Branding the Ozarks

Branding the Ozarks, Lens & Pen Press, See the Ozarks, Tourism, Uncategorized

COMPETING OZARK TOURISM ICONS: Old Matt’s Cabin vs. Bagnell Dam

November 13, 2023 • 0 Comments

The two biggest tourist centers of the Ozarks are Branson and Lake of the Ozarks. While graphics used to promote travel do not necessarily accurately or honestly represent those places, they can betray the character and history of places. Such is the case with the imagery used to advertise and decorate souvenirs of these two attractions.

Souvenirs from the Shepherd of the Hills Country (Branson). Its dominant motif is Old Matt’s Cabin from Harold Bell Wright’s “The Shepherd of the Hills.” Tourism and recreation were not add-ons to a dam and reservoir project here. They long preceded the building of artificial reservoirs and featured fishing and outdoor recreation with the bucolic locals playing a role.

Branson, near the Missouri-Arkansas line in southwest Missouri, began attracting travelers in the early 190s. Harold Bell Wright’s bucolic novel, Shepherd of the Hills, drew attention to the upper White River hills and their rustic inhabitants. Wright portrayed the inhabitants as colorful primitives and locals claimed to be the inspiration for various characters. The Ross house, known as Old Matt’s Cabin, became a symbol of for the area. It decorated brochures and gifts communicating that a vacation in the Shepherd of the Hills country was trip to the trouble-free past.

Lake of the Ozarks souvenirs feature Bagnell Dam, which created the reservoir for hydro-electric power, not recreation or flood control.

Lake of the Ozarks, on the northern flank of the Ozarks was created in 1931 by the closing of Bagnell Dam. This blockage of the Osage River was built by Union Electric (now AmerenUE) to supply electricity. Lacking any comparable settler mythos, pictures of the dam represented the new lake. This wonder of technology was plastered on tourist promotions and souvenirs. From the beginning, its recreational attractions have been hedonistic pleasure, boating, and fishing in the 54,000-acre reservoir. Perhaps the difficulty of picturing the artificial lake led to the inappropriate use of an industrial structure.

Most Lens & Pen titles are on sale on our website for half price, postage paid. See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, where you can find many more examples of this contrasting branding, is now $12.50, postage paid.

Branding the Ozarks, Uncategorized

The saga of young anti-moderns settling in a region renowned for its pre-modern image is the subject of an intriguing new book, “WHERE MISFITS FIT: COUNTERCULTURE AND INFLUENCE IN THE OZARKS”

October 10, 2021 • 0 Comments

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.

Branding the Ozarks

EXTRAORDINARY PORTRAITS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE

November 9, 2020 • 0 Comments

This collection of short stories by Steve Wiegenstein describes quirky small town and rural Ozarkers, both realistically and compassionately. If they are all crazily dysfunctional he doesn’t come down too hard on them for their lack of comprehension of the world around them. Chronicles of the clueless make for interesting reading. These are enormously enjoyable tales. Often the marginalized are described with unrealistic, gummy sympathies that are in fact thinly disguised condescension. Slice-of-life literature often has an ideological point—the characters being pawns of a political point of view. His characters may be in difficult circumstances, but they don’t come off as victims. That makes them more alive than much fiction about ordinary folks. These are very real screwballs, wonderfully set in out of the way places—like the scattered lights you see from an airplane traveling between coasts.

Some short “Discussion Questions” are in the back of the book: “Although the stories are set in the Ozarks, do you see them as having wider significance about people and life in general?”

William Faulkner’s Mississippi is also populated by intriguing eccentrics, but Wiegenstein’s style isn’t Faulkner-esque. His sentences are way too short for one thing. That there are some similarities indicates Wiegenstein’s stories have “wider significance.”

Leland thought the tales oddly Fellini-esque—indicating a very much “wider significance”—not like the surrealism of the Italian filmmaker’s wild indifference to chronological time and juxtapositions of supreme strangeness, but rather in his poetic naturalism. Fellini has a similar love of ordinary folk and forgiveness of their profound misconceptions and occasional violence. Scattered Lights stories are quite cinematic as well. Leland said, “As I read on, I began hearing Nina Rota for the score, not fiddles or banjoes. Pulling up some Rota scores on YouTube, I read more of the stories as Rota’s wistful music played and it was indeed a wondrous fit.”

Check out Steve’s blog while you’re at it!

Branding the Ozarks

SURREAL 1907 OSAGE RIVER POSTCARD

October 6, 2020 • 0 Comments

What in the world is that ball on a stick that pokes up from the bottom left of this real photo postcard marked, “Osage River”? It’s credited to “Becraft Photog. (21).” We have half a dozen of his mostly of Osceola and the upriver spa, Monegaw Springs, cards. In our book Damming the Osage (page 7) we used a wonderful image of his that shows a 68 lb. blue cat proudly displayed by two men and a boy on the streets of that old river town.

This enigmatic view is postmarked “Monegaw Springs Aug. 23, 1907.” It was addressed to Miss Mary Mifflin Kansas City, Mo: “Dear Sister, this is a splendid picture of the Osage. Having a royal good time. Am rather used to the strange country ways by now … lovingly, Edna.” “Strange country” indeed—what IS that ball on a stick?

Did surrealism, the art of incongruous imagery, hit the Ozarks a decade before the term was even coined in Paris? If you’ve got any idea what that ball and stick are please let us know at lensandpen@yahoo.com

Branding the Ozarks, Hillbillies

KNOW YOUR HILLBILLIES

August 17, 2020 • 0 Comments

For some reason, we have accumulated an embarrassingly extensive collection of everything hillbilly. For some reason, we put a group of our three-dimensional hillbillies together against a graduated seamless background and photographed them. This was to advance a book project which is as-yet unpublished. Naturally when more schooled writers than we’uns hold forth on the subject we pay attention.

In an August 15 post, “Playing the Stereotype,” Steve Wiegenstein borrowed an early photo of jazz guitarist Les Paul performing hillbilly music as “Rhubarb Red” from Thomas Peters Facebook post. Dr. Peters is working on a book on the Ozark Jubilee and Springfield’s radio station, KWTO (“Keep Watching the Ozarks”). It “for some reason” reminded Professor Wiegenstein of the crazy Cohen Brothers film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Under the photo of Buster on horseback playing a guitar, he wrote of that scene where Buster sings, “Cool Water,” the joke being that that song isn’t a cowboy song, but a 1940s pop hit:

What follows is a series of ghastly/comic episodes that both play on Western-story stereotypes and embrace them, just as the “hillbilly” image both mocks, uses, and embraces that stereotype as well.

We make art where we find it, with the materials at hand. Sometimes those materials include simplified versions of ourselves, and then we must decide whether to challenge the stereotype or play with it. I think either decision can work, as long as the stereotype is approached with conscious intent. It’s when stereotypes are presented unconsciously and uncritically that they harm. The rural rustic, the hayseed, has been with us since Greek comedy, and we will probably never get rid of it. So, we might as well play with that image as we move toward the larger points we are trying to make in our literary and creative work.

It’s encouraging that scholars like Drs. Peters and Wiegenstein are looking into the complexities of the hillbilly trope. It’s gratifying that Wiegenstein believes that “The rural rustic, the hayseed, has been with us since Greek comedy, and we will probably never get rid of it.” Perhaps the time and coin we’ve put into this vast study collection are justified.

“Whether to challenge the stereotype or play with it,” as Wiegenstein so nicely states, is one challenge we faced working on our publishing project. Should we be amused or outraged at these rustic embodiments of ignorance and earthiness? Are white primitives cool or even allowable? We’ll have to check with Rousseau.

Branding the Ozarks, Small Towns

“MIX AND MINGLE” AT ASH GROVE’S MAIN STREET HERITAGE FESTIVAL

January 12, 2015 • 0 Comments

Although I arrived at the Ash Grove festival late in the afternoon there were still a few folks milling around on Main Street. There were, like many country trade centers, empty buildings, but none looked like they were about to fall in. Some had going businesses. Others displayed relics of the town’s past in their windows. Overall, the scene did not fulfill the stereotype of villages on the verge of economic and cultural collapse. Writers like Edgar Lee Masters and Sinclair Lewis may have erred when, a century ago, they located all that is dysfunctional and antiquated about America exclusively in small towns. Could it be that cultural stagnation and backwardness may manifest itself in urban and suburban environments as well? A place like Ash Grove that takes civic pride in former residents Nathan Boone (Daniel’s son) and notorious gangster Ma Barker displays up-to-date diversity. It mixes historical eras with wild abandon. The place fits our HYPERCOMMON slogan – ordinary isn’t.

“Is this Ash Grove?” asked the woman in a red dress behind the wheel of a small car that pulled off on the shoulder beside me. “This is Halltown,” I told her. She didn’t understand my directions until a young girl produced a Missouri road map from the glove compartment and I showed her the way to Ash Grove. “I’m performing at some kind of festival there. Come see me.” She did a U turn and headed back east following my directions.

When I finished taking pictures of Halltown I went on to Paris Spring Junction. (Click on the links to see those posts). Later that afternoon I did end up in Ash Grove, and I did see a picture of the lost woman in red propped up by the door of a café. There was no Sing-a-Long Sweet Memories of Silent Movie Music coming from inside, so I did not hear Teresa Arth sing and play the piano. There was a strolling harmonica player, though.

The light was perfect, but it would not last. Things were definitely winding down at the Ash Grove Main Street Heritage Festival. Attendance was sparse, but the old buildings looked good through my viewfinder. The century old structures were an intriguing combination of decay, restoration, and unfinished restoration, many enhanced with stylistic choices not yet categorized by architectural historians. Such esthetic chaos may disturb purists, but American development has been wildly eclectic from the beginning. Bricolage, an arty French word, describes the practice of incorporating readily available materials or styles into an object or work. Unfamiliarity with the theory hasn’t stopped the citizens of this small town from bricolaging the hell out of their buildings, the collections of artifacts in those buildings, and culture.

Click on any image to start slide show.

Esthetically as well as socially, Ash Grove’s festival was indeed “mix and mingle” as 105.9 KGBX’s press release said of the event. I pulled it up on the web after getting home:

Back Roads to Main Street Heritage Festival
October 18 – 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.
Main Street – Ash Grove

CELEBRATING AND SHARING A FASCINATING HERITAGE

Notable Missourian Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone, early settler – here…. Birthplace of notorious 1930’s gangster Ma Barker, on FBI’s Most Wanted List – here……Civil War bushwhackers’ terrorizing raids – here……Main Street shoot out between horse thieves – here.…..Murder over missing foxhound said to be basis of book and movie, “The Voice of Bugle Ann” – here.……Enterprises that distinguished our area nationwide, Ash Grove Portland Cement and Phenix Marble Quarry – here.

Celebration of this fascinating heritage begins on Historic Main Street. It is a mix and mingle of Civil War to 20’s and 30’s eras in fashion, buggies and vintage vehicles, live music – fiddle — ragtime piano -Irish folk songs, plus foods from the days of biscuits always on the table, sarsaparilla a favored drink, and nothing was better than catfish fried up in a pan.

Come in historic full attire…enter the 10:00 am costume contest (for all ages and gender)… and a free order of biscuits and gravy is yours. Costume up your whole family and not only is your breakfast covered but so are the Halloween costumes.

No costume? Get in the spirit of the day with a flapper headband or gangster hat from the Headband and Hat shop. Don’t forget your camera to get a photo of your new look with flapper, Sara Vega, professional model.

Listen to the story telling and watch the re-enactments of stories from our heritage….join in the games and competitions….see artisans demonstrate their skills…make and take a painted gourd… make a planter from Ash Grove cement and paper… AND keep an eye out for Ma Barker’s boys – they’re usually up to no good.

As well as the display of a log cabin quilt that was being raffled off for a good cause, there was a photo exhibit on Main Street. Clothes pinned to clothes lines were photographs taken by the citizenry. Voting was underway to select the best images for a community calendar. Sunsets were the most popular subject.

Click on any image to start slide show.

Even if I had missed the opening act, the coda of the celebration was a provocative visual display of old, new, in between and outside the boundaries of time. It certainly wasn’t one of the laid-out-on-a-slab villages I’d photographed for Ozark Prairie Border. Ash Grove has a pulse.

Googling Ash Grove, I pulled up a dissenting opinion. “Agricultural commerce has abandoned Ash Grove. It isn’t a sleepy community. It’s in a coma,” wrote freelance reviewer of live music, Bill Glahn. He pronounced the town of 1,500 a victim of corporate greed that has killed the family farm and sent factory jobs overseas. Glahn is active in Occupy Springfield, a franchise of Occupy Wall Street, so it’s not difficult to discern his political leanings.

He motored up to Ash Grove from Springfield on Labor Day of 2010, “to make some kind of photographic record that this place actually existed before it crumbled into dust.” The anti capitalist protest group didn’t begin until September 2011. So he wouldn’t have been able to start a subchapter – Occupy Ash Grove – to protest the pernicious influence of big business on small towns. After my brief sojourn I don’t get the feeling the place was or is ripe for revolution.

Mural proclaiming Ash Grove’s debt to the coming of the railroad. Although the homestead of Daniel Boone’s son Nathan has become a popular state park just north of the town it was the arrival of the Missouri Pacific railroad in the late 1800s that spurred an era of prosperity, and is embedded in local memory. As well as a decent farming resource (which blogger Glahn prematurely dismissed) a nearby vein of excellent limestone was mined for building stone and crushed as aggregate. During the Depression construction virtually ceased in America and farm commodities suffered a price collapse. Ash Grove has more than survived. Though the train no longer stops and the quarry has closed, it has highway access to Springfield, a small city with a surfeit of shopping and gobs of jobs.

Branding the Ozarks, Small Towns

THE OLD MILL IS GONE, BUT HURLEY YET DISPLAYS RELICS OF OBSOLESCENCE

January 5, 2015 • 2 Comments

Had the son of the owner of the water mill at Hurley Missouri been more careful with his brush fire I could have photographed an earlier and more conventionally nostalgic relic of technology. The rambling three-story, crudely built, added-on, and deteriorating structure built in 1892 burned to ashes on April 3, 2005. Don Christenson had purchased the property in 1997 and embarked on an ambitious restoration when it was ignited by his boy’s careless cleanup effort. A newspaper article at the time said the heartbroken son was going to earn money to rebuild it for his dad. Obviously that didn’t happen. The site today consists of a few fire-scorched and rusty pieces of machinery set among some foundation stones. Invasive weeds and sumac are already being replaced by trees. In another decade, finding any evidence there was ever a historic mill here will require archaeology.

In the lot next to the overgrown watermill ruins is a neat small stone filling station with an old green car in front and a faded orange visible gas pump. A rusted iron-wheeled saw completes the exhibit of dated objects but not so ancient as the medieval technology of watermills. Other obsolete machines and implements are scattered about the grounds. The walnut buying operation is closed, but has a sign that indicates when it will reopen. A machine that holds the nuts deposits the shells into an old two-ton baby blue Ford truck with a yellow hood and faded red bed. Gathering food from the woods is even more ancient than the utilization of waterpower to grind grain.

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Across the road is a café, and behind it the Spring Creek Farm and Home business, which is in the early stages of ruination. Its milling machinery did not grind wheat for baking bread. It processed trucked-in grain for cattle feed. After the Missouri-Pacific Railroad came through Hurley in 1905, bringing flour that was grown and milled in Kansas with more efficiency than the small Stone County farms and watermill. The old watermill began primarily producing animal food. What outside competition doomed the Spring Creek Farm and Home enterprise, we haven’t learned.

Even if this recently deceased business has plastic, concrete block, and tin building materials instead of the more venerable stone and wood of classic ruins, time is lashing the remains. The untreated wounds of neglect are evident. But there are enough scarred and weathered wood components to wish for an 8 x 10 view camera and slow film.

At the back of the defunct agricultural service a muddy road plunges into a young forest. On the hills are steps, foundations and collapsed frame houses. There was a time in the Twenties and Thirties when the railroad brought some opportunities for these frugal subsistence farmers. Hurley then had twice its current population of 170. A 1927 Stone County booklet pronounced with only a little puffery:

Hurley is said to be the most mutual, cooperative and moral town in Stone County. It is a small town on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, between Crane and Springfield and surrounded with very fertile productive land, and it claims, in proportion to size, the largest trade of any town in the county. A stream of clear spring water runs through the center of the town sufficient to grind out the best flour, meal and feed; and the pretty homes and streets are all clean and the inhabitants healthy. Of course such a town and community has a good school and religious services and the business firms listed below carry a complete stock of merchandise, machinery, lumber, feed, etc., to supply the surrounding country.

A recollection of Hurley 1920-1990 by Ray Gold on www.rootsweb.ancestry.com tells of this hardscrabble but not demoralizing Ozark existence:

No two people will remember the same things just alike, and there is good reasons for that. We were all real close to our families, because of poor roads, poor transportation, very few telephones, no electricity, no TV, no money, and many other reasons. We really didn’t miss any of this stuff, because we didn’t know anything about it. Everyone lived about the same way as their neighbor. We all had out houses and no running water in our homes. If we were lucky we had a cellar full of canned fruit and vegetables, an old cow for our milk, and a smoke-house full of hog meat and lard. That is a few of the reasons we never got very far from home. When we were real young, everything was strange to us if we were ten miles from home. So we just rememberd things that happened in our small world.

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There is a larger than average quantity of such recollections from this part of the Ozarks. Mary Scott Hair, aka “Samanthy,” wrote a paid column beginning in 1948 in the Crane Chronicle that recorded the life and times of Hurleyites. Her father had once owned the Spring Creek Mill, and she and her husband and daughter worked a small farm nearby. In a 1982 interview printed in Bittersweet she summed up her life:

I have lived in Hurley all my life and I probably won’t live anywhere else. I am rooted and grounded in Hurley. My younger days were Hurley’s best days. Sometime I wonder whether or not it was all make believe.

Such rural experiences related by Stone County old timers were not unique to the Ozarks. As Hurley was on the fringe of the Shepherd of the Hills country whose mythos idealized plain folk, these natives may have been incentivized and more confident writing down the minutia of their bucolic existence than small farmers in regions not celebrated in books and promoted by Arcadian tourism.

Branding the Ozarks, Tourism

DEWEY JACKSON SHORT: FROM DONKEY CART ENTREPRENEUR TO U.S. CONGRESSMAN

December 15, 2014 • 0 Comments

We have discovered that the young man standing up in this real photo postcard by famed photographer George P. Hall is in all likelihood the celebrated “Orator of the Ozarks,” oft re-elected Congressman Dewey Jackson Short. It’s likely young Dewey picked up many of his pithy Ozark sayings consorting with the float fishermen he serviced with his donkey cart business. Catering to tourism had been his first paying job. Throughout his political career he remained an advocate of bringing vacationers to the Ozarks. This promotion culminated in securing the funds to build Table Rock Dam whose waters would back up nearly to Galena, ending the famous float trips Dewey once serviced.

We have discovered that the young man standing up in this real photo postcard by famed photographer George E. Hall is in all likelihood the celebrated “Orator of the Ozarks,” oft re-elected Congressman Dewey Jackson Short. It’s likely young Dewey picked up many of his pithy Ozark sayings consorting with the float fishermen he serviced with his donkey cart business. Catering to tourism had been his first paying job. Throughout his political career he remained an advocate of bringing vacationers to the Ozarks. This promotion culminated in securing the funds to build Table Rock Dam whose waters would back up nearly to Galena, ending the famous float trips Dewey once serviced.

In our post on the remarkable Y Bridge that brought tourists across the James River into Galena, Missouri, we mentioned that Dewey Short spoke at the dedication in 1927. The year after he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. During his twenty-four years in Congress Short became nationally known for his colorful speeches, which drew inspiration equally from Shakespeare, the Bible, and vernacular hill speak.

Dewey Short: Orator of the Ozarks, Vol. 1 by Robert S. Wiley. Very interesting account of political and cultural life in the Ozarks between World War I and World War II. Out of print but available used on amazon.com

Dewey Short: Orator of the Ozarks, Vol. 1 by Robert S. Wiley. It is a very interesting account of political and cultural life in the Ozarks between World War I and World War II. Out of print but available used on amazon.com. Click on image of book cover to go to book listing on Amazon.

Though Short had degrees from American colleges and had studied at Oxford and Heidelberg universities he mixed his quotes from the classics with down home witticisms. In Dewey Short: Orator of the Ozarks, Vol. 1 Robert S. Wiley quotes an example of Short’s folky injections given at a Republican banquet and reported in a 1928 Sedalia Capital :

He compared the g.o.p. elephant with the Democratic mule, which he termed a jackass.

“Compare the two,” he said. “The elephant is really an intelligent animal. It can perform in circuses and has been used as a domestic animal – but on the other hand the jackass, can do nothing but bray and kick. It is without ancestry, or posterity.”

Looking through this very readable account of the first half of Congressman Short’s career, when researching the Y Bridge, we came upon the following passage:

Often in later speeches he would reminisce about driving his team of jennies (female donkeys) as a youngster. He would meet salesmen at the train and help them haul their wares and eh would make long hauls of ice from the ice house on James River where winter ice from the James had been packed in sawdust to await summer’s demand for that rare commodity.

By 1911, when he was 12 years of age, Dewey had established a checking account with the bank of Galena. His diary of 1912 discloses that he was busy that summer catering to tourists making float fishing trips on the James River and buying and selling ice.

We remembered the stellar Hall photograph we used in our book on the development of Ozark tourism. Could the nice looking young man driving the donkey cart be young Dewey Short? How many donkey cart operations could one Ozark village support?

See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image by Leland and Crystal Payton. There are hundreds of old images of recreation from the 1800s to the present day in the “Land of a Million Smiles.” Available at a discounted price, postage paid from Lens & Pen Press. Click on image of book cover to buy a copy.

Short authority, Robert S. Wiley, still practices law in Crane, Missouri. We sent him a copy of See the Ozarks and asked his opinion. He wrote back:

Thanks for the beautiful book, well written and informative. Thanks for directing my attention to the Hall photo on page 7. From other photos in my collection, I believe your photo is one of Dewey with his wagon and team of donkeys.

Wiley explained in a phone conversation that he has a photo of young Short driving a four-wheel, two-donkey cart, the rig he likely used when hawking ice. The enterprising youngster, Wiley noted, saved his money for college. He was not only a fiscal conservative at an early age, in high school he gave a hawkish speech on “Our National Defense” delivered on the eve of World War I. His picture was on a tourist postcard when he was twelve and at seventeen his oratory was printed on the front page of the Stone County Oracle.

The crisp image by Hall was one of our favorites already. But that it is an image of the renowned Orator of the Ozarks Dewey Short was a pleasant surprise.

Branding the Ozarks, Tourism

A SUNRISE STROLL BY THE “Y” BRIDGE ALONG THE JAMES RIVER

December 3, 2014 • 0 Comments

Click to enlarge.

Fog obscures the James beneath the Y Bridge at Galena Missouri. There is a riffle under the bridge, but I do not hear it. Looking off the west end of the bridge I can make out a small house and several trailered flat-bottomed boats in the yard. Exiting the bridge I take a left. A few hundred yards down that road looms a huge rusty sign. Incredibly, most of the fragile white neon tubing still outlines the letters. It reads BILL ROGERS MOTEL CAFÉ FLOAT …

There’s no sign the motel is still renting rooms or serving fried eggs and bacon to floaters. A row of rooms is still behind the sign but they have been painted yellow. On a 1950s postcard they are coral. On the back of the chrome postcard is “BILL ROGERS MOTEL RESTAURANT FISHING SERVICE On James River write box 233, Galena, Missouri phone Elmwood 7-2641 air conditioned 15-unit Motel, electric heat, Large, air conditioned Restaurant, Fishing, Tackle and Supply Store. All these have been added to our long-established Float Fishing Service in the Float Capital of the World.”

This whole 1950s Bill Rogers operation looks like an improvident business decision. While Galena could once claim the title of “float capital of the world,” Dewey Short’s big lake was about to swallow up almost all the floatable James River. The 6,323 foot long, 252-foot high dam near Branson would back the White River up the James to within five miles of his “long-established Float Fishing Service” in 1958.

When the White River Division of the Iron Mountain and Southern Railway cut through Stone County before World War I, it opened the possibility of sportsmen detraining at Galena and engaging one of the services that provided a flat bottomed wooden john boat along with a colorful, yarn-spinning, gravel bar cook for an epic five-day float the 125 miles down the James, then the White, down to Branson. The train would haul the boats back and take the fishermen to Galena or wherever they called home.

Real photo postcard of James River circa 1915. Taken by George Hall. Camp Yocum was several miles upstream from Galena. The family settled in the region before 1800 and reputedly issued their own “Yocum Dollars” made by melting silver US and Spanish coins. These were used for trade with the Indians, principally the Delaware. No known examples have survived.

The improvement of roads and modern bridges like the Y made this celebrated ritual even easier. Sports writers immortalized the James and this float for decades. Movie stars, Catholic bishops, and affluent urbanites flooded to Galena to indulge in the ritual.

Congressman Dewey Short’s 4,100-acre chunk of flat water hasn’t completely stopped floating the James, but it cut it off at the knees. There’s almost nothing of the free flowing James below Galena, but there is still a decent one-day experience canoeing from Hootentown down to the Y Bridge takeout. In high water one can put in further up the cliff-lined, forested free flowing James.

The very unusual Y Bridge is readily detectable in this Google Earth satellite image. To the north is the new very sound, but less aesthetic bridge that crosses the James River on Missouri Route 76. After photographing the Y Bridge I wandered south from the west, Galena side of the old bridge.

Click on any image to start slide show of Galena’s river front. Truncated as it is by Table Rock Reservoir, the James is still an attractive, wild, and fishable but shorter float.

Branding the Ozarks, Tourism

ON THE “Y” BRIDGE IN THE FOG: A DIMLY SEEN ART MODERNE MASTERPIECE

December 1, 2014 • 0 Comments

I’m in a still photo, nothing moves. Sounds are as muted as the monochromatic fall colors. Is the sun up yet? The fog makes it hard to tell. Standing on the closed-to-vehicular-traffic bridge across the James River at Galena, Missouri I remember a vintage photograph we bought years ago.

Galena’s 1927 Art Deco bridge was the result of booster civic organizations’ agitation for improved roads to encourage tourism. It helped augment the railroad delivering vacationers to this region of the Ozarks already known as the Shepherd of the Hills. Harold Bell Wright’s romantic novel was set in Taney and Stone counties.

A crowd of some three thousand assembled here on the 23^rd of November 1927 for the grand opening of the new Y Bridge. Probably the unrecorded remarks made by the highway engineers and a Missouri Pacific Railroad superintendent stressed the technical accomplishment of the structure. When built it was the longest concrete arch bridge in the state. The concluding speaker was Dewey Jackson Short, who would run the next year for the U.S. Congress.

This was a golden opportunity to display his oratorical skills to a large group of voters. Unfortunately we have not been able to find the speech he gave to the throng of Ozarkers. Short’s command of English became nationally recognized during his subsequent twenty-two years in Congress. Not only did this self-styled hillbilly have degrees from several small American colleges, he studied at Harvard, Heidelberg University, and Oxford University, and he was a Methodist preacher.

If anyone knows if his remarks were preserved we’d love to hear from you.

The Springfield News Leader did report that Short understood the wonderful bridge would deliver tourists with money in their pockets to the formerly somewhat inaccessible region: “Short concluded his speech with a special plea for further development of the tourist industry in Stone County. He declared that the continuing possibilities of tourist dollars flowing from improved transportation made the local tourist industry stand beside the cow, the fruit, and the hen in local importance.”

Doubtlessly the arch conservative Republican who would later become renowned for his vitriolic opposition to Roosevelt and the New Deal’s expansion of the federal government didn’t dwell on the fact the financing of the bridge was a joint state and federal arrangement. As an apostle of old fashioned self-reliance, Short was in theory opposed to federal handouts in any form. People, he lamented, “seemed to be suffering with the gim-mes. It is gim-me this, and gim-me that.” Throughout his career, however, Dewey seemed OK with barrels of dollars rolling in from Washington to his southwest Missouri district. Later many millions of federal funds went into a much larger chunk of government-poured concrete called Table Rock Dam. Recognizing the Congressman’s seminal role in authorizing and funding this huge water resource project they named their architect designed visitor center after the Honorable Dewey Short.

A 1920s real photo postcard taken from a hill across the James from Galena. Not only is the bridge notable for its fork on the east side, it’s a splendid example of Art Moderne design.

Probably no speaker at the dedication commented on the Art Deco design of the Y Bridge. Art Moderne, as this neo-classical variety of Deco is called, became the preferred form for all manner of buildings throughout the country that were subsidized by the Roosevelt administration. The Y Bridge that helped to open up the Ozarks to tourists is a rare 1920s example of what became called Depression or WPA Modern. Thousands of post offices, schools, courthouses and other bridges were constructed in this style. Few are in such good shape or have been preserved unchanged like Galena’s Y Bridge.

A construction company in nearby Republic originally got the contract to build the bridge. They planned to use creek gravel in the concrete, which didn’t meet specifications. The Koss Construction Co. of Des Moines, Iowa said they would employ local labor as much as possible, but would use the required crushed limestone. Possibly they did in the load-bearing part, but the rails look suspiciously like they used the native orange-brown chert that can be seen on the gravel bar below.

Click here to read the National Register of Historic Places registration form for the Galena Y-Bridge. It’s a model of well-researched local history and goes into great detail about the role of the bridge in early tourism. Needless to say, the Y Bridge was enthusiastically included in the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

Click on any image to start slide show.