Hide Article Text (OCR)
Frwfcy, Sept. », teMTUB STARS AND SIQUEEN OF THE OZARKS* AVERS-tKUlMMiy Gts 'Rest* Grenade FtingersOH LA LA!{Start and Stripes V. S. Bureau)SPRTN GFTET.-D, Mo.—Sometime in October, ton years ago, on the night of the Moon of the Painted loaves at the edge of the White River in the heart of the Ozarks, the Ridge-Runners and Gravy-Soppers and Rabbit-Twisters and Ranch-Apes and Scissor-Bills and Web-Footed Level-Landers gathered their clans together from all over the midwest and crowned May Kennedy McCord ’’the Queen of the Hillbillies.”These prazy-sounding names of the different clans of The Hill crofters” designate hillbilly groups according to the section they live in. As their Queen, 62-year-old May McCord presides at their yearly meetings when they hold colorful rituals pledging the preservation of the Ozark Hills, the way it used to be before the tourist invasion.But May is a lot of other things too. Who’s Who” lists her as a member of almost all the national folklore societies and ”a collector of ballads, customs, superstitions, language and traditions of the Ozarks.” That simply means that she's the biggest booster, the nation’s number one Information Pleaser about the Ozarks. In her daily newspaper column ’’Hill Billy Heartbeats” and her radio program over KWK, she devotes all her time and space to what she calls, ’’the playground of the middle west, the Switzerland of America.”BOUNDED BY RIVERS She’ll talk about how big it is— 75,000 square miles bounded by four rivers, the Mississippi in the east, the Verdigris in Oklahoma on the west, the St. Francis on the north and the Arkansas River on the south; how beautiful it is—one million tourists coming there every year to get close to nature, to see the whole country covered with white when the dogwood blooms in Spring, or in Fall when the multicolored leaves make it look like a painter’s paradise; how happy the people are......Why shouldn’t they be happy, said May. ”The streams and rivers are full of bass and jack salmon and Die woods are full of squirrels and wild turkeys and the people them selves are always full of music . .May made sure to stress that the Ozark hillbillies don’t yodel the way the Broadway hillbillies do Nor do they twang out corn like They Cut Down The Old Pine Tree.” As for Jailhouse Blues” ami the other blues songs, that’s ’’river stuff.”What they do sing are old English ballads like Barbara Allen’ and The Wife of Usher’s Well,’ songs that date back to the Elizabethan times.And they hold their ’’sings” regularly in the Ozarks. Just recently 4,000 Ozarkians got together In Hartville, Mo., on a blistering hot day and sang far into the night Some of them even sang the ojd old Gregorian hymns.Then they dance. Dozens ofhome-taught fiddlers start fiddling and May Kennedy or her daughter or somebody else gets up on a plat form and ’calls” the different steps in tire different square dances and it sometimes lasts until the first dawn streaks.City folks have sort of adopted our square dances,” said warm-voiced May, ’’but they don’t know how to do it. They jump around too much. The Square Dance is supposed to be smooth and gliding.” They let the teen-age kids join in on the dances now. Years ago they'd never think of it because the hillbilly superstition was that the ’ devil was in the fiddle.” Now they welcome the kids to keep them away from the juke-box. beer’ hall joints down by the highway.It’s the highways and tourists that are worrying May Kennedy McCord and her organization of Hillcrofters who want to keep the Ozarks the way it used to be. These hillbillies, . especially those tv ho migrated up from Kentucky, have intermarried for generations among their kinfolk. So much so. that when the Stone family throws a picnic for their near-relatives, they'll have more than 600 people dropping in.Blit, with more and more tourists streaming in every year (not this year because of the gas rationing 1 May’s afraid that gradually this last seed-bed of pure Anglo-Saxon is going to be swallowed up by civilization. absorbed and standardized and ruined.’’Lots of city people make fun of the hillbilly because he talks differently than they do.” said May. ’They don’t realize that we hillbillies speak a vocabulary that’s still rich with the original Shakespeare and Chaucer.’’And they kid us about our child marriages. Well, maybe, some of us do marry young, but we stay married. That’s more than you can say for a lot of other people in a lot of other states.” ENTHUSIASTICALLY PROUD May is also enthusiastically proud of the hillbillies in the Army and Navy (her son is in the Navy).”0 Lands,” she said, ’’it’s the limit the way our boys throw hand grenades. They’re just about the best hand grenade throwers in the world. It just comes natpral with them.”May explained that, up in the Ozarks. when the kids are six years old, they’re taught how to ’’bark’ squirrels by hitting the limb of a tree with a rock, so that the bark flies, and the squirrel falls down shocked stiff. Among hillbillies, it’s a disgrace to kill a squirrel with a gunThere won’t be any postwar problem for our boys when they come back from the war,” said May. ’They’ll just come back to the deep hills and pick up their rod and old fashioned muzzle-loading gun and do a little hunting and fishing. It will take more than a war to keep our hillbillies out of the OzarksROUNDUP CONTINUESTHE CHAPLAIN asked the y. soldier to give one reason wh wanted to go home. The pointed to what you’re lookii and merely said, ’’That!” OR the mademoiselle is lovely, hi Adeline Potter of Chicago gi fully half-twisting her way to (AvenePloy BockFrank Croeetti took two a week to keep in shape f with a semi-pro team while ing in a California shipyar when he quit to give the Blt; a hand he surprised even Mc4 by being ready to go , . . Ph zuto, the little Yan^j? „ 1 shortstop, is now managing t club in a service league in Au;The finish-line camera rec deadheats and photo-finis) horse racing turned out 304 and-nose finishes last year, them for first money. In 19 last year before the earners into use, there was only on heat in the entire country . former Stanford University letic greats were teammates the Bougainville invasion but find it out till later. The boj football end Keith Topple baseballer Tommy Killifer.Six members of Notre undefeated 1941 football ele^ now lieutenants in the U. They are Angelo Bartelli, Murphy. Johnny Kovatch Dove, Harry Wright and Brock . . . One of the odditi
Newspaper Details
Oran Stars and Stripes
Oran, Oran, DZ
Fri, Sep 01, 1944
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Rachel P.
USA 05 Jul 2024
Other Publications Near Oran, Oran
North Africa Stars and Stripes
Oran Stars and Stripes
