.
Indeed a 1981 song by the Hot Mulch Band, Ozark Mountain Mother Earth News Freak, is an anthem to the movement:
Well, I’m moving to the country where
Everything is fine, I’m
Gonna live in a dome and drink dandelion
Wine and
When the collapse comes I won’t get the
Blues
I’ll have all the back issues of the Mother
Earth News.
I’ll get my little sweetie and my
Volkswagon Van
See the real-estate man and buy me
Some land
A few acres cleared with lots of trees
A place
That we can fix up however we please
We’ll get our eggs from chickens and
Milk from a cow
A horse that plows and book that tells
How
An organic garden growin’ comfrey and
Peas
Getting honey from our bees and fruit
From our trees
Self-sufficient, well that’s the name of the
Game, I’m
Gonna get myself a system self contained
A wind mill to give me my electricity
No phone in my dome I’ll use ESP
No more Coca Cola, stop eating
Trash
Get into plantin’ gonna grow my own
Stash
Plant by the moon and talk to my plants
Consult the I Ching and learn to do a rain
Dance
Get into harmony with Nature and the Universe
I’ll do Yoga in the morning if my back
Don’t get worse
Red Zinger Tea and Vitamin B-6
One keeps me high the other keeps off
Ticks
Listen to Ozark Mountain Mother Earth News Freak,
If Kersen’s “sociological imagination” is occasionally professorial, overall, the book is thoughtful and original. His coverage of bands with a back-to-the-land tie-in and the fate of various communes is noteworthy. In the final three chapters, the author affirms his belief that the overall influence of these idealistic, neo-Romantic, often educated young rebels on the region has been positive.
Misfits fits nicely with an earlier book, Hipbillies: Deep Revolution in the Arkansas Ozarks by Jared M. Phillips whom Kersen references. Both college professors are in sympathy with the liberal beliefs and agendas of the young Ozark immigrants. They do realistically point out examples of their naïveté and agricultural inexperience. Persisting groups have overcome their initial ignorance and some have even prospered.
One might think the influx of pot-smoking, anti-establishment rebels would clash with conservative natives. For the most part, they were tolerated. Kersen’s book makes the point the Ozarks has historically been a refuge for those out-of-step with the dominant culture. Misfits and hipbillies fit in remarkably well and when their ventures flopped it was not due to the prejudice of locals. It’s a neat trick reconciling personal recollections with two distinct mythos—the old traditional history and newer hippie experiences, but Thomas Kersen has done an artful job.
Where Misfits Fit is available from the University Press of Mississippi for $25 (paperback) plus postage.
