CAN YOU TOP THESE? Moving ads for Lake of the Ozarks Recreation

 Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 012023
 

Painted aluminum license plate topper, 1940s. Aluminum replaced steel in almost everything due to the World War 2 war effort. As aluminum didn’t rust it continued to be used post war. Below it is a less detailed image of the icon of Lake of the Ozarks, Bagnell Dam. Painted steel. Possibly in the late 1930s.

When Americans took to the highways for family vacations, license plate toppers were affixed to their automobile’s back plate. They advertised a place or business. A few identified the vehicle owner’s profession. They were in vogue before cars were required to have two plates and before automobile designs that don’t have space around the plate for the advertising message. Most are from the 1930s to 1980s. Occasionally one sees a descendant of the topper—a license plate holder advertising a sports team, car dealer, or organization. Bumper stickers advertising “Cowboy Bob’s Reptile Ranch” were a topper’s low-class relative slapped on by a teenage lad as you gawked at diamondbacks as fat as a truck tire.

The motif of license toppers of tourist regions, like souvenirs, usually conveyed what was thought to attract visitors or sometimes dramatic architecture or an unusual landscape feature. When Bagnell Dam closed in 1931, Union Electric of St. Louis, its builder, was bursting with pride about the multi-million-dollar hydroelectric project which backed up the Osage River creating 1,100 miles of shoreline. Images of this marvel of modern technology became the region’s icon. Union Electric would be forced to sell these developable properties before a tourism boom. While the public did take tours of the powerhouse, it doesn’t seem likely that very many planned their vacation around witnessing the creation of electricity from running water.

Lazy Days Resort, Lake of the Ozarks license plate topper, marked Vernon Co. Newton, IA. Possibly 1950s. “Fishin’s good” (below) Lake of the Ozarks license plate topper. 1950s? Its graphic style is reminiscent of Jazz Age cartoonist John Held Jr. but there weren’t many promotional artifacts from Lake of the Ozarks during Held’s heyday. No specific business is promoted so it’s unclear what its origins were.

Lake of the Ozarks tourist advertising rarely featured any version of the indigenous population compared to Branson and the Shepherd of the Hills country. This reclining country bumpkin is not accessorized with a jug of corn whiskey or a floppy eared hound. He’s rural, but not a stereotypical hillbilly.

The Vernon Company is still going strong. Founded in 1902, today they employ 500 people producing products branded for promotion. Through the years their design work has been eye-catching. One of their 1950s license toppers of a roller-skating girl with “God Bless America” advertises a Philadelphia Roller Rink. It was on eBay for $395.

Lake of the Ozarks attractions have always been somewhat generic compared to Branson’s specifically regional reasons to visit—float fishing, country music, and frontier history theme parks. Branson’s symbol was Old Matt’s Cabin, domicile of the god-fearing hill folk in Harold Bell Wright’s romantic The Shepherd of the Hills. This bestseller identified the upper White River Hills as a region that had preserved old time ways. Curiously, we’re not aware of license plate toppers with a log cabin or any representation of the anachronistic culture of the place. The two tourist venues have very different beginnings and pitches to vacationers with different promotional strategies.

Our 5,000-piece collection of Ozark memorabilia and souvenirs contains license plate toppers from Lake of the Ozarks but none from Branson. The collection is now owned by Missouri State University Libraries-Ozarks Studies Institute.

Lazy Days Resort seems to have gone out of business around the year 2000. There is a Lazy Dayz Resort and RV Park at Lake of the Ozarks which opened three years ago. Their advertising used a man sipping a drink in a hammock. The reclining hillbilly of the Lazy Days license plate topper has evolved into a lazy tourist.

 

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.

A True Ozark Icon: the Hillbilly

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Oct 172023
 

Controversy over viewing the Ozarks as a refuge of degenerate primitives has a long history. This symbol of profound rusticity upset promoters and businessmen like John Woodruff but defenders of the premodern Ozarks rushed to defend even the stereotypical hillbilly. On March 27, 1934, The Springfield Leader and Press reprinted highlights of the disastrous meeting of the Springfield Folk Festival advisory committee with Chamber of Commerce leadership. Replying to accusations that they were “advertising to the world that we are ignorant”:

“We are not trying to present freaks or ignoramuses,” the honorable district chairman said. “We are just trying to preserve some of the old, lovely, beautiful, wonderful things that went into the making of the country. I am not ashamed of some of the things my parents did.” “Of course, it does not have to be rough, rowdy, and hoedownish,” the Springfield city chairman said. “Oh, yes it does,” put another leader. “It wouldn’t be the Ozarks if it didn’t.” “You mean we’re not going to have hill billies with beards?”

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

 

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

 

Lost Attractions of the Ozarks – A fun read!

 Beautiful Ozarks, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 232023
 

It’s a guided tour of the bygone and often amusingly naïve efforts to attract travelers and tourists of the Ozark hills of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Up front is a disclaimer, “Okay faithful readers, this is your final warning. If you have an aversion to traditional hillbilly stereotypes such as these, you are advised to turn around and go back right now, because things are only going to get worse from here.” Scruffy mountaineers are indeed a regional icon, but they have apparently left the roadsides retreating deeper into the woods. Today’s motifs are more likely to be borrowed from popular culture. In Chapter One, “Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Hillbillies,” the shift is noted:

“Today’s young people are totally unfamiliar with the traditional “hillbilly” image made famous by movies, television, cartoons and the tourism industry. There are no doubt many mountain residents who consider that a good thing, but there was indeed a time when the depiction of the lazy, bearded hillbilly with floppy hat and accompanying hound dog was among the most popular graphics of the Ozarks.”

Remnants of hillbilly signage are scarce and in shabby shape. The book compensates for this by using pristine examples photographed by John Margolies, the godfather of roadside Americana. His sharp color-saturated depictions of crazy attractions enliven the review of past Ozark tourism. A chrome orange billboard for Dogpatch USA is on the cover. Tim Hollis has an enormous archive of memorabilia, tourist literature and souvenirs. They too of course are still vivid and contrast with contemporary shots of decaying and abandoned attractions.

Hollis is a superb tour guide. His corny humor notwithstanding, it must be admitted this stuff invites satiric comment. He is addicted to Hee-Haw humor. Among his 39 published titles is Rural Comedy in the Twentieth Century. It was published, as were a number of other of his pop culture studies, by the University Press of Mississippi.

This profusely illustrated, well organized and researched book was a breezy read. Hollis’ approach is neither condescending nor campy. The awesome capacity of roadside attractions to be tastelessly compelling is proven. As he admonished in the beginning: if you’re troubled by the cliches of moonshine-making hill folk, this won’t be a book for you. Of all regional and ethnic stereotypes, the Ozark mountaineer has largely skirted controversy.

A strength of this book is that the author visited many of the shuttered tourist businesses and reports on the actualities of their demise. He also reached out to fellow aficionados of roadside culture. Count us as one. We supplied several photographs and three of our Ozarks books are listed in the bibliography.

Tim Hollis has successfully portrayed these perished attractions because he is in sync with their goofy charm and wondrous indifference to good taste.

Lost Attractions of the Ozarks is the latest in Tim Hollis’s series of Lost Attractions of… books published by The History Press, Charleston, SC. 144 pages, 6 x 9, $23.99.

Available at the publisher’s website, and on amazon.com  and Barnes & Noble

OZARKS TOURISM OF THE 1940S CAPTURED ON CLOTH

 James Fork of the White  No Responses »
Apr 052023
 

Souvenir cotton card table cover designed and printed by Steve Miller, 1940s.

Artist Steve Miller created most of Jim Owen’s advertising. He also designed the logo for an Owen dairy milk bottle which is today a pricey collector’s item. Miller was from Kirksville and after teaching in Mexico and Columbia, Missouri, became enamored with the Ozarks, setting up shop in Branson in 1941. Probably the card table sized cloth map, depicting the rustic recreational attractions of the Shepherd of the Hills Country, is from the ‘40s. We’ve found it printed in both red and blue.

Miller’s hillbilly motifs are rendered with the graphic sophistication of a New Yorker cartoonist. More than any artifact in our collection it this textile illustrates the connectivity of the various country attractions of early Branson. The place’s rusticity is artfully depicted. Miller was a fan of days and ways gone by but had a modern design flare. Cartooning gave the old-time attractions a pop culture, post-War look. “Nostalgia Heightens Interest in Ozarks” was the headline of a 1972 Springfield News-Leader article about a speech given by Miller, then the artist-in-residence at the School of the Ozarks.

Miller was mindful of the region’s traditional image. In 1949, he created the giant Nativity scene still used at Christmas on the bluff across Lake Taneycomo from downtown Branson. He joined the staff at the School (now College) of the Ozarks in 1962 where he taught, and curated the Ralph Foster collection of Ozarks artifacts and firearms. His works permeate print media of the region. He died in 1972, survived by wife, a son, and a daughter.

The tablecloth illustration is from See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, an all color book of advertisements and souvenirs depicting early Ozarks tourism promotions and the image it created for the region. The book provides rich images and a unique aspect of history of Shepherd of the Hills Country, Eureka Springs, the Big Springs Country, Lake of the Ozarks, and more recent developments in this unique region – to answer the question: “What lured generations of travelers to the Ozarks?”

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $12.50 (half the original price of $24.95), postage paid. See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image is a  96-page all color, hardbound book.

 

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.

 

“So long, free flowing White River!”

 James Fork of the White  No Responses »
Sep 072022
 

Dewey Short and other VIPs say goodbye to the free-flowing White River

Photograph by Townsend Godsey.  Congressman Dewey Short and unidentified colleagues looking at the White River. On the back is written, “Table Rock dam site 9-14-4″

Dewey appears to be pointing out the location where the long-delayed dam would be built. Only a month earlier the President had signed the Flood Control Act of 1941, which included both Table Rock and Bull Shoals. Headline of the October 11, 1952, Kansas City Times announced: “Start A Big Dam Barbecue And Music At Launching of 76-Million-Dollar Reservoir.” Mayor Claude Binkley of Branson remarked he had ‘hurried to the Ozarks twenty-six years ago’ to be here for the construction start.”

Although a Republican dedicated to smaller government (mostly), like most politicians the lure of bringing big buckets of federal money to his district was strong. Congressman Short did get the appropriations for Table Rock Dam flowing again. Construction got underway in 1954, and the White River was backed up behind a $65 million, 252-foot-high dam three miles above Table Rock in 1958. Dedication ceremonies were held on June 14, 1959, when the powerhouse was completed.

Short had been a fiery opponent of FDR’s New Deal except when the federal handout was in his district. Dewey self-identified as a “hillbilly.” The term better fit his bank-robbing brother, Leonard, who perished while on the lam.

 

From James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, 352 pages with more than 400 color illustrations, which examines the entire watershed of the famed Ozark float stream, a tributary of the White River. 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.

 

DANCING AT PICNIC IN THE OZARKS, 1910s

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 202022
 

Real photo postcard by George Hall

Unlike the posed hillbilly family real photo postcard we shared in June this is a straightforward document of the surviving folk culture on the upper White River, circa 1910.  Hillbilliness is based on these anachronisms.

Locals at this hoe-down appear to be wearing store bought clothes. Once the railroad made its way to southwest Missouri, Stone Countians had access to prêt-à-porter clothing just like the tourists.

Music and the moves it inspires have always been part of life in the Ozarks. Some of the Arcadian resorts built dance floors and natives joined in with visitors. Distinctions between locals and visitors were not always clear when melodies filled the air and boots and shoes started tapping. That tradition continues today in music festivals in the hills as well as regular weekly gatherings like Friday night parties at the old McClurg general store. The decades old weekly gathering was recently well represented at the Smithsonian Folklife Fest, on the Mall in Washington.

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.

EARLY ENTRY IN HILLBILLY CARICATURE

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Jun 082022
 

The idea the Ozarks is inhabited by primitives has been perpetuated in books by educated travelers like Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, in popular songs like the “Arkansaw Traveler,” and in souvenir postcards, like this one by otherwise-respected photographer George Hall.

We have incorporated many quotes by Lynn Morrow in our books. This paragraph from Shepherd of the Hills County: Tourism Transforms the Ozarks, 18802-1930s by Lynn Morrow and Linda Meyers-Phinney, so perfectly describes this posed photograph that we use it in its entirety. The book exquisitely describes the romanticism and sentimentality that pervaded early Ozark tourism. Like Mark Twain, the authors debunk popular culture without dismissing the people who embraced its mythologies.

Morrow and Meyers-Phinney reproduced the Hall postcard, captioning it, “Commercial stereotyping using the Arkansaw Traveler story.”

Twentieth century Arcadians came to the White River expecting to see rustics whom the national press labelled as hillbillies, since journalists and tourists had used the term from the very beginning of commercial tourism. Ozarkers quickly learned to cash in on the demeaning hillbilly image. If the tourists wanted to see hillbillies, then hillbillies made their appearances. Float-fishing guides were model hillbillies at the gravel bar camps, telling tall tales and manipulating their Mid-South dialect for the enjoyment of sportsmen; locals at resorts and the legendary sites of Harold Bell Wright’s novel took up the challenge of dramatizing the hillbilly stereotype for visitors.

As we found in the gift shop of the Shepherd of the Hills Ziprider Canopy Tours tower, the practice continues:

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. James Fork, Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and others are now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for half the original price, postage paid.

CHARLEY BARNES, famed James River fishing guide, with brothers John and Herbert

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press  No Responses »
May 122022
 

Robert Page Lincoln profiled Charley Barnes, James River guide and john boat builder, in a long article titled “Floating Down the River” in the March 1948 issue of Fur-Fish-Game magazine.

The caption from the 1948 article reads, “This photo of Charley Barnes and his two brothers, Herbert and John, was taken in 1909 about the time that the Barnes float trip business at Galena, Mo., was at the height of its success. Barnes told Lincoln that the bass shown in this photo are the same average size as those taken now. Reading left to right are Herbert, John, and Charley Barnes.”

Charley later developed a distaste for trophy photos. Fishermen would keep more fish than they could eat to take an impressive picture. All the early river guides were supporters of the conservation movement and fish and game laws as they viewed the protection of natural resources to be in their business interests and encouraged an early form of catch-and-release.

Barnes was born near Mount Vernon in 1878. The family moved to a farm near the James three miles from Galena when he was eight. He and his brothers spent much time fishing this historic river and their catches were such that Barnes conceived of the idea of making boats and taking out fishing parties. At the age of 26, in 1904 Barnes started taking out his first parties.

Though his big city customers may have considered Barnes a “hillbilly” – he not only built the john boats they floated in, but with his brother he also owned the Galena Ford agency.

 

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. James Fork of the White, Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and other titles– all are now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for half the original price, postage paid.

 Older Entries