Ozark Country

by Ozark Country (retail) (epub)

  Other pastimes that have become institutions in the hills are: marble playing, horseshoe pitching, the shooting match, the medicine show, horse racing, card playing, and the annual picnic or old settlers’ reunion. Marble shooting is considered to be a sport for boys in most sections of the country, but I found many men enjoying this pastime when I entered the Ozarks a quarter of a century ago. Contests were sometimes held between communities with the best players taking part. Gambling usually accompanied such tournaments.

  The more modern card games such as auction and contract bridge are unknown in the backhills, but both draw and stud poker are relished by many hillsmen. The law against gambling requires strict secrecy and such games are usually carried on in the woods with stumps for tables, or behind closed doors. Pitch is played everywhere “jist fer th’ fun of it,” in hotel lobbies and country stores, and checkers helps the hillsman pass many pleasant hours. At Caddo Gap, Arkansas, checker squares are painted on the concrete in front of two business buildings for the convenience of the players.

  The medicine show is a transient institution that makes the rounds of the villages and it seldom fails to get a crowd. Entertainment is provided by a blackface comedian or two who crack jokes and sing catchy songs and dance with guitar or banjo accompaniment. Health lectures by the “Doc” are interspersed, and herb bitters, snake oil, or goldenseal salve are recommended for about all the ills imaginable. If you have jitters, stomach trouble, rheumatism, kidney trouble, freckles, boils, or bunions, the Doc’s remedies, “compounded from an old Indian prescription,” will do the work. The proposition is baited with special offers and a money-back guarantee, and it pulls “foldin’ money” from the hillsman’s pocket. “Honey Boy” and “Lasses” carry the products to customers with cries of “Sold out, Doctor” when a sale is made. Within an hour or two, the show ends and the Doc and his helpers head their car toward the next village.

  Annual picnics or reunions are held in the late summer after the crops are laid by and there is a rest period before harvest. A convenient grove, where plenty of drinking water is available, is selected for the occasion. Concessions include hot dog and cold drink stands, a dance platform, and sometimes a homemade swing pulled by a mule. Speeches are made by local politicians during the afternoon, but the night is for fun and frolic. These picnics may be one-day affairs or may be reunions that continue for a week or more. “Folks shore have good times at them thar picnics.”

  CHAPTER VI

  Customs and Traditions

  Hillbilly Barter

  “I’d like t’ have that thar yaller dog o’ yourn, Tobe,” said Ed Bullock as he took a seat on the counter near the stove at Tuttle’s store, “but I jist can’t give ye whut yer askin’ fer him. Tell ye whut I’ll do. If ’n you’ll put in th’ grubbin’ hoe with th’ dog, I’ll swap ye this here crosscut saw an’ five pounds uv th’ best homegrown tobacker ye ever chawed on. You’ens ’ill need th’ saw fer makin’ ties an’ bar’l staves this winter an’ this is th’ best one ever brought into th’ county, I reckon. Don’t need a thing done t’ hit but a leetle sharpenin’ and settin’. That’s a good offer, Tobe, fer that dog o’ yourn ain’t much account no way.”

  But Tobe Mullins was not inclined to trade that way. In fact, no hillsman ever accepts a first offer unless it is a bargain beyond the shadow of a doubt. Such procedure would spoil all the fun of barter and ultimately bring ruin to an honorable profession. The custom of barter is as old as the hills themselves. Mountaineers, with little cash on hand, always have been inveterate swappers. It isn’t necessary to designate the first Monday or the third Saturday of the month as trade’s day at Woodville. Every weekday is an open day for swapping in this Ozark community and the men sometimes deal in worldly goods on Sunday in spite of all the parson does to prevent it. Everyone remembers the time Deacon Jed Taylor was caught trading horses with a band of gypsies on Sunday morning when he should have been saying his prayers at the church house.

  Tobe chewed his tobacco hard and fast as he whittled long shavings from a pine slab that he had picked up outside the store. It was a tense moment in the commercial life at Woodville. Half a dozen village loafers awaited the outcome with interest. Hite Lindsey was already figuring that if the trade went through he would borrow the dog from Ed for squirrel hunting.

  P-futt went a stream of tobacco juice at the stove’s door. Tobe wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve and continued whittling. The pine slab began to take the shape of a butter paddle. At last the old trader spoke.

  “I can’t swap that way, Ed. This here dog is th’ best cur in these parts fer night huntin’. Refused ten dollars in cash money fer ’im last fall a year ago when I took that big hunt with Dan Freeman on White River. Treed four coons an’ seven ’possums in one night. Ye ort t’ put in a bushel o’ them taters ye growed in th’ bottom ’long with th’ tobacker. Best I could do would be t’ swap th’ dog an’ th’ horse collar fer th’ saw an’ tobacker, an’ a tow sack full of them taters.”

  After three or four hours of parley, the deal was made and the property changed hands. Ed seemed well satisfied with the trade as he went whistling down the trail, leading a yellow cur with a frayed rope, and carrying the horse collar on his shoulder. The trade had cost him a crosscut saw, a worn file, six pounds of tobacco, and two gallons of sorghum molasses.

  Jed Taylor holds the record as the best trader in the Woodville community. Last year he started a string of trades with a coonhound and when he finished swapping he had the dog back and a pony and a pig for profit. He began by swapping the dog to Ed Bullock for a broken-down plow horse. Ed took the dog to the Posey neighborhood and traded it for a couple of calves. Jed then contacted the dog’s new owner and swapped him the horse he got from Ed for the dog and a good-sized shoat. So far he was a pig ahead. Then he traded the dog again, this time for a cow. This farmer swapped the dog to another party on a hog deal. Taylor then bartered with the dog’s new owner and got the dog and a pony in exchange for the cow he had recently acquired. He had retrieved his coonhound and had a pig and a pony as profits on his trading.

  Under the hill by the river stands Tom Peden’s barbershop. It might be called a variety shop for although Tom began as a barber forty years ago, he has gradually enlarged his business to include many of the arts and sciences. At Tom’s place you can get a modern haircut, a late-model whisker trim, or a slick shave. In the old days he had to use the sap from wild grapevines as a hair restorer, but now he has the latest commercial tonics with which to scent the young bloods for their social encounters. At Tom’s shop you can have your shoes half-soled, get your watch fixed, or leave a rifle to be rebored. At one time he pulled teeth, but the coming of a “tooth dentist” to the county seat has relieved him of this work.

  Tom never was much of a dentist, but he served his neighbors in this capacity as best he could. His regular price for extracting a tooth was two bits for home folks and fifty cents for “furriners.” But a native did not need cash in hand. He would do the work with the same promptness for a ’possum hide or a bucket of huckleberries. Of course, the procedure wasn’t painless and sometimes the homemade pliers slipped off the tooth and fractured a jawbone, but Tom was persistent in this work and would continue the torture all day if necessary. The patient sat in the barber chair and laid his head against a board padded with flour sacks. Tom is cross-eyed and it is rumored that he sometimes pulled the wrong tooth. Of course, many of the old-timers did not patronize him. When they had teeth to be removed they cut around them with a pocketknife, or a pair of scissors, worked them loose and jerked them out without dental assistance.

  On Saturdays, Tom gives most of his attention to barbering. He looks all dressed up in clean blue denim overalls. Fifteen cents pays for a shave; a quarter of a dollar buys a haircut. Tom owns only one razor but it is a good one, given to him by his father years ago. He knows the exact amount of snake oil to put on the strop for conditioning the blade.

  Tart Tuttle, the merchant, has more t
rade sales than cash ones. A good mink hide or coonskin will pay for a pair of brogans and a few ounces of “sang” root will get the best hat in the house. Overalls that sell in towns at a dollar fifty are swapped for two bushels of corn or five gallons of molasses. It takes a generous slab of hickory-smoked bacon or a pail of wild honey to pay for a couple of cotton work shirts. Tart owns the best string of foxhounds in the country and if a fellow comes along with a dog that suits him, he will trade almost anything in the store for it. Old Lead cost him a ten-gallon hat, a box of cigars, and five dollars in money. Two other hounds in his pack cost a suit of clothes and an assortment of snuff, stick candy, and fishing tackle. Tart considers them good trades, for the dogs furnish the best of entertainment when the moon is up and the foxes are out.

  Farmers in Woodville community have the happy practice of swapping work of all kinds. During the haying season, neighbor swaps with neighbor in getting the crop into barn or stack. Sometimes a man gets behind with his spring plowing or planting and the neighbors help him out. He pays this work back at some time during the working season. Suppose Tobe Mullins decides to dig a pond to hold water for his stock during the dry months of the summer season. He has no money available to hire laborers and teams to help him with the work and he can hardly do it all by himself. But Ed Bullock and Hite Lindsey are available and they help with the project. A few weeks later Tobe pays Ed by helping him make molasses. Hite calls on him to help shingle a barn. These farmers keep no books but they do not lose track of the work due.

  Swapping picks up “right smart” during the sessions of circuit court at the county seat. Many Woodville folks go to court to listen in on important cases, to meet old friends and neighbors, and to do a little trading. Jockey row is on the vacant lots back of the old livery stable. Here the men from Woodville meet traders from other parts of the county and spend many happy hours in barter.

  Going to Mill

  History hangs like an aura over the old water mills of the Ozarks; tradition clings to them like moss to an oak tree. In the annals of folklore, few things compare with the waterwheel of an old burr mill, monotonous perhaps in its slow revolutions but providing, ever providing, food for the rural table and toll for the thrifty miller. The folklore of Missouri and Arkansas is enriched in flavor by the seasoning of romantic milling days.

  One of the first water mills west of the Mississippi was established by John Carter near Eleven Point River in Randolph County, Arkansas. It was built in 1805 and operated by Carter and his son for eighty-three years. For a long time it was the only gristmill within a radius of one hundred miles. It continued operation through the Civil War period and was one of the mills of the Ozark war zone that escaped destruction. A man named Hufstedler bought the mill in the eighties and christened it Birdell in honor of his two daughters, Birdie and Ella. Birdell Mill is still in operation after 138 years of continuous service.

  In pre-motor days water mills dotted the streams throughout the Ozark area. The burr mill was an institution necessary to the life of the mountain people. Farmers and frontiersmen of that day went to mill weekly, monthly, or yearly, depending upon the supply of meal or flour needed and the distance to be traveled.

  Among the early settlers of the Ozark region were many men who knew the milling trade. Some of them brought milling machinery with them, up the rivers in keelboats or by torturous overland hauls to choice sites near flowing springs or streams. To utilize a hillside spring, a wooden flume was built to carry the water to the top of a large overshot wheel which assisted in developing the power by its immense weight. If a stream was to be harnessed for power, and an undershot wheel used, a crude dam was built to provide a millpond which supplied water through a sluice gate as needed. One method of constructing a dam was to build pens of logs and fill them with stones. Some of these early dams were lashed with strips of bark when wire was not available. The structure was weighted down with large rocks which held it in place except in times of immense floods. The dam was usually twelve or fifteen feet high and twenty feet in depth. The logs were laid in pigpen style and fitted closely together. Gates or crude openings were provided to release the surplus water in flood time. The size of the millrace itself depended upon the type and size of the wheel to be used in developing power.

  Much of the machinery of the early mills in the Ozarks was manufactured by the millers themselves. The waterwheel was built of wood capable of long wear in the water. Shafts and pulley wheels were hewn from seasoned hickory. The burrs were of native stone cut to a thickness of twelve or fifteen inches and with a circumference of three or more feet. Belts were sometimes cut from home-tanned cowhide with the hair left on.

  Three types of waterwheels are known in the Ozarks. The earliest and, for many years, the most popular type was the large overshot wheel. It is twenty or more feet in diameter and the rims of the circumference are four or five feet apart. Wooden paddles are inserted at the proper slant to use the water to good advantage. The stream pours upon the wheel from the flume or race, turning it forward. The old Woodlock Mill in Crawford County, Missouri, had a wheel of this type. The main shaft of this large circular contraption extended into the mill proper and operated the machinery by means of pulleys.

  The undershot wheel is smaller in diameter than the overshot type but it has greater width. The water from the millpond enters the race through a sluice or gate and strikes the lower part of the wheel, turning it backwards. The axle shaft runs into the mill and operates a bar fitted with pulleys for the attachment of belts.

  The third type of wheel is more modern than the other models and is called a turbine. It has a vertical shaft, lies flat in the millrace, and is seldom more than three or four feet in diameter. It is driven by the impact of the flowing stream upon the blades of the wheel, utilizing a high percentage of the potential energy of the flowing water. Pioneer millers made turbines from the butts of large logs and carved the buckets in the solid wood. Modern turbines are made of iron. The vertical shaft from the center of the wheel is attached to a horizontal bearing on a level with the mill machinery.

  In the early days the water mill was a vigorous community center, a popular meeting place for all classes of hillfolks. It was no uncommon thing to ride fifty miles to mill and camp for two or three days while waiting a turn. The burrs ground slowly and quite often the output did not exceed two or three bushels an hour. This gave opportunity for sports and amusements and valuable social contacts. Frequently the whole family rode to mill in a jolt-wagon to enjoy the recreation the occasion afforded. The men carried their rifles with them in order to provide meat for the camp, to compete in tests of marksmanship, and for protection. Women knitted and gossiped around the campfire. The boys played marbles, gathered wild fruits, hunted with “bonarrows,” and went swimming in the clear pools. Sometimes they fished from the windows of the mill.

  The mill was a good place to exchange ideas about farming, tell tall tales, sing old ballads, and catch up on news from the outside world. Tom Keener from over on Bull Creek had foolishly planted his turnips in the light of the moon, much to his regret. John Johnson from the head of Bee Fork had seen the brush rabbits lying in shallow pits along the way, which meant fair weather for at least two or three days. A fellow from the knob country of north Arkansas told how he had “whetted a banter” on his cradle Thursday a week ago and had outdone every other man in the neighborhood.1 Susie Black, arriving muleback from Finley River, told about a neighbor’s baby being born with a veil over its face. Nate Sellers, who had carried his sack of white corn from the foot of Breadtray Mountain, was always ready with a hunting story in which he invariably played the heroic part. Of course, the old “yarb” doctor was there giving free advice on the use of catnip tea, hoarhound, sassafras, and slippery elm. The circuit rider shook hands all around and invited everybody to attend the fourth Sunday meeting and foot washing at the log church on Sow Coon Mountain. Sometimes marriage vows were said in the shade of the mill and the parson needed to be on hand
to tie the knot and collect his fee.

  In the picture of pioneer milling days, honesty and integrity stand out like a harvest moon. The toll of the miller was seldom questioned. The customers waited their turns with salutary patience. Good sportsmanship was an accepted fact that seldom met contradiction. Of course, occasional fights occurred but the records say that trouble was the exception rather than the rule. Such an exception happened one time when a certain hillsman grew tired of waiting his turn. He had been at the mill three days and had not yet been served. Jokingly he remarked that he would just dust the miller and go home. A fight followed but it was the hillsman himself who got dusted.

  Sometimes the little brown jug went to mill along with the sack of corn. One miller in Christian County, Missouri, combined distilling with milling. Corn was ground or liquefied as one might desire. A sack of burr meal and a jug of good corn liquor made a happy combination to the isolated hillsman.

  At midnight on Saturday the water gates of the mills were usually closed and not opened until Monday morning. It was the custom at a mill in Madison County, Arkansas, to auction the fish that might be caught in the race during the Sabbath. The closed gate provided an excellent trap and sometimes the catch was good. The auction was held on Saturday afternoon before the gates were closed and if no fish happened to get in the successful bidder paid just the same.

  Sometimes a section of the mill was used for a dance when the day’s work was done. If no fiddler were present, the young folks stepped to the tune of “Buffalo Girls” or other old party songs, singing as they danced. Many an old mill was the scene of this beautiful custom which today has lost out in competition with the modern dance. One of the favorite party games in the backhills comes from the milling tradition.