The Red Dodge
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, READ PART 1
PART 2
By Matt McGowan
I don’t know why I had to see the guy’s face to know that he was drunk. I don’t know why I had to walk a block and a half before I called 911. These are rhetorical statements. Of course I know why. I’m just embarrassed to admit it.
I looked up Washington street and saw my neighbor coming in his truck. Back on Sutton, his wife had heard me yell at the driver and she told her husband to go check on me. I asked him to call 911, but then I realized I had my phone. As I dialed, my neighbor tried to take a photograph of the car’s license plate, but the driver sped off. We watched him go to the end of Washington, where he slowed down and made a U turn.
The dispatcher answered as the driver started coming back toward us, his car rocking over a speed table. I moved behind my neighbor’s truck. The driver stopped next to the truck and looked at us. One eye. The sun shined brightly on it. He had a tattoo on his forearm. “Family,” it said.
While my neighbor tried to ask him questions, he kept pointing at me and saying, “Hey, you, come here.” His head wobbled, and later — after watching video shot by my neighbor from the seat of his truck — someone said it looked like he wanted to fall asleep.
My friend asked him if he lived around here. He said he did. Then he said he was looking for his daughter.
The dispatcher asked me for his license plate. I stepped around my neighbor’s truck, walked behind the Dodge and read it to her.
“Hey, you… come here.”
When I didn’t, he took off again, north on Washington. I watched him cross Lafayette and disappear.
The dispatcher asked me two dozen questions. (I still don’t understand why they need my address and date of birth, but I gladly gave them both.) I answered her questions while narrating the driver’s route.
He’d turned around again and was coming at us again, now south of Lafayette. His car scraped against a different speed table before he stopped again at my neighbor’s truck. I kept an eye on him while talking to the dispatcher. I don’t remember him saying anything. Then he took off again and went back to Dickson. Slowly, like he was sober, he turned left and he was gone.
A minute later, a police officer pulled up. “Did you find him?” I asked.
“Nope, we’re still looking.”
NEXT: Part 3, the final part, will appear in the next issue of Ozark Hollow with an unknown caller on the phone.
The writer, Matt McGowan, is author of the recently released novel, 1971, available through Amazon.
Upcoming Buffalo River Events
Special events are planned throughout the year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of designation of the Buffalo River as the nation’s first national river.
LECTURES
April 29 — The Honors College at the University of Arkansas will offer a community panel, organized by Jared Phillips, author of Hipbillies: Deep Revolution in the Arkansas Ozarks, and Joshua Youngblood, of the University Libraries Division of Special Collections. The panel will include Brooks Blevins, the Noel Boyd Professor of Ozark Studies at Missouri State University, members of the Villines family, Herb Culver of Bean Mountain Farms, and three people from the Ozark Outdoor Center: Gordon Watkins, Beth Ardapple and Austin Albers. The discussion will be at 2 p.m. April 29 in the Honors Hall Lounge of Gearhart Hall in Fayetteville. The event will also be livestreamed.
ENTERTAINMENT
May 14 — Aaron Smith and the Coal Biters will perform from 6-7 p.m. May 24 at North Arkansas College in Harrison, South Campus Room M143. Their latest release, The Legend of Sam Davis, is a coffee-table compendium of songs, stories, artwork, maps and family photos telling stories and legends of Newton County. The album is available through YouTube Music, Apple Music and other online outlets.
June 9 — The Kenda Drive-In on the east side of Marshall will feature films from 8-11 p.m. June 9 that focus on the Buffalo National River’s history, beauty, recreation and art. Find the Kenda Drive-In via this Google map locator.
June 10 — The Lucky Star Farm and its artist-in-residency program will offer a variety show at the Buffalo Point Campground Amphitheatre featuring music by Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes and the folk art duo of Donna and Kelly Mulholland of Still on the Hill; a historical reading on the Rush Ghost Town by author Alison Moore; stories of the Ozarks by photographer and writer Don House, photographer and writer Sabine Schmidt; and textile Imagery of the river by Cate McCoy.
June 11 — The Buffalo National River Partners will present an Ozark Music Festival from 2:30-9:30 p.m. June 11 at the Tyler Bend Pavilion. Read more about the musicians set to perform.
ON EXHIBIT
The Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale, Arkansas, has an exhibit of photographs by Ken Smith of his exploration of the Buffalo River, primarily from 1964, on display through the end of the year.
The University of Arkansas Libraries exhibit, 40/50/100, was created in 2002 and is still available online.
FOR RESEARCHERS
The Kenneth L. Smith Papers MC 1423, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries.
Various manuscript collections related to The Ozark Society including the Ozark Society Records MC 477, Ozark Society Foundation Records MC 1811, Highlands Chapter Records MC 1533 and Sugar Creek Chapter Records MC 2162
Neil Compton Papers MC 1091 and Neil Compton Recordings MC 2043.
Chronicles of the Little White Dog
By Mark Pennington
Maddox's dog is staying with us for a few days. She and the little white dog get along pretty well except they're always convinced that the other is about to get something that they're not, so there is a lot of watching and maneuvering.
The little white dog doesn't get many walks because she has to smell every inch she traverses, and if another dog has marked a spot she comes across she has to stop and pee on it. You move at the pace of that big machine that tears up paving. When she walks, she's the only one who has a good time. Maddox's dog, on the other hand, races along, pulling you behind her, determined to get wherever we're going before anyone else.
Lynda decided to take Maddox's dog for a walk and leave the little white dog behind. As she was putting the harness on Maddox's dog I looked up to the top of the stairs and saw the little white dog actually shivering with rage. I couldn't be any party to that so I put a leash on the little white dog and out we crawled.
After we'd eventually gone about two blocks I called ahead to my wife that we'd had enough fun. My wife said we'd take them both to the house. Maddox's dog wasn't ready to go back so she dropped to the sidewalk like at a sit-in. Eventually we got her up and moving.
The little white dog is no faster going in than coming out. Maddox's dog dashed ahead, then looked back and became concerned that the little white dog was going to get a longer walk than she did — the jealousy shoe was on the other foot. So she dropped to the ground again and would not stir until the little white dog came up to her. Then she would walk another 100 feet, look back at the little white dog, and drop to the ground again until the distance was closed. Eventually we all got back to the house.
A neighbor watching this weird ritual would have thought we were two crazy people walking two crazy dogs.
The Last Word
Pawpaw | paw-paw
Back in 1890, the author C.L. Norton, writing in his book Political Americanisms, described the word paw-paw as the equivalent of a “bushwhacker” in Missouri. Typically, bushwhackers were irregular military groups engaged in guerrilla warfare. Although the word bushwhacker was used as early as the Revolutionary War, it came into common use during the Civil War and was particularly used in Missouri, where large Confederate bands roamed the Ozarks and ambushed victims with some forethought as to when the victim would be most vulnerable, whether that victim was an individual traveling alone or an entire community being overrun because the menfolk were away at war.
People like the 16-year-old Jesse James, the 15-year-old Plunk Murray and their adult leaders — William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson — could easily have been described as bushwhackers, or to use the southeast Missouri word: paw-pawers. Vance Randolph had heard the word paw-pawer during his travels in the Ozarks in the early 20th century, and defined the word as an outlaw or fugitive. H.L. Mencken picked up Randolph’s citation for his ever-evolving reference The American Language, Supplement II: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States.
The word paw-paw appears to have landed upon the outlaws and guerrillas of Missouri because they were jokingly supposed to subsist upon nothing more than the wild fruit of the pawpaw tree, or Asimina triloba. The tree is from the custard apple family and has purple blooms in the spring, or right about now. The texture and taste of the fruit is less like any temperate fruit typical of the Ozarks and more subtropical, something like banana custard with a dollop of mango chutney mixed in.
The French Creole of southeastern Missouri were referred to disparagingly as the paw-paw French by their English-speaking neighbors, and their language, a mix of the Canadian French accent and the Louisiana French vocabulary, also became known as paw-paw French. The language survives in a rarified state, with various words and phrases still practiced in Vieille Mine, or Old Mines, Missouri. The last of the fluent speakers, though, is no longer among the living.
In 2014, a reporter for NPR recorded a short story about several people who grew up hearing the paw-paw French spoken fluently by their parents, but who were dissuaded by their parents from using the language because the teachers of the 1920s and 1930s would rap your knuckles if you were to speak the Creole French. Mon dieu, nous sommes tous paw-pawers! And that’s the last word. CEYA
Have an interesting word? Send it to editor.ozarkhollow@gmail.com. Include your name and hometown as well as why the word is of interest to you and what, if anything, you know about the word.
