MissouriLife Articles

Eight Seconds

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:53:03 GMT

By Jeremy Goldmeier

DUSTIN HALL EARNS his paycheck eight seconds at a time. Think
that sounds easy? Ask his coworker: two thousand pounds of bucking,
snorting rage. Making a living as a professional bull rider has its
perks—plenty of downtime, exotic travel, and hearty prizes for placing
at an event. But for those eight pivotal seconds, it’s the least desirable
position in the world of sports: hanging on tight as a wild beast does
everything in its power to dislodge you.

It’s a punishing line of work, and Dustin has the injury history to
prove it. But when he’s in the saddle, Dustin’s where he wants to be.

Growing up in the country community of Harrah, Oklahoma,
Dustin was immersed in bull-riding culture from a young age. It was
the kind of town where people like his father and uncle rode bulls “as
a hobby”—just the sort of thing to do for some kicks on the weekend.
Despite, or perhaps because of its inherent danger, Dustin was eager to
try his hand at the sport. His father was ready to oblige, but his mother
refused to see her son exposed to the dangers of bull riding. It
was one of several disagreements that drove the two of
them to a divorce. As part of the settlement, Dustin
could not ride bulls until he turned eighteen.
Even then, it took his stepfather to convince
his mother to let Dustin give it a shot.

His first ride was a common story for
novice cowboys. The bull turned hard right
out of the gate and sent Dustin for a tumble.
But Dustin got right back up to give it
another go.

“It wasn’t hard at all,” Dustin says of dusting
himself off after his first attempt. “I was
excited to do it again. Once you get past the butterflies,
you’re good.”

For professional bull riders, success is often not merely
a question of talent. To take the kind of consistent punishment that
riders endure—and bulls sure know how to dish it out—riders have to
possess an intense drive to compete. They are not necessarily fearless
men. Dustin still admits to getting nervous in the holding pen before
each ride as he waits atop his mammoth bull for the gate to fly open.
But perhaps more so than any other athletes, bull riders understand
how to control their fears and use them to their advantage.

“I think I do better when I get scared,” Dustin says.

The popular perception of how to ride a bull is to simply hang on for
dear life. But it’s trickier than that. What looks like chaos to the untrained
eye is actually a series of give-and-take between bull and rider.

“It’s kind of like a dance,” Dustin says.

The bull kicks; the rider sits up and then bows forward in rhythm
with his mount’s movements. It’s not so much brute strength and white
knuckles as it is sound balance and sharp timing. Riders can train on
horses and wobble boards in their spare time—or mechanical bulls, if
they’re feeling kitschy—but nothing substitutes the intensity of the
real thing. In his rise to Professional Bull Riders, Inc., (PBR) Dustin
relied primarily on his natural abilities.

“I didn’t exercise a lot,” he says. “It just all clicked for me.”

His first couple of seasons in PBR marked a stunning arrival. After
breaking into the pro bull-riding fraternity with six appearances in 2000,
Dustin stepped up his game the next season. He finished in the top ten
at six events in 2001 and won his first PBR contest in Reno, Nevada.
That triumph netted him a check for fifty-five thousand dollars, still
the largest sum he’s ever received for a single event. Dustin
doesn’t remember what he spent that money on, but
he probably blew a lot of it in a hurry. He was
still only twenty years old but already making
more money than most people see in a year.
In order to face the challenges that were
going to start cropping up in his young
career, Dustin would have to grow up fast.
Meeting his future wife Jessica helped that
maturation process immensely.
Jessica had heard that Dustin was “full
of himself” from other riders. Thankfully,
it turned out that they were just jealous, she
says. The two hit it off, despite their different
backgrounds. A Springfield native, Jessica convinced
Dustin to move to southwest Missouri, where the
couple and their two daughters currently reside. It was the first of many
changes Dustin would undergo as his career progressed.

“Bull riding was his life,” Jessica says. “The idea of taking a weekend
off to go fishing was out of the question. It was an obsession for him.”

But getting married and becoming a father changed Dustin’s perspective
on life considerably. He came to realize there was something
much more important to live for than just the action down at the rodeo.
At the same time, Dustin was getting a new lease on his spiritual life.
He had talked extensively about his faith with some of his fellow PBR
members, including longtime friend and roommate Mike Lee. With his colleagues’ encouragement, Dustin recommitted himself to Christianity
and began attending Bible study programs regularly. As he continued to
improve as a bull rider, Dustin matured more rapidly as a person.

These systems of support that Dustin had cultivated became more
important when his career hit the skids in 2003. Early in the season,
a bull stomped on his left knee after Dustin had fallen to the dirt,
causing severe ligament damage to the joint. As a result of the injury,
he had to wear a brace for several months. After a short hiatus, Dustin
tried to soldier on but suffered an even more devastating injury when
he broke his right arm in a second accident. That was the arm that he
used to hang onto the bull, and with it out of commission, he simply
couldn’t take to the saddle until it healed and strengthened properly.

There were more setbacks than progress with his injuries, and
Dustin wound up off of the PBR tour for two full seasons. He got
the chance to spend more time with his family and, as he underwent
various rehab activities, talked on the phone extensively with Mike.
But there was never any question that he wanted to return to competition.
Once he was healthy enough to start riding again, Dustin had to
rediscover his sense of timing. That was no easy task after spending so
many months on the sidelines.

“There was a while there where it seemed like I couldn’t ride anything,”
Dustin recalls.

But once he got back in the swing of riding, Dustin’s fortunes took
off once again. The 2006 season became Dustin’s dream comeback
campaign. He placed in the top ten at eight events, won the PBR’s
St. Louis event, appeared in his fourth PBR World Finals, and earned
over $125,000. That success has carried over into 2007, as Dustin
once again sits among the PBR’s top twenty riders in total points. He
attributes the success to his family, who travel with him all over North
America, and his renewed trust in God.

His favorite Bible passage, Isaiah 58:8, has a great deal of relevance
to his long journey back from injury to the PBR spotlight: “Then shall
thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring
forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of
the Lord shall be thy rear guard.”

Dustin’s certainly not your typical Hollywood cowboy—he’s boyish,
soft-spoken, and a consummate family man.

“His witness is to be the best example he can be,” Mike says, “and
he’s trying harder than ever before.”

After Dustin’s brush with early retirement, he and Jessica think a lot
more about their future—including life after the PBR.

“It’s not going to be there forever,” Jessica says. “It can be taken
away quickly. That gold buckle might shine today, but it won’t mean
anything when you’re seventy.”

Dustin hopes to raise cattle after he retires from professional bull
riding and maybe have some more time to participate in his favorite
hobbies of hunting and fishing. Until then, he’s going to keep at the
sport he loves. Now he knows that while those eight seconds of excitement
might make his paycheck, life has a bounty of more rewarding
moments to offer.

Oct 2007

Missouri's First Poet Laureate

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:56:43 GMT

By Scott Spilky

As the state’s first poet laureate, Ashland native Walter Bargen has crisscrossed the state speaking, reading his work, and championing the power of words to move the imagination.

“Poems are more relevant than they have ever been,” he says.

Walter, the award-winning author of eleven books, has been writing for nearly thirty years. His work has appeared in more than one hundred publications, including The Missouri Review. He grew up in Belton near Kansas City and attended the University of Missouri at Columbia where he has worked for decades, first as a technical writer and currently as a consultant on testing with primary and secondary schools.

Last fall, he was one of more than one hundred Missourians nominated to become poet laureate; he was selected as a finalist in December and interviewed with the governor. When Walter got the news he had been appointed to fill the two-year term as Missouri’s first poet laureate, he was “surprised, delighted, taken aback, wondering what’s in store for me.”

What’s in store is a minimum of six appearances a year at public libraries and schools across the state to promote the arts in Missouri. Walter was inundated with media requests after the announcement.

“People are curious,” he says. “It’s the first of something.”

While not a requirement of the position, Walter penned a poem about the state, “Moon Walk Missouri,” which he read at the ceremony marking his appointment in the state capitol rotunda. “It’s about the need to tell stories and how that is an essential part of our identity,” Walter says of the poem.

That need will be a central theme of Walter’s message as he talks to people about poetry’s continuing ability to move us in our fast-paced, digital age—something he witnessed with the outpouring of poetry after 9/11.

“People find solace in something that is well crafted and thoughtful,” he says.

Walter penned the following:

Flying on Instruments

In the flashlight’s beam, he follows the frantic
flutter of a dusty brown bird up and down
the shed’s cobwebbed window, leaving dusk
streaked with dust and stars. This bird, perhaps
a flycatcher, tries desperately to fly deeper into
night’s glittering glass as he approaches and fails
at rescue before grabbing it with one hand
rather than scooping with two. He is surprised
by its weight, or lack of weight, and feels
uncertain how tight to hold a handful of air.
He steps from the door into the dark
and he almost doesn’t notice his empty hands.

To Keep Going

From far up the valley,
from deep in the willow thickets
along the creek, a birdcall
comes I don’t recognize.

Juan Ramon Jimenez wrote
that he would go away.
And the birds will still be
there singing. He was right,

he went away, and some of us
still hear him singing, in
the branches beside our houses
and far up cold creeks.

But there are those birds
that have left too. The last
dusky seaside sparrow died
in a cage behind beach dunes

in Florida, unable to call in a mate.
The shrike, the butcher-bird, Jackie
hangman, the strangler, all our names
for feathers on the same bird,

a songbird that goes against the grain
and with hooked beak breaks necks
of mice and other birds and sometimes
hangs their limp bodies on strands

of barbed wire where they dangle
like half-eaten laundry–their song
is disappearing too–along with
the meadowlark that has perched on

a fencepost in my garden and tilted its
head back, stretching its neck and exposing
a black feathered necklace as it points
its bill skyward, clearly announcing

spring, a yellow-breasted soloist
fronting an orchestra of greening
grass, it too is going away, and for
no good reason that we can understand,

and so there are fewer notes
to remind us of his going,
to keep us listening, to keep
us going.

Deuces Wild

They argue from one god to another─
slippery steppingstones across a creek
deep in forest. Ice cubes in a drink.
Miracles outdistance conclusions.
Birth necessary but not sufficient.
Death the absolute.
The more certain, the louder they become.
The more uncertain, the louder they become.
Bouts of paradise race around the table.
Heaven hovers over half-filled glasses.
Hell simmers in the other half.
Cat curled under the chair,
someone steps on its tail
and everyone is awake again.
It’s the last hand of poker
this Saturday night. Everyone’s losing.
Nothing left to bet, the center of the table
piled high with wings.

Breakfast with Asteroids

Two million years into the Late Pliocene,
consciousness leaps and crawls before any of us,
beyond clear beginnings of our struggle, when an asteroid
doused its fiery body in the Bellinghausen Sea,
names only we need to locate ourselves, our suffering,
amid ice sheets more blank than Hobbes ever imagined.
The splash went three miles in the air, sent a tidal
wave twelve stories high into the Pacific Rim,
and perhaps rained unnamed creatures on the Transantarctic
Mountains, explaining the “Sirius enigma.” Another
sixty-five million years back, an asteroid crashed
into Yucatan leaving a crater wider then the sprawl
of Los Angeles, dust blotting out the sun, extincting
three-quarters of all species--too early for us to worry.

This morning I’ve a headache. I’ve collided with at least
the meteor responsible for the mile-wide crater in Arizona¾
six hundred feet deep when it stopped, but I’m plunging deeper.
For weeks now, I’ve been dreaming that the trees are still
burning with light. I remember looking out the window,
astonished that after so many killing frosts, that so many oaks
are still green and rustling with wind. Is it the lifting of a dish,
then a glass, then a fork, out of soapy water, wiping them
with washrag and rinsing, then setting them on the rack to drain,
these stark daily details, what the living do, that sends me
plummeting through another barren season. The trees are leafless,
the blooded sun rising, the sky an iron skillet, the sink soon empty.

Visit www.walterbargen.com for more information.

June 2008

Twain's Ammunition

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:13:57 GMT

By Roberta Moores

Missouri boasts movers and shakers in American political, literary, and cultural history. However, only one figure represents all three: Samuel Clemens, whose pen name, Mark Twain, has taken on mythical proportions. Columbia will be fortunate on April 29 to receive a return visit, of sorts, from Twain, in actor Hal Holbrook’s one-man show at a performance in the University Concert Series at Jesse Hall.

In a 2005 interview, Holbrook talked enthusiastically of the show’s more than fifty-year run and pulled no punches in relating how Twain’s work gives him ammunition to take on the world.

RM: Did you ever imagine that your show would go so far?

HH: No! I had no idea! In 1953, my wife and I were putting on a morning show, playing historical characters in New Jersey high schools in an effort to make thirty-five to fifty dollars a week. She had to quit when she was expecting our child. I knew I could get booked doing the Twain “lecture” (that’s what we called them back then), by the same people who’d booked the two-person show. In January of ’54, I auditioned for a soap opera, and after five auditions, I got offered a job for two hundred dollars a week. I started crying. This was at a time when we didn’t have two hundred dollars in the bank! But an interesting instinct, probably born of my native New England instinct to be careful, caused me to ask if I could keep one of my dates doing the Mark Twain show,

The first time, I was so surprised by the laughter. I didn’t know it was funny – I was scared to death! Then I got to thinking, a person could actually do this. Nine or ten months later, when my story in the soap dimmed down, I got a call asking me to play him in a nightclub act. Ed Sullivan saw me, and Steve Allen, and put me on their shows. In 1957, we’d saved up nine thousand dollars to produce the show off-Broadway. The critical fraternity of the U.S. went nuts. They wrote astounding reviews. It was absolutely frightening. It was awesome; it could have grabbed ahold of my whole life, but the cautious side said, “Don’t let this take over your whole life. Keep it on the side.” Since then, I’ve done at least twelve shows every year.

RM: Performing that number of shows can take its toll. How do you stay fresh and excited about the show?

HH: Two things help. As I get older, I get more — what is the word — angry, angry or frustrated, about the world I live in, in many, many ways. I see a change in ideals, behavior, standards—an apparent weakening of the moral plane according to what I was raised to believe in. In politics, which everyone is concerned about now, the press has taken over the job of thinking for us. So second, this material becomes my “machine gun,” my opportunity to shoot down all the deceitful, crummy things I want to knock out, fired out of this material written by someone who was also fired up. He questioned our thinking.

RM: Do you add to the show?

HH: I do add to the show all the time, anywhere from ten minutes to a half-hour. This year I’ve added quite a bit. But what is very important — and this is very important to me — I do not update, modernize, or rewrite. I select the material; if I edit, I edit by selection. The point is: I don’t want to change what he wrote, because the original is much more powerful. That way, the audience gets a “double whammy”; they hear the words, and they laugh because it’s funny, and it’s true, but then they’re also thinking, “My God, this guy wrote that over a hundred years ago!” I do occasionally simplify some words to take the “literariness” out. Clemens did the same thing in preparing his lectures to make it seem more extemporaneous…but what I don’t do is edit a political position.

RM: For example?

HH: [Twain] hated war, but we don’t know what he’d think about the war in Iraq. He’s not here, so we don’t know. But I found a piece last spring to make people think — to question — and that, I think, I can honestly do with Twain. I create a piece on a topic to pry our mind open and put a little fresh air in there.

RM: On the topic of political positions, you perform excerpts of Huckleberry Finn in your show. The book is often banned in schools for being racist. What do you think about that?

HH: It’s obvious that Twain uses Huck Finn to attack violence and racism by its continuous and widespread popularity in countries such as India, Japan, and China…On a panel at an American Literature conference, I talked about re-reading [Huckleberry Finn] recently, and I kept hitting up against the word “nigger.” I put the book down and asked myself, “Hold on, Hal, let’s use our common sense. Was Mark Twain a good writer? Did he know what he was up to? Why did he use the word when he knew it was unpleasant. Because if he didn’t know, he was stupid. Well, he’s not stupid, so if he used the word to the point it felt like you had bugs crawling all over you, he was doing it on purpose—he wanted you to feel disgusted.” Like other things—a ringing bell, or a sledgehammer—that word acquired such a distasteful sound for blacks and ninety-nine percent of whites, that it helped Twain’s purpose. We know he hated slavery; I don’t know if he knew the effect Huck Finn would have. I like to think so.

RM: Have you ever performed in Hannibal?

HH: I played in Hannibal in 1956 or ’57, before the show was well known. It was in the Star Theatre; they had to cancel the Saturday movie. Fifty-eight people showed up. I’ve been a few times since then.

Sometimes I think Missouri lets “Show Me” get out of hand. I wonder if they know what they produced in Mark Twain. Hannibal has to keep working Tom Sawyer, and it pays off, but they need to get beyond Tom Sawyer, and get all of [Twain] in; shake themselves loose.

RM: What influences do you think Missouri had on Mark Twain?

HH: When Mark Twain said, “I am not an American; I am The American,” he picked his words carefully. He reflected both the good and bad in our national character. He came from this little place, and like anyone who comes from a small place, you get spots on you, and those spots are mostly wrong. But he left there and absorbed this panorama with his extraordinary memory and literary view, and it altered him.

RM: While there are many imitators, no one gives us Twain quite the way you do. Do you worry that your legacy will live on?

HH: Mark Twain is an endless fountain of reason and truth … no one is indispensable. All we can do is begin to stand in his light. We reflect and absorb great power from certain human beings. Mark Twain belongs to that platoon of great Americans.

April 2008 MissouriLifeLines

Tom and Huck

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:13:20 GMT

“Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer swears they will keep mum about this and they wish they may drop down dead in their tracks if they ever tell and rot,” agree Tom and Huck in the Mark Twain classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Tom and Huck had more than a few secrets, and the Springfield Little Theatre will reveal all in its annual Literature to Life presentation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer from March 27 through April 6.

Sixth grader Colton Kastrup, as Tom, and seventh grader Weston Rist, as Huck—along with a cast of forty-nine who bring Mark Twain’s endearing characters to life—will race bugs, impress Becky Thatcher, and play pirates on the Mississippi River. Both Colton and Weston are returning Little Theatre actors.

The Literature to Life Presentations began eight years ago, says Rachel Peacock-Young, director of marketing at the Springfield Little Theatre. “We wanted to bring something that people are studying in school to life so that they can see it in another form, not just a book,” she says.

Visit www.springfieldlittletheatre.org or call 417-869-1334, ext. 4 for more information, times, and ticket prices.

--Rebecca French Smith

March 2008 MissouriLifeLines

Educated Hillbilly Hippies

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:29:51 GMT

Ozark Mountain Daredevils invite an encore

By Kenny Knauer

“If You Wanna get to Heaven, you got to raise a little Hell!”

The opening notes of this familiar song floated out over the packed auditorium in the Gillioz Theatre at Springfield. Many longtime Daredevils fans in the audience said they thought they had indeed “gone to Heaven.”

This song was more than just a regional favorite; it hit Billboard Magazine’s “Top Ten” when released.

And who could have been more appropriate to christen the reopening of the Gillioz Theatre than the Ozark native sons? Bob Bryant, a longtime board member of the Springfield Landmarks Preservation Trust as well as a business partner of John Dillon, an original Daredevil, suggested the band be the first act to play the restored theatre when it reopened this past spring.

The band had already held a “trial revival” of the original Daredevils at Wildwood Springs Lodge at Steelville last year. The concerts were completely sold out. In fact, Bob Bell, owner of the lodge and the organizer of the “Living Room Concerts” held in the cozy venue there, says, “People flew in from all over the world—England, France, Australia, and Israel—to hear them. It was really cool because it was the first time in twenty years these original members had played together,” Bob says. “The audience was wound up, and it was a magical night.” he says. The Daredevils played at the Wildwood Lodge again this year.

The concerts were more than just jumping back on a bicycle and going out on stage, even with the wonderful harmonies of four of the original members, Randle Chowning, John Dillon, Larry Lee, and Mike “Supe” Granda. It was time to rehearse with their fellow members, Ron Gremp, on drums since 1989, and lead guitarist Dave Painter. One of the best keyboard players in the Ozarks region, Kelly Brown, joined the mix.

News of the Daredevils’ three-night Revival Concerts, coupled with the desire to see the restored Gillioz Theatre complex, prompted a sellout of all 3,300 seats in less than twenty-four hours.

The band has enjoyed similar success over the past thirty-five years with a winning combination of great song writing skills, beautiful harmony, hard work, and good luck. Founded in Springfield in the early 1970s by self-described “educated hillbilly hippies,” they were first known as The Family Tree. The group originally came together at a legendary club at Springfield, the New Bijou Theater, as a group of songwriters playing each other’s songs.

In the beginning, it was Randle, Larry, and John, all from the Springfield area. John brought in Steve Cash and Randle brought in Supe, a “city boy” from St. Louis who was studying at Southwest Missouri State University. Local keyboard artist Buddy Brayfield rounded out the group.

According to John, the single biggest break in the band’s early career was when friend, songwriter, and later Daredevil Steve Canaday made an audacious, unscheduled visit to CBS Records’s senior executive John Hammond at New York City. Hammond had already completed a legendary career at Columbia Records. When Steve informed Hammond’s secretary that he had a tape for Hammond to hear, she assured him Mr. Hammond would probably not see Steve without an appointment. But Hammond began listening.

“Mr. Hammond never turned around from reading the newspaper until Steve Cash’s song, ‘Black Sky,’ came on,” John says.

Hammond must have thought that they had something. He sent one of his artist and repertoire men, Mike Sunday, to hear the group in Springfield. “His rep gave us five hundred dollars for studio time to record some songs,” Supe says. “They might have expected four or five, but we recorded twenty-three.”

That demo tape led to a management contract with Good Karma Productions of Kansas City and a record deal with A&M Records of Hollywood, says Randle. “David Anderle and Stan Plesser (Good Karma) knew Glyn Johns, a well-known British record producer, who had just produced two Eagles records. He listened to it, liked the authenticity, and agreed to produce the Daredevils’ first album.”

The Daredevils were a songwriter’s band. “We loved the group The Band, how they played multiple instruments. Glyn Johns wanted a non-L.A. band, and we were authentic,” Steve says.
Steve and Larry recall the band’s delight when Johns said they were to record their first album in England at the famed Olympic Studios at London. Many other famous bands had recorded there, including the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin. They would be staying in a two-hundred-year-old manor house near Headley Grange at London that some said was haunted.

There was some anxiety among the band’s members regarding recording in such a renowned studio with a prestigious producer. John wondered if the “organic nature” of their roots-style music would survive a transatlantic transplant.

Their first album, which was self-titled, was an immediate favorite, with “If You Wanna Get To Heaven,” by John and Steve, reaching the top ten song charts. There were a variety of crowd-pleasing styles and harmonies on the album. It featured Randle’s “Country Girl,” Larry’s mystical “Spaceship Orion,” and John’s “Standing On The Rock.” Steve showcased his harmonica styling with the concert favorite “Chicken Train.”

Larry Lee still says he enjoys the album. “It never gets boring, because every song sounds different from all the other ones,” he says.

The band started touring to promote the album and began work on their second, which was written and recorded in the band’s backyard, near Bolivar and Stockton Lake.

The Car Over The Lake was recorded in 1974 in a mobile studio parked in the yard of a marvelous Southern-style mansion named Ruedi Valley Ranch. Glyn Johns again produced the album for A&M Records. The band and their friends agree that Glyn must have suffered a “bit of culture shock” coming to the rural Ozarks from his usual haunts in Hollywood, New York City, and London.

This album was even more successful than the first. Steve Cash and Larry Lee collaborated on “Jackie Blue,” which soared to the top of the Billboard charts. The band toured to promote the albums while writing more original material. But the road took a toll on marriages and relationships, and band members longed for families back home.

Randle was the first of the three original cofounders to begin a solo music career. He produced the album Hearts on Fire in 1978, and in 2005, he and Larry collaborated to compose the CD Beyond Reach.

Buddy Brayfield also left the band to enter osteopathic medical school. He now practices at the Lake of the Ozarks and chose not to join in the Revival Concerts.

Larry Lee decided to “get off the tour bus” to put down roots. He moved to Nashville and began a successful career as a songwriter, studio musician, and producer for some of the biggest country music acts, such as Alabama, K. T. Oslin, and Juice Newton. He also played in Jimmy Buffet’s Coral Reefer Band.

The core group of remaining musicians had a momentous decision to make at the end of 1982. They had finished their record contract with A&M Records and had released one album with Columbia Records. The record industry was in a deep slump, John says, with major acts dropped in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

“We saw the handwriting on the wall, since we had not had a recent, successful single release to point to,” he says. “So, even though Columbia was contracted to produce another record, they weren’t up for the costs.”

More musicians left the group; Randle’s Norwegian replacement guitarist Rune Walle left, as did Buddy Brayfield’s replacement on keyboards, Ruell Chappell. Then some of the best musicians in the Ozarks joined John, Supe, and Steve, including Terry Wilson on guitar, Joe Terry on keyboards, and Steve Canaday on drums.

John Dillon remembers the period from 1983 to 2000 as “the missing years.” Memories of the venues all ran together as the band played every place that “ever had a name.” The band toured the length and breadth of the Canadian Provinces, Alaska, all of the major cities in Europe, and every first-, second-, and third-ranked city in the United States. They played the Calgary Stampede and sold more records in Canada per capita than anyplace else in the world.

As the new century dawned, the musicians began to pursue other interests. It was time to find a day job that didn’t involve travel. Supe moved to Nashville in 1990 and played with major acts like The Byrds and Carlene Carter while working in a studio.

Interested in writing since he was fifteen, Steve Cash signed a three-book deal to write The Meq Trilogy. “Rock ’n’ Roll got in the way for thirty-five years,” he says. “When I finally could, I sat down and started writing.” Two of the books have already been published.

John Dillon and partner Katherine Dowdy were busy restoring historic buildings on the public square at Ozark.

When Larry Lee and Randle Chowning moved back to Springfield in 2005 and 2006, a reunion seemed possible. Daredevil fans hope for more.

Visit www.ozarkdaredevils.com for more information, live and studio CDs by the Daredevils, T-shirts, and other memorabilia.

2 Score Years

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:36:37 GMT

For Branson's Presley family, 40 years is just the beginning

By Ron Marr

For Branson's renowned Presley family, the summer of 2007 witnessed laughter and celebration, tears and grief. Through it all, the four generations who have made Presleys' Country Jubilee an institution did what they do best. And what they do best, contrary to popular belief, would not be their combination of music and comedy, even though that is exceptional and has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, Paul Harvey, Regis and Kathie Lee, and a host of other national broadcasts.

What the Presleys do best is stick together as a tightknit family, relying on their deep-rooted faith in God and a faith in the inseparable family bonds that have seen them through two-score years of good times and bad.

On June 30, the übertalented family of musicians celebrated their fortieth year of performing on Branson’s 76 Country Boulevard. They were the first entertainers to build a theatre on that stretch of highway now filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic. The Presleys were honored not just by friends and fans, but also by Missouri Governor Matt Blunt, the State Legislature, the City of Branson, the Branson/Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Taney County Commissioners. It was a time of smiles and pride, particularly for the matriarch and patriarch of the clan, Lloyd and Bessie Mae Presley.

Just a month and a half later, on August 12, Bessie Mae passed away at the age of eightyfour, succumbing to the pulmonary fibrosis and diabetes she had battled with nary a complaint for several years. Although each and every Presley was rocked to the core by the profound loss of their loving and seemingly indestructible wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, they found solace in the sources that had served them so well in years past—faith and each other. Eventually, they relied on the knowledge that their beloved Bessie Mae had lived a full and extraordinarily happy life, experiencing countless smiles at the fulfillment of professional dreams and, more important, infinite pride in the people her large family had become—people who care not just about one another but also about friends, strangers, and the community.

The Presley story begins in the 1850s, when the family first set foot in the green and rugged Ozark hills of southwest Missouri. However, the more modern tale starts in 1934, when ten-year-old Lloyd Presley, son of a Pentecostal preacher, watched his older brother, Don, trade a prized hound dog for a guitar. Such would be the impetus for a musical legacy that to this day shows no sign of slowing.

“That’s where the music started,” Lloyd says with a smile. “But that hound dog was a good ol’ dog, and I sure hated to see him go.”

Both Don and Lloyd’s sister, Elva Mae, made token efforts to learn the guitar. However, both were teenagers and had other pursuits on their minds. The instrument was barely in its case and stashed under the bed before young Lloyd pulled it out and began to teach himself music.

“Of course me being just a little kid, I was really watching everything she’d been doing. When she quit going to lessons and quit playing guitar, I jumped right on it,” he says. “I had already learned the chords that she had learned, just by watching her play, and it all kind of went on from there.”

Lloyd had a natural aptitude for guitar and singing, and with another brother, Elwin, joining in with his harmonica and voice, the two began playing in their father’s church, at ice cream suppers and pie socials, and any venue that would allow them to pluck and sing from the back of a flatbed truck.

And then lightning struck … the good kind. At age eighteen, Lloyd happened to be hanging out with friends near the bumper car rides at Springfield’s Doling Park. It was there, for the first time, that he laid eyes upon Bessie Mae Garrison. The two began dating (Lloyd always brought along his guitar), and in 1942, the couple married. They remained devoted and in love for nearly sixty-five years.

And though many of those early years were not easy, they were almost always fun. The couple’s four children would come soon. Deanna was born in 1943. Next came Gary in 1946, Janice in 1952, and Steve in 1956. Lloyd continued to play his music wherever and whenever he could in the 1940s, forming a group known around southwest Missouri as the Ozark Playboys.

However, music didn’t pay the bills. During the day, he operated a trucking business, providing and delivering produce to local grocers. He would continue operating this business until 1967 and, for years after that, earned extra money as a fishing guide on the area lakes and rivers (as well as giving angling reports as The Friendly Fisherman on Springfield’s KY-3 TV) for many years.

Though none of the Presley kids were ever forced into music, they naturally took to it like a duck to water. From the late 1950s until 1967, the Presleys performed in Springfield’s Fantastic Caverns and at the (now defunct) Underground Theatre near Kimberling City. By this time, Lloyd had been joined on stage by Deanna, Janice, and Gary. It was in those damp and leaky caves that Gary, at age fifteen, added his comedy twists to the show, creating his hillbilly character of Herkimer. Herkimer was a hit from day one (he still is and is internationally trademarked). In 1965, a young Steve first took the stage as drummer, a position he occupies to this day.

In 1967, taking a leap of faith, the Presleys purchased ten acres on Branson’s Highway 76. A far cry from the glittering and glitzy thoroughfare it is today, Highway 76 was simply a desolate strip of broken asphalt in open countryside four miles from Branson.

“When we built the theatre in 1967, we built it with a flat floor and big, double doors in the backside. We didn’t know how the business would do, so Dad and Gary had thethought that, ‘Well, if it doesn’t work as a theatre, we can always use it for boat storage,’ ” Steve Presley says. Steve, the youngest member of the group, was initially provided equipment just a tad south of high tech.

“Nobody was playing drums in the family; really, at that time, there weren’t a whole lot of drums in country music. So, they sat me on the stage with just a snare drum. I literally sat on a block of wood with a little piece of plywood nailed to the top,” Steve says.

The grand opening of the Mountain Music Theatre was on June 30, 1967 (the name has evolved to Presleys’ Country Jubilee). Recalling how locals sought to escape the stifling Ozark summers in the naturally cool cave theatres, the words “air-conditioned” figured prominently on the building’s sign. Admission was one dollar for adults and fifty cents for kids.

Every member of the family was involved with the production in one way or another. On stage, Lloyd played guitar and banjo, while Gary continued with his Herkimer character that had proven such a draw at Fantastic Caverns and the Underground Theatre. Sisters Deanna and Janice sang, as did Deanna’s husband Dave Drennon. The entire family continued to work day jobs to support the fledgling enterprise, and then performed six nights a week (in some years, two shows per night). Lloyd would guide fishermen from the wee hours of the morning. For years, Gary and Bessie made a daily drive to Royal Typewriter at Springfield, before finally landing jobs in Branson. By this time, Gary had married Pat Adams, who was working at a Branson bank.

It was a hard row to hoe.

“We enjoyed doing it and were dedicated to making things work. For the first three years, we didn’t make a penny. The only money we made at all was the change we found on the floor that fell out of people’s pockets,” Gary says. Everything else, every cent, it went to pay the entertainers we’d hired, or to pay expenses, or to pay the bank. When we finally made a little money in our fourth year, we were overjoyed.”

Much has changed in those forty years. Today, the theatre is a state-of-the-art facility, packed most every night and holding 1,600 people. More important, the third generation of Presleys have moved to the forefront of the production, and the fourth generation appears to contain a few performers, too.

Gary and Pat’s trio of sons are crowd pleasers. Scott is the lead guitar player, and there are few harmonica players in the United States who can match Greg’s skills and talent. Eric developed his “Cecil” character, which now rivals his Dad’s “Herkimer” in popularity.

In 1976, Steve married Raeanne Miller (now mayor of Branson) and had three children. Nick handles all the video and electronic production of the shows. John is known for his showmanship and virtuosity on the piano, while seventeen-year-old Sarah plays both fiddle and saxophone.

Then there is the up-and-coming fourth generation. Lloyd and Bessie Mae were blessed with eight great-grandchildren from Scott and wife Malinda, Eric and wife Kelli, and Nick and wife Rhianna. Twelve-year-old Lauren Presley, Scott and Malinda’s eldest, is already showing her talent as a vocalist.

It’s a true family endeavor, and every male member of the Presleys attests that none of it would be possible without the wives who were and are behind the scenes.

“On the family side, we always get all the credit because we’re the ones who are on stage. This is still true now, but in the early days, it was the wives behind the scenes that made everything go. They worked during the day and then at the theatre at night. They sold the tickets. They popped the popcorn. They ran the concession stands. Really, everybody just pitched in and was part of it,” Steve says.

Before her passing, Bessie Mae Presley had a standard response to the thousands of fans who would say to her, “You must be very proud.”

“We’ve been very blessed,” she would respond in her quiet and happy manner.

Truer words have never been spoken.

October 2007

The Family That Plays Together

Tue, 29 May 2007 18:02:19 GMT

WHILE SOME TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRLS worried over boys and trips to the mall, Larita Martin of Versailles concentrated on playing the Dobro and traveling yearround with her family’s bluegrass band, The Martin Family. Now fifteen, Larita plays with professionalism that belies her age, as do her three sibling band mates. Jeana plays the fiddle, Dale the guitar, and Janice handles the banjo. Their father, Elvin, plays the bass, and their mother and their two younger siblings travel with them on a nationwide touring schedule, with the younger Martins home-schooled along the way. The most remarkable thing about this Missouri family is that until a few years ago, none of the children played an instrument. Inspired by a family band at Silver Dollar City in Branson in 1999, they decided to teach themselves to play bluegrass music. “When we came home from Branson, Jeana and Dale pulled my old instruments off the shelf, tuned them and said, ‘We can do this, too,’” Elvin says. Using videotapes as musical instructors, the Martins are selftaught musical impresarios. Since the band’s unlikely beginning, the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music Awards (SPBGMA), a national organization headquartered in Kirksville, has nominated each member for excellence on his or her respective instruments, and Janice Martin is the 2006 SPBGMA Midwest Banjo Player of the Year. As a group, The Martin Family has been SPBGMA’s Instrumental Group of the Year every year since 2004, and in 2006, the Martins are also SPBGMA’s Contemporary Bluegrass Band of the Year. With a growing fan base, the Martins are a bluegrass powerhouse and a closeknit family. “Some families go camping or fishing together,” Elvin says. “This is what we do together, and we love it.” For information and a touring schedule, visit www.bluegrassmartins.com. —Kendra Thomas

2006 Civil War Guide

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:31:22 GMT

*Skirmishes and Scars of the Show Me State's Struggle* *By Rebecca Smith* Literally a stomping ground during the Civil War, almost every corner of Missouri has a story to tell. From city streets to fields of corn to cemeteries, there are legends and stories of battles, encampments, guerrilla warfare, and the underground railroad. Use this guide to discover those stories. *ARROW ROCK* Secessionist Gov. Claiborne Jackson died in Arkansas in 1862 but was interred after the war at Sappington Cemetery outside Arrow Rock. *ATHENS* The August 5, 1861, Battle of Athens was the northernmost skirmish west of the Mississippi River. The State Historic Site preserves period homes and a mill. Especially notable is the Thome-Benning House, struck by Southern artillery fire during the battle and now known as the Cannonball House. *BELMONT* On November 7, 1861, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant led a drive to force Confederate troops out of their camp at Belmont and across the Mississippi River to Kentucky. The Confederates regrouped, and Union troops ultimately withdrew in the Battle of Belmont. *BILLINGSVILLE* An October 1864 clash between Gen. Sanborn’s Union Army and Gen. J.O. Shelby’s Confederates is commemorated with a bronze plaque at the site of Wilkins Bridge. *BLOOMFIELD* Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that keeps service members and their families informed, was first published in Bloomfield in November 1861. A museum is dedicated to the paper. *The Stoddard County Civil War Cemetery* has 150 military markers for the soldiers and citizens who died in Stoddard County during the war. *BONNE TERRE* Hildebrand’s Cave in St. Francois State Park sheltered outlaws during the war. Sam Hildebrand became notorious for guerilla tactics against the Union. The rugged area made it easy to hide in the Missouri countryside. *BOONVILLE* The first battle in Missouri was the First Battle of Boonville. Union Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon caught up with the Missouri State Guard outside Boonville and took control of the town. *1859 Crestmead Plantation Mansion* has original furnishings and built-in hiding places to tour. Legend says a fellow Mason sent to execute John Taylor for being a Southern sympathizer realized Taylor was a Mason and didn’t carry out his orders. Taylor was sent to prison in St. Louis, instead. *Cooper County Jail* was used as a prison for Southern sympathizers and even held Frank James for a few hours. Until its closing in 1978 by a Federal Court that deemed it cruel and unusual punishment, the 1848 jail was one of the oldest continuously used jails in Missouri. *Thespian Hall,* used as a hospital and troop barracks during the Second Battle of Boonville, is the oldest theater still in use west of the Alleghenies. *BUNCETON* Built for Civil War Capt. Nathaniel Leonard and his bride, Nadine Nelson, Ravenswood Plantation offers tours of the original furnishings, including George Caleb Bingham portraits. *BURFORDVILLE* Burned by Union troops to keep it out of rebel hands, Bollinger Mill, now a State Historic Site, was rebuilt on the original foundation by Solomon Burford. Today, the working mill sits next to Burfordville Covered Bridge, the oldest of Missouri’s four surviving covered bridges. *CAPE GIRARDEAU* The city and surrounding areas were home to several conflicts, most notably the April 26, 1863, Battle of Cape Girardeau. The battle site is marked, and the city’s only remaining original fort, Fort D, has been restored and is now a park. The town also is home to Union and Confederate memorials. *The Old Lorimier Cemetery,* established in 1820, is the final resting place of soldiers that died in battle and also from smallpox in the Minton House hospital. *The Minton House* Hospital was the site of many soldiers’ deaths due to smallpox. *The Common Pleas Courthouse,* headquarters for the Union forces, jailed Southern sympathizers and Confederate soldiers in its dungeon. *CARTHAGE* The First Battle of Bull Run is called the first land battle of the Civil War, but the Battle of Carthage took place seventeen days earlier on July 5, 1861. An interpretive display stands at the site of the last skirmish in the day-long battle. *The Civil War Museum* has an exhibit on Belle Starr, a Confederate spy who reported Union troop positions. The museum has other artifacts from the Battle of Carthage and southwest Missouri. *CENTRALIA* Markers describe the September 27, 1864, Centralia Massacre by “Bloody” Bill Anderson. *The Gray Ghost Trail* opens May 20. It is a driving tour from Danville through Fulton, Centralia, and Columbia to Kansas City that will highlight points in Centralia related to the massacre, as well as lesser known Civil War sites of “Bloody” Bill Anderson. *Centralia Area Historical Society* houses a statue of “Bloody” Bill Anderson and a Confederate flag replica in the Civil War room. *CLINTON* The Henry County Historical Museum boasts a period doctor’s office complete with the surgical bag and instruments used by Dr. John H. Britts during the Civil War. The military room houses a uniform, Confederate money, and an original “pardon” from President Andrew Johnson, needed after the war by all Confederate-affiliated citizens. *COLE CAMP* Museum exhibits tell the story of the Home Guard’s defeat of June 19, 1861, in the Battle of Cole Camp, one of the first of the war. *COLUMBIA* The State Historical Society of Missouri possesses paintings by Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham, including his famous Order No. 11. *CUBA* Outdoor storyboard murals in Cuba commemorate the Battle of Pilot Knob and the Confederate pursuit of the retreating Union army. *The Crawford County Historical Museum* displays Civil War uniforms and weapons. *DANVILLE* “Bloody” Bill Anderson rode into Danville on October 14, 1864, to destroy the homes of Union sympathizers. Baker Plantation House still bears scars from bullets and sabers. *DIAMOND* Peanut innovator and scientist George Washington Carver, born in 1861, was said to be kidnapped with his slave mother and taken to Arkansas by Confederate raiders. Carver eventually was returned to Diamond, where the plantation owner raised him. The George Washington Carver National Monument is on part of that plantation. *DONIPHAN* Maps of Gen. Sterling Price’s battles, stone cannonballs, clay bullets, and Confederate money are on display at the Current River Heritage Museum. Driving tour maps and histories of skirmishes in Ripley County are also available. *DREXEL* The Frontier Military Museum includes Civil War uniforms, saddles, and guns. *FAYETTE* “Bloody” Bill Anderson’s raid on Fayette was repelled by Union forces barricaded in the courthouse in the Battle of Fayette. *FREDERICKTOWN* Union troops led by Col. J.B. Plummer and Col. William P. Carlin successfully pushed Brig. Gen. M. Jeff Thompson and Confederate forces out of Fredericktown in an October 21, 1861, battle. The town cemetery offers a vantage point to view the battlefield. *War Eagle Trail Driving Tour* will highlight the 36 battles of the 8th Wisconsin Infantry with “Old Abe” the War Eagle, an actual eagle, as their mascot. *FULTON* On July 28, 1862, Confederate troops led by Col. Joseph Porter ambushed the Union Army led by Col. Odon Guitar in Callaway County near Calwood but were forced to retreat. The Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society displays artifacts and the history of the Battle of Moore’s Mill. *GLASGOW* A marker describes the October 15, 1864, Battle of Glasgow, during which a Confederate detachment raided Union stores in search of rifles. *HANNIBAL* Union forces occupied Hannibal throughout the war, though most residents were Southern sympathizers. The town was a stop on the Underground Railroad; slaves seeking freedom reportedly hid in Mark Twain Cave. Mark Twain himself served briefly in the Confederate Army. *HARRISONVILLE* The town became a Union stronghold and command center for enforcement of Order No. 11, which forced thousands of Missourians near the Kansas border from their homes. *HIGGINSVILLE* The Confederate Memorial State Historic Site, a 135-acre park, preserves homes used by Confederate veterans, a cemetery, and a 106-year-old chapel. More than 800 Confederate soldiers, including part of William Quantrill of Quantrill’s Raiders, were buried here. *INDEPENDENCE* Brig. Gen. John S. Marmaduke’s troops held back Union forces in a skirmish just west of Independence. *1859 Marshal’s Jail* (now a museum) After Union Provost marshals jailed women and children after the battles of Lone Jack and Independence the jail overflowed. A building that housed some of the overflow in Kansas City collapsed and killed several young girls, and historians believe this prompted the raid on Lawrence, Kansas, in 1863. *IRONTON* The site of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s headquarters, Ironton is home to a Grant memorial statue. The nearby Fort Davidson State Historic Site offers an electronic scale model of the September 1864 Battle of Pilot Knob. One of the largest battles in Missouri, it left a thousand men wounded. The site preserves the Union post of Fort Davidson and the battlefield. *The Iron County Courthouse,* built in 1858 and on the National Register of Historic Places, still bears witness to the Civil War with a cannonball mark on its face. *JEFFERSON CITY* The capital is home to the Missouri State Museum’s Civil War artifacts and the Cole County Historical Museum. *KANSAS CITY* Union Gen. Thomas Ewing signed Order No. 11 in the Pacific House Hotel in Kansas City’s River Marketplace on August 25, 1863. The Order forced nearly 20,000 residents in four western Missouri counties from their homes. *Forest Hill, Elmwood, and Union cemeteries* are all final resting places to many Civil War dead from both sides, including Gen. J.O. Shelby. *Westport* is known as “The Gettysburg of the West,” where the October 23, 1864, Battle of Westport ended with three thousand casualties. *Westport Historical Society Museum* is in the antebellum Harris-Kearney House. *Wornall House Museum* was headquarters and field hospital to both Union and Confederate armies. *KEARNEY* Union soldiers tortured Jesse James’s stepfather and harassed his mother at their farm here. The act led James to vow revenge. James is buried in nearby Mount Olivet Cemetery. *KEYTESVILLE* Gen. Sterling Price’s hometown pays homage to the Confederate leader and governor with a museum and monument. *KIRKSVILLE* Two battles in early August 1862 helped establish Union control of northeast Missouri. Led by Col. John McNeil, Union troops pursued Col. Joseph C. Porter and his Confederate Missouri Brigade to Kirksville, where Porter and his men hid in homes, stores, and fields. In a three-hour battle, the Union secured the town and captured many of Porter’s men. *Truman State University’s Pickler Memorial Library* has letters written by brothers Samuel and Clark Zeigler while they were in Arkansas with the Union Army. *LEXINGTON* Confederate forces captured a Union garrison during the Battle of Lexington September 18 to 20, 1861. The State Historic Site preserves the battlefield and the 1853 Anderson House. *LIBERTY* A battle near here on September 17, 1861, resulted in 126 casualties and helped the Confederates consolidate northwest Missouri. *Clay County Veteran’s Memorial* contains more than 440 names of veterans, including Civil War soldiers. *LONE JACK* The Civil War Battlefield, Museum, and Cemetery depict the Battle of Lone Jack August 16, 1862. *MARSHALL* A marker describes the Battle of Marshall, the final confrontation of Confederate Col. Joseph O. Shelby’s daring 1863 raid. *MEMPHIS* The William Downing House (now a museum), was a Union headquarters. Soldiers rode their horses through the ten-foot doors. *MEXICO* After Ulysses S. Grant joined the Union army, he was stationed at Mexico, Missouri, in July 1861, where he commanded the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry. *MOBERLY* The Oakland Cemetery pays tribute to both sides with statuary of both Union and Confederate soldiers surrounded by respective graves. The cemetery is also home to one of the few full-size statues of Abraham Lincoln west of the Mississippi River. *NEOSHO* Southern sympathizer Gov. Claiborne Jackson and the ousted Missouri legislature made a provisional capital at Neosho. On October 30, 1861, the group held the Secession Convention at Neosho to pass a bill calling for Missouri secession. *NEVADA* Known as the Bushwhacker Capital during the Civil War, Nevada is home to the Bushwhacker Museum and Bushwhacker Jail; both house permanent exhibits of the area’s Civil War involvement. *NEW MADRID* Island No. 10 was a Confederate stronghold in defense of the Mississippi River. Nearby New Madrid was a weak spot. On March 3, 1862, Union troops led by Brig. Gen. John Pope laid siege to the city. Unable to hold the island and the town, Confederate forces deserted New Madrid on March 14. The Union continued its push, eventually forcing surrender of Island No. 10 on April 8 to open the Mississippi all the way to Fort Pillow, Tennessee. The victory was essential to the Union’s naval strategy. *The Hunter-Dawson State Historic Site,* once the headquarters for Union Gen. John Pope, still holds about eighty percent of the original furnishings. *The New Madrid Historical Museum* has letters, clothing, equipment, and weaponry. *NEWTONIA* The First Battle of Newtonia, September 30, 1862, ended with a hasty Union retreat. During the Second Battle, Union troops chased Gen. Sterling Price out of Missouri on October 28, 1864. *Old Newtonia Cemetery* contains two hundred unreadable gravestones, possibly Civil War veterans. Second-in-command at the Second Battle of Newtonia, 1st Lt. Robert Christian, is positively identified. Oral history claims Union soldiers buried in the cemetery were moved to the National Cemetery in Springfield. *The Ritchey Mansion House,* built with bricks made by slaves, was headquarters and hospital at different times to both Union and Confederate troops. *OTTERVILLE* The 1861 earthen embankments and trenches are thought to have been built in anticipation of a battle that never happened. *PALMYRA* Brig. Gen. John McNeil commanded a firing squad to execute ten Confederate prisoners in retaliation for the abduction of a former Union soldier and alleged spy. Known as the Palmyra Massacre, the executions earned McNeil the nickname “The Butcher of Palmyra;” his actions were criticized in newspapers around the world. Afterward, enlistments and reenlistments in the Confederate Army increased. A granite monument is a memorial. *PEA RIDGE, ARKANSAS* Just over the Missouri border, nearly 6,000 soldiers, most Confederate, died in the March 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge. Missouri soldiers fought on both sides in this decisive battle that saved Missouri for the Union. The 4,300-acre Pea Ridge National Military Park offers a driving tour of one of the best preserved battlefields in the country. *REPUBLIC* Union Gen. Nathaniel Lyon died in the August 10, 1861, Battle of Wilson’s Creek, the first major engagement west of the Mississippi River. Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield near Republic offers extensive displays. *General Sweeny’s Civil War Museum* traces the war in the Trans-Mississippi West and displays over 5,000 artifacts collected over the lifetime by a descendant of Union Gen. Thomas W. Sweeny for whom the museum is named. *ROLLA* The end of the line for the southwest branch of the Pacific Railroad, Rolla was the staging point for Union troops and supplies heading west. After the Union defeat at Wilson’s Creek, the army fell back to Rolla and established Fort Wyman. *SALISBURY* The Chariton County Historical Society and Museum houses Civil War artifacts. *SPRINGFIELD* A series of twelve markers in Springfield describes Union Maj. John Zagonyi’s successful charge of the city on October 25, 1861, and Confederate Brig. Gen. John S. Marmaduke’s unsuccessful attack on January 8, 1863. *The Springfield National Cemetery* began as a burial place for men who died in the battle of Wilson’s Creek. It contains Civil War memorials as well as a stone wall that originally separated it from a Confederate cemetery. After a federal decision in 1911, the two cemeteries became one. *The History Museum* for Springfield-Greene County has a hands-on exhibit for kids and a display of artifacts from the war. *ST. JOSEPH* The Union used the Pony Express to communicate with allies in California. *ST. LOUIS* *Bellefontaine Cemetery:* Union and Confederate officers are buried here. *Calvary Cemetery:* Union Generals and Dred Scott, the slave who sought freedom in Missouri courts are buried here. *Camp Jackson:* This camp is on what is today St. Louis University campus. *Old Courthouse:* This building is part of the Jefferson National Expansion. *Eads Boatyard:* Bridge builder, inventor, and Union Capt. James. B. Eads built the first ironclad warships used by Union forces. Bellerive Park offers a river view similar to the Eads Boatyard in 1861. *Jefferson Barracks:* The first permanent military base west of the Mississippi River, Jefferson Barracks served as a Union training camp. Several museum buildings, including a laborer’s house, stables, and ammunition storage facilities, contain exhibits *White Haven:* Julia Dent Grant’s childhood home and her home with Ulysses S. Grant early in their marriage is preserved as Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. The property includes five buildings and exhibits. *Grant’s Trail:* A six-mile trail runs through southern St. Louis and takes hikers and bicyclists past White Haven and Grant’s Farm. *Missouri History Museum:* Located in Forest Park, the museum houses an exhibit about the Civil War experience in St. Louis and the slave Dred Scott. Several Civil War memorials dot the park. *Olin Library, Washington University:* A broad collection of nineteenth-century American historical prints covering slavery, the Civil War, emancipation, and reconstruction from 1840-1890 is on permanent display in the library’s special collections. *Riverfront Trail:* The eleven-mile paved, recreational greenway passes the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing, one of 64 Underground Railroad sites listed on the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. *Lincoln Shields Recreational Area:* A memorial containing names of Confederate soldiers who died in the Alton prison smallpox epidemic across the river in Alton, Illinois, stands at this area in West Alton. Named for a duel that never took place between Abraham Lincoln and James Shields, the area overlooks an island now underwater, at one time called Smallpox Island for the soldiers buried there. *WAYNESVILLE* The Old Stagecoach Stop, now a museum, served as the hospital and infirmary for Post Waynesville. Exhibits of an operating room and surgical instruments are on display. *WEST PLAINS* The town was raided repeatedly by foraging Union and Confederate troops. Paintings and news articles of Civil War actions are on display at the Harlin Museum. *WESTON* The only road into Weston during the Civil War, Leavenworth Military Road is today East Bluff Road, a hiking and biking trail that extends three miles from Route 45 into Weston. Fort Leavenworth soldiers were ferried across the river daily. *Weston Historical Museum* has a collection of Civil War artifacts. April 2006

Slow and Easy Saint Louis Rickshaw

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:11:04 GMT

The ideal way to explore a city, some say, is on foot or bicycle. But for many visitors, walking or cycling is impractical or tiring. Eric Brende of St. Louis believes his rickshaw is the perfect alternative for people who want to meander through Missouri’s largest city. He designed his rickshaw to accommodate four adult passengers plus the driver. Built in Indiana, it works primarily with pedal power from the driver, although a silent electric motor (about one horse power) can be engaged for uphill terrain. “I like being able to combine exercise with transportation,” says Eric, whose seated, aerobic workout takes passengers through downtown St. Louis and the adjoining neighborhoods of Lafayette Square, Soulard, and Benton Park. Licensed by the city, Eric drives the seven-to-ten mile per hour rickshaw year round, weather permitting. Many first-time passengers tell him they can’t believe how much fun the rickshaw is. Thanks to the support of several restaurants and bars, Eric provides free rickshaw rides in the Soulard area Wednesday through Saturday nights when Cardinals are not playing at home. He also offers historic tours of St. Louis, including Lafayette Square, a large restored Victorian residential neighborhood. A native of Kansas, Eric earned a master’s degree from MIT in 1992 in the Program for Science, Technology, and Society. He and his family moved to St. Louis in 2003 after operating a bed-and-breakfast (and rickshaw) in Hermann for six years. “We love St. Louis,” he adds. “Through the rickshaw, we’ve met all kinds of interesting people.” _Fees are $2 to $35 depending on length of the ride and the number of passengers. For information, call 314-520-7632 or visit www.stlouisrickshaw.com._ *—By Aneeta Brown* June 2006

Life in the Mansion

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 17:19:13 GMT

*GOVERNOR MATT BLUNT, FIRST LADY MELANIE, AND BABY MAKE A HOME IN THE GOVERNOR’S MANSION — TOURISTS, TRAINS, GHOSTS, AND ALL* *By Danita Allen Wood* Missouri First Lady Melanie Blunt can relate to the words of former First Lady Carolyn Bond: “Living in the Governor’s Mansion is like living above the shop.” But the Jefferson City Mansion is no corner grocery. With pink granite columns on the front portico, a nearly twenty-foot-wide grand entry hall with plush red settee by a black walnut fireplace mantel, prominent formal portraits of previous governors’ wives, and a gilded harp in the double parlor, the Mansion is a treasured Missouri landmark. Life in the Mansion means welcoming about sixty thousand visitors ever y year, from dignitaries to tourists. Current residents Governor Matt and Melanie Blunt are in tune with the sounds of those visitors and those of the Mansion. “The sound of school children touring,” the governor says, is among his favorite. Thousands of Missouri school children tour the first floor every year. At the height of school-trip season each spring, when fourth graders required to study Missouri history visit the capital city, as many as a thousand children a day tour the Mansion. Matt enjoys the excitement of the children as they discover the Mansion. In fact, the Springfield native first saw the Mansion’s exterior on a school trip. Many children assume the Mansion is haunted. “ They don’t ask whether it’s haunted,” Matt says. “They ask how many ghosts we have.” When his nephews spent their first night in the Mansion, Matt teased about ghosts. The typical old-house sounds — clanking furnace, creaking woodwork, noisy plumbing — helped convince them it was haunted. There’s the sound of trains running just below the river bluff on which the Mansion is built. Several tracks there are used for changing train cars. While the low rumbling sound of a train rolling down a track in the distance can be lulling, at three in the morning, the nearby squeal of metal-on-metal and clanging of cars coupling and de-coupling can be disconcerting. “It kept us awake at first, but you get used to it … sort of,” the governor says, smiling. Then, there are the sounds of ringing phones, the intercom, and staff scurrying about leading tours and events. Schedule permitting, the Mansion is shared with nonprofit associations for special events, and there’s almost always something going on. Sound-proofing was not a consideration when the Mansion was built in 1871, and the Blunts say you can hear the sounds of every tour and event from their second-floor living quarters. “It’s an honor and privilege to live here, but what we miss about our own space is the quiet and privacy,” says the first-term Republican governor. But there are compensating sounds: those of a baby. William Branch, the couple’s first child, was born in March. “One of the best things about being here is the proximity to work,” Matt says. “I can come back for lunch with Melanie and the baby.” The governor feeds Branch his morning bottle in the study off the small galley kitchen. The study also is where the family relaxes. “Branch’s toys make it homey,” Melanie says. When entertaining family, they use the second-floor dining and living rooms. The Blunts just moved into another historic-style house — Southern plantation — in an older neighborhood than the Springfield home they sold in September. Rather than bring their own furnishings to the Mansion, Melanie pulled things out of the Mansion’s storage for their living quarters. She says she found wonderful items, such as a bronze sculpture, an antique partners desk, leather chairs, and silver serving pieces donated by previous residents and citizens. She wanted to honor them by restoring the pieces to use, she says. She also duplicated the nursery in their Springfield home, ordering two of every piece of furniture and using the same fabrics to make the Mansion more familiar and less disruptive to Branch. When Melanie considers the history of the home, she says she thinks about previous governors’ children who were raised in the Mansion, including those of Christopher “Kit” and Carolyn Bond and John and Janet Ashcroft. She also thinks of Governor Thomas and Caroline Crittenden’s daughter, Carrie, who died of diphtheria five days before Christmas 1882 at age nine. The Blunts appreciate the bluff-top and Missouri River views their private quarters offer, especially from a porch that runs along the west side of the Mansion. “I really enjoy the sunrises and sunsets over the river,” Matt says. “Branch and I enjoyed a sunrise this morning.” Melanie describes poetic scenes of ice floating down the Missouri River and the State Capitol dome in different lighting. They enjoy those rare peaceful moments, like any other family. “It’s a home, like any other,” Matt says, “except for the seventeenfoot ceilings.” And maybe the sounds. h1. 'IF WALLS COULD TALK' FORMER Missouri First Lady Jean Carnahan’s book If Walls Could Talk: The Story of Missouri’s First Families provides 600 photographs and an engaging history of the Governor’s Mansion. The 430-page book, published in 1998 by Missouri Mansion Preservation Inc., is a thoroughly researched, well-documented history of the Mansion and its first families. The book and Mary Pat Abele, executive director of MMPI for thirty years, are the sources of the following information. Jean Carnahan also wrote Christmas at the Mansion: Its Memories and Menus. This 160-page book features 180 photographs of Victorian decorations and a hundred Mansion-tested recipes. Both books are available with holiday discounts at www.missourimansion.org or by calling toll-free 877-526-8123. Proceeds from sales benefit the Mansion’s restoration and education programs. h1. THE FAIRYLAND MANSION Carey Shannon, niece of First Lady Jennie Woodson, 1873 to 1875, described the Missouri Governor’s Mansion as “a real fairyland, huge rooms, magnificent furniture, magic carpets, chandeliers ablaze with rainbows gleaming through crystal pendants.” The Renaissance Revival Mansion is still a magical fairyland, especially at Christmas. The Mansion was built in 1871 after an embarrassing incident when fearful guests refused to attend a reception planned at the dilapidated previous governor’s residence, a poorly built 1834 structure near the site of the present Mansion. Before 1834, the governor lived in the same two-story, forty-by-sixty-foot Statehouse used by the General Assembly. St. Louis architect George Ingham Barnett designed the new Mansion — built for seventy-five thousand dollars — with red brick, stone trim, and a mansard roof. Governor B. Gratz Brown, his wife, Mary, and their six children were the Mansion’s first residents, moving in on January 20, 1872. Today, the Mansion remains one of the oldest in the country built for and still used as a governor’s residence. The Browns’ first official guests were Grand Duke Alexis of Russia and George Custer, who came for lunch. The men arrived by train from hunting buffalo in Nebraska just three days after the Browns moved into the Mansion. Other famous guests who have dined at the Mansion include Jefferson Davis, Eugene Field, William Jennings Bryan, Harry S. Truman, Henry Kissinger, and Barbara Bush. The first governor to live in the Mansion was also the first whose children enlivened the home. One day as he walked toward the Capitol with a senator, Governor Brown looked back and saw his children running along the edge of the roof, just inside the ornate grillwork. They had climbed through the attic to the roof of the three-story Mansion. He is reported to have said, “Go on to the Senate, Henderson, while I go back and spank the children.” Governor Brown donated the granite columns that grace the front portico, starting the tradition of each first family leaving a gift to the Mansion. The columns arrived nine inches too short, but the problem was solved by adding a white stone base to each column. Governor Brown also started the tradition of inviting the next first family to the Mansion to view their new home. Young Carey Shannon, whose father was the governor’s brotherin- law and assistant, moved into the “fairyland” mansion during the 1873 to 1875 term of the second governor to live there, Silas Woodson. His wife, Jennie, was known for her lively parties. Just twenty-six when she moved in, Jennie threw frequent parties, in spite of her strict upbringing as a preacher’s daughter in Columbia. The inaugural party entertained guests with the rollicking polka and schottische, which had replaced the sedate minuet after the Civil War. It was reported that dancers swirled “all through the magnificent parlors, waltzing around, through doors, and from one room to another, galloping over people who came in the way, and schottisching recklessly about … until long after the noon of night.” Several early governors entertained children at Christmas, especially children of prisoners at the nearby state penitentiary. Governor Joseph Folk, 1905 to 1909, even donned a Santa Claus suit to present toys to children at a Christmas party. *CORN FOR THE REINDEER* Children living at the Mansion made the holidays especially joyous. The three children of Governor Herbert Hadley, aged two to six at the beginning of his term in 1909, prepared for Santa by placing grains of corn for the reindeer on the bedroom windowsills of the Mansion. Once, when First Lady Agnes Hadley came downstairs to greet an Episcopal bishop, she found the churchman and her children kicking a football in the great hall. Governor Forrest Smith, 1949 to 1953, enjoyed Christmas and other holidays with his grandchildren. He could be seen sneaking around the Mansion on Easter mornings hiding colored eggs. His grandchildren caused excitement at the Mansion at other times, too. One had to be rescued from a locked bathroom by the fire department, and another released a squirrel in the Mansion. When First Lady Mildred Smith’s portrait was unveiled, the covering dropped and blanketed her two-year-old granddaughter, who laughed with delight. But Governor Smith said: “Sometimes I feel like I am confined in a glorified jail. ... I miss seeing and visiting with my many friends.” A more recent child pretended she didn’t live there. Julie Hearnes, the first-grade daughter of Governor Warren and Betty Hearnes, lived at the Mansion from 1965 to 1973. She tried to avert attention when her class toured the Mansion. She rode the bus, toured with the rest of the children, and never let on that she lived there. As she left with her classmates, she turned to her mother and politely said, “Thank you very much.” *EGGNOG AND WHISKEY* Governor William Stone, 1893 to 1897, and others of the twelve governors native to Kentucky entertained adult friends at Christmas with their special eggnog blends containing Kentucky whiskey. The holidays haven’t always been festive at the Mansion, though. Governor John Sappington Marmaduke died at age fifty-four, three days after Christmas in 1887, the date of the traditional children’s party he hosted. The only first lady to die at the Mansion, Mary Dockery, wife of Governor Alexander Dockery, died in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1903. Nine-yearold Carrie Crittenden, daughter of Governor Thomas and Caroline Crittenden, died of diphtheria on December 20, 1882. While researching her book, If Walls Could Talk, former First Lady Jean Carnahan was struck both by the story of Carrie’s death and the picture of the Hadley children playing on a fountain that once adorned the front lawn. As a result, Missouri Mansion Preservation Inc. commissioned a sculpture and The Missouri Children’s Fountain for the Mansion’s 125th birthday. *ENTERTAINING LADIES* A common theme among the stories of first ladies is the responsibility to be gracious and nonpartisan hostesses presiding over “at homes,” luncheons, teas, dinners, and dances. Many enjoyed the social whirl. Maggie Stephens, wife of Governor Lawrence “Lon” Stephens, 1897 to 1901, thrived on entertaining and became known as the Queen of Missouri, partly because of her costume at one of her convivial masquerades, but also because of her love of entertaining. Maggie gave one of the earliest documented public tours of the Mansion. It was a success, and she continued allowing tours. One time, she came home to find tourists looking through her closet. Hers was the first portrait to be placed in the Governor’s Mansion and started the tradition of first ladies leaving their portraits. When she was a sixtynine- year-old widow, she married a twenty-nine-year-old. Some first ladies preferred quiet evenings at home to entertaining. Sarah Louise “Lula” Stone, who lived at the Mansion from 1893 to 1897, was one. When their grown children visited, the family gathered before the library fireplace to listen to Governor William Stone read poetry aloud, as had been their habit at home in Nevada. While she enjoyed those evenings the most, Lula was a proper hostess, who also returned calls promptly. During the Victorian period, ladies established times they were “at home” to receive visitors. Part of the protocol required the caller to leave his or her name card on a silver tray, or salver, prominently displayed near the front door. Lula noted the difference in protocol between Missouri and Washington when her husband later became a United States senator. In Washington, a visitor could simply leave a card without actually visiting. As well, the lady of the house had the option of receiving a guest or sending word that she “begged to be excused” or was otherwise engaged. Lula disapproved of these social shortcuts. “I thought everyone in Washington was in very much of a hurry,” she said. “No one had time to be at home or finish a sentence.” Mark Twain once made fun of the etiquette of calling cards. Folding the bottom right corner meant, “I came in person, but you were out.” Folding the top right corner conveyed condolences, and folding the bottom left corner meant congratulations. Twain observed it was “very necessary to get the corners right, else one may unintentionally condole with a friend on a wedding day or congratulate her upon a funeral.” First Lady, Jerry Dalton, wife of Governor John Dalton, 1961 to 1965, missed casual visits from old friends. “Everyone feels they have to dress up and put on white gloves when they come to the Governor’s Mansion,” she said. Whether or not they liked entertaining, one thing most first ladies came to share was a passion for the fairyland Mansion. “To live in this house is to have a handclasp with history,” Jerry Dalton said. “You can’t live there long and not grow to love the building.” First Lady Janet Ashcroft said, “Sometimes I walk through this house and look up at these beautiful walls and ceilings, and I still can’t believe I really live here.” h1. MAINTENANCE WAS A CONSTANT PROBLEM THE Governor’s Mansion hasn’t always been the fairyland it is today at Christmas. Many of Missouri’s first ladies worked diligently to maintain, restore, and renovate the historic building. Although they had household servants, early first ladies supervised the routine washing of windows, curtains, and the brick, which regularly became covered in soot from the coalburning steam engines that ran within a few hundred feet of the Mansion. One first lady noted the curtains had to be washed every three or four weeks to keep them clean. Historical accounts describe how Governor Lloyd Stark, of Stark Nursery fame, and his family dealt with the then sixty-six-year-old Mansion in 1937: They stuffed rags around the windows to keep out drafts and set buckets in the ballroom to catch leaks from the roof. The Grand Stairway, temporarily braced with planks during the inaugural reception, needed permanent support. Even more disgusting, rats had moved into the dark, damp basement where the kitchen was located. At this time, work crews attempted to remove several layers of soot-stained red paint, but the bricks began to crumble. The Mansion was painted white instead. Governor Forrest Smith, 1949 to 1953, once fell through the seat of a chair in the Mansion. He had just lost twenty-two pounds and quipped, “I thought my diet was going well until this happened.” By the time Governor James Blair spent inauguration night at the Mansion in 1957, it had deteriorated badly. He spent one night, declared the new quarters uninhabitable, and moved back to his own brick bungalow in Jefferson City. He complained of beds as hard as rocks, rats roaming freely in the basement, vermin-infested woodwork, peeling wallpaper, and cracked plaster walls. He gave a press tour to show non-functioning windows — one in the master bedroom was propped open with a rusty tire iron — threadbare carpet, fireplaces boarded up, worn out furniture, and toilets still operated with old-fashioned pull chains. A General Assembly committee considered options ranging from total restoration to total demolition. The Assembly ultimately approved only forty thousand dollars to begin partial restoration. Blair’s wife, Emily, supervised the work of replacing faulty plumbing, updating electrical wiring, and removing thirty-eight rats’ nests found in the basement. The Blairs acquired a cat and moved into the Mansion in fall 1958. But problems remained. Winters were drafty and uncomfortable, what with rotting frames around windows and doors and steam radiators unable to bring the temperature above sixty-five degrees. The Blairs, as the Starks had done, stuffed newspapers between cracks and wore wool coats indoors. First Ladies Betty Hearnes and Carolyn Bond accomplished the greatest strides in restoration. When Governor Warren Hearnes and his wife, Betty, moved into the Mansion in 1965, she faced the continuing maintenance problems of her predecessors. Floors were so uneven that there was concern about the heavy wardrobes used in place of closets. The second-floor porch had deteriorated so much it was unusable. When rain dripped through the leaky roof into a third-floor bedroom and onto her daughter’s nose, Betty took action. She had the ornamental ironwork repaired, the roof replaced, and wooden cornices and window casements restored. While stripping woodwork, Betty discovered long-hidden enclosures for window shutters. The enclosures had been nailed shut and painted over. She had the shutters released and restored, as well as the back porch repaired and enclosed in glass. The Hearnes family had the longest continuous stay at the Mansion, until 1973, and it was Betty’s repair of many structural problems that paved the way for the next first lady’s extensive interior restoration. Carolyn Bond lived at the Mansion from 1973 to 1977 and again from 1981 to 1985. She undertook the fund-raising of two million dollars to restore the interior to its original Renaissance Revival style with vibrant Victorian colors and period furnishings. Carolyn started regular, open-to-the-public tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, using local volunteer docents in period costumes, and she began the holiday candlelight tours. She also helped form Missouri Mansion Preservation Inc., a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that ensures the authenticity and continuity of the Mansion’s preservation. Mary Pat Abele, executive director of MMPI since its inception, says the organization will undertake a major capital campaign next year to fund major exterior and interior restoration, education programs, and an endowment for the future of the Mansion. Mary Pat says their goal is to preserve the Mansion as a living restoration “where you can walk on the rugs, sit on the furniture, and touch things.” “The house needs to be lived in,” Jean Carnahan said. “That’s what gives meaning to the restoration and continuity to its past.” h1. VISIT THE MANSION THE Missouri Governor’s Mansion offers free holiday candlelight tours. The annual holiday lighting ceremony takes place at 7 pm Friday, December 2. Candlelight tours run from 7 to 9 pm that evening and from 4 to 6 pm Saturday, December 3. For more information, call 573-751-7929. Reservations are not necessary.. December 2005

Missouris Motoring Past

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 16:51:39 GMT

*Thank a Missouri Manufacturer for the Steering Wheel* *By Tracy Powell* Before Detroit claimed its fame as America’s Motor City, more than a hundred Missouri manufacturers made cars from the mid-1890s through 1929. The vast majority produced just one to five running models, but a handful of firms became mainstay manufacturers in Missouri — for a time. As in other parts of the nation, electrically powered autos in Missouri preceded those with gasoline engines. The first to appear was in St. Louis, a crude model that reached eight miles per hour, created by J.D. Perry Lewis in 1893. A second effort allowed twelve miles per hour on St. Louis streets, impressing editors of _The Horseless Age_ to comment in November 1895 that Lewis “conducted around the streets of that city with considerable éclat.” Although considered state-of-the-art, the construction cost, fifteen hundred dollars, was too high for manufacture. Lewis went on to sell others’ creations at local dealerships. Lewis was just one of many such flashes in the pan. Yet a few men, such as George Preston Dorris, enjoyed a longer term. *"Rigs That Run"* Nashville native George Dorris built a two-cylinder engine that powered a steam launch while at an engineering school there. In 1893, Dorris and his friend John French operated the launch as a cruise boat on the Cumberland River. Two years later, _Scientific American_ articles about French and German experiments inspired Dorris to build his own horseless carriage. By then, John French had returned home to St. Louis to work at his father’s piano and organ company, but he had the horseless-carriage fever. He enticed Dorris to come to St. Louis to build them, and Dorris arrived on Thanksgiving Day in 1898. French became president of the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company, known for its slogan “Rigs That Run,” and Dorris soon held the title of chief engineer and led the construction department for seventy-five dollars a month. The new company advertised its first car in the August 30, 1899, issue of _The Horseless Age._ It became the first successful automobile company west of the Mississippi. In its first year of business, the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company produced 130 cars. Dorris patented a sliding-gear transmission in 1899, and the company was among the first to offer steering wheels in September 1901. Most automakers still equipped their carriages with a tiller. Dorris received sixteen automobile patents from 1900 to 1940. In 1903, John French died from internal injuries resulting from a driving accident the year before. The company survived but relocated to Peoria, Illinois, in 1905. After building 710 cars between 1899 and 1904, the company declared bankruptcy in 1907. *“Built Up to a Standard”* Many of the company’s woes were due to the absence of Dorris, who stayed in St. Louis to build his own car. He produced some of the most technologically advanced models of the era, and his cars, “Built to Last” and “Built Up to a Standard — Not Down to a Price,” lived up to the slogans. In 1920, Dorris bought another St. Louis automaker, Astra, and the company continued to grow. Trouble began in 1922 when competitors lured executives away, and large price cuts, intended to boost sales, undermined the company stock. Already, larger, better-funded car companies like Ford and General Motors ruled the market. After building 3,100 cars and 900 trucks, the company switched to buses in 1923. But the death knell came from a long court battle that pitted a board director, anxious for his overdue dividends, against the company. Dorris Motors declared bankruptcy in October 1926. *First Automobile Parts* At the turn of the century, St. Louis resident Andrew Lee Dyke made a fortune in the industry. First came his establishment of the first automobile supply business in America in 1899, the St. Louis Automobile Supply & Parts Company, from which was produced the first automobile supply catalog. Because the industry had yet to create a demand for parts, Dyke designed and produced all the various parts needed for a complete automobile — in short, a kit car. Running models were constructed for demonstration purposes, leading Dyke to be the first to produce a car with a canopy top. Dyke also dabbled with building complete cars, organizing the St. Louis Electric Automobile Company in 1899, and producing assembled models. These were the first electric vehicles in production west of the Mississippi, attractive enough to sell to the Scott Automotive Company, another St. Louis firm, in 1901. As Dyke’s auto supply business prospered, he continued to build full-size cars. In 1904, he built a twenty-horsepower, four-cylinder gasoline touring car; three years later came a six-cylinder. *A Carburetor Float* Both Dyke and Dorris claimed the American introduction of the float-feed carburetor. The carburetor played a critical role in the early automotive era. A float inside the gas-feed mechanism automatically interrupted the flow of fuel, thus maintaining a constant level of gas inside the carburetor. Without a float, operators were forced to constantly adjust a gas-metering valve. Regardless of the rightful claim, the Dyke version is the floatfeed model that the Smithsonian Institute acquired in 1926. Yet Dyke’s interest was in sales and promotion more than manufacturing. Evidence suggests that with his undisputed clout as an auto supply magnate, Dyke took wide liberty in buying engines and parts from French’s St. Louis Motor Carriage Company and marketing them as his own. Despite the competitive environment in St. Louis, Dorris and Dyke together wrote an automotive textbook in 1903, “Diseases of a Gasoline Automobile and How to Cure Them.” Dyke would go on to author two more detailed manuals. *“The Ideal Car”* Joseph Moon was another astute entrepreneur based in St. Louis. After riding with friend Richard Sears of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 1903 in Sears’s Benz, Moon bought a St. Louis model. By 1905, Moon was building his own horseless carriage inside his buggy company. In December 1905, a Moon prototype was shown at a New York auto show. But it was the Model C, built in 1906, that wooed the automotive press. At thirty-five hundred dollars, the model’s chassis was topped with an aluminum touring body “of the latest French type.” The editors of _Motor Age_ crowed, “It is difficult to find another car combining so many of the late products of engineering skill and yet passing as a machine so bereft of radicalism.” The Moon car, called “The Ideal American Car,” sold as the finest medium-priced car of the time. And they were popular: all told, Moon production was close to fifty thousand cars. The last year of the Moon Motor Car Company was 1929, a tumultuous year when it began building the Ruxton. A sly promoter, Archie Andrews, was behind the new model. Andrews connived his way into control, eventually causing so much unrest that the old guard barricaded themselves in the factory. The new regime broke in and took over. That was the end of Moon cars. *“The Last Word”* Andrews was also in contract talks with another St. Louis-based company, Gardner Motor Company, to build the Ruxton. Gardner had made a fortune making bodies for Chevrolet before World War I. In 1920, Gardner made forty-three thousand of its first model, “The Last Word in Motordom.” Gardner was counting on the contract to build the Ruxton, as well as a mail-order model for Sears, Roebuck and Company. But plans came to a halt as repercussions were felt from Wall Street’s crash in 1929. Fittingly, the last model to come from Gardner’s factory was a funeral car, just as one of the region’s longest lived and most proliferate producers died out. Gardner closed its doors in 1931. That proved to be the swan song of Missouri-based automakers of the early twentieth century. *MOTORING MUSEUMS *Auto World Car Museum* 1920 N. Business U.S. 54, Fulton, Missouri Number of vehicles: 100 Featured exhibits: a 1931 16-cylinder Marmon; a 1924 Stanley Steamer; a 1909 Black; a Studebaker Wagon, and replicas of a 1902 Olds and Olds pickup. Hours: 10 AM-4 PM Mondays through Saturdays; 12:30-4 PM Sundays Admission: Adults, $5.50; seniors, $4.50; children ages 6-12, $2; children under 6, free. Telephone: 573-642-2080 Web site: www.autoworldmuseum.com *Memoryville, USA, Autos of Yesteryear* 2220 N. Bishop Avenue, Rolla, Missouri Number of vehicles: 40 classics in the museum and more than 40 in the restoration shop. Featured exhibits: Paul Harvey’s 1938 Nash; a 1902 Holsman with rope-driven engine; plus access to the auto restoration facility. Hours: 8 AM-6 PM Mondays through Fridays; 9 AM- 6 PM Saturdays; 9 AM-5:30 PM Sundays. Admission: Seniors, $3; adults, $3.50; children ages 6-12, $1.35; children under 6, free. Telephone: 573-364-1810 Web site: www.memoryvilleusa.com *National Museum of Transportation* 3015 Barrett Station Road, St. Louis Number of vehicles: 20 Featured exhibits: a 1901 St. Louis Automobile; a 1906 Ford Model N; a 1908 Galloway Express Truck; a 1915 Model T “Tin Lizzie,” a 1963 Chrysler turbine car; also 70 locomotives, trains, aircraft, trucks, buses, and street cars. Open daily 9 AM-5 PM; closed New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Admission: Adults, $4; children and seniors, $2. Telephone: 314-965-7998 Web site: www.museumoftransport.org April 2006

Emily Hendricks A Miracle in Progress

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:35:20 GMT

Emily Hendricks’s resume is impressive: founder and director of the charity Crocheters Anonymous, March of Dimes family ambassador, ranked top ten percent in Prudential’s 2005 Missouri Volunteer of the Year award, and feature writer for the Southeast Missourian newspaper. She’s only nineteen and a freshman in college. But Emily’s successes have not been without struggle. Born six weeks premature with VACTERL Association, birth defects that affect multiple organ systems, including an under-developed heart, she has spent most of her life in and out of the hospital. A family album of her first year is a reminder that her life is a miracle. The four-foot-six-inch-tall blonde has made a big ripple for such a little person. She is proud of her charity, Crocheters Anonymous, and its 120 members worldwide. They donate crocheted items to smaller, lesser-known organizations for breast cancer survivors and young chemo patients, as well as to larger institutions such as the St. Louis Children’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where she spent a lot of time. Within days of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, they had donated. “The point of the charity is for people who are addicted to crocheting, but don’t necessarily have people to crochet for,” Emily says. “If I was a perfectly healthy kid, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. I’m more grateful for all the goodwill and charity I received, and I want to give others the same gifts I was given.” *—Michelle Salater* June 2006

Missour Civil War Women

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 03:42:26 GMT

*By Larry Wood* Women in the War Between the States disguised themselves as men and fought alongside them, in addition to their more traditional support roles as nurses, cooks, laundresses, messengers, and spies. And the women who fought in the Civil War played the most prominent roles in Missouri, the border state where sharply divided loyalties fueled a bitter guerrilla conflict, bringing the war home to everyday people and inevitably leading to civilian spying and other covert operations. According to Elizabeth D. Leonard in her book _All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies,_ an estimated five hundred to one thousand women disguised themselves as men and enlisted in the Union and Confederate armies as combat soldiers. Although not much information is available about these women, historians do have details about a few of them. Of these, three, possibly four, had Missouri connections. Frances Louisa Clayton enlisted in the Union Army with her husband in the fall of 1861. Although the Claytons were Minnesota residents, they are thought to have served in a Missouri unit, according to DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook’s _They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War._ Frances was wounded at the Battle of Fort Donelson, Tennessee, in February 1862. After her husband was killed at the Battle of Murfreesborough, Tennessee, in January of 1863, she reportedly stepped over his dead body and resumed fighting when the order was given to charge. She left the service shortly afterward, having done “full duty as a soldier,” according to Blanton and Cook. Ellen Levasay, a private in the Third Missouri Cavalry in the Confederacy, was among the Southern soldiers who marched out of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, 1863, when Confederate forces surren-dered to General Ulysses S. Grant after a six-week siege. She was first sent to the Gratiot Street or the Myrtle Street military prison in St. Louis and later transferred to Camp Morton, Indiana, on August 14, 1863. A soldier named William Levasay, of the same Missouri regiment and presumably a husband, brother, or cousin of Ellen Levasay, arrived at Camp Morton the same day. Like Frances Clayton and Ellen Levasay, many women who disguised themselves as men and enlisted during the Civil War did so to follow a loved one into battle. Others, like Jane Short, alias Charley Davis, were simply looking for adventure. Jane, who enlisted in a Missouri Union infantry regiment in 1861, later explained she was “pining for the excitement of glorious war.” Despite being injured at the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, in April of 1862, Jane was not discovered as a woman until she became ill and was sent to a hospital a few months later. After her discharge, she reenlisted with Lou Morris, another woman, and served until August 1864 when she reportedly grew frightened at the pros-pect of having to face General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate forces, says Richard Hall in his book _Patriots in Disguise: Women Warriors of the Civil War._ She revealed her identity and also turned Lou in. Both were discharged. There were other reasons besides love or thirst for adventure that prompted women to enlist in the army during the Civil War. Some were motivated by a sense of patriotism, while others simply joined the army as a way to make a living. Regardless of their motivation, the women who disguised themselves as men took great pains to avoid detection. Loose-fitting Civil War uniforms facilitated the charade as did the strict gender roles of the time. Anyone who wore pants was automatically assumed to be a man. Also, many of the women who passed as men had a naturally masculine appearance and bearing. Frances Clayton, for example, was described by Blanton and Cook as a “very tall, masculine-looking woman bronzed by exposure” who readily adopted “manly vices” like drinking and swearing. According to Hall, Jane Short looked like an “unsophisticated country lad of twenty years.” Despite efforts to maintain their disguise, though, most women were eventually detected. For instance, a Private John Williams enlisted in the 17th Missouri Infantry (Union) at St. Louis on October 3, 1861, but was discharged by the end of the month with a notation “proved to be a woman” written on the muster roll. The story of her discovery is unknown, but circumstances such as injury, sickness, menstruation, pregnancy, and being captured often led to disclosure of a woman’s sex. Women who passed as men and fought in combat accounted for a small fraction that served in the Civil War in one capacity or another. But female spies and informants were particularly common in the state of Missouri. Mrs. Susan Bond was carried on the Union rolls and paid as a spy for work in the Springfield area during the fall of 1864. In September, when an unnamed female spy, perhaps Mrs. Bond, reported to General John B. Sanborn at Springfield that General Sterling Price’s Confederate army was moving into Missouri from Arkansas, General William Rosecrans, Sanborn’s superior, questioned the woman’s motives. Sanborn replied that “the woman scout has brothers in the rebel army, and she always manages to get the confidence of their officers. She has spied a good deal for us from Neosho and has always been reliable and correct.” Rather than receiving pay for their work, female scouts and spies often served in an unofficial capacity out of allegiance to one side or the other. Colonel John M. Richardson reported from Cassville in November of 1862, “a loyal woman advised me of the arrival of a small party of rebels on Roaring River.” Richardson immediately sent out a detachment of soldiers who found the rebels at the home of a local resident and attacked the house, killing one man and capturing another. Because Federal forces occupied Missouri during most of the Civil War, Southern women in the state were even more likely than Union women to execute clandestine operations in support of their particular cause. Such operations included spying and scouting, serving as couriers, harboring and feeding guerrillas, tending the wounded, making cartridges, and other similar activities. In the spring of 1863, the provost-marshal-general at St. Louis sought an arrest order for several prominent and influential Southern women, mainly wives and mothers of Confederate officers, because he suspected them of secretly collecting and distributing rebel mail that incited young men to join the Confederacy and encouraged their friends and relatives already serving in the Southern army. Some of the more obstinate rebel women flaunted their feelings through impudence and open defiance toward Federal soldiers. For instance, a Union detachment stopped to take breakfast at the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Spencer about ten miles southwest of Warrensburg in July of 1864 and were told by the couple’s four grown daughters that they could not have any bread because the family’s dogs needed it. The women added that “they would feed no Black Republicans; but said they had and would again feed their grub to bushwhackers when they wanted to, and even dared the soldiers to molest a thingabout their premises,” according to a report made by Union Captain William B. Ballew dated July 2, 1864 in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Sallie and Jennie Mayfield, whose brothers were notorious guerrillas in the Vernon County area, even rode with the bushwhackers from time to time. On one such occasion, they were captured and taken to the Gratiot Street prison in St. Louis. They eventually escaped after adamantly refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the Union. Personal acquaintance and friendship sometimes overrode politics, though, even for inveterate rebel women like the Mayfield girls. James B. Pond, a Union officer stationed at Fort Scott, Kansas, recalled a time not long after the Mayfield boys had been killed by a Union scout that one of their sisters warned him of an impending guerrilla attack and thereby saved his life, because he had previously been kind to the girls and had protected their family from an overzealous militia. Women have generally supported their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons during times of war. They have aided the causes in ways that ranged from carrying arms in battles to spying and the more typical support roles. They cried when their men didn’t come home. Women in the Civil War were no different. June 2006