21
THE OZARKS TODAY
VANCE RANDOLPH titled his classic study of 1931 The Ozarks - An American Survival of a Primitive Society. The term primitive was appropriate into the 1930s but is too strong for the present. In general, the Missouri Ozarks have lost the worst of the primitive and retained the best. This progress is more marked in the Ozarks than in the southern Appalachians for several reasons:
(1) The southern Appalachian area is one of roughly parallel valleys and ridges with greater isolation where crossing a ridge rising nearly 2000 feet above the valley discourages communication across the “grain” of the mountains.
(2) Missouri has one of the nation's top state highway departments and its supplementary road system has encouraged communication with the outside world.
(3) The Missouri Ozark economy is a growing one as tourism, recreation, and the move back to the land bring dollars into the area. Even though there are social and economic problems, Ozarkers are more fortunate than kinfolk in portions of the southern Appalachians with their problems of unemployment and stream pollution.
Ozark preservations in addition to those cited in previous chapters include the art of cooking vegetables to a mush as contrasted with the European al dente tradition. Missouri Ozark cooking is not completely southern, as exemplified by the lack of grits, yet it retains the southern touch in food such as corn pone.
The blackberry is an honored fruit (as it should be) served as cobbler, jam, or even liquid (in keeping with I Timothy 5: 23). A variety of customs, arts, and crafts which have died out in other parts of the country or are peculiar to the Ozarks has persisted. These include quilting bees, pie suppers, ice cream socials, sorgum making, and shooting matches (some unscheduled).
Two crafts which have almost disappeared are chair-making and cabin building. The southern Appalachian cabin is the best-built and most handsome variety in the United States, and the design was brought into the Ozarks where it persists as a monument to the pioneer's skill in using the broadax and adz. The use of the broadax in shaping logs led to the figure of speech “hewing to the line” with reference to shaping a straight edge on the log. Working with wood has produced many figures of speech. Among the printable is “"dull as a frow” used to describe humans. The frow was used to rive shakes (split shingles in modern terminology). Because it was a splitting tool it was not sharpened and thus deliberately dull. Dullards are also described as “dull as a widow's ax.” The expression “from who laid the chunk,” alluding to a time in the remote past, refers to the laying of a chunk of knotty wood as a corner base for a rail fence. (Incidentally, wild cherry and black walnut were used for fence rails in addition to oak. The cherry tended to rot quickly, but walnut was noted for its resistance to rotting.)
In what other area of the United States would you find a variety of fishing varying from floating, gigging, sucker grabbing, spoonbill snagging, jug and trot-lines to the illegal but exciting noodlin' or hawgin' (hand fishing)? Or fish ranging the social scale from carp and suckers to trout and bass?
Brush arbor revivals and use of shaped notes for hymnals extend from the South into the Ozarks and southern Appalachians but disappear in the North, as do fiddlers and other genuine hill-music artists.
In keeping with the rambling theme of this chapter, there really are left-handed and right-handed broadaxes and coon-hunting mules!
Shaped notes.
“a monument to the pioneer’s skill with the broadaxe and adz.”
“a variety of fishing
varying from floating …”
Reno Miller with bobber.
“Brush arbor revivals … extend from the South into the Ozarks”
Brush arbor near Potosi.
“There really are left-handed and right-handed broadaxes and coon-hunting mules!”
Roger Kinder and his coon-hunting mule Bonnie; the fence is 5 feet 4 inches high. [Bonnie won first place at the Missouri State Fair, 1979.]