Ozark Country
Page 5
Many difficulties were met in making collections from travelers. Once a cowman from Texas rode up to the pass and asked that the chains be lowered for his passage. Chandler refused to do so until the fee was paid. The Texan dismounted from his horse and asked Chandler to have a drink with him. He unlaced a saddlebag but brought out a Colt revolver instead of a bottle. The chains were lowered at the point of the gun and the bridge owner lost his fee. But Chandler was not easily bluffed and kept a shotgun handy to enforce collections when necessary.
County authorities tried to put Chandler out of business. They secured an injunction against him in circuit court, but the old pioneer took it to the supreme court of the state and the decision of the lower court was reversed. The county paid Chandler $1,000 damages and he continued operating the bridge until 1884 when he sold his mills and moved away. Early in the twentieth century, a railroad was built through the Gap and, a little later, a state highway. To make room for them, the overhanging cliff was blown away and the site of the old toll bridge buried underneath a mass of dirt and boulders. A few willows and tramp birch have squeezed their way through the debris, but there is nothing left to indicate where the old bridge stood. It was one of the few toll bridges in the world built “lengthwise with the river.”
The long isolation period, beginning shortly after the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, and lasting until the advent of motor transportation a hundred years later, has made the backhills of the Ozarks a world apart in American life. It was an interesting epoch, resplendent with heroic deeds, but for several decades the hillsman had no way of communication, except through the mails, and few came to interpret his way of life to the outside world. In more recent years much unreliable publicity has been given the Ozark world in books and periodicals, and on stage, screen, and radio. Slapstick comedy has ridiculed the native of the hills almost beyond redemption. Unbiased interpreters are needed to tell the romantic story of Ozarkland.
Justice is sometimes slanted in a peculiar manner in the backhills. Things move from the sublime to the ridiculous in a singular way. Take the “bull trial” of the eighties. Old-timers continue to talk and shake their heads over this famous trial held more than fifty years ago in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas. It is not a tall tale from the windy hilltops but can be verified by persons still living.
A mountain farmer owned a bull that was no respecter of fences or persons. He was monarch of his domain, and the best stake-and-rider fence in the country was no barrier to his invasions. Even the most modern fence on the more up-to-date farms was only a slight inconvenience to his migrations. He was the terror of the community and even his owner despaired of controlling him. Finally, the bull invaded one too many cornfields. The enraged farmer, whose crop had been destroyed, swore out a warrant and had the animal arrested. The law brought his bellowing majesty to the shade of a large oak tree where the trial was held. The case against the bull was plain enough but the proceedings lasted almost all day. Lawyers threw aside their coats and pleaded for or against the aggressor. Witnesses swore, natives cursed, and the bull bellowed his displeasure. After careful deliberation, the jury found the animal guilty in a degree deserving punishment. The verdict rendered, the justice of the peace assessed fine and costs. Then came the puzzling question of payment. After considering the problem from all angles, the judge decided to butcher the animal and use the meat as payment. A barbecue followed with judge, jury, lawyers, witnesses, and the general public taking part. It was a festive occasion and long remembered by those present, but the old-timers to this day shake their heads and say it was not a fair trial. They point out that the judge neglected to appoint an interpreter for the bull.
A day of better understanding is now dawning. The public at large is beginning to appreciate the humor and character of the Ozarkian. Vance Randolph has led the way in folklore with a dozen books. Charles Morrow Wilson and Wayman Hogue have featured the hill country, and its interesting folkways, in works of fact and fiction. Rose Wilder Lane, Nancy Clemens, and Thomas Hart Benton deserve special mention for their vivid portrayals of Ozarkian life. On the platform and in her newspaper column, “Hillbilly Heartbeats,” May Kennedy McCord preserves and defends the lore of the hillsman. Charlie May Simon gives many of her juvenile stories an Ozarkian background. Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey interprets the true spirit of the hills in poetry and prose. On screen, stage, and radio, Bob Burns, “Lum and Abner,” “Mirandy,” and the Weaver Brothers and Elviry portray the hill people with wit that gurgles like cider from a hillbilly’s jug. We are beginning to recognize the heritage of the Ozark hillsman as a firm cultural bridge between the worlds of yesterday and tomorrow.6
CHAPTER II
Anglo-Saxon Seed Bed
Salt of the Earth
A late evening sun winked over the bald portion of Breadtray Mountain. The old ridge road from Woodville to White River was crystallized with age, the wagon ruts washed into miniature gullies. Verdant layers of moss cushioned the giant boulders by the roadside. Below tumbled a swift mountain stream, fresh from the bowels of the earth, its clear icy waters caressed by weeping willows and guarded by ragged birch which stood like sentinels along its borders. Oaks and cedars interlaced with vines dotted the hillsides in comely confusion. The varicolored hills around me, with arms extended to the advancing twilight, added the touch of halcyon repose to complete the scene.
The call of the open road had led me to the scenic White River country of the Missouri Ozarks. Leaving my baggage at the boarding house in Woodville, I had gone in quest of adventure, following the old ridge road southward to the river. I walked and enjoyed myself, with no thought of the approaching darkness. My Ozarkian quest had become more than just following a will-o’-the-wisp. I was seeking the lore of a people reputed by sociologists to be the seed bed of Anglo-Saxonism in the United States and the last survival of Elizabethan culture in the Western world.1 Harold Bell Wright had told about the region in his romantic novel The Shepherd of the Hills, picturing the Ozarker as a colorful personality “lost” in isolation. This seclusion in the very heart of a continent steeped in commercialism and flushed with progress appealed to me as a fact endowed with paradoxical appeal, and one worthy of investigation.
Darkness came rapidly upon the heels of twilight, and walking on the mountain trail became more and more difficult. I suddenly realized that a man who had trekked through the hills all day should have a place to lay his head at night. I began to wonder what I would do for bed and board in this sparsely settled region. But luck was mine and opened for me the gate to a new world. A gentle breeze from the river carried with it the odor of frying bacon. A dog barked and I knew that a house was not far away. At Woodville, I had heard much of White River hospitality. I decided that now was the right time to pull the latchstring.
A dim light showed through a clump of trees. I approached it with caution. Half a dozen potlicker dogs howled warning as I turned from the trail and climbed a fence that did not offer the convenience of a gate. I stopped at a respectable distance.
“Hello,” I called through cupped hands.
There was no answer except that the dogs increased their chorus of howling disapproval and one of the braver ones approached uncomfortably near. Then a door of the house opened and the head of a man appeared. I explained that I was a stranger in the hill country and asked shelter for the night. The man quieted the dogs and invited me in. That was the beginning of my acquaintance with the Freemans—with Big Dan and his veteran father, Uncle Henry. It was an acquaintance that ripened into real friendship.
Dan Freeman had taken life in the rough and made it pay dividends. He had that virility which, added to native intelligence, makes the house of the soul a pleasant habitation. He could work all day on the farm or in the woods and then dance or foxhunt all night without apparently tiring. Although in the middle forties, he had not lost that quick wit and wholesome humor that were parts of his youthful nature. Big Dan, as everybody called him, was always ready to j
oin in a prank but was also equally willing to lend a hand in time of need. Everybody liked Daniel Freeman and respected his opinions even when they did not agree with them.
“Clever folks live down on White River,” Lem Logan, the Woodville blacksmith, had told me. “Mighty clever folks an’ white clean through. Last fall me an’ Hite Lindsey went down across th’ river t’ look fer a stray steer, an’ come back by th’ Freeman settlement. They wus butcherin’ some hawgs that day an’ Abe Howell from over on Bull Crick wus helpin’ ’em. We had et a turrible sorry dinner at that eatin’ house on th’ state line, but with Big Dan an’ Uncle Henry hit wus different. That tenderline meat an’ flour gravy an’ hot biscuits wus sure invitin’. Abe is a right good eater an’ hit wus a sight th’ way he took t’ them vittles. An’ Hite an’ me kept him purty good company. No better folks anywhere than them thar Freemans. Not fine-haired a-tall, even if Emily has been away t’ high school, an’ they own most of th’ good river land clean up t’ th’ mouth of th’ James.”
Henry Freeman, eighty-year-old hillsman, lived with his son, Dan, on the old Freeman place near the ferry. He was known for miles around because of his prowess as a hunter and his integrity as a citizen. He was an old-line Ozarker of the old school, with the map of England on his face and Elizabethan traditions in his blood. His language had a smack of Shakespearean flavor to it. It is true that his words were strange vagabonds long strayed from their native soil but they carried a charm that captivated me. Uncle Henry could say “hope” for help, and “whup” for whip in such a musical way that the ear could not refuse the delightful cadence of pronunciation. With him it was “spile” for spoil, “hist” for hoist, and “bile” for boil. His blue eyes sparkled as he talked of the good old days when each home had “its taper to cheer the vale with hospitable ray.”
Uncle Henry liked to talk of old times. Life was rich in contentment in those pioneer days, according to the old man. The theory that generosity means much in the life of a people was thoroughly tested and found good. It was an age of hunting and fishing, church-going, Sunday visiting, logrollings, barn raisings, quiltings, husking bees, play parties, square dancing, horse trading, going to mill, and singing and visiting by the fireside. Each man knew his neighbor, understood his needs, and stood ready to help him in solving pioneer problems. Farmers traded work during the busy season, and little cash money changed hands. The undercurrent of friendliness led to understanding and, for the most part, the community life was peaceful. Whatever the hillsman’s intellectual deficiencies and social shortcomings may have been, his wholehearted generosity made up for them. It was always considered discourteous in that day to accept payment from a stranger for bed and board except in the established lodging houses. It was a day of chivalry in Ozarkian life. Of course, many of these traditional practices have survived to the twentieth century, but the old-timers could already feel the influence of the machine and its corresponding commercialism, and could sense the meaning.
Flashing eyes told me that Henry Freeman had an active mind and an intuitive fitness given him by nature in reward for obedience to her laws. He had spent practically his entire life in the Missouri Ozarks, emigrating from Kentucky with his parents when he was a lad. He had known the day of the oxcart and the tarpole wagon and had lived to see the beginning of motor transportation. As a young man he had hunted and fished and searched for buried treasure in many sections of the Ozark Country. He had sought the lost Slater Copper Mine along the Current River, hunted bear, deer, turkey, and smaller game in the Boston Mountains and the canebrakes of Arkansas, floated streams, explored caves, living his youthful years fully and freely. The one dark chapter of his life was the Civil War of the sixties and he was reluctant to talk about it. He had taken but little interest in the opposite sex until at the age of thirty he met Mary Austin of Woodville. He courted her in true Ozark fashion and, in due time, they married and settled on a part of the land homesteaded by his father a quarter of a century before. Aunt Mary, as folks called her, had been dead nearly ten years when I arrived on the Ozark scene. Uncle Henry now lived with Dan and his family in the big double log house which the pioneer Freemans had built just after the War Between the States. There was plenty of room for the old man as Dan’s family was small. It had been twenty years since the marriage of Daniel Freeman and Sally Evans and, contrary to the custom of the hills, they had but one child. That was Emily, an attractive girl of seventeen. This young woman impressed me immediately with her radiant personality. Surely, I thought, these Freemans were the salt of the earth.
Supper with this Ozark family made an indelible impression on my mind. I had arrived, an unexpected guest, a short half hour before meal-time but there was no scarcity of food, no framed apologies. The table was loaded with good things to eat. Crisp bacon was served with delicious crackling corn bread. There was yellow butter from which the moisture had been all “whacked out” by a cedar paddle. Baked beans, brown and savory, were dished from a blue crock. A pitcher of cold buttermilk from the springhouse sat alongside a platter of lettuce, radishes, and onions from the garden. There was fluffy wheat bread, baked at home, with apple jelly if one cared for it. For dessert we had ginger cake and dried peaches that had simmered in their syrup through the long afternoon. To partake of such wholesome food in such a pleasant environment was to slip back into the Elizabethan age of old England. I decided that Lem Logan was right. These Freemans were “mighty clever.” They belonged to an aristocracy of brains and honor with a pedigree that isolation could not weaken. Later on I came to know many such old-line families in the backhill country of the Ozarks.
After supper we retired to the parlor to enjoy an hour or two of conversation and music. It has been said that nowhere in the world are the old tunes rendered with greater fervor than here where the Ozarks thrust up their rugged flintrock shoulders against the sky, sheltering their primitive people from a civilization ever rushing westward. Dan Freeman was a fiddler and Emily accompanied him on the guitar. Eli Bradshaw, a young hillbilly employed as hired man, played the banjo. He worked by the “dry month,” Dan said, and had plenty of time on rainy days to play music. Dan and Eli played at country dances throughout the White River country but Emily seldom went with them. Sally Freeman drew the line for her daughter’s social activities and the ungoverned dances of the community were excluded. With Big Dan it made no difference. He was a friend to everyone and at home in any crowd. Many a time when the boys got “lickered up” and trouble brewed, Dan stepped in to pacify the situation and avert trouble. His good humor and interest in his fellow men made him a kind of moral balance wheel in the neighborhood.
I called for music which was characteristic of the mountains and for more than an hour the walnut logs of the old house reverberated to such romantic melodies as “Leather Britches,” “Sally Goodin,” “Sourwood Mountain,” and “The Arkansaw Traveler.” Then they sang old ballads that had been brought over from England and Scotland and transplanted in Ozarkland. Some of Dan’s favorites were “Barbara Allen,” “The House Carpenter,” “The Jealous Lover,” “The Blind Girl,” and that ripping old play-party song, “Old Joe Clark.” One song the hired man sang impressed me strangely. He called it “The Lily of Arkansas” and said it was a popular ditty throughout the “Lapland” region. (Lapland is the territory of southern Missouri where, as they say, “Arkansas laps over into the Show Me State.”) Here is the song as Eli sang it:
My father built the bow, the ship that sailed the sea,
With four and twenty seamen to keep him company;
The waves and winds are beating, while sailing on the sea,
Lie low, the Lily of Arkansas has parted you and me.
I fear my love has drownded, I fear my love’s been slain,
I fear my love’s been drownded on his way to France and Spain;
The waves and winds are beating, while sailing on the sea,
Lie low, the Lily of Arkansas has parted you and me.
There’s girls e
nough in Texas, I know there’s one for me,
But my own dear and lonely one is far away from me;
The waves and winds are beating, while sailing on the sea,
Lie low, the Lily of Arkansas has parted you and me.
The Freemans ran cattle and had several hundred on the range at the time I visited them. Dan would make occasional trips into Arkansas to add to his herd. He liked to tell stories of these trips and enjoyed teasing his wife who was a native of the Wonder State.
“Talk about that book, Three Years in Arkansas, insulting the state,” said Dan. “I can tell one that actually happened and it just about equals the hens roosting on the meal barrel, and the old cat and kittens in the stump table.”
Dan had a pleasing bass drawl and his English was comparatively good. Sometimes he dropped an s or slid into a quaint Chaucerian vernacular but he did not butcher the King’s English in the usual hillbilly fashion. Just as in England the Yorkshire dialect differs from that of Dorset, so does the folk speech of the Ozarks vary with class and locality.
“A few years ago,” continued Dan, “Dad and me took a long trip into the Boston Mountains buying cattle. Night came on us in the Big Buffalo country and we put up at Albert Heffner’s place. Al was a bachelor and as clever a man as lived in that country, and he fed pretty good. We had one objection, though, to his method of housekeeping. That one thing, in our estimation, was enough to offset all the good qualifications of the household. Al had a pet pig he was very fond of and he let the critter have the run of the cabin. It must have weighed close to ninety pounds and was a right pert shoat. It was an antic brute and during supper it ran between our legs and squole and took on terrible. Al finally quieted the pig by pouring some flour gravy into the stove hearth that he used for a trough. The pig et his supper with relish and then laid down in the corner and went to sleep. When it came time to go to bed, Dad and me found that we was quartered in the same room with the shoat. It seemed to be a friendly sort but we didn’t take any chances with our clothes. We rolled them up, put them under our heads and slept on them. We forgot our shoes, though, and had to pay for our neglect. That blame pig chewed the strings out of all four of them.”