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.

John Joseph Hogan’s Missionary Life Begins – 175 years ago

 Irish Wilderness, On the Mission and Fifty Years Ago, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 252023
 

One hundred seventy-five (175) years ago today, October 24, 1848, John Joseph Hogan, age 19, departed from his family home in Cahirguillamore, County Limerick, to travel to St. Louis to study for the priesthood. Not the traditional path to holy order perhaps, but his chosen path to fulfill his desire to become a missionary on the plains of the still-new country in America.

Young John Hogan was the eighth of nine children of James Hogan and Ellen Connor.

My father, though educated for a profession, had the good sense to confine his ambition to the safer and less contentious way of living as a farmer of land and a dealer in cattle and crops; and besides, the penal laws, then in force in Ireland, debarred Catholics from the learned professions and from Government office, unless upon recusancy of their faith, which, in my father’s case, was an insuperable objection.

His education and background set him on a path to holy orders.  But unlike one of his brothers who studied for the priesthood in Rome, Hogan dreamed of being a missionary to those who had not before heard of Jesus Christ. To this end, he determined that the place most suited for him was the plains of North America.

MY MIND MADE UP

I had learned from many reliable sources of information that in the far-away Western World, on the banks of the Mississippi, a great diocese was growing up that had immense missionary fields, over which the Church was spreading rapidly. One of my sources of information, the American Catholic Almanac, sent regularly every year to my father by his brother, my uncle and namesake in America, gave full description of the diocese of St. Louis and had a well-executed frontispiece engraving of the Cathedral of St. Louis and buildings adjoining it, so that I had become greatly familiar with the place.

Priests were not needed in Ireland, where for every vacancy there were twenty or more applicants. In the St. Louis diocese it occurred to me that possibly there might be more vacancies than applicants, as it was a new country. Why not go where, as it was reasonable to suppose, “the harvest was great, and the laborers few”? Besides, I preferred going where few had gone before me and where new paths had to be opened. Of “perils of rivers” or of “perils of the wilderness,” I was not afraid. St. Louis was, as I regarded it, my foreordained place. I made up my mind to go there. This conclusion was reached by me on Thursday, the 9th day of October, 1848. I sought an interview with my father and informed him of my purpose and of the reasons that led me thereto.

He unhesitatingly gave me his necessary permission to depart and that I might begin at once to make preparations for the journey

Travel in 1848 was a more arduous exercise than today (although holiday travelers with cancelled and delayed flights or families in cars stuck in traffic might argue that point). But Hogan’s journey started with a full day of riding and consulting with shipping agents to determine his itinerary.

The next day I rode twelve miles to Limerick to consult the shipping agents as to the best way to go to St. Louis. The shipping agents informed me that, as the American railways had been built only as far west as the western boundaries of New York and Pennsylvania, the journey thence westward to St. Louis, about 1,000 miles, was too great to be attempted by uncertain ways, such as stagecoaches and sailing on lakes and rivers, especially as the cold, freezing weather of winter was about to set in.

They advised that I sail from Liverpool to New Orleans and take steamboat from New Orleans to St. Louis, which I might possibly reach in the early part of winter, should the Mississippi River be then free from ice, as they thought it might be, on account of its more southern latitude than that of the northern lakes and rivers. Accordingly, I engaged passage from Liverpool to New Orleans on the first ship sailing on that voyage that I could reach, which was the Forfarshire, advertised to sail on Wednesday, November 1st, the intervening eleven days being sufficient for my preparation and the journey to Liverpool. On that same day that I went to Limerick, Friday, October 20th, I returned to my home at Cahirguillamore and announced my purpose to finally leave home on the following Tuesday, October 24th, feast of St. Raphael Archangel.

Archangel Raphael with Bishop Domonte. Painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682). Wikimedia commons

In the Old Testament book of Tobit, a faithful and wealthy Israelite living in Nineveh, suffers reverses and is blinded. He sends his son, Tobiah to retrieve money he has left in a place several days’ journey from his home. But Tobiah is young and unfamiliar with travel. They engage a guide, who is the Archangel Raphael in the guise of “an Israelite, one of your kinsmen” who says his name is Azariah (“Yahweh helps”). The Old Testament story of course is detailed, intricate and enlightening. From this singular event, the Archangel Raphael has been considered a protector of travelers. A fortuitous date for the commencement of Hogan’s life.

Departure day arrived and young Hogan rose at 4 a.m. After sad adieus he traveled to Limerick:

I reached Limerick in less than two hours, and was at the railway station on time for the departure of the morning train for Dublin. The train went out on the Limerick and Waterford Railway as far as the Limerick Junction and there turned northward on the tracks of the Great Southern and Western Railway for Dublin.

Arrived at Dublin in the evening, I straightway proceeded from King’s Bridge terminus by the Liffey along the quays past the Custom House to the North Wall, where I found the steamship Royal William with steam up bound for Liverpool. The Royal William, then one of the fastest steamers afloat, made the voyage from her Dublin pier to her pier in Liverpool in ten and a half hours.

The first leg of his journey was accomplished in little more than 24 hours. From Liverpool, his sites were set on New Orleans, Louisiana …. far across the Atlantic.

 

On the Mission in Missouri and Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir is available on our website for $10.50, postage paid at www.beautifulozarks.com,   Companion volume, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness, is also available for $9.50, postpaid.

 

BALANCING THE HILLBILLY AND PROGRESSIVE OZARKS: The saga of a forthright newspaperwoman

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 052023
 

Like the pioneer newspaperwoman’s prose, this is well researched and very readable. It’s in the Ozarks Studies Series, edited by Prof. Brooks Blevins. It is footnoted and indexed but does not have an academic tone. The author credits Dr. Blevins encouragement and acknowledges Lynn Morrow for “setting me straight innumerable times.” Morrow also knew and admired Lucile. Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton. Susan Croce Kelly. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville. 2023.

by Leland Payton

The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton reads the subtitle of Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks, a new book by Susan Croce Kelly. The author knew the pioneering woman journalist. Lucile was her great aunt. It’s much more than a genealogical tribute, though, familiarity with her “bookish family” and small-town background gave insight into Lucille’s rare ability to champion modern technology and at the same time accept the unenlightened behavior of the legendary Ozark hill folk.

Way back when someone was bitten by a dog suspected of having rabies, they would borrow the Morris family’s “madstone”—a small, calcified object found in the gut of a white deer. Backwoods folk believed when this rare object was soaked in warm milk it would draw the “pi-zen” out of the wound. Her literate family knew better but they played along with the superstition. Decades later, when the Springfield business community lit into “hillbilliness” she supported a folk festival which celebrated the old-time ways in her column. The belief Ozark hills and hollows sheltered communities living like our ancestors made good copy and attracted tourists.

Lucile Morris not only wrote hundreds of features covering the atavistic Ozarks, but she also wrote a column for the Springfield News and Leader, “Over the Ozarks,” inviting readers to submit folk songs, legends, and poems. This recognition of the vernacular gave her a large following.

As a child she was enthralled by old timers’ tales of the Civil War and its turbulent aftermath. An outbreak of unsettled scores in the region was covered nationally. Lucile is best known today for her study of the Baldknobbers, the Ozarks’ bloodthirsty post-Civil War vigilantes.

All aspects of the past interested her. The fact that the home of Daniel Boone’s son, Nathan, is a state park and Wilson’s Creek Civil War Battlefield was incorporated into the National Park System is due in large part to her persistent advocacy for their preservation.

Journalists today are often accused of political bias and advocacy in their reporting. Lucile Upton distanced herself from politics or social movements. Susan Kelly notes that although women were once discouraged as newspaper reporters, she was not an active feminist. That her family were all Democrats in a Republican stronghold perhaps made her wary of partisanship. She acknowledged issues had two sides and vigorously pursued objectivity and fairness.

The writer of this biography shares this interest in stories that connect the past with the present. Susan Croce Kelly was once, like Lucile, employed as a reporter by the Springfield News-Leader.  Her book Father of Route 66: The Story of Cy Avery was praised for connecting its subject’s personality and the times in which he lived. That gift of portraying people against a historical backdrop connects the two related writers.

Lucile Morris Upton grasped that the hillbilly was derived from observations of authentic Ozark folk culture. If a pop culture cliché, she didn’t blame the cartoonist, Hollywood, or the media for exploiting this rustic’s popularity. “The public, however, is entitled to know the difference between the genuine and the synthetic,” she believed.

Bald Knobbers, published by Claxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho. 1939, is a stirring account of vigilante violence in the aftermath of the Civil War. This first edition with graphic dust jacket can go for hundreds of dollars. Lucile interviewed old timers with memories of the night riders who terrorized the White River hills until three Bald Knobbers were hung on the courthouse square in Ozark Missouri in 1889.

Her well-researched book on the Baldknobbers was the first to cover the violent post-Civil War Ozark vigilante. Since that time, numerous accounts have been published, both fiction and nonfiction. Hollywood was interested in making her version into a movie, but World War II redirected their priorities. A recent locally produced movie has been released on DVD. A well-known musical group, The Baldknobbers, have entertained Branson visitors for 60 years.

Lucile worked for years on two unpublished novels. Her characters and locations were praised by editors, but they thought the plots lacked excitement. This is surprising given her vivid account of post-Civil War violence.

On Sept. 7, 2023 Susan Croce Kelly gave a lecture on her new book at the Springfield-Greene County library Center. it was a cut-to-the -chase presentation. Kelly, like her great aunt Lucile Upton, been a journalist of the old school—terse, factual prose without an agenda.

As a native, Lucile had a feeling for the landscape and the people who settled it. She didn’t always share their attachment to primitive ways, but she understood it was a component of their identity.  She disagreed with the modernist, progressive beliefs of Springfield Chamber of Commerce president, John T. Woodruff who underestimated the commerciality of hillbilly-ness as a tourist draw.

Through the many years as a News-Leader reporter, she produced countless features covering every aspect of Ozark folk culture. She covered Thomas Hart Benton, the Herschends, Rose Wilder Lane, the Lynches, Rose O’Neill, Otto Earnest Rayburn, and Harold Bell Wright. She reviewed Vance Randolph’s books but they had an “on again, off again” relationship as Susan Kelly put it.

 

 

                                     Susan Croce Kelly signs a book for
Crystal Payton after her Springfield Library talk.

 

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Paul Holland, “Hillbilly Artist” of Springfield

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 172023
 

These attractive maps promoting rusticated leisure near Springfield were designed by Paul Holland.

Paul Holland was the owner of Holland Engraving Company and a weekend painter active in the Ozarks’ Artists Guild in the 1930s. Holland was a lifelong defender of the Ozarks as a fit subject for art. “Ozarks Treat Artists Better” read the title of a July 25, 1930 Springfield Leader article about Holland’s misadventures going back east to paint that landscape. Not only was he unimpressed by the art he viewed, but he also found the landowners inhospitable:

After a three-week survey of the situation, Paul Holland, “hillbilly artist” and leader in the Ozarks Artists Guild, has returned from a tour through New England and southeastern Canada more convinced than ever that the Ozarks offers to artists “all the advantages and none of the disadvantages” of the east. “‘The natives,’ he said, ‘seem averse to having sketchers on their land, and even the docks, and virtually all homes are posted ‘no trespassing.’”

This painting and five others by Paul Holland, as  well as the maps, from our collection are now with Missouri State Libraries-Ozark Studies Institute. Read more about the collection here

Oil painting by Paul Holland titled “Ozark Village.” View of Branson’s downtown from Presbyterian Hill across Lake Taneycomo.

 

Woodruff Believed Springfield’s 1934 Folk Festival was “a lot of freaks”

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 122023
 

 

 The committee for the first Springfield Folk Festival, held in 1933. Vance Randolph is third from left, and Sarah Gertrude Knott, the woman he was attracted to, is on the far right. Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who also fancied Miss Knott, is the gent with the bow tie. May Kennedy McCord is fifth from the left.

In the spring of 1934, the Springfield Chamber of Commerce was presented with a very different opportunity to celebrate the Ozarks Empire. May Kennedy McCord, of KWTO’s radio show “Hillbilly Heartbeats,” was on the advisory committee for the upcoming First National Folk Festival to be held in St. Louis, Missouri, beginning April 29. Folk-play and folk-dance enthusiast Sarah Gertrude Knott conceived of that four-day event. Banjo-playing, bowtie-wearing, ballad-singing Bascom Lamar Lunsford, “Minstrel of the Appalachians,” assisted her. The St. Louis Chamber of Commerce enthusiastically backed the venture. Leading up to the main event, contests at smaller festivals would decide who would take the stage in St. Louis to fiddle, yodel, or clog. McCord’s friend Vance Randolph was asked to be one of the judges. She asked if the local committee could meet in late March with the Chamber to solicit support for a Springfield venue.

That meeting did not go well. A blow-by-blow account appeared in The Pittsburgh (Kansas) Headlight of March 22, 1934. On March 27, the Springfield Leader and Press reprinted highlights from it entitled, “The Ozarks and Culture.” “A lot of freaks should not be selected to go to the national festival,” John T. Woodruff, a Chamber official told the shocked group. “Why call back the things we’ve been trying to forget for fifty years? Why advertise to the world that we are ignorant?”

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

FIRST Lead Mine in Missouri was on the James River

 James Fork of the White, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 062023
 

Lead mine along Pearson Creek, circa 1900. Commercial extraction of lead here began in the 1840s and ended around 1920. Remnants of lead diggings can be seen in the hills along lower Pearson Creek.

In Schoolcraft’s 1819 account, A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri, he wrote, “On the immediate banks of James River are situated some valuable lead mines, which have been known to the Osage Indians and to some White River hunters, for many years.”

The young New York explorer repeatedly expressed astonishment at the clarity of Ozark streams. At his James River camp at the lead mine he observed lumps of ore “through the water, which is very clear and transparent.” Other Ozark regions had much vaster commercial lead deposits. These diggings along the James River left unsightly holes and the potential for lead contamination.

Dr. Robert T. Pavlowsky and his associates and students at Missouri State University’s Ozark Environmental and Water Resources Institute have investigated the effect of these old mines on water quality. They found lead contamination from mine waste has been stored in alluvial deposits of floodplains. Lead that washed into streams is now embedded in sediments in Pearson Creek and the James River. It will eventually degrade, but there is a danger if channel instability uncovers this mining-related metal contamination.

 

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

Evolution of Ozark Bridges

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 272023
 

Real photo postcard, 1920s, Ozark, Missouri. Wooden covered bridges were never common and very few survive. Iron bridges were abundant and with maintenance, many remain in use today.

The logo of the City of Ozark features the 1922 iron bridge under which flows the Finley River and the motto of the growing community is “Bridging strong tradition with bright futures.”

The flood of July 9, 1909 was the greatest on record (although records may be updated when the floods of the last few years are counted). Soon after this photograph was taken the covered bridge floated off its piers and crashed into the railroad bridge visible downstream.

The Christian County court advertised for bids for a replacement just five days after it washed away. That month they contracted with the Canton (Ohio) Bridge Company to build a metal span for $3,648.

Covered bridges evoke the past even more than old metal truss bridges. The popular belief that they were constructed to keep from spooking horses may have some validity, but primarily their enclosure was to protect the wood trusses from the elements. Few have survived anyway. Only four remain in Missouri.

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

Springfield’s Sequiota Park, once a Fish Hatchery

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 012023
 

Domino Danzero photograph, circa 1922, of his family picnicking at Sequiota Park. In spite of changes in name, ownership, and utilization, the cave and spring at Sequiota Park still retain a natural ambience that visitors find picturesque.

In 2011 the Springfield-Greene County Park Board held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the completion of a $1.8 million “facelift to the much-needed natural water environment of Sequiota Park.” Considering the variety and intensity of utilizations of the place over the last century, that expenditure seems justified.

Fisher Cave, as the larger cave on the property was originally known, was bought in 1913 for $10,000 by H. E. Peterson, who renamed it Sequiota, which he claimed was an Indian word. The Frisco line ran a motor car service to what they called Se-qui-o-ta Park. Springfieldians flocked to picnic, fish in the small lake, and take boat rides in the cave whose water level was raised by a four-foot dam. More than a thousand feet can be viewed by boat. Cave explorers have mapped another 1,600 feet of passages.

The Missouri State Fish Commission bought the property in 1920 for $23,000 and used the strong spring that flowed from the cave to create a fish hatchery. Both smallmouth bass and rainbow trout were raised. When Table Rock Dam was completed and its discharges proved too cold for native fish, the Shepherd of the Hills Trout Hatchery was built below the dam. Sequiota’s hatchery equipment and manager went south in 1959 to the new facility at Branson. Springfield was deeded the property. It has continued to attract crowds, although boat tours of the main cave are limited and seasonal to protect hibernating endangered gray bats.

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

UP SOUTH IN THE OZARKS – Sampling the cultural DNA of a legendary region

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Mar 032023
 

Brooks Blevins lectures frequently after the publication of his many studies of the Ozarks.

5-Star Review of Brooks Blevins new book by Leland Payton

National and regional identities may not have disappeared but what defines a people and their relationship with place has undergone evolution. Colorful identities are challenged by the homogenization of modernization. In rural regions, more than in urban, lifestyle relates more to geographic specificities. A rural place’s reputation may not have been created by—or accurately reflect the perceptions of, its natives. Academic studies of the Ozarks are scarce compared to other regions of the U.S. Tourism and popular culture have largely shaped its image, but not always falsely, Blevins concedes.

Brooks Blevins’ latest take is Up South in the Ozarks. Subtitled, Dispatches from the Margins, Blevins challenges the overall accuracy of the place’s most dominant symbol, the hillbilly, but acknowledges that the definition of a region needs to account for its clichés. Curiously, many Ozarkers accept cartoonish rustic depictions. Professor Blevins melds academic expertise from many disciplines— an appreciation for folklore, familiarity with both literature and journalism—with the personal, insightful observations of a native son. His encyclopedic geographic and historical knowledge is delivered with humor and a talent for metaphor. Throughout he contrasts and compares this Midwestern river-cut uplifted plateau with both the Deep South and the Appalachian Mountains.

Missionaries and writers descended on the southern highlands of Appalachia before they came to save souls or describe the more isolated Ozarks. In the chapter, “A Time Zone Away and a Generation Behind,” he analogizes the Ozarks to a younger sibling: “You were never first, never original, never completely yourself. Even at school, your teachers knew you as your big brother’s little brother. If that’s your story, you know how the Ozarks feels.”

His chapter, “The South According to Andy,” makes the case that the 1960s TV show set in a fictional mountain south small town was a portrait well received by Ozarkers: “Andy’s South was not the South. It was a South. … It was a projection of something quite southern, even if not a complete portrait of the South.”

Dr. Blevins doesn’t idealize the Ozarks. He confronts the idea that the mountain south was exempt from the past racial prejudices that characterize the Deep South. In “Revisiting Race Relations in the Upland South,” he admits his earlier position based on that premise was wrong: “But the equation of a small Black population with a comparative degree of racial harmony has not always appeared so self-evident to scholars and observers of the South.” He follows facts down unmapped, rocky trails no matter where they lead.

A generational lag in scholarship he believes may be closing: “In 2010, Missouri State University established the region’s first Ozarks Studies minor for undergraduates. Five years later, the University of Arkansas Press launched a monograph series in Ozarks Studies. (They published this book). We may never be first in the Ozarks, but we get around to it eventually. Such is the life of a regional little sibling.”  Blevins is on the board of the Ozarks Studies Institute, an initiative of the Missouri State University Libraries. Dr. Blevins also teaches classes on Ozark history at MSU.

Up South in the Ozarks seeks the nuanced realities of a large, misunderstood region that is paradoxically both romanticized and maligned. Brooks Blevins cherishes the Ozarks and believes its story is worthy of an honest telling, quirky, droll, and marginal as its realities often are.

Available from the University of Arkansas Press, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble.

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