Chamber of Commerce President Incensed by Violent Obscene Novel of the Ozark Hills

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Sep 252023
 

“Mountain Music Lovers On March To Springfield; Chamber of Commerce Looks Askance at Hill Billy Antics; Old Fiddlers Will Torture Ears of Progressive Ozark City,” read a headline from The Jefferson City Post-Tribune:

“The new broadside was fired by John T. Woodruff, president of the Chamber, who told sponsors of the Ozarks folk festival across the table last night that writers on Ozarkian subjects are “a lot of carpetbaggers” and that Harold Bell Wright, who first “touted the Ozarks hardly knew a thing about them and held up the class of citizenship at the foot of the ladder.” He said that Vance Randolph, Ozark author who was present, had been “consorting with some of the undercrust and took them as typical.”

And he added he wondered why “the woods colt” [sic], a recent Ozarks novel by Thames Williamson had not been suppressed. “The Ozarkians,” said Woodruff, “are a lovable people. Never get the idea that they are uncouth, illiterate and mean – the real Ozarkian is high-minded, patriotic and God fearing and he made here a near perfect a civilization as it is possible to make in a wilderness.”

The Springfield Leader and Press covered the banquet as well. “The worst thing about Vance,” said Woodruff, “is his association with the author of ‘The Wood’s Colt.’” That novel was described in Kirkus Review as “a story of the Ozarks, with the seemingly unavoidable component parts: bootleggers, moonshiners, revenue officers, sheriffs, blood feuds, the hero of the piece, and the villain.” Vance Randolph had gone over the dialect for authenticity, and Williamson dedicated the book to him. Time magazine thought it deserved a Pulitzer. The author of the book that Woodruff thought “should be suppressed” wasn’t present, but Randolph was.

McCord leapt to his defense. “Vance Randolph is the greatest authority on the Ozarks living today.” Eureka Springs Chamber of Commerce president praised Woodruff for his “pioneering in the way of better roads” but said he was indebted to Randolph for his interest in things Ozarkian.

Vance refused to comment. “Mr. Ozark” had signed on to be a judge largely because he found Sarah Gertrude Knott fetching.

 

Taken from James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, now on sale for $17.50 (half price) postage paid, at www.beautifulozarks.com

 

Congressman Dewey Short – Hillbilly and Orator and proud of it

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 092022
 

Press photo, May 9, 1938, showing Congressman Short, Rep. Dudley White and their wives at a DC barn dance.

Dewey Short was “an avowed Hill-Billy.” Neither he nor renowned folklorist Vance Randolph ever disavowed the term. Unlike the transplanted Kansas folklorist, the educated congressman was an Ozark native. Like politicians from Andrew Jackson on, he exploited his backwoods credentials. The cutline of this press photo, “Chicken and Fixin’s YUM YUM,” notes they were dressed in “approved rustic styles” at a D.C. barn dance. Galena’s famous son alternately postured as an Oxford schooled philosophy professor and a Stone County hillbilly. And he was both.

Born in Galena to a family of 10 children, he served in the infantry in World War I, then graduating from Baker University in 1919 and from Boston University in 1922. Short also attended Harvard University, Heidelberg University, the University of Berlin, and Oxford University. Dewey rose to national prominence as the Representative of Missouri’s 7th congressional district.

In 1942, the St.  Louis Star and Times sent a reporter down to Galena to find out, “Just who is Dewey Short, this 44-year-old, one-man hillbilly band from the Ozarks, who has been elected for four straight terms in Congress from the Seventh District in Southwest Missouri?”  Encountering Jackson Short, Dewey’s father, the reporter “came to the right place.”  Writer Ralph S. O’Leary noted that “the oratorical gifts” for which Dewey Short was noted came from his father, “who talks fluently and decisively.” Dewey’s own speechmaking talents earned him the moniker, “Orator of the Ozarks.”

 

From James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, 352 pages with more than 400 color illustrations. Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. James Fork is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.